CWU LIVING HISTORY PROJECT
Paul Bechtel
(Transcription of Tape 1, Side 1)
LL: And the interviewer is Larry Lowther, and running the equipment is Jean Putnam. Paul, before we get to your career at Central, would you just fill us in on family background – something concerning the size of your family, and when you were born, and uh – what they did for a living, and then talk about your education and any early career before coming to Central?
PB: I was born on a cattle ranch in southeastern Montana – uh – north of the Black Hills in South Dakota – uh – the second – next to the youngest, that is – of a family of twelve. And I lived there until I was 19 years old, and spent some time out in California out – during the nineteenth year working shipyards down there. Uh – was sent to [sounds like “braising”] school, and worked on a [inaudible] – the brass tubing in the ships in the shipyard – and from there I was going to be drafted into the service in 1942, so I joined the Air Force instead, and I became a pilot, and was a B-17 pilot in WWII.
And then when I come out of that I – uh – went to school. Started in Omaha, Nebraska, and then transferred to Montana State University and graduated a Civil Engineer, and after that went to work for Bonneville Power, building large power lines into [inaudible] valley – only I worked over around Spokane, and helped build a lane from Spokane to Hungry Horse, and then transferred into the office in Portland and worked over the winter, and then was assigned out at Office Engineer at The Dalles, Oregon for the big Eddie Maupin line, and worked on that. And I didn’t like the moving around of that – of that work, so I quit, then, and went back to Montana – to Bozeman, Montana – old Alma Mater – and took a job at the City Engineer’s office. Worked there for a year, and while I was working there they created a new job – the Associate Director of Physical Plant at the University there – and I applied for that. I got that job, and I worked for three years there building streets and housing projects, and so on, and re-wiring the campus underground – electrical underground.
And then one morning I got a phone call from the president over here, who was looking for a Director over here. How he got my name – I guess that Engineering – the head of the Engineering Department over there gave it to him. And he wanted to come see me, so I told him, well, I guess I couldn’t stop him from coming to see me, so he came to see me about a week later, and –
JP: Who was that?
PB: Dr. McConnell. And he hired me right on the spot, and a week later, I was over here. I think I spent 30 years and 9 months as Director of Physical Plant over here.
LL: What year was that, that you came?
PB: That was 1957.
LL: And so you retired in 1987, was it?
PB: Eighty-eight. March of ’88.
LL: Okay. And what was your assignment when you got to Central?
PB: I was Director of Physical Plant.
LL: Okay, and uh – you held that one position throughout your career?
PB: That’s right.
LL: Could you tell us a little bit about what this entailed – being Director of Physical Plant?
PB: Well, Director of Physical Plant – you’re in charge of all the physical properties that you see on the campus – the maintenance and operation. That includes repair and maintenance of the buildings. The new construction, at that time was – they had no one else, so it was sort of my responsibility. The central store for the supplies – at that time we didn’t have a “motor pool” – that came later. Uh, we had the custodial, the grounds, the plumbing, the electrical, the carpentry, the painting, the grounds work – and all of the things that – this includes both the academic and the dormitories at that time. So all the – all of the maintenance and operation of all the facilities that you see, from the mechanical and electrical and repair standpoint, was my responsibility.
LL: Well I can see from just the amount of time that you’ve been here that you were in on an awful lot of change on campus. Are there any particular points of change, or any particular issues that stand out in your mind?
PB: Well I think of – yeah, there were a number of things that were quite interesting. When I came to the campus they had – the street lights were all out except for three streetlights running on campus – three – I should say landscaping lights, or streetlights. The rest of them were all out, and they had probably 50. And the underground wiring had eroded away, and corroded, and the President didn’t want the campus tore up. He wanted it fixed, but he didn’t want the campus tore up. Now that’s an impossible job. But at that time they had very little blight – they didn’t have any money to get me to do it, but somehow I was supposed to figure out how to do that. So uh – that was – after, I believe about the time the Korean War was winding down, and we had a lot of material surplus, but it was in Seattle. So I went over to Seattle one day, and I don’t remember how I got there – I guess I – they had one – as I recall, they had one black van for the whole campus – for delivery on the whole campus, and the workmen used to spend a couple of hours a day waiting for material to get sent out – to get the material on the job. And one day I took that van and went to Seattle and surplus, and shopped there, and I found – I found some wire. It wasn’t made for rewiring the campus, but it was – it was good wire, but it was probably an inch in diameter, and had three conductors on it that were all too small for the job had to be done to provide the current to supply these lights. But I checked with the campus electrician, at that time, and he said, “Well why don’t we just – uh – wire two of those hot, and one of them for ground, and we’ll make it work.”
So I brought home three or four rolls of that – big rolls of that wire – probably 10,000 feet of that wire. And the president then, later on, went on vacation, and while he was on vacation I went out there and got Paul Manner – used to have a sort of a – earth-working – some small equipment of [inaudible] Ford tractor and a little machine that you plow the cable underground with – or pipe, or whatever. Just kind of a tooth that went underground and fed the pipe underground as it went. I hired him to come in and we plowed all that wire underground between the light fixtures while the president was on vacation, I believe [Everyone laughs], and we had him run over it – when we got through we had him run over it with the wheel of the tractor, and when he got done you could hardly tell it was – with the groundsmen picking up a few rocks and so on, we got all that wire plowed underground. When he came back he – the streetlights were all working, and he couldn’t see what we’d done. So he never said a word to me about that. Never said a word. Then one night when we had a big deal down at the commons, and all the faculty and everybody, he says, “And I want you to notice that I got the streetlights working.” [Everyone laughs] He never said a word about who did it, or anything like that! Keep the credit.
LL: How large was the campus when you first came here?
PB: Sixteen hundred students.
LL: Okay – but in terms of the physical plant – which buildings?
PB: We had only the building where the – the big smokestacks are – the old [inaudible] right on the main campus. That’s the only building we had. They had everything in that.
LL: Okay, and in terms of the classroom building you had Barge Hall, and –
PB: Barge Hall, McConnell Hall, Shaw Smyser, Kamola, Sue, Lind, and uh – small – the older part of the [inaudible]. And that’s all there was.
LL: So just this lower part of the campus?
PB: And Anderson Hall, and Hebeler – Hebeler was here. But that was it. And of course, the older part of the commons. And the rest of it was open field and houses right around the campus. I remember there was no – there were no retaining walls or sidewalks around the sub, but there was rocks four inches in diameter just laying all around there, you know. You stumbled over them as you walked down the street.
LL: Okay. Let’s get back to some of the outstanding issues and problems. You rewired the campus without the president knowing it. [Laughs]
PB: At his request.
LL: Okay – you did it without disturbing the campus.
PB: That’s right. Without disturbing him, would cover it.
LL: Was there any other upsetting problem that you recall?
PB: Well one of the outstanding problems was that they had – their steam lines were leaking all over the campus. They had the old – what do you call – [sounds like “rick wheel”] system. It was a very old system, with insulation around the steam lines that lay in a corrugated culvert – a steel culvert – and the water got in, and it would corrode the pipes, and the pipes would [inaudible] deteriorate and leak steam. And they were replacing them about once every ten years, I guess – something like that. It was thousands of dollars – very expensive process.
The other thing was they had no chemical treatment in the water to – the boiler water to – uh – prevent internal corrosion, which was a real problem in steam pipes because you have impurities coming out of the water, and they generate gasses and chemicals that corrode the inside very rapidly. So that was one of the first things I did, was to get a program – treatment program going to get that internal system protected. And I – you can imagine – I think I must have had 50 chemical engineers descend on me when I come here, because they all wanted the business. And I had to find my own way through that. And of course, you have to have anodes in all of the tanks, too. The big tanks are very expensive, and the anodes are very – you know – relatively speaking a very cheap solution to helping to – to prevent this corroding – general corrosion. But I had a terrible time finding the money to do this. I had to sell that to the administration because they’d never done it before. They were replacing this stuff, at a terrible expensive – cost.
I finally got them convinced that we needed to do these things, and they went ahead with them, and I picked an engineer – picked a firm – and I think it was a good decision because they were very, very supportive and very – very cooperative. If you had a problem on a weekend, they could be right over here. And then we – as we put in new lines, we tried to change the systems to a different kind of a system that wouldn’t corrode so fast, and we put in an external – what we call a cathodic protection system of anodes out on the campus. You probably saw us dig up the lawns and put in magnesium anodes in the ground and connect them to the lines. Well that diverts the – you see, I don’t – a lot of people don’t realize this, but the earth’s magnetic field and the rotation of the earth through its own magnetic field generates current. So if you have a gird of piping on a campus, that is a grid that’s rotating through the earth’s magnetic field, and that generates current. And that current has to go to ground. And so the cathotic protection people come in and they – with their instruments they determine where that’s going to ground – the direction of flow in the pipes, and they find out where that’s going to ground, and if they can’t accommodate where it’s going into ground [inaudible] – if it’s too sporadic, then they’ll put what they call a rectifier on there and they’ll induce a current on the pipe, and cause it to flow a certain direction, and then they’ll go over there where that goes to ground, and put a set of anodes in. So we had both rectifiers and anodes. And the anode, then, deteriorates, but the pipe doesn’t. And so that’s how you protect your steel piping underground, partly.
So we did that all over campus, and it cost – oh, probably – you know – tens of thousands of dollars to do that, but in comparison to hundreds of thousands of dollars. It was much more economical than having to replace the steam lines. And I believe that even today they’re maintaining those – that cathotic protection system underground. I’m not sure that’s what’s going on now, but I’m pretty sure they’re still maintaining that.
LL: From a civil engineer’s standpoint, is this the most efficient way of getting heat throughout the campus?
PB: Well it is from the total [inaudible] problem. You see, otherwise you have to – you have to have pipe lines and equipment out of the buildings of sufficient size to operate the systems out there, and then you have to have – you have a multitude of units to take care of, and you have to have more people on the payroll 24 hours a day, seven days a week. So it’s a – you know, you have to study that out, and determine whether it’s – it’s cheaper to have individual systems or a central system, and most everybody – engineers and so on – for most applications it’s agreed that a central system is the most economical.
LL: Soon after I came to campus – so that was in the Sixties – the environmental movement was started up, and you heard a lot of complaints about the smokestack on campus. Do you remember that controversy?
PB: Oh yes, you bet I remember that. You bet I remember that. That was the old coal we got from Roslyn. When I came here, that’s all we had for heat. And the quality of that coal, as the years went by and as the mines – as the railroads ceased to use that coal – they changed to diesel and electric and so on – mostly diesel, I think, in those days – and the coal – the locomotives began to be retired. And pretty soon, the railroad wasn’t using any coal. So the state, then, wanted to keep those coalmines open. They wanted to provide – politicians are always buying votes with somebody else’s money, and that’s the name of the game. And uh – so they were trying to keep the coalmines open in order to get the votes, I guess, up there, and to provide employment. Of course, that’s all one and the same package.
But they made the decision that the University would continue to use that coal. But the thing was, the – the mine operators couldn’t continue to – couldn’t afford to continue to mine the coal without considerable business, and we didn’t provide enough business. So what – what they do – they delivered us the old slack – the stuff that they’d piled up out there. The stuff that had been laying around kind of waste for years, that’s what we began to get for coal. And uh – it was actually so bad – the slack was so bad that you couldn’t burn it without it just flashing up – there was no heat value much in it – and yet it was so volatile that it would burn back up the flues into the stockpiles if we didn’t keep a hose running down in the chute, to wet the coal before it got into the boiler. Well you can imagine how inefficient that was, because you had to evaporate all that water back out before you could burn the coal in the boiler. So you couldn’t get any heat out of it.
And they kept sending a bill that they’d delivered coal down here, and then the State would send the bills over, and want me to sign that I was getting so may BTUs, and the coal was of the quality – because that contract – was supposed to be a certain quality. And I used to get the pressure out of the – out of the State to sign those bills. And finally I got to the place where I just said, “I’m not going to sign any more, and somebody from Olympia is going to have to come over here and sign these bills, because we’re not getting – the contract is not being fulfilled, and I’m falsifying the record. It’s making a liar out of me if I sign for the payment.” So I said, “If you want to subsidize the Roslyn Coal Mines, then you take the responsibility and do it.” And I got a visit by the – by the State officials, and I got my name in the papers all over the State for refusing to sign this thing, but I notice the contract was stopped almost immediately – because they weren’t going to sign those things either.
LL: What was done, then? What – what –
PB: We finally – then, for a while, we got coal out of Utah.
LL: Oh, uh-huh.
PB: And then, about that time, the City –
LL: Is that much cleaner burning?
PB: Oh, that was – that was good coal, yes. There was no problem with that. Then – uh – but we did have the other problem, you know, along with that – constant – every time you’d blow the flues – and you have to do that with coal, because you get soot, and cinders and stuff, and you have to blow the pipes out and let it go up and down across the valley, and down across the town, and every time you’d blow the flues, why it would dirty somebody’s wash, or something would happen, and you’d – the phone would ring. And the City – there’d be letters to the editor, and then the editor himself would write, every now and then, about it, and that was the thing – there was something going on all the time with that thing until we finally – uh – the City finally brought in the natural gas. And since they’re the utility owner for gas in the town, we negotiated an agreement with them for a pipeline to the College, and we finally converted our coil boilers over to gas.
LL: You remember about when that was done?
PB: Uh, yes, that was done about in – it was begun about 1960 and ’61, along in there. I remember that because I had a boiler engineer – the chief boiler engineer was a man who had formerly worked on the railroads. He was a good man. Very qualified man, when it came to coal and [sounds like “juggling”] coal and – steam with coal. And he was comfortable with that, but as soon as we got gas in, he was scared to death of gas, so he – he uh – he retired. And he was retirement age, but he just – he was very uncomfortable with gas, and it always was a puzzlement to me because coal is far more dangerous than gas when it comes to operating a boiler. Because coal can generate the same gas, and you never know what it’s doing in there. And sometimes it inerts the same gas, and you have an explosion with coal. Gas – at least you know that you’ve got gas, and so you can take the precautions to perch the boilers, and so on, and try to minimize that danger. But he was very uncomfortable with it, and he retired, and it’s interesting that just two weeks ago he died. He was 99 years old. He lived to be 99, and I saw – I wondered what happened to the guy, because he’d left town and I lost track of him, then I saw the notice of his death in the paper, and noticed the funeral, and I went to the funeral just about two weeks ago here – up here in the cemetery.
JP: His name?
PB: John Larrow. Very nice fellow.
LL: But you didn’t switch to gas early in the Sixties, did you?
PB: Early in the Sixties, yeah.
LL: Well I thought the controversy –
PB: There, there was –
LL: . . .was still going on late in the Sixties.
PB: Well it could have been to some extent, because we had a number of the boilers – we had the – the capability of burning either gas or –
LL: Oh.
PB: . . . oil or coal. But the State refused to let me cease buying any coal, see, for quite a while there.
LL: I see.
PB: And so we had a capability, but a lot – you know, they wanted to support the Roslyn community.
LL: Eventually you went entirely to gas, didn’t you?
PB: Yes.
LL: Did you know – do you know when that was –
PB: That was in the late Sixties somewhere.
LL: Late Sixties, Okay. Okay. Um – well you were – uh – must have been involved in most of the building that went on on campus. Do you recall any interesting incidents or episodes, or anything in connection with the expansion program?
PB: Oh, there was – there was a lot of things. It’s hard, sitting here to – you know, to – I think of – when you think about the building program, there was a lot of discussion and controversy about whether we should expand – you know – have a large campus, which we finally did, or whether we should build high-rise and uh – and uh, keep a more concentrated campus so we didn’t have so much to take care of. And uh – there was a study that was – that had just been delivered to the campus when I came – when I came on the campus – that had suggested that we should go high-rise, more or less, south of the railroad – right in the area where these prime buildings are out here – and build large tunnels under the ground for both pedestrians and utilities, so that regardless of wind or weather you could walk from one building to the other. And that would preclude having a lot of maintenance people and a lot of expense in caring for a large campus. You could still have landscaping on the surface, but the people would not be stomping over it so much. They’d be using the – it would still be beautiful from the – from the – from the ground level side, but –
It’s interesting to me the studies that we’ve had on the campus since I’ve been here, and they had probably three or four major campus plans that were – that had been developed by engineering firms, and architectural firms, and brought in. And it seemed like every time you get a new leader, why, that old plan would just be shoved – thrown over the left shoulder, and they go out and make a new one. And that leader would then follow his own plan as long as he was here, and as soon as he was gone the new leader would throw that over his left shoulder, and start a new one. And there was no continuity of following those plans. And it was – uh – sort of a – almost a waste of time and paying for the plans, but on the other hand, you realize that you’ve got to have a plan of some kind. So maybe there was some rhyme and reason to what went on, but to me there wasn’t. You know – I don’t really know.
LL: What was the reason for rejecting the high-rise plan?
PB: Uh, well, it’s just like anything else. It’s politics. And I don’t mean statewide politics, I mean campus politics. You know that goes on. Whoever is the strong – if you have people who are strong leaders, and they’re able to – they’re able to sway other people. And so you find certain figureheads that rise to the top and dominate, and that – as far as I can see, that is – that’s what happens in not only national politics, but campus politics all over the country.
LL: Do you recall any particular individuals who asserted a great deal of influence over this decision?
PB: Well I – I would have to say that it was – it would have to go – it would have to fall back to the – to the – in my life, at least, it would have to fall back to the president, the leader of the institution, and the people that he appoints to the various positions. I don’t think I can put a finger on any particular one, because it’s not that simple. It’s a complicated thing. In any group – any committee – uh – that you might be on, you’ll find that there maybe are one or two figureheads that rise to the top, and steer that committee. And –
LL: Incidentally, did you report directly to the president, or – or to someone –
PB: When I came here I reported directly to the president. And then, after – uh – oh, I’ve don’t know [inaudible] time – probably four or five years, then, I was – uh – put under the Business Manager, where it probably should have been in the first place – that or the Vice-President for Business, because it doesn’t – the Director of Physical Plant position doesn’t really – uh – it’s not really designed to report directly to a president. There’s too many details. He doesn’t have the time to give to you for – to make the decisions you have to have on a daily basis. I remember when I came her, the president was pretty much in control of things, and – I think it was the system they had was – for me, again – that was very cumbersome. I used to have to go down – if I wanted a – five pounds of nails, I had to go down and give a price, had to come back up and get a requisition, and then I had to go down to the President’s office and get it signed, then I had to go back downtown and get the nails.
LL: Was that under McConnell?
PB: That was under McConnell, at that time.
LL: Did it change under Brooks?
PB: Uh, yeah. That system has been in and out, over the years. You know, we keep changing things all the time. Uh – there’s been systems that have been as cumbersome as that later on, but uh – you had to work with that system, and – while you have it, and then you have to try to get it changes. And so – and that working for the President put me in a bind a few times, because the President would tell me to do something, and the Business Manager would tell me there’s no money in the funds to do that. And then I’d have to go back and tell the President “I can’t do it because there’s no money,” and then he’d get the guy down there, and they’d shake their fists at each other, and their fingers under each other’s noses, and “Get out of my presence,” until I figured out how to go about it, you know. And then, maybe two or three days later, well, we could go ahead with the job. But it was a – it was a cumbersome thing. I should have been reporting to the Vice – to Business Manager from the start, and they should have been working on the details out, and then just my boss telling me what to do.
LL: Mm-hmm.
PB: But it was a – that was a cumbersome system. But there’s been systems just as cumbersome later on, that – uh – when you’ve got people, you know, you’ve got – people are a source of problems.
LL: So the decision was made – uh – instead of having the compact campus building upward, to build outward. And uh – in order to do that, you had to acquire a great deal of land. I seem to remember an urban renewal.
PB: Urban renewal. I think, if the truth was known – you know, I can’t put the finger on how, or who, or – the decision was just kind of – you know how things happen. They just kind of – people begin to move, and things begin to move, and uh – and they applied for this urban renewal through the city – uh, applied for this urban renewal project, and one other renewal came through. That probably had as much impetus to – towards expansion of the campus as anything. Because once that land became available – you know the old axiom about uh – uh – governmental or State agency. It expands to occupy the space available.
LL: [Chuckle]
JP: Uh-huh.
PB: And when that project was approved and went forward, then that probably had as much to do with the expansion of the campus as anything.
JP: About when was it?
LL: Late Sixties.
PB: That had to be about nine – the late Sixties. That had to be the late Sixties. I would say it probably started about 1965 or ’66.
LL: There was a good deal of controversy about that urban renewal, wasn’t there? Wasn’t there some opposition in the City?
PB: Oh yes, there was – there always is, you know. It’s always – conflicting views on everything. But I – I don’t, uh – nothing sticks in my mind, really, on that.
LL: It’s interesting they call it urban renewal, but weren’t some of the homes that you were displacing – weren’t they very fine homes out there?
PB: Well there – there was a minimal number. There was – most of the area was, uh – was – you know, had seen its day. But there were some nice homes. I think of one family that – I always think of the urban renewal project when I see her, and that’s Irene Reinhart.
LL: Oh yeah.
PB: She and her husband had a nice home right out here where – near where the uh – what they call – where the ROTC was?
JP: Peterson Hall.
PB: Peterson Hall, yes. Right up there at Peterson Hall. Right here, behind Peterson Hall, on the other side there. They had a nice home there. And then there was some nice homes right here on – where the music building is now – where music is located. Some nice homes in there. Some of the telephone company people lived in there. But there was a minimum number of those. I would say there wasn’t over a half a dozen, if that many.
LL: Some of the land that was acquired has not actually been used yet. There must have been – um – you know, a rather grandiose concept of what the University would become.
(Transcription of Tape 1, Side 2)
LL: At the time this was done – what did – what did people think the size of the University [glitch in tape] would be?
PB: Well I heard – I heard figures like 13,000 kicked around, you know. Back in the Seventies – early Seventies – late Sixties and Early Seventies, we thought – everybody – all the publicity you heard, there was just no end to this upswing. We’re going to have unlimited energy, we’re going to – we’re going to – we’re going to create utopia. And then all of a sudden the bubble burst in about 1973, when the energy prices went sky high. I think it was the – wasn’t that the Arab oil cartel, at that time, that caused that?
LL: Mm-hmm.
PB: And uh – burst the bubble. But uh – there were figures bandied about for 13,000 people – or students here, as I recall, in not too long a period of time.
LL: Now I would assume that you were intimately involved in the planning, the selection of architects, and the overall design of the, uh –
PB: I was at –
LL: - of the campus?
PB: I was on a building committee – there was two or three building committees that I wasn’t on, and that was partly because – I don’t really know why, but it was political – politics of the campus, sort of, you know. They left me out of a couple of them. And I don’t think it was deliberately done. I think it was just – sort of an oversight, because they appointed people that uh – on the committee that were so occupied with the academic needs and so on.
This was one of the things I had to constantly be on the alert about, and scrap about, was that the – the academic space needs a – or the space needs of the academic side were the primary reason for doing the building, and I have no argument with that. I agree. That’s what it’s for. But you have to – uh – consider the whole operation of the building, and I always had a problem in that if I mentioned the garbage, or the custodial needs, or the need for mechanical rooms, or electrical rooms and so on in those facilities, I was always told, “Well wait till later in the project. We’re not ready to discuss those yet.” And then as soon as they got the academic needs established, then they’d say, “Well now, we can’t change these things, because we have to – we’ve put all this work in on these now, we can’t – it’s too late! Why didn’t you talk about this sooner?” [Everyone laughs] So you were constantly fighting that battle, and you had to – you know – you had to sometimes get rather nasty about it because – people back down to the nasty [sounds like “now now”], because we do have garbage. And almost every building we’d build without any thought of garbage, and what are you going to do with it? You know? “Well, there’s a garbage can sitting right on the front step.” You know, we don’t want that either! So this was the thing I had to fight constantly on at almost every building [committee] I was on, was to try to get – get it to consider these real, down to earth needs at the time – at a decent, or even an appropriate time in the planning. And another thing that I always watched for was, uh – they’d build a beautiful building, and then they’d put the rest room down at the end of the hall, and the door opened right in, and you could see everything going on in the restroom. [Laughter] I’ve got to say, I was constantly watching for that kind of thing. And uh – creating all kinds of non-problems for people.
LL: Concerning architectural design, was there a decision made early on concerning the overall design of architecture, or was this made on a building-by-building – this decision made on a building-by-building basis?
PB: Well uh – at the beginning – and I think this is partly why Dr. McConnell – he used just one firm, pretty much – [inaudible] – and he built all these buildings. He built Shaw-Smyser, McConnell, and Lind, and if you notice, not very much – they’re somewhat identical. They have the same sort of treatment. But then other architects – I guess the answer is that it would be that – when you hire the architect – before you hire an architect, you should go out and see what kind of buildings he’s designed, because most architects have a – have a style of design, and you can just about expect to get that style when you hire that architect. And most building committees did do that – they’d go and review what that architect had done, and really – uh – there was not – there was a sentiment on the part of a lot of the people on the campus – the Site and Planning Committee which was over the building committees and so on, that – on one or two treatments – you know. It was an interesting idea. So they didn’t really – there really was no – except for tying the building materials together – the types of materials, and so on – there was no concerted effort to try to provide a uniformity of exterior design.
LL: So if there was any plan at all, it was for architectural diversity.
PB: Well, you know, I couldn’t say that that was a goal, but, uh – there was [inaudible].
LL: Mm-hmm.
PB: Obviously, you go out and look.
JP: Yeah.
LL: Do you recall any particular problems or controversies that grew up in regard to ay particular building, or – or was it pretty much routine?
PB: Well there was – there was talk about Nicholson Pavilion when it was built. Is the roof hanging – you know – how long is it going to hang, and who’s going to take a hacksaw and cut the cables off, and it was all kinds of talk like that. And then when the high-rise dormitories were built, that’s the – that’s the same architect – and you see what I say – both buildings are suspended from the top – both the high-rise and Nicholson. The same architect built those two. So when you hire an architect, you pretty well – you should have an idea as to what he’s going to come up with. And there’s been talk of the high-rise, you know – how long they’re going to stand. So –
JP: Who built that?
PB: That was Burkhart.
JP: Oh.
PB: But they’re – they’re all – they’re still there, you know. They’re all you get. [?] And actually, Nicholson is a rather – except for the exterior turrets and the space taken up with all that support structure on the outside – the interior is – is free of columns. So – it just depends on how you look at things.
LL: Paul, did you have anything to do with the naming of buildings?
PB: No, I didn’t, really. Of course, anybody could suggest names.
LL: But you weren’t on the naming committee?
PB: No. No I never was on that. That was more of a political kind of a thing. And that went from – there was a phase, there, of when they were building and naming buildings after living people. Some of the people that buildings are named after are still living. I think of Samuelson – the Samuelson Union was built and was named for him before he passed away. The building that I heard stories of –
LL: Hertz is still there.
PB: Hertz is still living. And then the man that the building that I built is named after – Jongeward – is still living. So –
LL: Tell me a little bit about that decision – the uh – [inaudible] plan was down across Eighth for a while, and then – when was it that the decision was made to build a new –
PB: Well that was a – that’s a kind of a unique story. Let’s see, where was I? We moved into that building in ’71, so it must have been in about 1968, or thereabouts, that – usually the legislature appropriates money for building construction projects through legislative action, but in about 1968 the legislative session – I’ve forgotten what all the political reasons were, but the legislature avoided their responsibility. I guess they figured they couldn’t come up with enough money, and the political hot potato that would be, or something. And so they come with an initiative to the people, and – for the people to vote whether or not they were going to provide – they put it on a building-by-building what – you know – [inaudible] vote on that. And it just happened to be that year that I had a young architect working for me, and we decided that we were crowded out down here, and we would put in a request for building. So we got busy and studied what we’d need, and so on, and I went over to look for land and I found this old land over here that – where they had an old cannery, and that big old warehouse that sits there now. But they had a lot of buildings in behind the old – old Green Giant Cannery in there, and I decided that would be a good place for a physical plant. So I put in a request for the money to buy that land, and – and a request for a building to go on with it. And it was put on that initiative as a separate project, and lo and behold, the people voted to fund it. And –
LL: That must have been before the hard times hit.
PB: Must have been. The campus had – it turned out that the initiative – that the money could not be taken for anything else. That was one of the problems I had. Most of the time I’d get money appropriated through the legislature and then it would be taken away from you anyhow, for some other – what was considered a higher priority. But they couldn’t take that money, so that was a – and I was the only Physical Plant Director in the state that had done that and got a building, and everybody – all the other Physical Plant Directors were as envious as could be. Turned out to have one of the nicest facilities in the state, and I wondered how in the world had I pulled that off. [Laughter in background]. Well you know, I’m – it was through no really superior understanding I had. It was just a quirk of fate that it worked out.
LL: Now I’d like to have you respond to some of the people that you worked with. You said – uh – you said quite a bit about President McConnell. Do you recall anything else concerning his style of operation, or your relations with him that would be worth talking about?
PB: I had a good relationship with Dr. McConnell personally. He treated me fairly, and was good to me – seemed to appreciate the fact that I had come, and – although he never told me directly – he was a man who didn’t heap a whole lot of praise on people. He was a man that ruled with a strong hand. Uh – although you have to understand, he came up through that – he was the president here for 32 years, and his tenure was – see, when did he leave? In 1959 – ’59 is when he left. So he would have come here in 1927 – when was that? Thirty-two years? Twenty-seven. That was back in the days when leaders were expected to be totalitarian. And so that style of leadership was the style of leadership that he had learned, and the kind that he understood, and the kind that he – kind that he operated with. And it was successful for him for all those years. And – but he – he treated me – he was a – he was a – I don’t know what you call it. A very – he would kind of distance himself from you. He was a figurehead, sort of. I think he was that way with everybody on campus, pretty much. He was a – he was a sort of a loner. But he – but he treated me fair enough, and I got along fine with him. Uh – except, you know, the ones where he’d tell me to do something I couldn’t get done. But we usually managed to find a way to get those things done anyhow. It just took a little longer, is all. But his procedures, of course, were old-fashioned and becoming out of date at that time, as all – you know, most authoritarian kinds of leadership now has gone by the board. You don’t find very many places where you have that kind of leadership any more, but back in those days, that’s what was expected of a leader.
LL: President Brooks.
PB: Dr. Brooks was young when he come here – I forget now – about 34 years old, I think, when he come on the campus. And he – Dr. Brooks and I didn’t hit it off. He – uh – in fact, he took steps to get rid of me one time – and – but now Dr. Brooks and I are good friends. He says I changed, and uh – I contend that he changed.
One of the things he expected me to do when he first come here was to make a rounds of the campus and be in every department head’s office and ask them if they had any problems. Well, that’s like waving a red flag in the face of a bull – everybody’s got problems. And I knew I couldn’t do that, because I didn’t – I wasn’t being provided the funding to solve the problems if I wanted to find out what they were. So I didn’t do that kind of thing. I figured if a department head had a problem and it was sufficient, he’d come to see me about the problem and we’d take care of it – try to take care of it. Because if I’d – went out and met their problems, and do something for one person, then I’d have ten of them in my office the next day, and they would say, “Well, you did this for the other – that – guy. Now I want this done for me,” you know, and it’d put you in a untenable position.
And he – uh – he went out and did that, when he first come here, but I noticed after he’d been here about three or four years he no longer did that. Because he found out that – you know – there’s all kinds of complaints. If you want to go out and stir up people, and try to find out what their problems are, you’ll find plenty of problems. But the people that are the – the department heads that doing their job and taking all their responsibilities, if they’ve got problems, they’ll try to solve it. Or if they’re not worth their salt, they hadn’t ought to be a leader. And so you don’t have to go out a-looking for somebody’s problems. They’ll come – they ought to come to you.
LL: Were there other policy differences that you had with President Brooks?
PB: No, not a whole lot, I don’t think. He uh – he – when he first come here he was young, and he’d forget his, uh – he’d forget who was responsible for what. And one of the things he used to really jump on my case was – [inaudible] – was – the kids would put tape on the dormitories and put signs all over the outside, and then they’d take the signs down and leave the tape hanging up there, and what have you, or a tree branch would fall down, you know, and if it wasn’t off the campus the next morning by eight o’ clock, why, he’d see it and be upset. He forgot that I wasn’t responsible for the dormitories. He’d chew me out, and tell my boss that – you know – that these are the reasons he’d give my boss that I wasn’t doing my job – well, I wasn’t even assigned to work in those areas at that time. But he’d forget that, and uh – at least that’s what came back to me. But – but after – after he’d been here for four or five years – uh – then we began to get along better. At the beginning it was nip and tuck whether I was going to be here.
LL: President Garrity?
PB: I got along well with Dr. Garrity. Uh – Dr. Garrity was a man who had been through the mill on administrative things before he came here. I understand the faculty didn’t like him as well as I did. I don’t know – it’s just the rumors that I hear. But Dr. Garrity was a man that understood my problems. He was a man who was very aloof. He never – you couldn’t develop a personal relationship with him – at least I couldn’t, in my position – he would always – he was always friendly, but very curt, and businesslike, and go on his way.
But when you had a problem he seemed to discern – in fact, I was kind of put on the spot a couple of times over the police department during his tenure, and there was some unreasonable demands being placed on us. They wanted to use the police as sort of – uh – babysitters, if you will, for some of the students, and what have you, and police – police, you know, are kind of like – they’re – their job is to enforce the law, and to knock heads together, and what have you. I mean – they have a mortifying role that they play. And, uh – I shouldn’t say knock heads together. They’re gentle, if they do. But I mean – but they’re – they have a very well defined role that they play in society, and it isn’t trying to counsel, because they’re not trained to do that. And there was a time when the people in the dormitory – over the dormitories felt that they should be able to use the police in that capacity. And they tried to take control of the police department from me.
Well I – I would have fought that very much, but – but uh – they had a big meeting over at the President’s office, called me up there and – uh – tried to bring this to pass, and uh – Dr. Garrity immediately discerned what was happening, and he said, “No, you can’t do that. That doesn’t work.” He understood – uh – what the problem was – put the other – and put the other people – sort of explained to them why it wouldn’t work. Of course, he had the authority to make it stick. Got me off the hot seat.
LL: When you first came here you reported directly to the President, but then, later – I think under Brooks’ administration you started reporting to the – um – Vice President for Business Affairs –
PB: I think it was under Harry Mitchell that I started.
LL: Oh, under Harry Mitchell.
PB: When he was here earlier.
LL: He was here –
PB: Yeah, I started reporting to the Business Manager, and then – the Business Manager at that time reported directly to the President. And then, later on when Brooks come – after he’d been here a while, then he hired a Vice President for Business Affairs.
LL: I see.
PB: And then the Business Manager was under him, and then I was under the Business Manager, so I was two steps down.
LL: Oh.
PB: Which was even better. [Laughs]
LL: Do you remember any of the Business Managers – the Vice President for Business Affairs – any of those people that you had relations with – did you get along at all?
PB: I’ve had – I’ve gotten along well with almost everyone that – that [inaudible] administration, and – the only one I’ve gotten along with – even Dr. Brooks and all the others that I’ve had problems with initially, we’ve kind of worked those out, and – and I think one of the things that – with Dr. Brooks that gave me credibility more than anything was that things were kind of tough, so I decided to apply for a job elsewhere, and I applied for the Director of Physical Plant job that was open down at Oregon State University. Oregon State – Corvallis – whatever that is.
LL: Oregon State University.
PB: Oregon State University – and I got the job. And I negotiated, then, for salary for – oh, a couple of months. They finally decided to meet my salary. And that was on Friday night they called me and said, “We’ve finally got together and decided we’re going to pay you what you asked for.” And so – but I never slept a wink all that weekend, because I had – at that time my wife had left me about, oh, a year or so before that – two years, maybe. I had these little guys here in town, and when it come right down to the wire, I couldn’t leave. So I called the guy up on Monday morning and I told him – and I apologized to him, and I said, “I fear I’ve led you down a primrose path for two months,” I said, “trying to get salary out of you, and now you’ve promised to give it to me, and now I can’t come.” And he said, “Oh,” he said, “Care to share with me why?” And I told him why, and he said, “Well,” he said, “I appreciate that,” he said. “I don’t think you should come either, under those conditions.” So I didn’t go.
And as it turned out, it was a good thing because the budget down there – the economic situation down in Oregon went from – went down the well, and the funding dried up, and it turned out that I did as good up here as I would have down there, with a lot less trauma because of all the change, and so on. And I was able to stay with my children, and nurture them – take care of them. But at any rate, through that process of getting a – getting offered that job and almost leaving here – I’d given my notice and everything here – and deciding to stay, why, that seemed to give me a little more credibility on the campus than I had before. You know, an expert is never a local. He’s always found over the hill somewhere.
LL: Okay. For a while you were under the Business Manager, and then that Business Manager reported to the Vice President of Business Affairs. Did that system work pretty well, or?
PB: It’s still working – it’s still – I’m still [inaudible].
LL: Now, thinking within your own department – the Physical Plant – are there outstanding individuals who come to mind? People who were your subordinates?
PB: Well I – when I saw that question on the sheet, I thought – you know, as you go through your experience over the years, there are certain people that stand out, that maybe – as far as the campus [inaudible] were concerned – were not very well known – not very well recognized. But for one particular job there are a few that stand out, that really helped me all the way. It seems like – as – when I first came here, the office down here had a – all they had was part-time students, you know. Didn’t have any full-time help in the office. And I had no – uh – supervision. I had one – I had one supervisor of the custodial crews at night. And it turned out that – I found out later on that he wasn’t doing his job. He was sleeping half the time on the job. But I had no – no supervisor, no foreman here. They were all just lead men or tradesmen. And – very difficult to try to do an administrative job, and – and – and still – and keep all of the customers on campus happy, and do the – you know, the quality of work [inaudible] – very difficult. So I had to convince the campus that we had to get some supervision somehow.
That – the first – one of the first ones I hired there, to help, was a full-time secretary, and that turned out to be – at the time her name was Lola Petersen. She later – her husband died, and she remarried, and her name later was Lola Hausen. But she was a – a rather tall, large lady, and I guess I could say that she wasn’t highly skilled in any area, but very, very practical, and uh – she got along well with men. And she turned out to be a foreman, and a secretary, and a supervisor, and the whole bit. She ran the plant for me when I was away, or even when I was there. She had a way with those men that she could tell those carpenters, or those painters, or anyone just what to do and when to do it, and they would do it. They respected her. She was with me for – uh – until I moved over to the new – to the facility – up until about 1970, ’71, along in there. Did an excellent job for me. And like I say, she was not recognized on the campus, to speak of, but she just made the Physical Plant hum. Up and down the stairs probably fifty times a day, and seemed to enjoy it. And very much helped. But when I went over to the new Physical – to the new building and had the systems over there – the Central secretarial crew were [sounds like “following”], she just wasn’t comfortable – that wasn’t her kind of thing. So – but it seemed like that time other secretaries came in and were able to handle that job, and uh – so there were many transitions like that that took place.
And then, another one that was very good that I hired was – Bob Thomas was a good – very good man, when it came to – one thing about Bob Thomas – he took over the custodial duties for me, which was very important at that time. We had Nicholson Pavilion coming on the line, and all the activities up there, and some of the things had to be scheduled – people had called out for the building to be opened, and for certain things to be set up, sometimes six weeks in advance, and for – personally myself who had no record system or no one to assist me in those areas, it was hard for me to get all that information with all the other demands I had, and it see that that was – to be assured that that stuff was done at the proper time. Well I could just meet Bob out on the street and tell him “This thing has to be set up at a certain time, on such and such a date,” and I could forget it, and I could be assured that it would be done, and it would be done right. And for a number of years Bob was right there, and the thing about him was – it was that very thing. He was just dependable as could be – as the sun coming up, you know, and never had – I don’t think there was ever a time I ever got chewed out for something that Bob Thomas was responsible for. He took care of it.
And then I think of Jim Tatum, who was – who came, at the time we converted to gas, as chief boiler engineer. At that time we had – before I came here they had required all the boiler engineers in the boiler house be – have a – have a license to operate, and that meant that they had to go to Seattle and take a certain test. The problem was that after a while, these boiler engineers kind of got their heads together and they were using the fact that they’d been licensed as a lever to try to get more money. Which I would have [inaudible] the fact that they should have had more money, but it put me in a position that – uh – that – if I gave them more money then what would I do with all the other employees? And so they got disgruntled at one time, and three of them quit, and there was only five of them operating the plant. So that left two men to operate the plant 24 hours a day, seven days a week. So I immediately began to try to train some other men, and Jim Tatum was there. Of course, the chief engineer, he was the one that trained them, so we tried to get people in so he could train them, but he had to offer [inaudible] also.
So at that time it dawned on me that I was going to have to change the operation of the plant somehow, and do away with that licensing requirement because if they’re going to use that as a lever, once we train them and get them – and help them to get their license, then if they’re going to use it as a lever to – against us to try to get more money – either that or quit, you know – we’ve got to do something about that. So I went to the Board of Trustees and had the license rescinded, but I – at the same time, I had the – required that the chief engineer get even a more stringent license, and that then he be made responsible for total operation of the plant. And he could train anybody, then, to his satisfaction, and then they could fire the boiler – so that [inaudible] brought that, and that’s the way it still operates. So then they didn’t have this lever to uh – to cause them to be disgruntled, and for us to be disgruntled.
So those were kind of interesting things. There were some other things that I think of – uh – a man that’s been gone for a number of years –
JP: We’re getting down, but we can stop and take [inaudible] – you keep going.
PB: Uh, there was – um – the electrician who was here – one electrician that ran the whole campus, and his name was Howard Lime. I would have never [inaudible] the campus without him. He was just a – his shirttail was just kind of standing out back all day long. He was running from one job to another. And the – the maintenance on the campus was – was bad, at that time. There was not enough people, and not enough – really – programs developed in order to do this maintenance.
(Transcription of Tape 2, Side 1)
PB: Did we turn that over? [Inaudible response.] And uh – so Howard was busy removing motors and sending them off to Yakima to be rewound. We probably had two or three motors every day that had to go to Yakima in those days. Now I – you know, it’s a rare thing to have a motor that you have to take out and rewind, because we have a – we set up a preventive maintenance program where we try to – to take care of the motors, and so on, and avoid that kind of problem. This seems to be – that kind of program, though, is the thing that’s cut the first when the budgets are cut, and it puts you in a hole where you can’t possibly get out.
But anyway, Howard was a – he was a [several seconds of silence on the tape]
I was going to mention – uh – Marv Johnson, who was the maintenance supervisor here for a number of years – uh – gone to Re-bill Department which was – which was – in itself was a sort of a controversial department as far as the campus was concerned, but it was necessary from the standpoint of the Physical Plant Director by virtue of the fact that it, uh – it relegated the cost of operating things in the proper areas rather than making Physical Plant responsible for things which they couldn’t fulfill because of funding.
And then there’s Phil Hammond, who’s been with me for a number of years – he’s still on campus – who pretty much took over the mechanical and electrical side of things once he came to campus. And uh – there are many others. I couldn’t have done it – of course, with the kind of job that I had, I couldn’t have done the job without people. And I’m sure that there’s a number that I’ve – that I’ve failed to mention that should have been mentioned. I think of Leonard Hookan, also, who has passed away now. He was – he was a good man – very skilled individual when it came to the same kinds of things that Marv did, only in maintenance areas. So there are just any number of good people that have gone through the system, and done an excellent job for the University.
LL: Now, uh – was the police – the campus police under you? Were they responsible to you?
PB: Yeah, when I came here they had – uh – they had a private agency, the Burns Agency, and it was – uh – more watchmen on the campus. They – they walked from building to building and punched a time clock, and they provided, you know, minimum security. I’ve forgotten what the year was now, but there came a time when the Burns Agency was not – when the State had to move towards a – uh – commissioned kind of law enforcement agency, and I was the one that was given the responsibility to bring that together. Hired the first chief, and developed – and developed training programs for the policemen, bought the equipment, worked out the uniforms, all that kind of stuff – we did all that, and set up the first police force. We stumbled a little bit and fooled around like you always do when you start those kinds of things, but – um – then, after I had the police force for a while, the Dean of Students, being on the committee [inaudible], decided he wanted control of the police force, and so he made a play for that at the Presidential Council level and we decided to let him have it. And I kind of – that was – that was, uh, Witherspoon. And I felt kind of like Br’er Rabbit at that time, when they threw him into the briar patch. [LL laughs.] Yeah, I was, uh – police is, uh – police department – especially when you don’t have highly professional people – when you’re learning – is a kind of a technical thorn in the side. And so I laughed all the way to the briar patch, if you would, when he took that over.
Well, he had problems with it, and – I’ve forgotten how long it lasted. I think it lasted about five or six years. Finally that – having that police department was the thing that was his demise on the campus – caused his demise on campus here. He finally left one weekend – over the weekend – and nobody’s ever heard from him since. And then another man took that over. I hesitate to mention his name. I think he’s still around. He took it over, and he had the same problem. It wasn’t very long to where that thing got the best of him. And then the University asked me to take it back, and I didn’t want it back. It had been a mess, and I told them, “I don’t want it.” They said, “Well, we’re ordering you to take it back.”
So I got it back, and I was – somebody noticed that there was about – there was two lawsuits against the department for – age discrimination on the part of one of the policemen. I’ve forgotten what the other thing was about, but at any rate, I asked for all the files from the department on it, so I could get myself up to speed and find out what in the world was going on, and when I read the letters that had been written by the college officials, I realized that we had a case we were going to lose. There was no way we were going to win that case, and we were going to be out some heavy bucks. So I immediately notified my superiors of what my assessment was, and I said, “The only way out of this is to give me the authority to go and interview this policeman that had been laid off, and offer him his back pay, and bring him back on the campus.” Because he had been unfairly treated. So they said, “Whatever you can do, do it.”
So I called the guy up, and he didn’t want to talk to me. He had been a pretty good friend of mine, too, on the campus – or at least, you know, a casual friend. But I finally got him to agree to meet with me, and I went and talked to him, and told him, I said the police department is back under my control now, and the people he had dealt with on the campus were gone, and I felt that he had been misused – mistreated – and I wanted to rectify the problem. So I told him what I wanted to do, and he says, “Well, I’ll do that.” So he came back, and he was chief here, for a while, on the campus and after that. He did a pretty good job. And the other lawsuit – I’ve forgotten just what the nature of that was, now, but we got that settled, too. Got that going down the right path.
JP: What was the time period there?
PB: You mean, uh –
JP: When the first policeman – where you hired him back?
PB: Well that was, uh – it had been about eight or nine months, as I recall. I’ve forgotten.
JP: And what was the year? Can you remember any years?
PB: I don’t, exactly, but I think – it must have been around – it must have been around ’78, or somewhere in that area. Somewhere in that area. I’ve forgotten exactly when that was.
LL: When did you – were you able to get a motor pool for campus?
PB: Well that kind of – that kind of grew. Uh – first it wasn’t a motor pool, and then it was, I guess. I don’t know. It began – I started that back – and that was a story which I told you a while – from when I bought that electrical wire from the surplus. The State, about that time, was getting some pickups in. They were – this was about a 1951 Chevrolet pickup, and they had a bunch of Jeeps from the Korean War that they brought in to surplus over there, and I was over there one day and they had this pickup that was sitting there, and it had a good paint job on the outside. It was – the body was not bent up, but the tires were flat, and you look under the hood and the carburetor was missing, and the distributor was missing, and a few things were missing off the motor, and you really had no way of knowing what kind of shape that vehicle was in. And when I bought some of those Jeeps, I bought that pickup, and I went down to the junkyard, or used car lot, and I got the parts that was needed out from old used cars, and I went and put them on there, and started that thing up, and I swear, that pickup was brand new. And I drove that pickup, then, back and forth from here to Seattle to pick up those supplies for probably five years. I don’t know how many tons of material I hauled back with that pickup, for the campus. And then some of the Jeeps were the same way. We had the wheels off, and so on, but we’d buy them, and put the parts on them, and you saw a couple of them running around here. There’s probably still one, I think, in use.
But it was through buying – and those little three-wheelers, you know. I bought 35 of those three-wheelers for $100 a piece. That’s $3500 for 35 vehicles, and they’ve used them for – I think they’re still using some of those. Tremendous transportation for the workmen. First – when I first them over here the workmen just threw up their hands. They were not going to be seen driving those things. [Laughter in background] It was demeaning to have to drive those things. Within two weeks they all wanted one. And uh – but at any rate, I began to charge myself for the use of those – a rental, and set up a little fund. Pretty soon the college wanted in on that sort of thing, so then it began to put other institute vehicles in there, and set up a fee for those, and that’s how the motor pool started. It was back there in the early Sixties. It was really Physical Plant funds that set that motor pool up, because we charged ourselves for the operation – because we wanted to be able to set a fund up so that if one of these things wore out, we’d have some way of getting some replacement vehicles, and you just couldn’t count on that through the budgets. So that’s how it started.
LL: Good. Um – do you have any – um – memory of outstanding Board members – Board of Trustees – or did you have much dealings with the Board of Directors?
PB: I had as little dealings with the Board as I possibly could. That’s the way I felt about the thing. I was in an organization – usually a Physical Plant Director gets credit for everything that goes wrong, but nothing that goes right. If things go wrong – right – that’s what’s expected, but the minute anything goes wrong, then you get full credit. And uh – that was at the Board of Trustee level also. I remember one winter when – this was when Dr. Garrity come in – one winter when we had an unexpected cold spell, and we had some freeze-ups up in the Psychology building that – some radiators were broken. It was a comedy of errors where the [inaudible] had – really hadn’t done his job, and someone had forgot to turn the heat on, or something – somebody turned it off, and somebody forgot to turn it on, so there was some expense up there. Not a whole lot, but – University of Washington, had, I think, ten, twenty times as much problem as we had. But this board member wanted my head for that. And Dr. Garrity says, “No.” He says, “We don’t do things that way.” He says, “ I run the campus,” he said, “You run the Board of Trustees.” He says, “We’ll take care of this problem.” And uh – so he came to my defense.
But this is the kind of thing that went on in the Board of Trustees. You see, you have people on the Board of Trustees – you get some real good men on there, and women, but you get others that never had any authority in their life, and when they get a little bit of authority, they don’t understand how to use it, and – they don’t understand – you know, one thing I learned early on in my supervisory experience is that when you get a person that makes a mistake, if you point that mistake out to that individual, and that individual shows any kind of remorse for having made that mistake, he’ll never make that mistake again. But you go out and hire somebody new, and put him in that position – he’s liable to make that same mistake. So you’re better off all the way around to treat your people with a little graciousness, and – they become far better employees for you than if you’re hard-nosed, and hit people over the head with a club, you know. That isn’t – that doesn’t get any loyalty.
LL: Did, uh – were you satisfied with the hiring policies? That is, did you control your own hiring policies – who’d get hired, and what not?
PB: Well in the very early days I hired pretty much who I wanted to, but then, later on the formal civil service procedures come in, and I would have to say that if you understand the civil service procedures, and if you follow them, and use them – and I mean use them – learn how to use them – they’re all right. There’s nothing wrong with the civil service procedures if you diligently do your job. It’s when you’ve got your neck bowed, and you’re negative about it, and about the whole procedure, and you refuse to follow the procedure, then you get yourself into problems with the civil service procedure. The civil service procedure protects you from a lot of things, and it also – uh – it also prevents nepotism – a lot of things that go on – that can go on, you know, without even any intent. Because everybody has a circle of friends that influence him, and those are dangerous things – when you have that kind of thing entering into hiring practices.
I was very careful when I was in my job. I had all kinds of relatives that would have liked to have work, but I never hired a relative. Never, ever let them even have any idea that they had an opportunity to come to work under my supervision, even before I had any procedure. Because that – that is not a – never a – to hire your friends, or your relatives is just not – not very smart procedure, as far as I’m concerned.
LL: My last question, Paul. Do you have any impressions or recollections of the relationship between the town and the campus – the state of the relationship?
PB: Well they fluctuate from one way to another, you know, over the years, but I would have to say that I think the town/gown relationships have been pretty good. You know, it depends on – it all depends at any given moment on the people that are on the various commissions and committees. Again, it depends on the leaders of the committees, because the leaders of the committees are the ones who lead the others. And so at any given time in history, even today, it depends on whether or not people want to cooperate, and whether or not they want to be able to put themselves in the other person’s position – and of course, that’s – that’s true in all human relations. If you’ve got a person that thinks only of himself, then uh – you don’t get very far with any kind of cooperation. But if you’ve got – and it’s true on the faculty – if you’ve got someone that thinks only of his own department or his own selfish desires, there’s no point in asking that person to cooperate. The good of the institution is down the tube, you know. And that, in my experience, has been one of the biggest pitfalls of campus relationships – when you’ve got small faculty in big positions. [LL laughs]. That’s true!
JP: Mm-hmm.
PB: And it’s true with not only faculty, but it’s true in administrators as well, because when you’ve got small people in big positions – uh – you’re – it’s uh – it’s not good for the institution.
LL: Okay. Now, if you have anything else you would like to tell us about your experience here?
PB: No, I think I’ve – you know, I’ve rattled on here, and I’ve spoke about a lot of things that I wasn’t – that didn’t even – that came to mind as I was going along here. I hadn’t thought about them before, but I imagine there’s a – there’s a – scads of others, but – I don’t really know of anything. I – I came here at a good time, had about as good an experience, I think, as anybody during that growth – uh, growth years. I’m glad I’m retired. There seems like there’s a time for everything, and I’m enjoying retirement, and uh – I’m glad somebody else has got the responsibility and I can go fishing. [Laughter] Play with the grandkids.
LL: Thank you very much.
PB: You’re welcome.