My name is Betty DeGraw. I, uh, came to ASU in 1986 and, uh, started the
Downtown Center in downtown Phoenix, and I also served as associate Dean
and Dean of the College of Extended Education. I retired in 2005 and now
I'm a Dean emerita and professor emerita. Um, I'm Dar Eschbach. And I came
to, uh, Arizona State University in January of 1976 and probably recorded
as retiring in about 2002. My full name is Barbara Jean Bradford Boling
Powell. Ashbach. I actually retired two times. The first time was June
30th of 2006. That was from Information Technology. Then the second time I
retired was June 30th of 2008,
and that was uh in economic affairs. I was a program coordinator. Well my
name is Richard Jacob. I'm known as Dick Jacob in most circles. Uh,
including campus at ASU. I came to ASU as a tenure track assistant
professor in 1963.
And I retired as a professor in 2001.
My name is Val Peterson. I, uh, I was director of facilities management at.
Uh, ASU and I arrived early in the year 1988 and left in the year 2000.
My name again is Marigold Blinnton. And I was director of educational
services in the College of Education was director of education services
and mathematics, and then became uh director of American Indian programs
at ASU East. I am Conrad Store and. Worked here at Arizona State
University for a little more than 24 years actually this week on Thursday
, it'll be 3 years since I tendered my retirement papers. So happy to be
back on campus and talking about my time at the university. uh, Gary Crabi
, um, I came to ASU as an assistant professor and worked my way through
the academic ranks and then finished, uh, as senior. Vice president of the
university, I'm Jerry Snyder. And I was at the university for 37 years, uh
, the entire time was, uh. Uh, in the, uh, comptroller's office, which was
, uh, renamed to uh Financial Services about 10 years ago. Legal name is
Jacob Fuchs, but I never cared for it and so most of the time I've gone
under the name Jack, and that's the one I prefer. Uh, I'm currently
professor emeritus of chemistry. After having been at ASU for. Now 61
years, 55 of which they paid me the the last part, I'm on my own.
Uh, my name is David George Schotsley, known as Dave Schotsley. My first
position at ASU was as a student in 1961. I was in the Masters of
Engineering program. And I remained a student until the end of 1963.
And went away and continued my career in the Air Force. And then came back
in 1979 as an associate professor later became a full professor and at the
end I was the associate dean for the College of Architecture and
Environmental Design. My name is Daniel Jankowski, uh. I've, uh, was at
ASU for 40 years and during that time I was a faculty member having worked
my way up through the ranks. I was also a vice chairman of mechanical
engineering. Uh, associate dean for academic affairs and interim dean, and
I closed my career at ASU with a uh service as the uh coordinator for the
2002,
uh, accreditation effort. Uh, my name is Anne Schneider, and I was dean of
the College of Public Programs at ASU, and after that I was a professor in
the School of Justice studies and then in the uh department of Political
Science.
Have you been told about the, the takeover of the ROTC building? OK.
A handful of students, no more than 10, uh, taking over the ROTC building
is, is the wrong way to describe it, but that's how it was described. They
just sat in. They just decided to sit there and they would not move. Uh,
this, well. I don't know. I, I can get you the date early in late 60s and
uh protesting ROTC. They wanted ROTC off campus. It was pre Ken state, uh
but it was an anti ROTC demonstration and it was the old Maine then was
the home for ROTC, so that's where they had, uh, settled in. Now this is
the kind of thing that uh wasn't public. There had been uh campus unrest
on and off because there was all over the country, and one of the methods
that the administration used to keep it calm was they irrigate it every
weekend. So that all the lawns were that deep in water and you couldn't
have demonstrations on the lawns. I mean, there, you, it wouldn't be
possible is what I'm saying. Uh, John Duffy was head of campus police, uh
, before Gay Schuman took over. George Hamm, uh, Dean, Dean of men, and
John Ryan, academic vice president. And these kids are sitting in the ROTC
building. I didn't know any of them, but I had, uh, good rapport with
students and students knew that. Uh, what nobody except a very small
handful of people knew was that the campus was surrounded by National
Guard. The government had the governor had called in the guard. The guard
was armed and they were prepared to shoot if necessary. Uh, they were
gonna get those kids out of that building that day or else. Uh, That's
what I wanted to tell you. I don't think it's ever been made public before.
Uh, the rest of it is, is kind of irrelevant in a sense. I went in there
. I sat, I remember sitting on the floor with the students. I don't
remember what I told them except that I promised them that there would be
no repercussions afterwards if they just got out, that they wouldn't be. I
had no right to say that because nobody gave me permission to say it. I
just felt so. I was really nervous about the guns. Anyway, I talked him
out of the building. And I think it's so ironic.
That I've only made the front page of the republic once and that was in
because of a student demonstration but it was dangerous it was dangerous
we had the whole campus surrounded by armed National Guard. Never hit the
papers.
We were the bulldogs in those days. I, I was a cheerleader in those days
and uh. One of the things I want future generations of of uh. Uh, sun
devils to know that they come from a long proud line of bulldogs and, uh,
the, the bulldogs in those days were, as I said, we were kind of the
country cousins always struggling, uh, for status and uh. So we came from
, uh, a long line of bulldogs that really grew up on the wrong side of the
tracks and uh we as mean as junkyard dogs, you know, when provoked and
there was more than enough provocation from the U of A. They were
constantly putting us down and uh our, our chant was 12 beat the you.
Their derisive response was 123 beat tempe. They did everything in their
power to keep us localized. They were the university. Very jealous about
the fact that the capital which they wanted when when the 13th territory
Legislature created both ASU and the UFA, what the people in Tucson really
wanted from that legislature was for the capital to be returned to Tucson.
That was a proud old community, you know, a century before Phoenix was
anything, and, uh, they didn't get what they wanted, but at least they got
the university. The the capital eventually came to to Phoenix, so there
was a lot of jealousy over that, but they never wanted to share this idea
of university status with anyone else. So, so it was a long hard struggle
when we finally indeed did beat them in in 1950 very convincingly. In
football, to our dismay, the Arizona Republic had this headline. Can I
show this to you?
There it is. All right, yeah, so the old bulldog yell, I'll demonstrate
that for you later, but it was a very visceral kind of a yell. OK, here's
the old bulldog yell growl it out, girl.
Ah.
G.
Bulldogs.
The yell that followed was called with an A, and it was with an A with an
A with an A R I Z O N A and it ended Arizona, Arizona, Arizona state. That
is we, we were constantly reminding people, hey, we serve Arizona, we're
not just a little small town school.
Can tell us a little bit about your early life and some of the other
things that happened uh in your development prior to coming to the issue
then we'll get back to the issue. Very good. Um, it's not difficult for me
to describe my background because in a sense I've had a very, very broad
and very interesting background of life. Uh, when I graduated from, uh,
junior high school, I had begun at that time at age 18, uh, to do some
acrobatics and gymnastics even to the degree that later in my life, in
addition to my regular work as a university administrator, that's what I
was Elmer, a university administrator from 1946
until I retired then in 1988.
Uh, so I was had a side issue in life in addition to being, uh I can say
this with a little bit of, uh, humility, a pretty good student. I was
academically always, uh, sort of at the top of the class and so on in the
schools I went to junior high school, high school. And then college.
Having said that, part of my life is made up not only of family and of
Arizona State University for 25 years. But also of being involved very,
very directly and seriously in gymnastics and acrobatics as a side issue
of my life. It's one of the reasons that at my age I'm still in relatively
good shape except for this broken foot that which you can't get on here
but I do have a broken foot today. In any event, if that's enough to, I
was gonna have you since you're talking. your acrobatic skills. I was
gonna have you describe this photograph that uh that we have, yes, with
you and your friend. Yeah, this this photograph was taken in Hawaii while
I was in the Marine Corps active duty in 1944, and the man on the bottom
is Al Matter. He was a very, very famous acrobat, professional acrobat,
and I met him on the beach there, and we worked out and this is uh Diamond
Head. And this is uh Wai Waikiki Beach in Hawaii and you're the one on top
standing on the top on one arm. This fellow and I, Al Mater and I during
World War II, we did a hand balancing act which you saw a copy of, uh, in
the evenings while he was in the Navy and I was in the Marine Corps, Pearl
Harbor, by the way, location. And we were allowed to, uh, by our bosses to
take time off in the evening as long as we got back at 0600 hours in the
morning to begin work and we would be we would actually, we were actually
paid for each of those performances and we would traveled all over those
islands, the Hawaiian islands, which at that time, by the way, was not a
state this was the territory of Hawaii at that time. Now having said that
, that's, that's what that picture is about.
The chemistry building and the Life Sciences building were both built at
the same time, somewhere around 1958.
Well, I don't mean the whole building because our building has wings A, B
, C, D, E, F, and G, but the wings B and C were built around 1956,
1958, something like that.
That's exactly the same time that the Sun Devil Stadium was built. The
state ran out of money. And in order to finish Sun Devil Stadium,
BMC wings were built 1/3 shorter than the original plans.
And so you have this building, they didn't put up a wall, they put up a
temporary. Because the next year they knew they were going to get the
money. And that would, they would be able to finish that building. And so
if you go down B and C wing halls, there's a place where there's a double
door, which was the original end, and then they put on the other third of
that building.
But I've been writing children's books for about 20 years. What I really
did best or like the most was communicating science to kids. 1991, wrote a
book about swarro cactus. It's a little science book for fourth graders. I
was hooked. A lot of people will recognize this book. Don't call me Pig. I
have a Lena story. It's probably my most famous book gets sold. More than
3/4 of a million copies now since 1999 and it's a little story. It's about
javelinas which are not pigs and of course no one knows that they think
they're wild pigs. They're here in the desert and I was working with this
company. It was a toy company and he was making stuffed animals and he was
selling tens of thousands of his Javelina toys. He wanted to do a Javelina
book even though he'd never been a publisher before. See, and I had worked
for him on the side doing some other little projects. He said, Conrad,
could you write a book about Javelinas? I said sure I can do that. I had
written books about scorpions and tarantulas, little science books for
libraries, so that's what I thought I was gonna do. But as I started this
project, I realized this is gonna be for kids and was doing my my research
about what hevelinas are and everybody thinks they're pigs and of course
they're not so I'm thinking, well, don't call them pigs. Uh, I had my
title. It was in my head. I kind of chuckled, don't call me pig, and I
thought about kids playing on the playground, calling each other names. We
didn't like somebody to call you a name. We wouldn't want someone to call
you a pig. Here's this animal in the desert and everybody's calling it a
pig. It's not a pig. Don't call me pig and so I started playing around
with rhyme. And then I couldn't stop. It was in my head. I couldn't stop
until I was done, and we found illustrators John Ran and Beth Neely were
from Prescott. They were adjunct professors at NAU of art. They had never
illustrated a book. The publisher was a toy company who had never
published a book. I'd never done a picture book. We all came together. It
was meant to be. It wins Arizona Children's Book of the Year. It comes
wins the silver medal in the Benjamin Franklin Awards is the best
children's picture book in America. And we're off and running, uh, later
on in 2006,
this was 1999, in 2006, Janet Napolitano was governor of Arizona. And each
year during her terms as governor she would select a book. She had a
literacy program and it was underwritten by Phelps Dodge Corporation and
Southwest Gas. She would select a book. Every first grader in Arizona
would receive a copy of that book from the governor in 2006 she picked
this book. So 93001st
graders got a special edition copy of this book from the governor and it
was a very good day for me, yeah.
When I received the offer from ASU, it was a Western Union Telegram with
two incomplete sentences. I mean, written the way telegrams are written.
Uh, the first, the first partial sentence was. Offer position assistant
professor some salary. And this whatever. I mean, it was just very cryptic
and the next one said. Respond via cable to and that was it and I always
laugh about that because over the years the offer letters got to be 3
pages of legalese and you had to sign it 4 ways and have it notarized and
so on anyway it was uh it was it was funny to think back. That my offer
came on a on a two line Western Union Telegram.
We had a lot of close calls, uh, bomb threats, uh. Usually during finals
week and usually came from the College of Business. My, uh, my personal
experience with one of our illustrious governors, um, we had a bomb threat
during a board of Regent's meeting. And the bomb threat always came
through the information desk and, and they were trained, you know, when
you get a bomb threat, listen for all these other things, you know, noises
and etc. etc. And we took that information and and anytime there's a bomb
threat, I met with who, whoever they was on duty from campus police. And
they came over and we went through all the information and then they
turned to you and say it's your call. I was concerned enough that it was a
credible threat. And it wasn't during the finals week like normal, but
that particular governor had a lot of interesting things going on at that
point and. So we made a decision to evacuate the building and
unfortunately during lunch, that's all the students leaving and all the
food service really hated it when I did that. So I went up to the alumni
lounge where the board of Regents were meeting and went up to my vice
president and said we need to evacuate the building. We've had a bomb
threat. It may be credible. There's enough concern that we've made a
decision to evacuate the building about the time the alarm started going
off. So the vice president stood up and told the board of regents we need
to evacuate the building.
And the uh Governor turned and said, why are we evacuating the building
and the vice president said, Well, there's been a bomb threat and we think
it's credible enough that we need to evacuate the building. And he stood
up and said, I'm the governor of the state of Arizona. And you will not
evacuate this building unless I say we do. So I said, sir, you're welcome
to stay, and then I ask everyone else to leave. So that was, we had those
situations too.
Are you the one that had the pots put on the freeway, uh, yeah. Route 51.
OK,
half of them are gone now. Yeah, I was wondering I'd a thing. It was
proposed that in the airport.
On the escalator, long escalator that went up, there was a
There was a sculptor, I think his name was Alvarez, who did Plexiglas
sculpture. And he did a he did a mockup of a. Gigantic rattlesnake that
wrapped around. The
Escalator and at the very top its head. was there and I said, We're not
gonna do that. That would scare the hell out of every little kid that came
by here, so we never got that one.