CWU LIVING HISTORY PROJECT
Dee Eberhart
(Transcription of Tape 1, Side 1)
MS: [The interviewer is Milo Smith.] And welcome, Dee. Glad to have your interview in our archives. Let’s start with a little bit of autobiography. We have your name. We knew – we know now that you were a professor at Central, but we know very little else about you at this time. Where were you born – your parents, your siblings, and so forth? Shoot.
DE: I was born in Los Angeles in 1924, and when I was about a year and a half old we moved back – my parents had been from Nebraska – back to Nebraska, and I began school in Aurora, Nebraska and then, during the great migration of the early 1930s we traveled from Nebraska to first Longview, Washington, and then to Topenish, Washington where I graduated from high school in 1943. My parents were Urban Eberhart and his wife, my mother, Jean Eberhart. I had one brother, Urban Alan Eberhart.
MS: All right, Dee, I assume that your boyhood was spent doing those things that boys did in Topenish in those years – probably working in crops.
DE: I did that. I also had a part-time job when I was in junior high school during the school year working at Safeway, and I kept that job up until shortly before I went into the army. In the summer times I would work either in field work, as you suggested, or the orchards. By a little later I was working for California Packing Corporation – now Del Monte, the cannery in Topenish.
MS: Okay. Now let’s jump way ahead to – when did you graduate from high school, Dee? What year?
DE: That was May 15, 1943. We got out early that year so the boys could go to work in the fields. There was a great labor shortage as you remember, Milo, and ten days later I was in Uncle Sammie’s fighting infantry.
Milo: I graduated the day before you did, in the same year. May 14.
MS: Okay, then when you came home from the service, what was your immediate task?
DE: My immediate task was to get over the trauma of living with men for three years, and try to get adjusted to civilian life. And once again, I immediately found a job at the cannery. At first I was in charge of survey for aerial crop dusting, and then I worked in an experimental lab at Cal Pac until school started in the fall, and I started at the University of Washington. Thank God for the GI Bill of Rights. I’d saved some money, but not enough, probably, to go otherwise.
MS: What was your major at that time that you began?
DE: Well I started out in Economics and Business Administration, but after two quarters of accounting and tracing lines on graphs – uh – as I got to be through – let’s see, I think I was in the junior year, and I’d had a good course in economic geography which I really liked, so I shifted majors and then had to do a lot of catch-up work in the year and a half, but I graduated in spring of 1949 with a geography major.
MS: And a BA?
DE: Yes.
MS: Did you proceed on then for advanced degree, or did you go to work first?
DE: No, I – I had a summer field camp that was jointly arranged by Syracuse and Northwestern University. I had an assistantship at Northwestern, and so I began in the mid-summer of 1949 in Wisconsin geography fieldwork.
MS: Then that fall, what happened?
DE: Well, I began my course work toward a master’s degree at Northwestern, and had that the following spring. So really a fast track operation, and I was anxious to get [inaudible] stable, being able to keep accelerated pace for university studies.
MS: About when did you finish your master’s?
DE: That was the spring of 1940 – 1950.
MS: Then I assume you were employed someplace.
DE: No, you know better than that. They said “You seem to be doing okay. Stay on for a PhD.” And I said, “All right.” The following year I – which was 1950/51 – well I was employed if you can call an assistantship employment, but I also still had the tail end of the GI bill, so I was in Evanston, and I was able to complete both the language requirements and all of my course work, and pass the orals in the spring of 1951. So in effect I was through with the schoolwork end, but I still had a dissertation to come, and that’s another story, however.
MS: Will you share with us the subject area of your dissertation?
DE: Well I would if I’d ever completed it. The – what happened was I went to Portland – I was out of money – and I got odd jobs there, and I had started on a dissertation topic and then I changed from Pacific Northwest Columbia river geographic economic development study to something a little more romantic, which was mountain geography in the European Alps, and that took some convincing on my part of the dissertation advisor. But I was offered an appointment at – temporary – one quarter at Ohio State University as instructor, which I accepted, and before the quarter was out I applied for military intelligence job in
MS: It must have been satisfying, Dee, to find that at one particular time there were three separate organizations that wanted your employ.
DE: Times changed after that, but – yes that was. I was really pleased and, uh – but the – once again economics were the compelling force in my life, and I had to go to work. I ran out of money in Europe, and returned home. So I found that I was over-educated in the eyes of many prospective employers – or so they said – and so I downplayed that and got a job as a field man – instrument man for a Shell oil company exploration crew. My immediate boss had been kicked out of the third grade for not shaving, and he was from Texas. But it was a good job, and we were on the road all the time shooting up the countryside trying to find oil and gas deposits.
But in the mean time, when I returned from Europe, I’d stopped to visit a friend of mine at the CIA in Washington DC. And previously, as a graduate student I’d been interviewed but hadn’t filled out the final application papers. This time I did. This was the fall of 1952, and it took perhaps six months for the investigation and the – and then the checking with neighbors and friends, and I was engaged to be married and so my wife’s parents had to be cleared and all of their neighbors were checked out. So that was all done, and in the late spring of 1953 I began with CIA. The Korean War was still on, as you well remember, and I felt that I should do something. I still had some patriotic fever, and I didn’t want to carry an M-1 again as I had in WWII, so – hence the service in the CIA.
And after the war had ended and the An Moon Jong, or whatever the name of it was – the shape of the table had been agreed upon – it was time for me to leave. I did not have a job, but I left the CIA in the – in fall of 1954. I did have some contacts. The Rand Corporation – I had a contact there, and it’s probably where I would have ended up, but I stopped – [inaudible] my wife and I, Barbara, stopped in Seattle where her folks lived, and visited a former graduate student friend of mine who was at – had been at Northwestern with me, and he said, “Come on and work for us. We’ve got a booming, very small company in real estate consulting and shopping center development. I knew something about that. Northgate – this was Larry Smith and Co. – Northgate was Larry’s first project. It’s the first shopping center – post War shopping center – in the
So we stayed in Seattle, and in a couple of years or less than that I was an [inaudible], and an account executive, and then I was – became a partner in the firm, and we were working – or I was personally – the firm was working from Europe to Asia and South America, and all the United States and Canada, and my area was primarily the Western half of the United States, Canada, and Hawaii – that was good duty – New Zealand and Australia, and a couple of jobs in Alaska. So I’m doing a lot of flying, and working out of Seattle. Then we moved our office to San Francisco and were very heavily involved, also, in the development business. So we were not only consultants, but began developing and holding our own projects in which I had a percentage share – a small percentage. I was a junior partner and Larry, of course as the senior partner was 51% of the ownership, and there were six of the rest of us who were junior partners in the firm at that time.
MS: Dee, I think I can see some relationship to what you were doing after you had left the CIA – some relationship to economic geography. But for the life of me I can’t figure out how you ended up at Central.
DE: There were several things. One – we had moved our office to San Francisco. I liked it okay. It was tremendously stimulating work. I was making more and more money every year, and the opportunities were really very good financially. My wife was from Seattle. She had only lived in Alaska and Seattle before she married me, and then we went to Washington DC area. She didn’t like the Bay Area. We had, at that time, six children, and she was pregnant with the seventh and did not want the seventh child to be born in California. All the other six – our other six – had been born in Washington State. And so there was a little distaff dissent, one might say.
In addition, and more realistically – and it was not a mid-life crisis in the traditional sense, but I had, in effect, in my own mind topped out with what I was doing. Different clients, different problems, always stimulating, a lot of moving, but I was doing the same thing over and over again, and presumably the values were going up in the investment part of the company that I would share in, but I just wanted to try something else. We had land here. I – Barbara and I owned 160 acres up in Wenatchee [inaudible] in Kittitas County at that time, and that – that presented a draw. I was, as you were, from east of the Cascades, raised here, and that’s a – that was a compelling factor. I never had any concern about earning a living or finding something to do that was interesting and remunerative. So it was a combination of those things, plus I was on an airplane – all but every week I was flying someplace, and when I wasn’t on an airplane I was on the biggest parking lot in the world, which is Bay Shore Freeway going to San Francisco from San Mateo where I lived, and back in the evening.
So given the combination of things and, uh – what I did, I had a job in Yakima that turned out to be the Yakima Mall – the downtown Mall that we were just getting started, and that was one of our projects – mine, initially, in the early stages. And so I was flown from San Francisco to Seattle, rented a car, driving to Yakima. It was probably early October of 1964. Beautiful day, as October can be here. So I stopped on Main Street at the Texaco station up somewhere a little north of the courthouse – phone booth there, and I flipped through and found Central Washington State College, and I called Fran Warren, I think – was it Fran Warren? Sure. And I didn’t know her, of course, and I asked her if Central had a Geography department, and she said, “By all means. I’ll put you in touch with the chairman of the department,” which was Marty Katz at the time. So I introduced myself on the phone, he said, “Come on up, I’d like to talk to you.”
So I drove up there, and Marty and I spent maybe an hour chatting – told him who I was, and what my background was, and if he could crack loose a job I might be available the following year. He said, “Well, the school’s really expanding and the department needs one or two more people. Fill out the forms, send your bio sheets and whatever your academic background.” So I did. He reviewed it and either called me or wrote back, and said, “We’ll probably make an offer, but we’d like to have you get going again on your dissertation.” And I said, “Well Marty, the – that’d be tough to do because the – my dissertation advisor died a number of years ago.” And when I was working in Washington I’d go down to the Library of Congress. I did pursue it for a while. Unfortunately those fall days I would get bored, I think, and I’d drift over to the tavern and watch the football game on TV, and have a few beers – so I didn’t make as much progress as I should have, and then Malcolm Proudfoot, my dissertation advisor, died. At that point I had no interest whatsoever. I didn’t need it in the work I was doing, first for the CIA and then Larry Smith and Co., so I said, “Okay, I’ll check in on it.”
And the next flight to the East Coast I stopped in Chicago, and stayed overnight there, visited with Ed Escochade – I knew him well. He was then the chairman of the department when I stopped in in 1954, and I said, “Malcolm Proudfoot’s dead. Do you have anybody that could take me on?” I figured I could do it in – with a good executive secretary I figured I could really do it fast because I’d been doing this stuff professionally – reports and all kinds of monumental reports – big ones, and little ones. And so I’d dictate them, and I didn’t think it’d be much of a problem to. So he said, “Well, the faculty members that you knew – there – one of them’s retiring, I wouldn’t be able to do it, and two are dead, and we have some new people.” And he said, “The only possibility is Bill Garrison, and he’s in Washington DC today.” And I said – I said, “Ed,” I said, “Bill Garrison was a graduate student with me. I couldn’t work for him on a dissertation! That would be an absolute impossibility. He’d say, ‘Well, I don’t like the comma here, it should be over there,’ and I’d flip out.”
And so the – so I told Marty – I called him, or wrote to him – whichever – and said it was unlikely that I would be able to resurrect that, and I didn’t feel like starting at another institution. And so it was left in limbo. He didn’t say, “Well, that’s okay,” but he didn’t say it wasn’t okay, and pretty soon – I’d already told Larry Smith that I would – I’m going to pull out of the partnership and retire as a partner. He told me that “If you’d stay on I’ll double your common stock in all of” – he had – what should have been, Larry insisted, about $50 million of pure value in these projects, and I had a – not a big percentage, but I had a significant percentage, and he said, “I’ll double it if you’ll stay.” I said, “No, Larry, it isn’t the money. It’s um – just time for me to make a change, and I’m going to do that.” Well I didn’t have the job at Central at the time, but anyway I had made my commitment – burned a bridge – and then a short time thereafter I got a letter from Marty, and he said, [inaudible – could be “Here’s an offer.”]. And I can’t remember – I think this was an assistant professor. It might have been associate, but I think it was assistant professor, to begin in September of 1965. So early in the summer I – I moved up here with the family, and we’ve been here ever since.
It was a place to live. It was where we wanted to live. It wasn’t because we were trapped and had to live – you know – and where I could only teach at Central. It was a deliberate choice, and it was a very pleasing choice to me, and it’s turned out extremely well. Barbara hasn’t stopped smiling since we moved up here from the Bay Area, so she really liked it. She thought it was ideal as a place to raise the kids, which I agree with.
MS: And so the year that you signed on and began teaching was?
DE: Uh, 1965, fall quarter.
MS: And you taught straight through until?
DE: Uh, the – until 1986, and then I got into one of these phased retirement programs – I think for probably two or three years. It was – I think it was officially probably for two years, and then Ken Hammond, who was the chairman at that time – he asked me if I’d help out with one of the courses, and I came and did that, subsequently – I forgot which year it was. So I kept a hand in, and – uh – for a number of years after retirement, the department – we bunched up. Otto Jakubec and I shared an office, and then Jim Brooks – so there were three of us sharing an office until Dwayne Skeen suggested we all better go down the road – they needed that office for more important people than a bunch of retired professors. So I kind of waved good-bye, sadly, to the office connection, but I still see the people, obviously, from time to time.
MS: What were the subjects, Dee, that occupied most of your teaching load through those years?
DE: Economic Geography, Political Geography, which I liked, and uh – then I had [inaudible, could be “to offer”] beginning courses – the Geography 101, and the – those were the three – Urban Geography, and Geography of Europe. Then I introduced a new course for upper division people – and there were some graduates that took it – it was Real Estate and Land Development for those in the Geography department interested in planning, and urban activities, and construction management – built it into their program required course for their advanced students in construction management. So it was a seminar-type course in which I took the students through every step of the development process, and they had to do it. It wasn’t lecture – well, there were lectures, obviously – but there was no text book, and there was project work – really hands-on, and they did – they ended up with a portfolio that was of use to some of them of what they had done – everything from the beginning site selection, and market analysis, and financial analyses, and mortgage applications, and – had them even do a plan – a layout – a physical layout. They weren’t architects or planners, but they had to do it anyway. And then an assessment of whether it met their requirements. They had to do the goals, and then look at it from the financial standpoint at the end, as to whether it – uh, it worked or not in their own minds. So it was a critique kind of thing, and a number of the people did go in – who took the course told me subsequently it was very useful to them in their work, if they went to work as planners, because they were dealing with developers. And some of them went into the development field themselves with investment firms and development firms. So anyway that was the – kind of a specialty course, and when I left, it died because nobody else had the experience, and there was no textbook or materials that could be handed to somebody else to teach it if they hadn’t been through it as I had been.
MS: In looking back through your academic career, at least, Dee, would it be safe to identify you as an Economic Geographer?
DE: Uh, yes. You could say that. Political Geographer, too, but yes – Economic Geography, certainly, was the specialty that I had – or the affinity that I had for that, plus the Urban, because I was working in cities all the time, so I had a – my own perspective of Urban Geography. So those were the three areas that I was most interested in, and – plus the regional course – the Europe. I was interested in that. I’d been there a number of times.
MS: Was it in any way disturbing to you as a Geographer to suddenly discover one morning that the environment people had crept into your academic area?
DE: No, no. I’m pretty relaxed about that. There’s more, perhaps, conflict when I – in the work that I’ve done – which I’m doing now in the – in the agricultural business, because there is some conflict there. Not with environmentalists, per se, because this is what we were taught when I was an undergraduate. We were familiar with the term ecology, and preservation of the environment long before they were popularized throughout society. So that’s innate in the way I do things. I like nature, and I’m very sensitive to it, and I’ve always been that way. I wouldn’t be in Ellensburg if I loved the man-made environment so much more. This uh – so any conflict is with the extreme views, and we could have our own private conversation about extremists on either side of the political spectrum, and I have no use for extremists in general. But in – specifically in the environmental field, there’s where I do have some problems with extremist views in the environmental field. You can take the example of spiking trees as an extreme example of extreme environmentalism. As far as the academic encroachment, I – I think the more the merrier, and that I had no problem whatsoever at the time, nor do I now. As they say, many of my best friends are environmentalists – professional environmentalists! So no, there was nothing like that academically.
MS: Now, I’m very concerned with the fact that there appears to be a mounting problem among Geographers and environmentalists, and professional orchardists when it comes to water. How serious is the water problem now, and what do you see for the future in Geography, water, orchardists’ operations? Is water going to determine the future of that kind of agriculture?
DE: I don’t remember that question on the sheet!
MS: It is [inaudible].
DE: Absolutely. Absolutely. Without question, Milo, and two years ago we had – we had many trees, and those trees would have lost their – we would have lost the crop. The trees – many of them would probably not have survived, because our junior water rights – pro-rated water rights district in with the Kittitas Reclamation District water – the canals were turned off on August 6, 1994, and you, from the Lewiston area, know how much you can grow in late summer, and it was a hot summer in 1994. There was no rain, and there was no alternative source of water, except underground. So we sank a hole in the ground and got an oil-drilling outfit for a quarter of a million dollars which we’ve been paying for, and will for many years, in order to keep the crops alive –
(Transcription of Tape 1, Side 2)
DE: [Tape begins mid-sentence.] . . . increased demands of everyone who has – who is a claimant. And the courts are still working – and will, probably, for the indefinite future – trying to sort out and adjudicate who has the rights to surface water, and to underground water. So the – uh, you put your finger on it. It is the issue for the rest of this century, and well into the next century. Maybe indefinitely. And these water short – periodic water-short areas – and we are in one, especially with the differential rights and the increased claims by the Indians, the attempt to renew the fish runs to where they once had been – so it’s conflicting uses – demands – for a limited resource, and we happen to be one of the – um – economically impacted sectors of the economy – I’m speaking of the agricultural area, and especially these [sounds like “pro-rated”] or junior water rights districts.
MS: Now when you sunk this well, were you able to tap an aquifer that gave you what you needed?
DE: Oh, indeed. Indeed.
MS: Good
DE: And so we have a – a – what I hope, unless somebody takes it away from us through the legal process – we have – should have an absolutely source of water for the next emergency. But it has to be a declared emergency – uh, this was government-declared emergency, at which point we were allowed to drill the well for irrigation purposes in an established irrigation area. There was no other source of water for us.
MS: Now the reason, Dee, that I have sashayed away from academe to get this discussion about water in here is I think it’s important to get that recorded on tape for the people in the future who are going to possibly be reviewing this tape.
DE: Well I’m pleased to comment on that subject. It’s a critical one for this area, as long as this area retains an agricultural base for its economy. It may not. It may convert over to suburban dwellings, and then you can use desert landscaping, and sagebrush instead of lawns.
MS: Now going back to academe – problem, or a question that I’m sure that you saw on the list – did – what problem do you recall – problems do you recall that you would class as significant during your tenure at Central?
DE: Well Milo, you were – you’ve been here as long, or longer than I have, and you’ve seen these things wash up, and they seem of critical importance at one time, and kind of disappear, at least in my memory, subsequently. You and I were both in combat arms, we both know what it’s like on the [sounds like “bite”] of the line, and I’ll say it for the record here, that I don’t mean to dismiss important things at the institution, and very important to the individuals. But to me, there were – there were often the “tempest in the teapot” characteristics or aspects to it, and I didn’t take many of the problems that exercised my colleagues very seriously because I – uh – they weren’t really life-and-death problems for me, and I tended to take a rather detached view of the problems of the moment. I would be hard pressed to name any single issue that caused me one sleepless moment in so far as Central is concerned. There are many trends that have shifted. There were some things that I didn’t appreciate when they happened, but they were of really no great moment in my life. So the significance factor – the word you used – I would be hard pressed to say that anything was overly significant along the administrative / academic minor conflicts that I have seen from time to time.
MS: Now Dee, as an ex GI, wherein you have been called on to make sacrifices, and to work very hard, what was your reaction when there were so many – so much campus unrest during the
DE: Well I was familiar with the burning of the cities, which was semi – there’s a civil rights problem, primarily, rather than anti
MS: Okay, let’s get personal now, Dee. Concerning your personal opinion of administrators and faculty members on campus who come to mind as important leaders during those years that you were active here.
DE: Well I certainly have to start out – and I’ll probably end up the same place – with maximum kudos to the administrator I – I – I normally don’t think of him as an administrator, but it was Martin Katz, the Chairman of the Geography Department. So insofar as departmental chairs are referred to as administrators, he would rank very, very high, and right at the top. There were – uh – I think Burt Williams – uh – I really appreciated his role as an administrator – the Dean of the College of Letters, Arts and Sciences – because he was – he really thought highly of this institution as a maybe existing, maybe potential place of academic excellence. And that’s what he was striving for, and he had extremely high regard for academic scholarship qualities in the faculty, and he tried to encourage it every way he could. And so he had high standards in that regard, and I would rank him extremely high. There were – there were – I think Jim Brooks, when I first came, he had – he had this symposium program on that I was really impressed with. So I think he opened up the institution, which perhaps prior to that time had been more of a closed, parochial-type institution. I wasn’t here under President Palmer, but I think Jimmy probably did a great deal in introducing some new concepts. So there was high – I felt very high faculty morale in the 1960s, notwithstanding the
There – there was – there were some off-hand kind of things – Bob Yee and I’ve forgotten who else – there was a very informal “idiots” club that would meet maybe on a Friday night at the Highway Grill upstairs and have dinner, and somebody would present a paper – uh – of their own choice. Well these kinds of – and from different departments around the campus. And so these kinds of things were fun, and they were – there was a lot of enthusiasm and interest.
I think – uh – subsequently that top administration probably – and the presidents – and I notice this, that both President Brooks and then President Garrity when he was here – I think initially there was this fusion of interest between where the goals that had been established by the new president and the faculty who want to see a new breath of fresh air. And so they’re rooting together in the same direction, and that’s good. That’s like the winds of change have swept away the cobwebs. Then, as – I don’t think it has to do with the change of style – uh – but I – I’ve watched, and was sensitive to in both of these cases – I knew both of the presidents quite well, as you did – that people – faculty members, but others as well, perhaps – would criticize, and the more criticism that may come from different directions, the more the tendency is to go to ground, and to become more and more isolated, and – but I don’t think that’s unique to this institution. I really – and I once – I talked to Jim Brooks about it. He gave me the figures – I’ve forgotten what they are, but something like the normal longevity of a university president is, he’s told me, eight years – maybe something – eight or nine years, then they’re through. Because by then it’s the negatives outweigh the positives, seemingly, and then the pressure is on, and the guy says, “No, I don’t need this,” or maybe he’s even forced out, in some cases.
So I would have felt very fortunate to be here in the ascendancy period, but then I did see this plateauing, or thought I did, and I noticed the same with President Garrity. He used to come to – Geography Department’s always good about having little seminars, and some guy who’d been to Europe and he’s got some slides, or he’s got a paper he wants to try out, and sometimes from other departments – History and others – people would be invited in – or Geology – and so these – and I can recall that the new President would come to these things at somebody’s home – it was all very cordial and interesting. And then pretty soon those didn’t happen anymore – at least the President didn’t show up anymore. So you got that kind of closing of doors – and - that unfortunately occurred, and it tends to close down opportunities for progress, I think, in an institution.
MS: Now, Dee, have you any memories of problems which existed between the teaching faculty and administrators, or between the teaching faculty and the Board of Trustees? Problems that were significant.
DE: Well I’m sure there were some, but I can’t really comment on those. Personality problems that I’m aware of – I don’t choose to comment on those. And – all I can refer to – and so I’m speaking for sense of – set of values now, but I’m removed from it. I am aware of faculty – some displeasure by some faculty members of the trend that has emerged – I don’t know when – in the last ten years, perhaps – the political correctness, where traditional values of academic excellence, and where traditional values – it’s elitism. Of course it is. And that – there are A students and there are substandard students, and different records, and different – maybe – intellectual capacities have something to do with it – a great deal to do with it, perhaps. But at least the standards were well understood in this country. To see that being replaced even in part with revisionism of American history, or almost creation of separatism, or tribalism, and encouragement of those types of attitudes among students where the differences are expounded upon instead of the universal set of traditional values, whether it’s in literature, or whether it’s in history, and whether it’s in civics, or ethics – uh – these – I feel that there has been a deterioration of the qualities in academic institutions, and how much of it occurs here I can’t say, because I’m not – I don’t have first-hand knowledge anymore. But I do know faculty members – and that was your question – who have expressed sentiments somewhat similar – well, they’d probably be said much better – than I have expressed it. So there are those distinctions that may be occurring at the present time, or in the recent past, and that kind of thing – that kind of trend, if accurately portrayed – it may not be, by me. Those are troubling, and I would say that that has been, or may be, indicative of differences – significant, significant differences between points of view of certain academic people and certain administrative staff.
MS: Interestingly enough, Dee, within the last month I’ve had three conversations with neutral friends of ours – old faculty members at Central who at one time were very critical of Dr. Brooks. And my surprise in this recent conversation came about because all of them said – suddenly, and within the last six, eight months now Jim B rooks keeps looking better, and better and better.
DE: Well Jim’s a friend of mine, and so I’ve always been a supporter of Jim. But I recognize that there were tough times – they really were tough for him.
MS: You bet.
DE: Before he became a full-time professor and – and uh – President Emeritus.
MS: Now, Dee, let’s go to some short, titled subject – and I’ll just throw the subject at you and make whatever comments you think you would like to make, remembering that it’s going to be recorded for posterity. Central’s salary schedule.
DE: Central’s salary schedule was just fine with me. If I hadn’t been satisfied with it, I would have found another job in which there was a more satisfactory salary schedule. I had no problems with it. I – the only – the salary schedule was fine. It was sad and unfortunate when the – the merit raises were, perhaps because of economic necessity, discontinued or minimized. I thought that was unfortunate. The basic schedule, though – everybody could look at it, and if you don’t like it, go someplace else. And that was my feeling, and I was never a complainer.
MS: Okay, how about the Faculty Code?
DE: I never had any problems with it. I did read it – don’t misunderstand me, I couldn’t recite any of it now, but I can’t think of it – any clauses that ever gave me any trouble at the time, and still do not.
MS: Now the Faculty Code grew out of hard work by faculty people putting their heads together and trying to find common ground on which they could put in paper – put on paper – that which the faculty believed as a matter of rules to live by on this campus. Uh – covering salary, covering merit, covering hiring, firing and so forth. And at one particular time I can recall that there was conflict between the Faculty Senate and certain faculty interests outside the Senate with the Board of Trustees because the Board of Trustees apparently – it was believed – was trying to move in and take away faculty freedoms. Not in the classroom. We have jealously guarded academic freedom in the classroom. But there were lots of changes that were made by the Board of Trustees that certain faculty members felt that the faculty was not consulted. And I remember collegiality became a very common word on campus – that there should be more cooperation between the faculty, the administration, and the Board of Trustees. And as I look back, that increased communication that my colleagues were looking for really meant “We want more say in what is done on campus, and less orders from the Board of Trustees.” Do you ever get involved with that conflict? Now many of the faculty members who were encouraging unionization and the American Federation of Teachers, and so forth – and I had a chairman for a short while who was a leader in that movement – those people felt that the faculty was being given short shrift in helping to make decisions.
DE: Well Milo, the – everybody looks at this in one’s – obviously from one’s own standpoint. And what was absolutely essential to me was the freedom in the classroom – the academic freedom to do what you were professionally trained to do, and what you were expected to do. And it was made clear when I came here that you were supposed to do excellent work or superior work in teaching, in research, and in public service. Very few faculty members of my acquaintance – and I include myself as one of these – people who never did all three of them supremely well. But we knew what the rules were, or I knew what they were, and so at least I tried to do some of each, and that was an expectation. I never had any desire, and any particular interest in trying to travert an academic institution into a hierarchical form where there is a general at the top, as in the Marine Corps or the Army, giving orders that filter all the way down.
I never had any problems because nobody – that is, from the administration – ever said “Here’s how you will teach a class.” They may say “Well, you’re going to have to teach twelve [inaudible] – have twelve credit hours, but – so they set the standards. They said, “Here’s what’s expected of you. You’re going to teach, you’re going to go out there and you’re going to do some public service, and you’re going to do some research. How you do it, and on what schedule you do it – that’s up to you. You’ll be evaluated periodically. You’ll either get a merit raise, when we used to have those, or you won’t. You’ll be promoted or you won’t. Or if you absolutely do something that is outrageous you’ll get fired.” So there were faculty members and colleagues when I was on the faculty who did feel that they should be – should have a greater say in the administrative function of the institution. I never shared it. First of all, I had no interest in it, and secondly I thought that’s what you paid people to do – staff and others – administrators – to administer, and the faculty are paid to teach. So I didn’t have this problem.
As far as unions are concerned, I have never – I’ve been – I understand the labor movement. I know that it was a necessity, and I know that it did great things for the working people of the