CWU LIVING HISTORY PROJECT
Dr. James Brooks
(Transcription of Tape 1, Side 1)
KB: Today is Wednesday, April 5, 2005. I’m Karen Blair, about to interview James Brooks, graduate of Central, class of 1950, with a major in Geography, who became President of this University from 1961 until ’78. After that as Professor of Geography, and uh, even after retirement an organizer of Friends of the Library, an organization founded in the 1960s. Well thank you for agreeing to this interview. Will you tell us a little bit about your background before you became a student?
JB: Well first let me say that I’m delighted to be here. When you’re almost 80 years old, you’re delighted to be anyplace, of course, and I’d like to mention that when you’re almost 80 years old – this is for people who might see this tape later on – uh, it’s difficult to remember back to, uh, oh, 59 years when you came here as a student, and 44 years, or whatever it was, when you started as President, and 24 years when you left the presidency. So it’s difficult to remember all of the – the details. And uh, also that some of the things that occurred during my 17 years of the presidency were complex, and if we get into those, it’s – uh – it’d be difficult to cover them, maybe, without some research.
I’d add, again, that one of the things that impairs me in this interview is that a couple of years ago I had a seizure, and I don’t know how bad it was – uh – we couldn’t measure on the Richter scale that is used for Geology, but at least it took me to the hospital – a minor one after that, and then a minor one a couple of years later. But I’m all through that now, but a good chunk of my memory was wiped out. All the memory is up here, but the doctors say it’s difficult to get into it. Now if I go back and look at documents, the memory comes back. So I would alert you, and anyone else, that there are some reasons why I could be making some statements here that might not be exactly correct, and anyone who has been in this institution with me for a long time might pick those things up. So with that, um, tell me your question again.
KB: All right, well would you tell us a little bit about where you were born, and what your background was before you became a student here?
JB: Well I was born over on the coast. I’m a native of the State of Washington. I went to school at Salcom Elementary School – a little town in Western Washington and Lewis County. I was there for the first five grades, and then, um, my family moved, and so then I went to Mossy Rock through the elementary grades, and then all the way through high school, through the eleventh grade. At the eleventh grade I left – at the end of the eleventh grade, end of my junior year – and I had volunteered for the Navy in May of that year, and went into the Navy in October of that year. So I was in the Navy until June – let’s see, May 17, 1946.
Came out exactly one month later to come to Central, and was persuaded to come over here – I’d never heard of Central before – but persuaded to come here by a good friend who had just got out of the Marines – a fellow classmate. So we arrived in downtown Ellensburg, right in the middle of the town, with two beat-up suitcases, not knowing where to go. So we came up to the campus, and uh, we seemed to survive. Uh, this person was David Marsh, and his mother had told me, since I had only three years of high school and Dave had only three years, too, that – we were a little bit nervous about coming to school – she said, “Just – if they ask you anything, just say education, and somebody over there will take care of you.” And of course, that’s what happened.
So we started summer school, which meant that I could graduate early. So I graduated in the fall of, uh, 1949. So I was here from – um – June 17, 1946 to – um – December 16, 1949. Left immediately to go to University of Washington, where I completed an MA and a PhD, but there was an interval there, in 1952 Spring, when my major professor passed away – Dr. Reginald Shaw – and I was asked to come back to complete his classes. So I had that one quarter – almost a quarter full of teaching. Now after that – after I completed my – uh – my Doctorate, with the exception of a – uh – of a dissertation – I was a little long on that – a professor in Geography and Geology left Eastern Washington University late in the summer, and they were desperate to have someone come over. So they knew that I had taught here. So I went over and taught there from 1953 to ’58, completing my PhD through completing the Doctorate – um – thesis, or um, Art in the Columbia Basin, and then, after five years, decided to go to, uh, Portland State University – it was Portland State College, and I was – I was invited to – uh – to come there by a good friend who had graduated from this school.
You know, it was difficult to leave Eastern, because when I started out to, uh, get into Geography, and also to get into my career, there was one thing I wanted to do, and that was to come to a small college and teach. I did not want to go to a large university. I was very much impressed with Reginald Shaw, who was my advisor, Professor Pete Barto, and um, Dr. Mohler, and others in this small school – we were very small at that time. So I – there’s nothing more that I wanted to do than to be in an institution like this, and to teach.
But Portland State was going very fast, and they were building that institution right in the middle of – right in the downtown of – of Portland. And we were close to my folks, and to – to my wife’s folks, who lived, again, in Lewis County close by. So uh, from there, we, uh – I, um, was asked by the – um chair – the um, the chairman of the, um, Social Science division, Dr. George Hoffman of – they were changing the buildings down there, and knocking old buildings down, and we were in an old building. He was sitting in the very small dining room. I was sitting in what was the old kitchen, so we were right next to each other, and he said to me, he said, “Jim, I’m sending your name in to be Assistant to the President of this institution.” And I said, “Why me? I have absolutely no administrative experience.” And he said, “I’m going to send your name in. We have to send a name in. You won’t get it, forget it. We just have to do this!” And so I said, “Well, Okay, if it will satisfy you.”
I go over to the park block, the President comes out of his office, and he – they had me sit in the park block – you know park blocks run up and down the area from downtown Portland. And I found out right away that he was going to offer me the job, because I could tell of questions he was asking me. I told him I had absolutely no experience in administration. My whole objective in life was to be a very successful professor in a small school, and that’s all I wanted. And he said, “Well, you don’t have to be here three or four years.” And I said, “You know, I don’t know anything about administration.” And he said, “I don’t know anything, either.” And I said, “Well what do you mean? You came from Michigan. They hired you as President. You don’t know anything about it – about administration?” He said, “They didn’t tell me what to do.” I said, “Well what did you do?” He said, “I started journal in English.” So, he said, “If you come to work, we’ll both learn how to run this school.” And I said, “This is ridiculous!” He said, “Well, do you have your own secretary?” I said, “No.” “Do you have your own parking place on campus?” I said, “No.” “You’re writing a book, aren’t you? Do you have your own office? Your own typist? You know, we can do a lot for you. You’re writing a book on Oregon, so come on over.” So then I became Assistant to the President.
Now meantime, a gentleman who’d come in to um, to Central – uh – Dr. Wolf Underburg – came about 1947, before I left. He was a gracious, delightful, uh, uh, Southern gentleman – a good teacher, and I had him in class. As soon as I became Assistant to the President at Portland, he sent my name in to be President here. And uh, I was very much concerned about that, so I called, um, professor Pete Barto, a good friend, and I told him, you know, “What should I do? I should send him a letter? I should phone him, and tell him how nice it is that he did that, but, um, you know, I’m really not ready for this.” And uh, Professor Barto said, “Right.” He said, “You’d never get it,” he said, “but it might be an experience for you, um, why don’t you send some papers in anyhow?” And so I did talk to Dr. Thunderbrook, and um, uh, this was in 1959.
Meantime, the Board of Trustees here kept interviewing, and interviewing, and so forth for two years, while I remained as Assistant to the President. And then, um, uh, Professor Barto called and said, “Have you left your papers in for the Presidency?” And I said, “Well, I’m not sure. I think we withdrew them.” “Well, leave them in,” he said, “you might get an interview, and that’s good experience. But you won’t get it. You won’t get it. Don’t worry about it, you won’t get it.” So I did as Professor Barto suggested that I do, and lo and behold, a couple years later I was interviewed for the Presidency here, and the whole administrative staff was having a party down at the Dean of Faculty’s house in Portland. I got a call in the evening, about 10:00 at night, from um – um, Victor Bouillon, who was Chairman of the Board of Trustees for 34 years here, and he welcomed me to the Presidency. And of course, there was a big celebration there, and I didn’t know exactly what to do.
You have to remember now, when I became President, I had six years of teaching, and two years of administration. And so this is what the – the Board gave to the institution for – prominent professor said, “My God, we asked for a President, and they sent us a student!” So this was – this was my introduction. And the material that I gave you here, uh, showed what I said to the faculty even before I arrived as President. And then the material that showed the first, uh, six years – shows what we accomplished in the first six years, and then there was – there’s an article there starting 1967 which was going to go to Phase Two, to 1975. And at that time, after 12 years or 15 years, I intended to resign.
My philosophy was that you take an institution so far, you work on it, you give it all, and then it should be passed to new leadership. And so we got to – we got to thirteen years. I was warning the Board of Trustees I wanted to leave, and finally it got to fifteen years and said, “Listen, I’ve – I’ve got to get out of here, you know. I want to resign.” They were resisting that. But the whole Board was replaced by a new Governor. Now that had happened before, two other times to me. The Governor uh, Rosselini, before I arrived, had appointed all Democrats to this Board. They were replaced by Republican Dan Evans, who came in. Democrat Dixie Lee Ray replaced the Board again – that Board had just been replaced – and so we had no Board at fifteen years when I was going to leave. So Dr. Gene Brady who was on the Board here – a Republican – said, “Jim, you better stay another two years.” So I did, with the understanding there would need to be an interim President, and uh –uh – I could finally get out at seventeen years. That’s a long story, but that’s it. So maybe that will – will help you ask good questions.
KB: Wow. Tell us what you found when you arrived here in 1961. What kind of an institution of higher learning was it?
JB: Well, the um – let’s see, it was, uh, 72% of the students graduating in Central in 1961 were in Teacher Education. They were teachers. Um, the – the students were heavily, um, represented in the lower division. In other words, we didn’t have very many upper division students. We had – uh – an Arts and Science faculty that was good, but limited in size, so a student didn’t have much variety if the person wanted to take more than one course. Very small History Department, for example. I found that at Eastern, too, when I went there. They had only 800 students when I arrived, and 1800 when I left, so there was a growth year. So the – it was heavily Teacher Education. Now the – um – the Board of Trustees – um – this was something I didn’t know – was interested in – in strengthening the Arts and Sciences. And I had been here, and I knew that the –uh – the Arts and Sciences weren’t as strong as they should be. I went through the Teacher Education program – didn’t find it very difficult. I found much more challenging courses in History, Geography, Geology, and Geography, and Philosophy, and others, that I tried to take across campus.
So I had that feeling from here that the Arts and Sciences weren’t very strong at Central. I found the same thing at Eastern. So my thought was, you know, if anything needs to be done to these schools – and probably at Western, too – the Arts and Sciences ought to be strengthened to support Teacher Education, if for no other reason, but also to stand on their own eventually, and that these institutions eventually had to go to the Master’s degree so there – there should be more – in the Arts and Sciences – more opportunities for students to take different professors, and also, the institution should – should grow so it starts offering courses and – uh – in the upper division, at a graduate level. Because the Community Colleges were coming on, and uh, taking care of the first two years.
So I – when I got here, I had those things in mind, and I found that, um, we had to start building. But I have to say, here, that the – this institution was on its way with Perry Mitchell as interim President, the former Mayor of Renton, because Nicholson Pavilion had been constructed, a beautiful library, Bouillon Hall, was open, a couple of other buildings – and they had plans. So – so – so they were moving. And this – we caught the wave of students coming in, and it was quite an increase in students through the Sixties, and we were part of that wave. So I – I found a base here to work with – that a base that I thought that I needed to strengthen this as much as possible, and I worked very hard to do that, and everything worked quite well, as you can see from the first report here, through the first seven years.
The percentage of doctorates at this institution – uh – went up from 31% to 40%, to 57%, and when I left the Presidency it was somewhere now 87%. And the Sciences had over 90%, and the – the – the uh, I think the Social Sciences, or Behavioral Sciences if you would, had – um – about that number. They were 89, or something like that. So we increased the doctorates because we were offering upper division and graduate school – uh – work. So if we’re going to work on that level, we’ve got to have a faculty there. So this is why I pressed for the doctorate, and tried to accommodate those who did not have it in fields like Art – uh – where maybe the doctorate wasn’t needed. This was a controversial – um – item for – uh – for the faculty.
So I found – I have to give credit to those who were here already, who had built this school from 1891 to when I arrived in 1961, but from 1961 to 1`966 we doubled the enrollment, and we doubled the faculty easily. So things really developed during those – those years. We had some exciting years. Those were the most exciting years that this institution’s ever seen, as far as I’m concerned. And think what we wound up with – a multiple purpose state college at the end of those first years – the Phase One, as I call it.
KB: The early 1960s produced about fourteen new dormitories on [inaudible].
JB: Yes. I don’t know – I couldn’t cite – I couldn’t recite the exact number, but there were twenty – twenty buildings constructed during my – uh – my Presidency, and what we had to do is sort of follow what the Board of Trustees wanted. The Board of Trustees way back in 1950 said, “This is going to be a residential campus.” So they already started building dormitories. And the board of 1958-1963, whatever it was – a very liberal, Democratic board, and uh, let’s see, Dr. Roy Wahl had graduated from here, he was on that board, and uh, former student body president, as I remember. He was strong for that. And we really needed that, too. I could understand the position, because Ellensburg just didn’t have the space for a growing campus.
So uh, quite a number of buildings were constructed, and the library is a good example. As the institution grew in size, there were more demands for more books, and the Bouillon Library that they had planned simply wouldn’t hold the books that we needed, and we were putting money into the library, so we had to build a library – now on the north campus, the James C. Brooks Library – and we tried to get as much space up there as possible. We also built it so that the – the wall – the walls at the end of halls could be knocked out, and we could expand that to the back. But we needed – uh – we needed a space.
That building sits on Urban Renewal land. In the early Sixties we started an Urban Renewal program, and I think it went from ’66 to about ’70. We took in 41 acres of land, and 54 homes were destroyed. Now the um, City had to agree to sponsor that project, and they did, and the Chamber of Commerce supported it, but the Federal – uh, Federal dollars came in and paid for the whole project, except the City was supposed to provide 20% of that. We provided that through the land that we were buying. So we got that whole area up there, which is really from about this building clear up to the other side of the library, and that was to consolidate the – uh, uh – the campus. That was a little bit controversial, but not too much. We had strong support from the business community because this was a vital operation for them. And as the size of the institution grew, it became more important to – to the City, and also more important for the City and the college to work together.
KB: Who were the opponents, and what did they argue?
JB: Well they’re – I can’t name them, but some people felt that the University was taking over too much land, and if it belonged to the State of Washington, it wouldn’t be taxed, and maybe the University is moving out into other areas. Well the land around the University was – was going up in price about four times as we moved into Federal Urban Renewal, and if we hadn’t had Urban – Federal Urban Renewal, our campus wouldn’t be together like it is now, and we wouldn’t have the Mall. We’d have that separation from here, and the gym, and the field to the north. You see, when I came here, in terms of physical plant, here’s what we had: we had Highway 10, the main cross-state highway going right out in front of this building, Okay? Going right straight through. We had the main route to the airport right over here, right on the other side of Kamola Hall, going straight to the airport. We had an irrigation canal coming through the middle, so-called the Ganges. We had the Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific Railroad coming right through, so we were cut into all – all different, uh, [inaudible]. The freeway came in in ’68, so that got rid of that. The – the railroad went defunct and so we could take, uh, take that over. We got the road – road to the airport moved, so that – uh – that was gone. And we didn’t get rid of the Ganges – the irrigation canal – but we could, um, beautify it, and then, of course, allow students to float down it every now and then.
So we had – we had really some major land problems that I inherited from uh, from the past, and I think we solved those. I believe that the campus grew from 113 acres to over 400 acres. Yeah, it was over 400 acres when I left. We included some fields on the other side of the Music Building, which the – the college, I hope is sharing (and not selling) to the City, and they’re using them for soccer fields, and other things like that. So, um, land – uh – purchase was a major problem for me which I didn’t really understand – uh – when I arrived, but one of the first things I did was go to the far North Campus, way on the other side right at the edge of the Athletic Field, and I walked all the way down to Campus Court, straight as I could, figuring that each step was three foot, and for me it came out to 4400 feet. Well now that’s – if we kept moving buildings away – we didn’t have the land – you know, it just simply wouldn’t work. We have a large campus as it is. So that was one of the jobs that I had. Now I just might add here, when I go back to meetings at American Association of State College and Universities trying to pick up ideas. There are colleges and universities our size – people have asked me, “What’s going on? What’s going on at your campus?” I say, “Well you got Urban Renewal going on.” They’ll say, “Urban Renewal? You’re out west! You’ve got all kinds of land. How could you qualify for Urban Renewal?” But we did qualify for it, and we did get support from people like Katherine May, who was a conservative Republican in Congress who told me, when I went back to see her – said before – after I explained the projects and [inaudible] money she said, “Jim, you know I’m against Urban Renewal, but this is in my district. This is a good plan. You need it, and I’ll support it.” And [sighs] – that was the wonderful – best think I’d heard for a long time. I think that our good friend – a Board member of ours, a Republican, Herb Frank down in Yakima who used to be the head of the Yakima Food and Cold Storage – I think he might have softened her up a little bit by phone before I got there, because he was a big supporter of hers. So –
KB: Did it change the character of the campus to add 3300 dormitory rooms?
JB: Oh, oh yes. But the campus was growing and we needed – we needed those buildings. But when – when you add buildings like that, you take on an obligation to pay them off. So we had to charge students for them. So if enrollment went down, you didn’t have the students – that was a worry for us, and this is why we had – we’ve had the Conference Program going for quite some time, so that you would add income to those buildings like the [sounds like jai alai] and others, and we started that quite some time ago.
Indeed, I pioneered one of them with business, and that was Business Week, which some may have heard of, where business people coming to campus, because Larry Danton came in as head of the Business Department. He was outgoing. He related immediately to the local business community, and to the Association of Washington Business, and in a very short time he had those business people on campus. And of course he came to me and my wife with his wife Louise, and we started entertaining them, because he – he knew they would give support to the Business Department. But they were grousing. They were complaining that college professors don’t care anything about business, and they’re anti-business, and the students wound up – wind up here anti-business. And so I asked them, “Why don’t we do this? Why don’t we have a Business Week? We’ve got the facilities here, and if you’ll raise the money, we’ll bring in high school students.” So the first year we brought in over 400 high school students. The business people raised the money, and they told me, “You write the curriculum.” So that’s what we did.
So year after year, we brought in more and more students to [inaudible] Dormitory during the summertime, and – and also use our dining service. Business Week will enter its 30th year this coming year, and there’s Business Weeks in campuses across the state now. But one of the main reasons, I have to admit, is not only to meet those criticisms of the – um – of the business community, but to fill those dorms in! Having people eating in the dining hall during the – uh, uh, uh – summertime.
KB: How were relations between Town and Gown?
JB: Well, there – we had, um, I think, during my time, probably 60 prominent business people – you know, in their own right – some might have been in agriculture, some in business downtown – but probably six or seven of them were really supportive in terms of being out on the front lines. The rest of them might have been passive, but they were supportive. Because as the institution grew, they knew that their businesses would improve with more people, and more expenditures. So we had good relationships, but I made sure that they knew exactly what this institution meant to them, and I can show you documents that outline every cent, we think, that this institution meant to the town. And so they appreciated that, and they – some got involved, like Len Thayer, with the Business Department. Mose Ruppel was Mayor, and he was supportive of us. A number of them – Bob Case, again, is always involved. Several – probably out of that 60 or so, probably 10 or so were, you know, out with us all the time.
In terms of the relationships, uh, this is a long time ago, so you met a lot of those people at Rotary. You may remember I mentioned Victor Bouillon, who was Board Chairman here – one of the Trustees for 34 years. He’s the one that called me – that told me I was going to be President. He met me, he took me downtown, took me to his bank to open an account, and then took me to Rotary. Now most of those business people were in Rotary, and Rotary was big. It’s a noon club, and it was really quite strong, so there was a lot of relationships there, and a number of people up here on campus – probably 15 or 20 – were really involved in town, and a couple of them were reasonable directors, or whatever they call, for this whole Rotary district in here, like Bert Christiansen, head of our Music Department – head of Band. So they were very prominent. And so quite a number, like Wayne Hertz at the Music Department – there’s a whole list of people who got involved in the Rotary, and Kiwanis, and so forth, and then socially there was something called Rigadoon Dance Club. Well, you just about had to belong to Rigadoon, so everybody belonged to Rigadoon, and of course it was black tie for at least most of the dances until the very last dance, and it’s still going on. So that – that brought us all together.
And then there was another thing: Elk’s Club. There was no place in town to go except the Elk’s Club, so everybody went to the Elk’s Club. So if you wanted to see anybody, they’d go to the Elk – everybody was an Elk. No other place – now this is a small town and a small – uh, small campus. I’m dominating the conversation as usual. Go ahead.
KB: No, no! [Inaudible question from videographer]
How did the community at Ellensburg feel about student demonstrations? Civil rights and anti-Viet Nam activity in the Mid-Sixties? This was a lively place.
JB: This was a lively place, but it was not – uh, uh – we did not have damage to buildings. We were very fortunate. I’ve had many people tell me that, uh, we did very well in controlling that. You see, across the country at that time there were, oh, I think it was 28 institutions that suffered damage to their facilities, and something like 8.9 billion dollars of damage. Eight students were killed. There were lots of demonstrations going on like at Berkeley and so forth, so a lot went on. What we did here was try to – to work with the students. And the, um – I found it, uh, my responsibility to admit that this institution that is growing so fast, and done so much with buildings and all of that, had ignored the need to diversify its student body – to change the student body. That was very clear. The uh – as a matter of fact, I mention this – the year – in my talk, a year before we had any problems on campus. Now I could – I could talk about Presidential morale, and I can list for you about 20 different problems that we had – everything from all kinds of new regulations putting on – putting us through – the Federal government and the State government. But I could also list a whole number of things that went on during that period of time that would upset faculty, and upset students. There were all kinds of things.
Now Viet Nam, of course, was one of them. Uh, Viet Nam started in – what was it – 1972, something like that, and went to ’85, but some people claim it started earlier than that. But it drug on, and on, and on, and we were battling in Laos and Cambodia. Well, if you looked at the figures at that time, 22% of the people – the men fighting in Viet Nam – were college students that had been pulled out, and here we’d built this young faculty. They could have been drafted for Viet Nam, and they knew it. So they were very concerned, too. It just wasn’t – wasn’t the students.
But the ones that I related to the most were the, uh – were the Black students, because we’d completely ignored them. In the drive to build this – this institution, during that time, we had not taken care of their needs. So when that was done, they simply accepted their – their demands. Now they – there were only eight or nine or ten of them, and uh, one fellow was coming to me and saying, “Dr. Brooks, our parents are calling us. They’re saying, ‘What are you doing over there? We want you to graduate.’” Many of these kids, I think, were from – from middle class homes, and Ron Sims – you interviewed – his father was a minister over in Spokane. He said, “Did my father call you?” (He asked me that just recently.) “No, he didn’t.” But uh – uh – these kids had a good point. We weren’t doing as much as we should. And we’re a little bit isolated, you know, from the other parts of the United States where there wasn’t very much of a Black population here at all. But still, we needed to respond to that, and um, Ron may have talked to you about a talk I gave the night that we had this big assembly there. I just simply said, you know, “Accept these sorts of things, and work them out.” And we did. And Ron backed off with his student – he was very, very happy, uh, with that. We – we negotiated, finally, an Ethnic Studies program which not only included Black, but included Chicano Studies, and the Indians, and so forth, and I think we adjusted quite well.
Now as far as the Students for Political Change, or whatever they were – I can’t remember now. They were from the Political Science Department. They made some ridiculous demands, and I simply refused those. The demands, you know, that right now we put a student and a faculty member on the Board of Trustees. Well, we can’t put a faculty member on the Board of Trustees! That’s the Governor and the legislature’s responsibility. And we had to clarify who governs this institution. It’s not the students, and it’s not the faculty or the administration. It is the Board of Trustees. We had to go through some of those elementary things with them. But when they – they came out with suggestions like, “We’ve got to have beer sold in the Student Union Building, we’ve got to have condoms distributed over there,” and all of these ridiculous, uh, demands. We simply had to handle those, and – you know – just meet with them, but really shut them out and not agree to them.
Now during this time of the –uh – Black students and the Students for Change Political Science students – one of the things that interested me is that hardly any faculty member stood up and said, “This is ridiculous! This is our institution, what’s going on here?” So that time, and many times throughout my Presidency I was out there on point by myself, with the support of the Administration. I had some good people working with me, who were helping with me, but they – it was not their position to get out on point, it was my position. So I – I found it difficult to believe that this faculty that we had hired – you know, a lot of PhDs and EdDs, well-trained from probably a couple of hundred universities, would sit silently while I was out here, uh, on the Mall.
In one case I was called, and my office was right here, and a group of Political Science students and professors – a couple of them on the faculty [inaudible], came down the Mall and went over to a little flagpole – a little aluminum flagpole that we had over in this little corner area over here – little grassy area – and they were making all kinds of noise, and pushing the flagpole to take the flagpole. Now it’s an aluminum flagpole, and they had to turn, so I stood in front of the flagpole and talked to them. They finally backed away. We took the flag off, and put it on top of this building. Well, that was irresponsible, but that was about the only problem that we had that way.
I had one disappointing experience with them, and that is – that same group, and more Sociologists, this time – came down the road in front of our house – the President’s house. By that time the house had been remodeled, and there were little balconies up on top, and I thought, well – I could hear them coming. I thought, “Well this – ” I remembered Mussolini, who used to go out on the balcony and give talks, and I thought, “Well, should I risk that?” And I thought, “You know, I just – what’ll I do?” So I – and I put my housecoat on, and I go out on the balcony. And they come up right to the front, and just completely disappear. That was one of the biggest disappointments of my Presidency. I had a chance to give a speech from the balcony. Never had that chance again! So that was one of the, uh – the things that I missed about it.
KB: Well now half the campuses in America closed in May of 1970 over Nixon’s expanding into Cambodia.
JB: Yeah, yeah. The students – um – asked that classes be dismissed. Uh, what we did – I’ve got all kinds of documents on this – they wanted a day off, and so forth. So – um – we supported them. We said, “Okay, go out and have your Friday, if you wish – um, no classes if you don’t want to, but the faculty members who have responsibility to be in their building – this is their obligation, to serve those who don’t want to go out there – you be in your room.” And it worked out okay. There was all kinds of talk, and this and that, and so forth, but these were tense times, and uh – um – you know, we had Watergate and all of that coming on. These were tense times. But my point is, we got through them – uh – quite easily, compared to other institutions where there was a lot of damage, and so forth, and uh – Kent state – wasn’t there eight students killed there?
KB: Four.
JB: Four, was it? Just in one place. So I think we got by it quite well, and I can give you all kinds of documents from that period.
KB: Lots of people have talked with fondness about the Symposia that [inaudible] in the Sixties. Could you talk about that?
JB: Sure. When I was at Portland State as Assistant to the President there was going to be an inauguration of this President I just described – Bran Millard – and we had a Director of Public Relations, so he was in charge of all the arrangements for the Symposium, and he arranged to spend quite a bit of money – uh, planned that way – but something happened to him about, oh, less than a week before the symposium: he got drunk. He drove his car around the park blocks honking the horn – just terribly drunk. The next day the President came in to me and said, “You’re in charge of the symposium.” Just like I told him before, [inaudible] “I don’t know anything about ” – I mean, his inauguration. “You’re in charge of the inauguration.” Well we – we went through with it, but we spent a lot of money. So when I came here, I thought, you know, I hope we don’t do that here. So as a result, the Board starts pressing me, “When are we going to have an inauguration?” So about that time David Burt and Modell – Dr. Modell – came in, and brought Martin Kaatz with them. I always kid Martin that he was their interpreter. They’d come up with this idea, “Why don’t we have a symposium on American values?” Well, the first question is, where are we going to get money. So here we go. We used the inaugural money to start the symposium. And these two people, working with others, brought in outstanding speakers for many, many years, and it was a – really a highlight on campus. And classes were dismissed – everybody showed up. We had a great time.
As years went by, you know, as – eight years, and so forth – students start thinking, “Well, this is a good way to have a vacation,” and the attendance went down, and the cost went up tremendously to bring people in, so we had to cancel it, unfortunately. But that was a – really exciting time, in the Sixties, and there’s a book on it, as you may know, that Odell – uh, uh – summarized the – all the symposium speeches. Now you – you should seek that. I think Sam Mohler might have touched on that, didn’t he, in his book? Yeah. Just right at the end, yeah.
KB: Who were some of the speakers who came to [inaudible]?
JB: Oh, I can’t remember them all. I remember that Harold Taylor, the President of Sarah Lawrence College, was my speaker at my inauguration, which was the first symposium. So he sat there, I gave my talk, and um, a little deal was put around my neck, and I was inaugurated, and he gave my talk. But, um, faculty members here can remember, but I can’t remember them all. There’re just – just too many. We had five or six each year, so that – that’s that memory that I just talked about.
KB: Now did – there was quite a controversy over the invitation of a communist – Gus Hall.
JB: Oh yeah, Gus Hall. He was invited to come to campus, and the Board supported it – you know, we should have the right to have speakers on campus who just – just didn’t happen to agree with the person – that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t have them. And a number of institutions in this state invited him to – invited him to come in. But there was a great uprising of people across the state: “Don’t bring this person here.” Because we’d been in a Cold War with Russia, remember? We were worried about what they were going to do. Even when I came in here in 1961 there was worry, and then later on the same thing, long before Regan said “Tear that wall down,” and so forth. This – there was really anti-communism feeling in this country. So there was – there was, um – uh, threats for people to come on campus, and to do anything they could to disrupt. So it got to the point where it would be a danger, uh, for people here to have him on campus, and so he was rejected, not only here but across the state. Now unfortunately events like that and the – um – oh, the Black students, and the Students for Change, and problems going on across the country, and various other institutions – Berkeley, and so forth – turned a lot of people against higher education, and this was one of the problems that we had, because in – um – I think it was in 1969 Fall there was a major vote in this state for more funds, and higher education was included, and we got wiped out. We didn’t get anything because the – uh – the people were so annoyed with the taxes, and with what they’d heard about what’s going on in these schools, and so no matter whether it was right or not, you know. A great number of students here were not involved in any of this, but uh, the people felt, “Well we’re a part of this. What’s going on? Can’t you hold those students up? We’re paying for this!” So that really – that period, the later part of the 1960s really hurt us, and [inaudible].
KB: When you made the decision to dis-invite Hall in 1961, were you aware that the University of Washington had had great scrutiny in the late ‘40s and ‘50s about communist – uh, supposed communists among the professors?
JB: Uh – no, I’m not fully aware of that, although I went there. I – I’m not – I’m not aware of that.
KB: Well you spoke a moment ago about faculty morale at the time. The school grew fast with insufficient resources. Could you talk a little bit about faculty attitudes?
JB: Yeah. I would be delighted to do that. I think that if you’re looking for someone who should have – should have had poor morale, it should be me. I had more issues than almost anyone, and as far as I was concerned the faculty issues were – were insignificant. But being a good guy, I didn’t challenge them on them. But let me tell you some of the demands made by the – the, uh – the faculty group. One is that we have to have our salaries increased because the community college professors are making more money than we are. So what did we do? We got the full information from the head of the community college system and another business manager, and it shows Central higher than Eastern or Western, and higher than all these community colleges. Um, they said the Administration is being favored by salary increases. Our salary increases were 6%, faculty were 11%. So we had all these kinds of things coming out.
Now I could add up several of those things, but – what would you do? Would you come out and say, “All right, AFT, we want a public apology for this information that you’re sending around.” I didn’t do that. You don’t do that sort of thing. But I had people from the outside say, “You know,” – and I mean people in higher education that I associated with across the state – “When are you going to come out, and stop being a nice guy, and clobber those characters who are making these – these – these – these demands?” So a number of their demands were – were ridiculous. And I think the one that made the faculty look the worst is when they challenged the Board of Trustees on its right to amend the faculty code. You see, there – apparently there’s problems back in 1947 with Dr. McConnell and the faculty, so they worked up some sort of an agreement.
KB: I’m going to turn this over now.
KB: Let’s continue with some more of President Brooks’ interview.
JB: And they called it the Faculty Code. But they didn’t have anybody approve it – not anyone – and those things have to be approved through the State. So it had not been approved at all, and the Board – the President agreed to it, and I guess at that time the Board agreed, too, because the President told them to. There were only three members on the Board way back then, I think, in the ‘40s. So it came on into my administration, and one of the things I noticed was, this thing’s out of date. So we started working on it way back in 1966, and we had Assistant Attorney Generals working with us then, right down the hall. They were young people, but they were very good. Tom Dalgliesh was one, and he worked hard on that code, to incorporate all of what he thought the faculty wanted, and what the Trustees wanted. But the Trustees wouldn’t agree to one thing: they wouldn’t agree to have the faculty override their power as a governing board. And that’s as simple as it was. And so Tom and I told the group, and particularly the AFT, “This isn’t going to work. This is going to be thrown out if you take this to court.” “We’re going to take it to court.” The most disappointing thing at that moment was that the AAUP that I was a member of, and the – uh, I think it’s called the Council of Professors – I’ll tell you what – NEA – I can’t remember their right name – they came out and supported this. It went to Olympia – Judge Baker turned it just – turned out just like it – just like we said that they would.
So I thought the faculty looked ridiculous at that time. That was – after we gave them this information. Now they probably had all kinds of other things that – um – were bothering them at that time. Maybe their fear that we’d have reduction in force, and that they’d be cut off, or something, but the – I don’t think the – the faculty in general understood what was happening to it. You see, by 1965 – 1965, not long after I became President – 56% of the faculty at this institution was new. Fifty percent of the members of the Faculty Senate – by the way, I wrote the Faculty Senate document – um, were new. So that lot’s of new people. So you come on the campus, you’re new people, you’re new in Biology, and so forth – how’s your morale? “Oh, I think it’s pretty bad right now.” “Do you want more money?” “Yeah, I want more money.” Well, we had a high percentage of people, quote, saying that their morale was bad. I question that. But I – I was a faculty member. Matter of fact, I came in here as a faculty member more than a President. My experience was a faculty member, and if you read Sam’s book you’ll see how I reacted those first – first – first days. It was more like a faculty member trying to involve the – the uh, the – the faculty. So I gave the faculty a lot of – a lot freedom, a lot authority, and I didn’t criticize them. I – I didn’t take advantage of the chance I had to [inaudible] if I really wanted to. That wasn’t my position.
KB: It sounds like there was some interest in unionizing.
JB: Oh yeah, there was – but there were very few people. See, back then, a long time ago, if you agreed to a union, you were agreeing to something that was below your level as a professional academic. I – I couldn’t find anyone at Eastern (who led, by the way, in getting the union just recently) when I was over there, or at Portland State, or here, that would accept a union, you know. And they had got – they got established in the Community College. I had experience with one at the YVC for 25 minutes when I was interim President there, and it’s one of the worst experiences I’ve ever had in my life because the people they sent to us have got to be the most abrasive people that they could find. They demanded, and I refused to give in, so I wasn’t very popular around there. But a long time ago, then, on college campuses, the feeling was that unions were really not the thing. And so while some people wanted an AFT, and so forth, it really didn’t go until well after my time – until just recently, and I was shocked when I heard that – was it 90% of the faculty agreed to a union here? Then I found out that adjuncts are included, too, and they had quite a vote on this, so there’s – there’s a union here now, and I’m still shocked about it.
KB: I understand that 1962 and three, the campus changed from a Faculty Council to a Faculty Senate.
JB: Yes, good. When I came here, Dr. Keith Rinehart, who was later to become Chairman of the English Department, came to me – he was head of what was called the Faculty Council – and what I was told was that the Faculty Council is ineffective. “The, uh, President doesn’t listen to the Faculty Council. Faculty don’t respect it, because it just doesn’t do anything. What can we do with you, as a Faculty Council, to work together to have better relationships? ” He came very early to do this, and I say, “Well why do you want a Faculty Council? Why don’t you have a Senate? A Senate, it has broader powers, it’s – it’s more respected in our educa – [inaudible]” “What is a Senate? I don’t know what a Senate is.” So I gave him a copy of the Senate document. I said, “Keith, why don’t you take this back and remodel it to fit our needs?” He comes back the next day, lays it on the desk, and says, “You do it.” I said, “Why should I write your Faculty Senate document?” He said, “Because if you do that, and immediately we can agree, and we’ll get through all this committee stuff and all that, and we’ll set it up.” I said, “Well Okay, ” I said, “But the Senate document here says that the President of the school is the head of the Senate. I don’t want to be head of the Senate.” He said, “We want you to be head of the Senate, because then we know what you want, you know what we want, and we’ll settle it right there. [Inaudible] oh, we’ll have all these committees, and years and years.” So – so I wrote the Faculty Senate document, became Chairman of the Faculty Senate for six or seven years, kept telling them, “I don’t need to be here,” you know, but it was Keith Rinehart, who had experienced this before with Dr. McConnell, that wanted to get by all of the, uh, the committees, and all of the negotiations, and so forth. He wanted us together to solve it right now in Senate. So that’s – that’s how we got a Senate.
KB: Well, we haven’t talked about branch campuses.
JB: Okay. Branch campuses really started during my presidency. I talked to President McIntyre the other day, and I don’t think she realized that. But it – it came because – um – during the first part of my presidency – the first six or seven years – we built a faculty that was strongly Arts and Science and Teacher Education. We designed an organization that could have very easily led to our demise, simply because when the Seventies came along, we weren’t prepared for what happened to us. High School enrollments went down, students were going to the community college, going to – well actually the first – the percent of high school students out of the total going to – going down – everything – everything went wrong. I was called in to the Governor’s office, to meet with Governor Evans. I was Chairman of the Council of Presidents – that is, University of Washington, WSU and the three State Colleges and Evergreen, and we sat down, and – in November – and he said, “We’re in trouble. We need – we’re going to be short somewhere between 58 and 60 million dollars next biennium, so we’re going to have to start cutting – uh, right now, in 59-61, and we’re going to project into the future lower enrollment than you have. Our enrollment started to go down.
Now the students were looking for something that would, uh, lead them to a job, and they weren’t getting it here. And the enrollment in the Arts and Sciences in particular really dropped off, but also Teacher Education dropped off. We were down to placing only 60% of our graduates in Teacher Education. But the State was bringing in teachers of Special Education and Vocational and Technical Education – had to import them, at the same time. So I tried to tell the faculty (and this is all documented), “Look, we’ve got to adjust. We’ve got to change.” And I suggested, “Why can’t we have a college of Technology tie in with the Community College? Do you know Technology Colleges have 60% of their – um – course work in the Arts and Sciences? Do you know that AFT/ CIO [sic] sometime back said, ‘Hey, we ought to have a ladder concept so that our people going through these technical schools can have something else, too?’” So it was all there. The faculty wouldn’t accept it because we were professionals in the Arts and Sciences.
So what we did is struggle the best we could, and make adjustments as we could – interdisciplinary studies, an honors program, the program for migrants – anything we could think about. And in order to maintain student credit hours we had to go off-campus. So a number of faculty members went off campus and, and created their own credits. And if they hadn’t done that, we wouldn’t have had a place for them. And again, the Arts and Sciences were hit pretty heavy. In a very short time we had almost 1500 uh, uh, full time students that quit off campus. And that’s how these branch campuses started in these various places. Now there are, what? There are six – six of them? And that’s their origin – because of the relationships that we had out there already from Teacher Education. That helped. So that’s how we started, and that’s how we saved a lot of jobs here.
KB: Where were some of those, and what kinds of classes were offered?
JB: Well, for example, classes were offered in – in Philosophy. Chester Keller went over to the coast – uh – I don’t remember whether he’s still on the faculty or not – and he taught – others taught just the standard classes that we’d have here, and they’d offer them for people in an area where they couldn’t get to a college easily who wanted to take some courses, maybe just to take them, you know? To learn about this or that. And so the faculty members developed followings out there, and the community colleges loved it, and they would publicize it. So we, uh, we went around to most of the institutions, I believe, where we now have the branch campuses.
KB: But the classes weren’t on the [inaudible]?
JB: Oh yes, yes. And people had to drive there, and so we tried to – tried to support them that way.
KB: Now shortly after you came, the school changed its name.
JB: Okay.
KB: Did it have an impact?
JB: Oh yes, um, matter of fact, while I was President it had three different names. Uh, I came here when for one month it was Central Washington College of Education. One month later it became Central Washington State College, okay? And um, then, just before I left the Presidency it became Central Washington University. So that is the change that I went through, and of course when I came here, the fact that we were changing from a college of education after 70 years with only 2000 students accumulate – going to be a state college, and that helped the enthusiasm as we got going.
But there’s another story related to name change, and that is the University title. I started attending the meetings of the American Association of State Colleges, which soon changed to American Association of State Colleges and Universities because they were the same size as Central, and I hoped by going to those meetings that I’d pick up ideas, you know, that we might use here. And so I found out a very short time after I started attending those – just a couple of years – that some of those institutions were using the University title. And so I checked up on them, and I found out that several of them didn’t have the quality, or the size and all that that Eastern, Western and Central had. I couldn’t understand that.
Now shortly after that, um, in investigating, we found that there were 17 states that were use – where colleges like ours were using the University title, and it amounted to 50 schools. So I proposed in 1964 – the young guy who didn’t know anything – that we pursue the University title. And then I really pushed it in ’66. Now this faculty didn’t do an awful lot with – the Western faculty studied the hell out of it. Really. They had – I can give you a long – a long memo that they worked out to distribute to their faculty – how they went through all the associate things, and after reading through this – it takes you a long time – they finally come up, “Well, maybe we’d better go for University title.” So we kept pushing for the University title. There wasn’t much action at Eastern – Eastern Washington University – but we kept pushing it here. And then we found out that there was something going on. Western – larger than us – was pushing very hard to get the Doctorate in Education before [long pause].
KB: So how did Western lead the pack?
JB: Well as I was mentioning, there was something going on at Western, and that is the people at Western were attempting to get the Doctorate in Education, and be the first, and that would move them into University – another University instead of a State College like we were. Well Senator Frank Atwood from Bellingham, who was pretty influential in Olympia, helped them, and President Jerry Flora pushed it very hard, and they thought that they were moving quite well. But in talking with President Flora just recently he said that after he left office, his successor didn’t push it, and the Education people were slow in getting around to doing anything. So nothing happened. But that was interesting that they were not saying very much to anybody else about this.
Now comes the time when 50% of the institutions in the American Association of State Colleges and Universities were using University title. We had a little bit more to uh, to use. And so we were able to get it before the legislature, and uh – uh – Herb Frank – Mr. Frank from Yakima was the one that went with me to Olympia to lobby for it. And of course I prepared all kinds of stuff which we sent out, and there was stuff in the newspaper here – articles and all of that. Well, the Governor at that time was Dixie Lee Ray, and she says, “I’ll agree to the University title for the three institutions, but no Doctorate for Western or any of the schools.” So we got the University title. And at that time, um, I received notes from Western – especially from Jerry Flora, the former President there – um, and from a Senator, both of them complimenting me on keeping – keeping this thing going through the years. So that’s how we – we uh – we got the University title.
By that time all three schools were um – uh – were offering quite a bit of graduate work. The Science people had branched out a bit, and we were doing a lot in Education, and quite a number of our students were in the upper division. We had 60% upper division instead of 60% lower division. So we had, as I mentioned, a highly qualified faculty in terms of Doctorates, if that means anything. So we had built up quite a – quite a case, and the Governor agreed with us, and uh, since the Governor was an academic – she had a Doctorate of some kind, as I remember – to have her agree to it – uh, to have the University title – was significant. So we joined the rest of the – the – the – the uh, schools in – in – uh, our – the universities across the country, and I think we were a little bit late in doing that, but I’m proud of – of bringing it up early, in 1964 – the first one that did it, and – and of course there were critics right away, you know – “What’s Brooks doing? Who does he think he is? This is terrible!” But it was something we deserved based on what was going on in the country, and based on really what a University was anymore.
Now you have to remember, by the time we did this it was Pacific Lutheran University, Willamette University – all the private schools had moved ahead of us, see. And remember the colleges. It was no longer Clark Community College, it was Clark College in Vancouver. It was no longer Clark – uh, Olympic Community College over in Bremerton, it was Olympic College, and even YVC was being called Yakima Valley College. So the community college across the – were calling themselves colleges. Well, we’re a college. We’re a State College. Shouldn’t we be differentiated in some way in name? So there was a lot going on.
KB: Do you think there was rivalry between Central, Western and Eastern?
JB: Well, uh, on the athletic fields, yes, very definitely so. And there’s always the – the uh, students comparing the two schools, and one saying one’s better than the other. But in terms of cooperation on the inter-institutional level that I was aware of – we had a lot of cooperation. Um, the Presidents met regularly, the Deans of Faculty, Deans of Students, and those people were with us inter-institutionally working out programs, working out positions to take before the Council on Education. The State established the Council on Education and then changed it to a Council on Post-Secondary Education in the early 1970s, and they got into everything. They wanted to check class size, room capacity, everything – costs, ratios, a whole list of things. And so we had to get together because we were all being influenced by that. And one thing we did that was very good – I think the Presidents – the five Presidents – this was before Evergreen – we worked hard to establish a faculty formula so that you get so many faculty members depending on the classes you taught – junior, senior, and graduate students – and the number of students that you had. And we got that adopted, and that worked for many years. It got up to 84% at one time, which was miraculous, and it dropped significantly the time that I’m – this is one way that the legislature could cut back on your funds – cut the faculty – the, the staffing formula. So we did get that established inter-institutionally, and that was a battle. It took a long time.
KB: Adjuncts and part-timers are a big part of the college teaching scene now. Was that an issue in the 60s and 70s?
JB: I don’t remember it being an issue. We used, uh, part-time adjuncts, but I think a good number of the adjuncts were laid off in the early 70s when we had really serious problems across the state, and across the nation, too. It just wasn’t the state of Washington. There was an economic downturn after 1969 that lasted several years. I think it lasted much through the rest of my Presidency. See, my second phase couldn’t take place because bango, we’ve got this economic recession. The aerospace was off. Nobody was buying timber – until then – that was the case, and farming wasn’t doing good. There was all kinds of problems. As a matter of fact, there was out-migration of Washington State from 1970-75, you know. Somebody said “Why don’t we just turn off the lights,” in Olympia, “And forget the whole thing.” And so it was a tough time. Students had great trouble getting jobs, and they knew that they had to get trained for something, like at a Community College. You’re not going to make it through here. The Liberal Arts to me might be fine, but what do you do with it? You know? And there’s – there’s no way to make a living.
KB: Was your administration making efforts to reach donors and create endowments?
JB: Yeah. Yes we did. We um – uh – I established the Foundation in early 1960. I asked when I came here, “Do you have a Foundation?” And “No, we don’t.” So Perry Mitchell, who had been the interim President – I asked him if he would work with local attorneys and come up with – I gave him the outline of Foundation – see if we could get one for Central Washington University. We got it established in, I think it was 1963, and so it’s been with us all the time since then. But we didn’t have the money and all that to hire – develop – development officers, and we were probably a little bit better off with support from the State. Now – now I guess the institution is saying that they’re State-assisted and not State – uh – supported, see? So there’s a big drive to raise money across the whole country, because funds have been cut back for institutions.
KB: We haven’t looked at student activities. I would like to hear about the extra-curricular activities in your college experience in the late Forties, but also how those evolved in the Sixties and Seventies.
JB: Okay, well, um – I wasn’t too involved in student activities. I think I was on the honor – when I was a student – student year. I think I was on the Honor Council, and did a few things, but my wife and I got married at the end of the first year we were here, and I – I turned to studies, and my advisor and good friend, Dr. Reginald Shaw, had me already working on graduate school, much to my shock, actually. He sent me over to the University of Washington to go through the Geology Department, to be shown around, and they were absolutely amazed that a Sophomore would come in, and they found it highly amused [sic] because, you know, I hadn’t been accepted or anything like that. But an Australian [?] who was there, after laughing a bit, took me around and showed me the [inaudible], so – Dr. Shaw had me taking French – three quarters of French – so I could pass the examination at the University of Washington – take – take [inaudible]. I was involved in all that, so I didn’t get involved too much in student activities while I was a student, after that, but there were a lot of activities going on – dances and proms and all that, but a lot of it was kind of like high school, you know, and – like an extension of high school.
So when I became President, as you will read from the student – report to the students here – I wanted the students to have something different – to get involved in the intellectual life of the school, and learning. That’s why they were here. And they were – they were involved greatly in Symposium. So – so we turned that around quite a bit. I think that we made an impact there.
KB: Well now, by the time you left the Presidency and returned to teaching, I wonder if you could recollect the strengths and problems that you turned over to President Garrity.
JB: Well, we had, surprisingly, maintained most of our enrollment through that downturn, and as I’ll write up, a number of things the faculty did, did help. But we never got to the point of really looking at various ways to change this institution so it could accommodate not only the Arts and Science and Teacher Education, but those who were pointed toward a job. We’d have a lot of Arts and Sci – I – I couldn’t get them there, but we – we were able to maintain the enrollment, for the most part, but that economic downturn continued into the years, and my purpose was to complete fourteen years here. I figured there would be seven years, and seven years – fourteen years is enough. I wound up with fifteen years, and at that time – uh – the Board was replaced, and as I mentioned earlier, the uh – the uh – one of the Board members – several asked me to stay on, so then I stayed on seventeen years. So the – the enrollment was maintained, we turned over a much better physical plant, and a – uh – a faculty that was heavily steeped in the – um – in the long doctorates and terminal degrees. So he had a – I thought, an – also turned out a beautiful President’s house for him to use. Um, so we turned out a – gave him a good physical plant, a good faculty, a good um, um, um, set of guidelines to follow, I think. I think we – we made the break from the Teacher Education to the multiple purpose State College and then University. So he started out with the University title.
KB: What should Central be proudest of?
JB: Well I hope it should be proudest of its – uh – its interest in learning. No matter what area, whether it’s the Arts and Science, Teacher Education – I hope that they should be proudest in that area, particularly with helping students, because that’s what this institution was set out about. And I don’t think that we should attempt to learn for students, I think we should help them learn. My feeling about people in general is that we’re all learners, you know. We’re all students, and uh, we can help people along the way, and encourage them, and all that, and I hope we do a lot of encouragement here. I hope that Central would be noted for that.
In my own particular case, the courses I took, in terms of their quality, all the way through from the first I arrived here until I got my Doctorate, were important. But what’s important to me was the encouragement that I received from professors along the way. They gave me a lot of encouragement. I owe an awful lot to – I owe an awful lot to the school, but I also owe an awful lot to the University of Washington, and some of the graduate faculty there took special interest, it seems like, and encouraged me, and helped me, and so that made me a better learner. I hope faculty members understand that. You’ve got the subject matter to present, and you want people to understand your – your discipline. You want them to grow in it, and so forth, but you – that other aspect of helping meant an awful lot to me, and I didn’t get that till I got to Central.
The high school I went to was only 100 in size – yeah, 100 in size. It had, what, eight faculty members, and two of them had degrees. There were only two degrees in all the degrees there from schools like this. They were all from private colleges. And I got the impression, before very long, that I never would have got to go to college, because private colleges are expensive, and matter of fact our Principal, who was from Willamette University said practically the same thing, you know – there’s only two or three of you going to go to school. Well that let me out. I didn’t I’d ever make it. I didn’t have the money, anyhow. The GI bill helped me a lot, so –
KB: Well, what made you decide to retire to the faculty of the Geography Department?
JB: Well because I was a Geographer to start out with, and because I started out this school with the ambition to become a Geographer at a small college, and teaching was, you know, my uh – well this is what I wanted to do. Not necessarily be a President. I think I sort of – there was a whole set of circumstances that got me into the Presidency – highly unusual circumstances, I think. Um, so this was a chance for me to leave the administration and all of the various problems that you have to take care of, and you know, the pressures and so forth, and get back. And as soon as I got back there, Dr. Bob Bentley contacted me and said, “I want you to teach the introductory course in Geology.” He’d found out I taught all the Geology at Eastern, so I wound up in Geology as well as Geography, and I enjoyed it. I enjoyed it very much.
And then that was interrupted when I went to Yakima for a couple of years as interim President, and then by 1994 I had retired. See, I was on the Board at Yakima as Chairman, and had the unique privilege of first meeting, down in Yakima, with the new Board of Trustees appointed by – who do you guess – Dixie Lee Ray, who changed the whole board. I was elected President immediately – first meeting. My first job was to call in the Black President of YVC and tell him he’s done. The first night. So that was my first – first experience with the Community College. He um, he left, and uh, then the school needed a lot of help, and – matter of fact, a representative – a good friend of Dixie Lee Ray’s came to me to ask me to go down there. So that interrupted my time here.
KB: Did you teach full time, though?
JB: Oh yeah. Oh yeah, uh-huh. And I love teaching, and I love field trips. I had a lot of fun in field trips over at Eastern. Eastern Washington University is a wonderful place to teach, because it’s only 16 miles from Spokane, it’s in a glacial area that’s been eroded by the glaciers – all kinds of lakes – it’s just a wonderful place to uh, to serve. So I was really privileged to be there from ’53 to ’58, and guess what? I go back each year with my wife for a reunion of all the students. I’m going this year again. I’ve had some wonderful experiences with them, because some of – well, a lady came up and said, “You changed my life.” “Well how did?” “Because of my association with you in the classroom.” She said, “You told jokes.” And I said, “I told jokes?” And she said, “No, no, no. You slipped one in every now and then.” She said, “Because of you, I became a teacher, and I taught in Central America the whole time, and I was just retired.” She came to me to tell me that. Now that’s a reward. You don’t get that as President, I don’t think. You see I’ve had a – had a – had a lot of those that really made me feel good about teaching.
KB: Why do you stay involved in the Friends of the Library?
JB: Well, um, there’s a reason for that. First, when I left the Presidency I knew that I’d be asked to do – help with a number of things. So I thought, the best thing you can do, Jim, is pick out something to help that you like, that you think deserves some attention. And then if you have that – and I help with the library then – you can say, when somebody comes to you, “I would love to help you, but I am helping the Friends of the Library.” So I help the library. But I want to mention about the library – I didn’t start the Friends at all. The plaque says that up there, but they didn’t check with me about the plaque. There was the Friends of the Library going when I arrived. Corky Gorscholt – Dr. Gorscholt of the Library – headed that up – the Librarian. So there’s been Friends along through history. I don’t know the whole history, but this is not – I didn’t start the Friends. I probably rejuvenated it a bit, but that’s about it.
KB: You’ve made many unique contributions to this institution. Would you tell us about those?
JB: Well, uh, I think the most important thing that I did here was to bring to the institution – insist that the institution have an excellent faculty. And right along with that, we – the thing that I appreciate the most, or think about the most, is that I had some very good people working with me in administration. And beyond that it would be the various programs that were set up to move the institution from what it was to what it became in 1966 – ’67, ’68.
KB: Would you care to name some of the colleagues who were important leaders with you?
JB: Well, um, when I came there was a gentleman in English, his name was Charles McCann. He was – I’m not sure what his rank was at that time, but he agreed to come over to serve as Assistant to the President. He eventually wound up as Dean of Faculty, and we lost him in November 1968 – um – when he became President of Evergreen College. He was a Yale man, an English professor, and he was the right selection for that institution because they were looking for somebody with ideas to have a different institution than Central or Eastern or Western. He was over just recently and I talked to him, and he still feels strongly about that. He didn’t stay very long in the Presidency, which puzzled me a little bit because I was invited to talk at his retirement party. I couldn’t understand why he didn’t stay much longer. He was one. Don Bechler, who was my assistant for a while, became Dean, too, and he became President of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. So he was there. Those people helped a lot. Charles was awfully good in terms of helping me form the idea. I had good ideas, but he would help me – sometimes – sometimes write them for me. We had good Business Managers. Stan Boney was one, but there were several others. I could – if you allow me, I could remember – I could list all these people for you. So we had good people in administration, and also heading the faculty. I was very fortunate that we brought good people. Even the Assistant Attorney Generals we had – Tom Dalgliesh, Steve Pylon – we had an Assistant Attorney General here that was supposed to help others in the whole area, but helped us. So he – we’d give something to him right away, and say, you know, “Do we have to comply with this? How do we comply, and what do we do?” So he helped me quite a bit. For example, when the students – I mean, when the faculty challenged the Board of Trustees with regard to the code, he said, “Hey, let’s give them all full information,” and he had that right away. I didn’t have to go to Olympia. And so we tried to persuade the faculty that, you know, this was ridiculous to challenge the Board of Trustees on something that was their right. Why are they the Board – governing Board?
KB: The last question: what have I forgotten to ask that you need to tell?
JB: Oh, well, um – would you want to know why I’m a unique President?
KB: Sure.
JB: Okay. I’ll have to read that real quickly because I can’t remember everything. Remember the memory thing that I talked on? Let me see if I can find it here. Okay, here it is, right here. I’m trying to work on something so I can write up the whole thing, so here we go. Okay, I’m the only graduate of Central Washington University to become President, okay? And my wife is also a graduate. In 1961 I was only – uh – I was the youngest President in the state, and in 1978 when I retired, I was the Senior President – the oldest President – so that was quite a change. Um, and in 1961 I was the only person – I mean the second person to have a PhD to occupy the President’s office. George Black had one, from 1916 to 1930. I may be the youngest President every to take over at Central. I may be the only Washington resident to take over at Central. I may be the one with the least administrative and faculty teaching before I became President. I was the only full-time President – um – prior to President McIntyre – full-time President who hasn’t been fired. And Dr. Mohler would come to me all the time and tell me, “Jim, you are the only President so far who hasn’t been fired – yet.” So he reminded me of that constantly. I was first to um – in the state to advocate the University title. I think I probably was the only President to have five children while in office. Four of them graduated from Central. I am the only living President left during the 100-year period from 1891 to 1991, and that includes the interims. They’re all gone. Um, as I mentioned earlier, the President of Central Washington College of Education, Central Washington State College, Central Washington University, and I was appointed by four different Governors – Rosselini, Evans, Ray and Gardner – to five different commissions while I was President. And finally, I’m the first legal President of Central because Title 28 of State Law was not changed until it was re-codified in 1969. So all principal administrators at Central, Eastern and Western prior to that time were Principals, legally. So I was Principal of Central Washington College of Education in August 1961, I was Principal of Central Washington State College until 1969, President of CWU until 1977, and President of – no, President of CWSC until 1977, and President of CWU until 1988. So you can see that I – I’m just putting this together, and I have to do a little research on it, but, you know – I can’t remember a number of things, but I’m finding this guy is kind of interesting to study. So I’m finding out things about him I didn’t know, and I’m going to write this all up.
KB: Well thank you for [inaudible]
JB: Well I appreciate, uh, being here. This is a first for me, and I’m delighted that I have a noted historian who is gracious, and who has been very nice to me in this discussion. Couldn’t have a better person.
Male Voice: Okay, I’ve got a question.
JB: Okay.
Male Voice: Do you think that – and you can direct your answer to Karen – do you think the college campuses today are more apathetic than they were when you were President?
JB: I can’t answer that, because I’m not fully associating with the students here, and the campus itself. The campus is much larger, and a long time ago, when there was some faculty morale stuff and so forth going on, one of the complaints was that, “Hey, we’re separated by buildings. There’s a building here, and we’re here, the Biologists are here, and the Geologists over here. We used to be all together, and so our morale isn’t very good, and the campus doesn’t have the livelihood that it had before.” So there was some complaint about that. But the very people who complained about that came to me and just were happy – just so happy to get new Biology facilities, and to get new Chemistry facilities and so forth, in their own building, and then after a while they, “Well, we just don’t get along with other faculty.” So I don’t know how much the faculty associates. We were much smaller, and I think certainly during the first half of my administration there was – there was a lot of real feeling on campus, with the Symposium and all that. It was really an exciting place. I don’t know how it is now, because I’m not associated.
Male Voice: But I was thinking more in line with the Viet Nam era – talking about students, rather than – you just don’t hear about it anymore.
JB: Uh-huh. Well, I would be – I’m surprised that there’s not more activity out there regarding our problem in Iraq. And maybe if there was a draft, you’d see it. But I don’t see much attention to that, or the problems that we have around the world. I don’t know whether the students are geared into the international stuff or not. We certainly were in the late 1960s, because the students felt that we might be involved personally. We might be taken, and it was a different situation. And I think we had some faculty members who were very much concerned too, and they might have been behind the scenes many times, but we had some excitement. Sometimes it didn’t number – you know, number of people didn’t – you know, marching down the mall if you have 25 you’re lucky, you know. But I don’t – I know somebody – you’ll have to ask Karen Blair is this an exciting time on campus?
KB: A thrill a minute.