CWU LIVING HISTORY PROJECT
Gary Fredericks
(Transcription of Tape 1, Side 1)
MS: Long-time athlete, coach, and Athletic Director here at Central. Bob Jones is operating the camera, and your interviewer is Milo Smith. I am pleased to identify Gary as Dr. Gary Fredericks. Proud especially because he was a former student of mine a thousand years ago. Okay Gary, let’s start it out by feeding the tape some information on your background starting with you were born.
GF: I was born on July 16, 1937 in Hoquiam, Washington. Actually I almost was born between Hoquiam, Washington and Raymond, Washington, which ended up being my home town. My Mom and Dad were in a Model T Ford going between Aberdeen and Hoquiam and Raymond when my Mother almost – since I was a third child, was almost gave delivery during that trip. My whole life, as far as grade school and high school, basically was in the Raymond area, although for two different – the first grade and the fourth grade I did go to a little school – a little town about 16 miles from Raymond called Van. And my Dad was a logger – had part ownership in a small tavern in the Van during those years, and we lived there for a couple of years, but most of my life was spent in Raymond. I graduated from Raymond high school in 1955.
In 1954 I came to Central Washington University as a member of Boy’s State, and that was my first experience with Central Washington. At that time it was Central Washington College of Education. And actually stayed in – we stayed in the quad area that’s by the new Science building – between the Science building North Hall – those were all pre-fabs, and the pre-fabs that were there were their same names that we now have in the Bassettis – the Carmody, the Monroe, and that type of thing – we stayed in those pre-fabs, and it was interesting that time, because we all had to take part during Boy’s State – of two hour shifts during the night of walking the hall and fire patrol, because those pre-fabs had caught on fire it could burn down in about 11 minutes flat. They’re pretty tinder dry, and those actually were used for dormitories until – you know, until 1970s. That was my first experience at Central, and pretty much that – being here, and being on the campus, and being in Eastern Washington – you know, Raymond’s a town with about 85 inches of rain a year, you know, and being here and seeing that kind of weather – it kind of was a – was the reason I wanted to go to Central. But probably the – the real reason I ended up here – the final reason I ended up here was Abe Poffenroth, a long-time member of our staff here – Abe Poffenroth was hired from Eastern Washington in 19 – the spring of 1955, as the new football coach at Central. Central had had may down years in football in the 50s, and he was hired to try to turn that around by Leo Nicholson, and the only letter I got from a college coach to play football was from Abe Poffenroth, and that finally was the reason I ended up here.
MS: Good. How many years did you play, Gary?
GF: I played four years of football for Abe Poffenroth. My first year I pretty much sat on the bench til I got in the last two games of the season. We were thumping Western pretty good, and Abe asked me if I wanted to get in the game or would I want a red shirt, and my intention was I was going to graduate in four years – we could, in those days. It’s a little different now. But I wanted to play, and I actually did my first – we played single wing T formation, we shifted at single wing, and in those days, and that first year I was here, we did not have bars on our helmet. And I know that – you know – as a center, having to lower your head so you could center the ball back to the tailback was a dangerous situation, because they always had somebody playing over the top of you, and my first experience in college football was I – the person across from me was a guy by the name of Willie Ball at Western Washington University who was six foot five, 245 pounds, later went on and played some pro football. Well the first play that we played – that I played in that game, Willie Ball hit me so hard I knocked the tailback down who was three yards behind me, and I wasn’t too sure I still wanted to play college ball after that. But the next year, halfway through the season I broke in as a starter, and ended up playing four years for Abe Poffenroth, and Abe Poffenroth was a very influential, like a lot of people on the campus at Central here at that time, in my developing my teaching personality, and my coaching personality, and so on.
MS: Did you play center all those four years?
GF: We played both ways, which in those days –
MS: [Inaudible]
GF: Yes. We played – they didn’t play two platoon. That had not – you could do it, but most teams – most college teams couldn’t afford to do that at that point in time, so I played linebacker on defense, and I played center on offense, as did most of the people that were playing at that time. We had a few people that just played strictly defense, but the bulk of the starters played both directions.
MS: Now you came in ’56?
GF: Fifty-five.
MS: And you went straight through.
GF: Yes. I graduated – I graduated in March 1959 because I’d gone to summer school, and I graduated March of ’59 and begin my teaching career at the last three months of the 1959 school year at Thorp. I was a third grade teacher, and the next year I was the seventh and eighth grade teacher. I was a combination teacher. And I told my class – my Administration classes this fall, I said that times have changed, and people have changed. I said when I taught at Thorp the seventh and eighth grade in 1960, both classes were in the same classroom. I’d spend 15 minutes on one side teaching math, and go 15 minutes on the other side and teach math, and back and forth. I said I had – I coached seventh grade varsity basketball, eighth grade varsity basketball, head junior varsity basketball coach in the high school, head varsity basketball coach in high school, was head baseball coach – got $300 for coaching and thought I was overpaid, because I was doing something I really enjoyed doing. I said nowadays the coaches ask, “Where’s the money,” you know? That seems to be their main interest – main focus.
MS: Now where did you go after Thorp?
GF: One of my mentors was the Superintendent of Thorp, a man by the name of Jerry Mabe, and Jerry Mabe – I enjoyed him as a Superintendent, and I really wanted to coach football. I really wanted to have an opportunity to coach football on the high school level. And Jerry got the opportunity to move to a little town in SE Washington called Waitsburg, which is about 20 miles between Spokane – out of Walla Walla, between Spokane and Walla Walla. And it’s a neat little community. And so they needed a football coach, and Jerry asked me if I would go with him to Waitsburg and teach Social Studies and Physical Education, and become the football coach, and I did. And I went there for three years, and when we went there Jerry said, “Well we’ll be there three or four years, and then we’ll look to move to a higher level, to a larger school” and that type of thing. Well low and behold Jerry got pretty entrenched in that community with his family and everything, and basically he never did leave there. He’s no longer living, but he was there until he retired.
And after three years another one of my mentors, who was Adrian Beamer, who was the Athletic Director at one time, but he was hired by Poffenroth my junior year at college to be the line coach – he was a very successful high school coach at Central Kitsap High School on the Olympic peninsula, and he was – he came up to me – Adrian came up to me at a coaching convention and said, “Are you interested in moving to a larger high school?” And I’d been very successful in Waitsburg, and had tried to apply for several other jobs, and basically found out that sometimes it’s not what you know, it’s who you know, and Adrian said that he had coached at Central Kitsap and they’d had nine straight losing seasons since he left – they hadn’t had a winning season since he left – and wanted to know if I was interested, because he would like to recommend me for that job. And he recommended me for the job. I interviewed and got the job, and was head football coach at Central Kitsap. Went from a school with about 90 kids to a school with about 1100 kids. They were in a very tough league with the two Bremerton schools at that time, and Port Angeles, and Shelton, and I had pretty good success there. I was the head baseball, head football coach at Central Kitsap, I was high school counselor there, and taught History.
And then I came from – decided, you know, once you’ve made [inaudible], Milo, a lot of the kids that were here when I first came here, Like Corky Bridges and Mary McGuire, and all those guys that played on our football team, you know, we graduated – most of us decided, “Hey, this is it. No more school for us. We’ve had enough school.” And seem it happened that after we get out for a while we decided, “Hey, maybe we should get a Master’s degree. Maybe we should get our Principal’s credentials.” So I decided I’d get my Master’s degree. I could have gotten it a lot cheaper if I’d gone to school when I was in Thorp, but I waited until I left this area, and then I decided to get a Master’s degree. I came back to Central, got my Master’s degree in the summer of 1950 – ’65, and then in the spring of ’67 I got a call from Abe Poffenroth and Adrian Beamer, and they said that they were hiring – needed to hire a head baseball coach, an assistant football coach, and was I interested. And the first question they asked me was, “Do you have your Master’s degree?” And I have told my classes here you may not think you want to get your Master’s degree, but if you want to move along the ranks, then you need to have that kind of an education. So I came here in 1967 and was here – I was hired as Assistant Football Coach, Assistant Professor of Physical Education, Head Baseball Coach, and about 1970 I decided that, looking at the salary schedule and the fact that even though the coaches did not have to have a terminal degree, that if I were going to eventually move on the salary schedule, and also if I wanted to get into Athletic Administration or Administration in Physical Education, that I would need an advanced degree. And so I decided to pursue that, and received my Doctorate in Education from the University of Idaho in 1974.
MS: Why did you choose Idaho?
GF: Well, one of the things I didn’t want to do is – I didn’t think I could afford to take a full year off without a salary. I had not been at Central long enough to get a sabbatical in order to do that type of thing. So in order to go to school, I would have to take leave without pay, and Idaho had an offer – they had a situation where they wanted you to have a year residence as part of your Doctorate program, but they allowed you to get that year residence by going summer semester, fall semester. So basically the only salary that I lost was for the fall. And so I had to come back in the winter and coach my baseball. I did take a leave of football in 1970 to do that.
MS: Now what was your – what was your own baseball experience preceding coaching?
GF: Well basically high school, but I had, as far as coach is concerned, the year I graduated from high school I was too old to play Junior Legion. They did not have a – they did not have a Junior Legion coach so they asked me to coach, so I was coaching Junior Legion baseball team when I was 18 years old – coaching kids 16 and 17 year old, and when I came to Central, actually, I didn’t turn out for baseball because I didn’t think I was good enough, and I was asked by Jim Nylander, who became the – the baseball coach, you know, my senior year – my junior and senior year, and I was playing at fast pitch in the summer with a lot of our college players that stayed around during the summer, and he liked what he saw and asked me to turn out, and I said, “Well, I would except that I plan on graduating in March,” so I never did play college baseball. But I – baseball’s always been one of my favorite sports. I have – you know, I think I was knowledgeable in the game of baseball, and I did coach it here for eleven years.
MS: Did you enjoy it?
GF: Very much. Very much.
MS: How was your record?
GF: Well, I think I’m still the winningest coach in the history of Central baseball. I have – I think it was 240-some victories and less than 150 losses. In eleven years we won nine conference championships. We were in the district all eleven years. We won the Regionals twice, went to Nationals twice – we finished third my first year here. We went to Nationals in Missouri, finished third, and then we went to the Nationals in 1970, finished second. We had two of our players play professionally – Bill North with the Oakland As some other ball clubs – ended up with the Dodgers in the last year – and then Dave Hammermill, who played for the Mariners, who played for San Francisco, played for Oakland, whose son, Jeff, presently is a top prospect in the Mariner’s organization as a pitcher. He signed for over a million dollars.
MS: Now some place along the line, Gary, you got married and you started a family. Where were you at that time?
GF: Actually here.
MS: Here?
GF: Here. And my first child was born in Ellensburg – born, actually, right where Safeway is right now. It was used – there was a clinic, and the doctor was Dr. Brown, and my oldest son Brook was born here. And then two of the children were born in Dayton, Washington, and two others, the two youngest were born here in the Ellensburg area.
MS: Yes, your son Brook and my son Kevin –
GF: Went to school together.
MS: Were good friends, and Kevin was also born where Safeway is now.
GF: Actually I’ve actually spent some time in the old hospital which is up for sale right now.
MS: Incidentally, you may or may not know about this – Kevin and Brook decided that as soon as they had opened up the freeway to bicycles, they were going to bicycle to Yakima, and they talked me into joining them.
GF: Because I couldn’t. I was playing baseball. I was coaching baseball. I’m glad you did that.
MS: So I went with them, but when we got to the top of the first hill we decided that Yakima was a little far, so we turned around at the military turn-around and came back down. But they left me at the top of the hill because I wouldn’t turn it loose and let it roll. I’d brake down to what I thought was a safe speed, and those two young fellows just went wide open all the way down.
GF: Yes, a little scary. We don’t – we don’t want – as parents, we don’t want to know of those things.
MS: That’s right. Now I had the good fortune of having one of your sons in a play when we did South Pacific. We made a – we made a South Pacific islander out of one of your sons. Which one was that?
GF: That’s Rob, and actually, Rob went to – the three oldest boys went to Whitman college and graduated from Whitman. There was a freshman, sophomore, and a senior there at the same time. And that – Rob was the freshman, and then our daughter Anna graduated from Central here, and son David graduated from Central here. But Rob, the third oldest – he actually graduated from Whitman in drama.
MS: Did he?
GF: He was in a ton of plays, and we didn’t miss any. Bobbie and I went to every one of his productions. He – I remember even one of the productions was an eight hour – eight hour production, and I can’t remember – and we broke for dinner in between, came back, and finished up, and I can’t remember the name of the production right now, but it was a great – it was a great production. Rob went to San Francisco, to the American Conservatory Theater as an intern, and actually was there for two years and while he was there, he was a house boy for a time-share condo – five star condo hotel on Nob Hill in San Francisco called San Francisco Suites, and he was house boy there. Well, he is the general manager of the hotel there now. He worked up from – but it’s interesting. He now – Rob is 39 years old. Rob is now going to San Francisco State – has decided he wants to be a kindergarten teacher. This is his first quarter, and he – he actually has been working in a kindergarten with a teacher, and just loves it. So he’s going to end up going into teaching now.
MS: Well I’m pleased to hear that that start that we gave him in South Pacific gave him some years of joy at Whitworth.
GF: He’s very good, and I have a hunch that in kindergarten he’ll use a lot of his techniques that he’s learned in Drama as far as those kids.
MS: Now when you arrived on campus, Gary, and for your four years, who do you consider significant instructors that you had other than this one.
MS: Well there were many, and you were one of them, and I say that I think for a lot of us – like I said, like [inaudible] Bridges, and Larry McGuire, and Harold DuGras, and [inaudible] all these individuals that went into Education, and most of them ended up in Administration and that type of thing. But all those individuals that I played college football with, probably their first experience, really, at any kind of getting up in front of a room and speaking was in your Speech class, which was very valuable to us, and most of us were very, very nervous about that, because that was our first experience.
I had some great instructors here. I think that – I told my class this last fall, here, I said that the instructors that probably in the field of History and Social Studies – because I had a Social Studies degree – that were most influenced me were Harold Barto, Floyd Rodene, and Dr. Funderburk. And those three individuals I was fortunate to have them, and I took as many classes as I possibly could from those people. The thing I liked about them is that you always knew where you stood. When you left the class you knew what grade you were going to get, and if 95 was an A and you had a 94.4, you were going to get a B. You were not going to get an A. If you had a 94.5 you were going to get an A. But you knew exactly where you stood.
Harold Barto was one of my favorites. If you look at the man, he scared the crap out of you, but he had the biggest heart around of anybody that I know. He was a great, great instructor. I’d like to relate a story about him, and I’m not sure anybody knows about this, and I tell my class and they don’t believe me, but it’s the honest to God truth. The – we were in a classroom right next to the driveway area that’s between Shaw-Smyser and Mitchell. Used to be a Music building there – Edison Music Building used to be there, and it was just a driveway. And the Physical Plant, as they sometimes do, they were outside during his class, and he was trying to lecture to us, and they were outside, and they had a generator, and they had a jackhammer, and they were tearing up the road. In those days, you know, they were – they’d pave it, tear it up, pave it, tear it up –
MS: [Inaudible]
GF: Yeah, once a week. They’re out there with the jackhammer, and they’re going, and he’s having trouble lecturing because he can’t hear. He goes outside the door, goes to the generator, guys facing away from him, they can’t see him, pulls the plug, walks back inside. The guy’s jackhammer stops. He can’t figure out what’s going on, and he finally sees it’s unplugged, so he plugs it back in again. Same thing. Harold walks out, pulls the plug, walks back in, the guy can’t figure out what in the hell’s going on here. Finally the guy figures that out, plugs it in for the third time. Harold Barto walks out, pulls the plug, stands there. The guy turns around, sees him. [Barto] takes a pocket knife out of his hands [pants?], and cuts the cord. Never got in trouble. He never got in trouble.
And he had a thing on, I told the class, I said, “When the bell rang, the door closed, and you better not open that door.” Because you were [inaudible]. If you did, he’d say, “You better not come in.” And he also had a rule that if the bell rang and he was not there, that they did not have to wait for him. They should leave. And on several occasions the bell would ring and his hat would come flying in the room, and we knew he was there. But we did get away from him one time, and most of us ended up over in the student union building, and after about half an hour most of us went back to his office to see what happened, and he wasn’t upset. The only thing he was upset about that nobody took the time to come down to his office right away and see if maybe he’d had a heart attack or something, because he did have a bad heart.
But those – those three instructors, along with Abe Poffenroth and Adrian Bink Beamer probably – and I also mentioned you, Milo, as a – you guys were very influential in developing a lot of my teammates philosophies, and their background in Education.
MS: An interesting story about Pete Barto, and there are thousands of them, I’m sure. I was on a fishing trip up in British Columbia. We were – my friends and I were hiking in to the lake, and there were two men coming toward us that had been in to the lake. Got fairly close, and one of them was Pete Barto. And Pete had already been diagnosed with a very, very bad heart. And as we met, we stopped and chatted for a little while, and Pete had a – had a pack board on his back with an outboard motor on the pack board besides all of his fishing gear, and I said, “Pete, what in the hell are you doing hiking in and out with that pack on your back? You’re not even supposed to be hiking.” He said, “Well Milo, I decided that there’s probably not a better place to die than on the trail to a fishing hole.”
GF: [Laughing] That’s him.
MS: And I said, “Pete, have you ever thought a little beyond that? Who’s got to carry you out?” He was a grand old gentleman.
GF: Yes he was.
MS: Who were the outstanding students during your four years, that when you think of, who were the students that made things happen? That did things in your four years? Who were some of those names?
GF; Well, I can think of several people that were – that went through the ROTC program that ended up being pilots and things. There was Don Pierce, who played football here. There was Don Lyle, there was Remo Nicholai – all these individuals were good students, good athletes, and also went on to – you know, and had – Steve Diedrich went in the military, because at that time, when I first came to school here, you were required two days a week to take Military Science classes in the Air Force ROTC, and so you were –
MS: Was that an unpopular rule?
GF: Yeah, it was. You know, most of us did – preferred not to do that, but it was a requirement, and it was because we – you know – that particular time was the Korean War, and that kind of thing, and a lot of us – a lot of people went to school here during that time went, because it kept them from going into the military. But the thing about it was that most of us felt that, hey, if we wanted to choose a military career and wanted to be serious about it, it would be better to go in as a Second Lieutenant than to go in as a Private, so –
And there were a lot of - you know – a lot of my classmates during those years did go into the Air Force military and continued on as part of their career.
MS: Do you remember any of your student body Presidents during those four years?
GF: Yeah. Wally Johnson was one. George Carver. In fact, I ran against George Carver as a – you know – for the student body President, and he – he won. And in those years you could pretty much put the student body in McConnell Auditorium. But yeah, George Carver was a – he ended up being a Superintendent of Schools, and an outstanding contributor in the field of Education.
MS: After George became Superintendent he used to write to me for – for some advice on Speech and Drama activities. He said that “I found you an honest sounding board,” so I’d give him the honest opinion, and sometimes he was in favor, sometimes he wasn’t, but George was probably a heck of a good Superintendent.
GF: Yeah. I think George – probably his greatest attribute was his ability to communicate with people. And I think that obviously administrative-wise, that’s probably one of the most important things.
MS: Do you remember any events in your four years, Gary, that involved riots, or sit-ins, or anything of that nature?
GF: Probably the – probably the only thing that occurred in my four years here was the protest about the food on campus. Because at that point in time it was mainly dinner. Breakfast and lunch was fine, but mainly dinner and that type of thing, you had one choice of entrée. But one of the interesting things which I still think would be a really, really good thing in the dining halls, but I don’t think the kids would ever go for it – when I first came to Central every dinner – evening dinner was sit-down. And you had eight people at a table, you had four females, you had four males, and the person at the head of the table who was brought to the head of the table, that person served everybody else. And then, after a month, you had to switch tables so that you got a chance to actually know the 1300 students on campus. You maybe didn’t know them all by name, but at least you knew them by sight. And then on Wednesdays and Sundays – Sunday, we only had two meals on Sunday. We had breakfast, and then we had a mid-afternoon dinner, and those were dress-up – suit, tie, or at least sport shirt.
MS: Right, you mentioned it.
GF: And Wednesday night also was another one.
MS: Good. Do you remember the library facilities at those times – in those years?
GF: In my tenure here at Central as a student and as a faculty member, this is the third library that I’ve been involved in. Shaw-Smyser was the library. And presently where they – I think the Business Administration is located right now – that was the library. And I know that sound really carried in that old library. In fact, the President’s office, Dr. McConnell’s office was in that library. It was a very, very, very small library. And then when I came back and got my – worked on my Master’s Bouillon Hall was the library, and then when I started working on my Doctorate and that type of thing then we had – that would be the present library, yeah.
MS: Do you recall any humorous events that happened on campus of any significance?
GF: It’s been so long ago, Milo, I’m not – I can’t really remember a lot other than being a student here, and – at that time a lot of us, even though we were sophomores or juniors, lived in North Hall or Wilson Hall, and at that time Walnut went all the way through the – it was not a closed campus like it is now, and I remember when it snowed, like it is doing today, that lots of times people driving through the campus by the dormitories really got bombarded pretty good with snowballs from the students, and that kind of thing. As far as anything other than the normal college type of things that we did – I know this – we used to try and go out, and a lot of us used to try and go out to Thorp to the Grange [inaudible – sounds like “anapsis”]. They had a Grange hall, and they had dances on Saturday night, and a lot of us would do that. Also at that time Munson Hall and Sue Lombard, and it used to be a lot of camaraderie between the male and female residence halls, and we would get together for dinners, and parties, and that type of thing, and I don’t think a lot of that happens now. I think that was a pretty close-knit campus.
MS: Now, when it came to teaching classes, Gary, what classes did you teach here at Central over the years?
GF: Well basically when I first was hired here as the Assistant Professor and Head Baseball, Assistant Football – other than teaching Coaching Theory classes, basically, I was assigned activities. Coaches here at Central, at that time, were hired as faculty members, and part of their – they did not receive extra pay for coaching. What they received was release time from class. So if a normal load was, let’s say, fifteen teaching credits per quarter, the quarter that our sport would have the biggest emphasis we probably would only teach eight contact hours that quarter and have eight contact hours that we would get for the coaching part of it. So basically activities and the theory classes, and then after I got my Doctorate then I was assigned other classes that were theory courses in teaching students how to teach Physical Education. I have taught fund raising classes, AD, Administration classes in Physical Education, Administration classes in Athletic Administration, I’ve taught Personnel Management, I’ve taught a combination Conditioning/Nutrition course that we developed in conjunction with the Family Service and Nutrition Department – basically a lot of – lot of teaching methods courses, and that type of thing.
MS: Did you enjoy your years as Athletic Director?
GF: Looking back on my 18 years as AD, I enjoyed it very much. Unfortunately, when you are a – when you go into Administration your position with your fellow coaches changes. When you become the person that’s responsible for hiring and firing, even though you’ve been a friend with many, many of the coaches for years and years, you suddenly became a little more of an outcast. You weren’t invited to as many of the functions that they had as you did when you were just a coach, and I knew going in that that probably would be the case, and – but I felt that as AD, I think that what I was doing was continuing – trying to continue the legacy that – that – of quality athletic programs that Adrian Beemer, and Leo Nicholson, and Abe Poffenroth helped develop here. And I think during that 18 years, I think I was able to maintain that. I think that we stepped up, you know, even a little higher level than we were before, and I think that’s all my answer.
MS: Well I think you have an exemplary record as an Athletic Director, and God knows you had headaches along with all of the joys. Now as Athletic Director it was absolutely mandatory that you became involved in what became known as the Dean Nicholson case.
GF: Mm-hmm, that’s correct.
MS: Dean was much loved in the community. He had been a school boy here, and a college boy here, and his parents were active in the community, and he could do no wrong. However, sometimes doing no wrong leads you into doing things that are wrong, and Dean got himself into some trouble. Can you describe what the trouble was?
GF: Well basically it’s – I’ll try not to make it a real lengthy story, but basically there’s a – before I get into what really happened, is it – twice during – during my tenure as Athletic Director the President of the University came to me and said, “I’ve heard some rumors about how Dean is using his money from his basketball camp,” which was his camp. It was not owned by the University at that time. “And I understand he’s using it for the players,” – at that time we were a non-scholarship program – “And he’s used that for his players to help them, and that type of thing, with their housing, and that type of thing. Would you please check it out?” So I went to Dean twice and asked him, “How are you using the money from your camp?” And Dean told me that he was using the money from his camp for – to hire the athletes to work. And I’d actually seen athletes cutting out newspapers, and things like this for recruiting, and so on, and I said, “Fine,” and reported that to the President.
Well later on a whistle blower – and the State of Washington has a whistle-blower law where if you are a person – a citizen that feels that money’s being misused or mishandled, that you can go ahead and report this to the State Attorney General and then there’s an investigation. Well there was a whistle blower that said that Coach Nicholson was using his money not appropriately from his camp. And the process started with our State Auditor, Esev Mina, investigating. And we had two meetings with Esev Mina in which I was with Dean, and I advised Dean right off the get-go that I thought he should get a lawyer because I didn’t like the way this could go, and he didn’t feel that he needed to get a lawyer – that basically that – you know – had come out in the wash that he was fine. And both times that we met with Esev Mina, you know, I supported what Dean had said.
MS: And he was?
GF: He was the internal auditor for the University – worked for the State, but he was an internal auditor. And Esev Mina would ask Dean how was he using the money from his camp, and that – because there was some question whether it should be his camp, or the University’s, because it was using the University’s name. That’s where this started – the problems started to occur. And both times I supported Dean in the fact that he used the money to hire these athletes, and I know he did this. Dean Nicholson never took a penny from any of his camps. He never took any money for himself, it was always for his program. And the third time we went down, Esev Mina threw out checks on the table, and these checks were to apartment houses, a used car agency – things that I could not support as an Athletic Director, because that is in direct violation of the rules. It was also after the investigation was found that seven of the thirteen players on the team actually had received more financial aid than allowed by the institution, and also found out that there was no income tax paid on this money that the camp – so it was a lot of things that came out.
Once the Auditor’s final report came out, it was given to the President, and the Provost, and the Dean of School Specialties, who I reported to at that time, and I met, and the one thing – two things we wanted to do after we met: we wanted to preserve the integrity of the University, which is – was the key thing – that if you have a University that doesn’t have integrity, they don’t have anything – and we wanted to preserve the man, Dean Nicholson, because of what he had done for the University – what he’d done for the individuals that were part of his program. Because I will say this – he saved a lot of kids. This was the last stop for a lot of kids – young men – and a lot of African American young men. This was their last stop. If they didn’t make it here – if they didn’t make it with Dean Nicholson, they weren’t going to make it with anybody. I would say 75 to 85% of the kids that – in that category ended up being solid citizens. One comes to mind – Sammy Miller who was a – came from Washington State, could be considered a hoodlum – the guy is in Education, doing an outstanding job. So what Dean did, we did not want to destroy that.
It was decided that we were going to get a two-year probation, which means we could not compete in national tournaments and that type of thing, from the NAIA, and what we decided was that we had no choice but to remove him from coaching, but he could remain as a faculty member for as long as he wanted to, and that was pretty much the decision of the four people involved. Would I do things differently than we did then? Yeah, I would. I would. Because I had to handle it as an AD. I’m the one that had all the interviews with the newspapers and the TV. The other three people basically were not involved, once the decision was made, even though it was a joint decision. I was the one that had to make – and I was the one that received the death threats. My family received two death threats for – for this, and basically it was easier for me to handle than my family. It was very difficult for my family. If I had to do it all over again, I’d let it all hang out. I’d let everything come out. I would have had everything published, you know. Unfortunately what happened was people that were my very, very close friends on the – in the Department had to choose, and unfortunately, you know, a lot of them chose – didn’t choose me, which I understood. It was probably a lowest time in my history as AD, but I am a stubborn German, and I was not going to let anybody run me out of a job that I felt that I was pretty good at. So I weathered the storm, and people that –
GF: I thought I was right.
MS: Now, Gary, you are retired, but you have a different kind of retirement. Would you talk about that a bit?
GF: Yeah, I’m a phased retiree. I’m teaching nine credits in the Fall. I teach two Administration classes and a couple of Weight Training classes, and they hired me as part-time Softball Coach. I’ve coached four different sports here. I was Assistant Football for 17 years under Tom Perry and Mike Dunbar – mostly under Tom Perry. Tom Perry also was my Pitching Coach in Baseball for a few years. I was – when I became AD the Women’s Basketball Coach quit, and we did not have a position on the staff so I said okay, I’d take it for one year. I coached Women’s Basketball for 11 years. We went to the National tournament one year. We had over 100 victories as a – as a basketball team those 11 years, and then I took a leave of absence – I took sabbatical leave in 1993 and went back and worked with the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics as the Interim Vice President for Championships. And when I came back, the young lady that I had hired to start the Softball program – also as my Assistant Basketball Coach – and before I went on sabbatical I said if she would take both Softball and Basketball the year I was gone, that she could go ahead and pick the sport she wanted when I came back. I knew she wanted Basketball, and I was kind of anxious to get back into the Spring sports, so six years ago I became the Softball Coach. So it’s the fourth sport that I’ve coached since being on the staff.
MS: If you had it all to do over again, would you still pursue coaching?
GF: I certainly would. I think it’s – along with teaching, it’s probably the most gratifying experience that a person could have. It can be frustrating at times, but the association and the ties you have with the young men and young women that you work with is something that – you know, you never forget. I mean, you’re in a similar situation. You’re a coach. You’re a coach of Drama.
MS: Sure.
GF: And you know, the ties you have with Brian Thompson nobody else has, you know, and I think that’s the thing that – as – we as coaches, I think that’s the thing that we cherish most. The victories and losses you forget about, but the people you don’t.
MS: You were mentioning how Dean had been effective in helping students who really needed help –
GF: Yes.
MS: Who needed a friend. I think most coaches find that some of their most significant work is not done on the field, but some of their most significant work is done strengthening individuals, and helping them learn to cope, and helping them learn to succeed. And it usually comes, of course, from the fact that coaches become such good friends with their athletes, and athletes will oftentimes listen to good friends.
GF: Yeah. I told Dean, I said – when I was AD I says, “You know, Dean,” – because every time I’d go by his office there’d be somebody there, and I’d say to Dean, I said, “Dean, do you know what? What I should do is budget about $800 more in your budget and you can get a couch where your Psychology class that you have every so often.” Because they say the problems of the kids become your problems. Because they’re the one person that you – that they feel they can confide in, and basically you get involved and much more personal with them than you do with – you know, the other students that you have.
MS: Okay. Now looking back over all of your years here at Central – as a student, as a faculty member, as an Administrative – as an Administrator – who would you say were among the most effective Administrators in all of your years here at Central?
GF: Well, I think Abe Poffenroth was an outstanding Administrator. I think that the – he was a – you know, he was a gambler, and I think that as Administrator he always held all the cards. I mean, he always knew what was going to happen. He was a step ahead of most people. Even though a lot of people don’t agree, as an AD Dr. Garrity – Donald Garrity – was good for Athletics here at Central. I remember that first time that I met him, I basically was driving him down to his next meeting – he had been hired as President and I was driving down to his next meeting because he met with various constituencies on campus, and he met with Athletics, and [as] I was driving him down, I said, “If our budgets don’t increase in Athletics we’re probably going to have to drop two sports.” And he says, “Young man, will drop nothing. If you have to operate all the sports on no budget, you will operate them on no budget. We are not dropping sports here at Central.” I says, “Yes, sir.” I felt that I always had a fair chance, along with the other departments on campus, to get additional money, and that’s all you could ask – just a fair chance. And I didn’t always feel that way with some of the other Presidents.
MS: How about Deans who were influential in your work as an AD, and as a teacher – coach.
GF: Probably the toughest thing as an AD is reporting to – not that Athletics isn’t an academic – I consider it a part of the – integral part of education. But the toughest thing is to work through the different levels that you had here at Central. Prior to my becoming AD, the AD reported to the Chairman of the Department, and the Chair of the Department reported to the Dean of Professional Studies, to the Provost, to the President, Board of Trustees, so you had many levels to go through to get something done, and by that time you got through all those levels, it was sometimes too late. And now the new AD reports directly to the President, which just gets rid of a lot of those steps you have to take.
Jimmy Applegate was one of the Deans that I reported to, as far as – Dr. Erickson was another one. I would say, as far as their influence athletically, I don’t think their influence was very significant, mainly because they really didn’t know enough about the Athletic program. So I would say that that part was – I had some real experiences with people I report to previously – the Vice President of Student Affairs [Sarah Shumate], who’s no longer here – that was one of the most interesting ones because of some of the situations that occurred. But basically I think that I’ve operated within the system, I’ve supported the system. I don’t always agree with the system, but once a decision is made, I think that I – you know, I’ve carried out the wishes of our administrators.
MS: Now Gary, I’m interested in a new position that has appeared on the horizon. You didn’t have anybody, did you, that was primarily a fund-raiser?
GF: No. Actually, I take it back. My last year we did have. We had a man by the name of Brent Nanick, who came here from the University of Louisville, and he was here for about a year and a half, and then was offered a job at a big increase in salary back at the University who built a brand-new football stadium on campus, and he was hired back as the – the person in charge of that stadium – getting events to come in there for money making – concerts, and all that kind of stuff. And then we were – had an interim person for a couple of years about a year and a half after that by name of Bill McAllister. But just recently they’ve hired a full-time fund raiser that looks like he’ll be here for a while. He’s got five kids, and another one on the way, so I think he’ll probably stick around for a while. His name’s Lyndon Luisman, and he came from one of the schools in North or South Dakota, and their responsibility is to raise money for athletics so that we can become a little bit more self-sufficient.
MS: Could you have used somebody like that?
GF: Most definitely. Because one of the things that they kept telling me is I should raise money, but one of the things that – I could do that locally – we had a very fine corporate sponsorship program, but it takes time, and if you are – if you are an administrator and you’re running the – your responsibility is to administer the events, and if you’re going to administer events you have to be there. And with the broad-based program we have athletically, I didn’t have time to do those types of things. But I think the future with Central is very bright, and we’ve got a great group of young coaches. We’ve got a great group of young coaches. I don’t think we’ve missed a beat, as far as the quality of coaches we have. The only thing that’s different now than it was before – the coaches that I – when I was hired here – I mean, they’re all – every one of them, practically, is in some hall of fame somewhere. I mean, you had – Dean Nicholson was here a couple of years before I got here. He’s in the Hall of Fame NEIA Basketball Hall of Fame – all of the different Hall of Fames that he’s in. Eric Beardley who started the Wrestling program, Art Hutton, Track and Field, and Tom Perry, and Bob Gregson – I mean, those coaches – they didn’t worry about how much money they were making. All they worried about was their program, and we had a good time together. We enjoyed one another. And I think these young coaches are a little bit that way, except they’re a little more concerned about money than they are about other things.
MS: Well Gary we thank you very much for spending your time and giving us the benefit of your years of experience in the positions, and someday we hope that somebody, in writing up the history of Central, will find that your addition was valuable. Thank you very much.
GF: Thank you very much.