CWU LIVING HISTORY PROJECT
Jim Carmody
(Transcription of Tape 1, Side 1)
MS: Our interviewee today for the Living History Project is Mr. Jim Carmody. The date is December 20th, the year 2000. The equipment operator is Dr. Jean Putnam, and I’m Milo Smith. Okay, Jim, would you try to give us a thumbnail sketch of Jim Carmody up to the time he came to Central?
JC: Um, way back?
MS: Way back. When were you born, if ever?
JC: I was born 12/24/24. I was born in Nebraska, [inaudible] Nebraska, and came to Washington in 1934. And one of the reasons we settled in Washington – my father – we drove through the town of Ellensburg. My father had a job in Wenatchee but he only had an eighth grade education, and when they drove by the highway went by the college. So he decided to move back to Ellensburg because he thought he’d get his three sons into college if he lived in that town. So that’s the reason we moved to Ellensburg, was my Dad’s dream of getting all three of his sons through college.
MS: Good reason.
JC: Then – so I was in grade school here – entered high school.
MS: This is another interview for the Living History Project of Central Washington University. The date is December 20th in the year 2000. Our interviewee is Mr. Jim Carmody. The equipment operator is Dr. Jean Putnam, and your interviewer is Milo Smith. Now Jim, give us a thumbnail sketch, if you will, of your life – born and educated, right up until you came to Central.
JC: Um, I was born in Grand Island Nebraska on the 24th of December, 1924. I moved with my parents, and I moved to Washington in 1934. My father was employed – had a job offered to him in Wenatchee, so we were headed for Wenatchee, but along the way by through Ellensburg we drove by the college – that was the main highway – and my father, not having a high school education, saw the college, and he had a dream of moving back to Ellensburg that he felt he could get all three of his sons to go to college. So we moved to Ellensburg, and I lived here – went to grade school, jr. high, and high school in Ellensburg. I graduated from Ellensburg in 1943, was inducted into the military. I served with the 41st Division in the Pacific, and when discharged, I enrolled at Central.
MS: What was the rank that you were discharged from the Army in?
JC: I beg your pardon?
MS: What rank did you hold when you were discharged from the Army?
JC: Staff Sergeant.
MS: Staff Sergeant. Now Jim, um, do you have any relatives that have also attended Central?
JC: Yes, I had two brothers. My oldest brother went to Central in ’39 and ’40 and I think ’41, but he entered into the service.
JP: What was his name?
JC: Corlin. Corlin Carmody. And my other brother L.G. Carmody came to college in – I think was in ’38, and then he was inducted into the service also. And then I came into the – Central in ’46.
MS: Now there has been a dormitory after a Carmody. Which one was that?
JC: That was Corlin. That was my eldest brother. And my other brother, L.G., is in the Hall of Fame for football, and also for himself, and for a football – 1942 football team.
MS: Now that you mention it, I recall in the – this year’s football season your team – one of the teams you played on was inducted into the Hall of Fame.
JC: Yes.
MS: Which year was that?
JC: That was 1946.
MS: Forty-six.
JC: L.T. became one of the first little All-Americans from Central, and the only boy from Central to play [inaudible].
MS: Aha. Did any of your children come to Central, Jim?
JC: Yes. I had two – no, three – three out of four.
MS: Names?
JC: The oldest one was Patrick, and then he transferred to WSU. Then Laurie – she was going to Lewis and Clark in Portland, and transferred to Central, and Carrie started at UPS and then came back to Central.
MS: Good. Did any of those three graduate from Central?
JC: Um, Laurie and Carrie did.
MS: Good. Um, now Jim, reminisce just a little bit of your years on campus. Who were the primary administrators?
JC: Dr. McConnell, and I have a cartoon of him here. This was made – it was made several years before I was here, but they were still here, and he was the President of the college at the time. And then there’s Dr. Peterson – also was a professor here at the time.
JP: Which one was he?
MS: In the white.
JP: In the white, on the white side. Okay.
JC: And then there was – there’s more in here, too, but there was Dr. Quigley in back [or it could be “and Beck”].
MS: Do you remember any of the Deans at that time, or Department Chairmen?
JC: I think – I’m not sure, but I think Dr. Samuelson was one of the Deans at the time. But to look back that far, I’m not sure who some of the others were.
MS: That’s not so far, Jim.
JC: Yeah. I don’t think Elwyn Odell was a Dean, but he was very close to all the athletes, and became almost a personal friend to every one of them.
MS: Who were the coaches under whom you played those four years?
JC: My first year playing, I played under Johnny Limball, which – he was an ex-Colonel in the service. And that year we won the championship in football – ’42 – but one of the reasons for that – like I said, he was a Colonel and practically everybody on the football team was an ex soldier, so he knew just exactly how to handle them. And then, after that, Monty Reynolds came, which I played against him when he was a teacher down in Prosser. And then after that [inaudible – could be “Shelby Huff”] came. And then after that I just helped out [inaudible], but my brother became the coach.
JP: What year was that?
JC: L.C. was coach – I graduated in ’50. He was an Assistant Coach in ’50, and became head coach, I think, in ’51-’52.
MS: Good. Did your wife attend Central.
JC: No.
MS: She did not.
JC: No, she did not attend Central.
MS: Let’s get her in here, give her a name.
JC: My wife lived in Ellensburg, and her name was Dorothy O’Neill.
MS: And you were married?
JC: And then we got married after I graduated from college.
MS: What year?
JC: That was in 1949.
MS: Do you remember the date?
JC: I think it was [inaudible].
MS: If you don’t, I’ll tell her.
JC: [Laughs]
MS: Thank you, Jim. You lived at home, and walked to school every day that you were at Central.
JC: Yes.
MS: Or you jogged to school, since you’re an athlete.
JC: We didn’t believe in jogging in those days.
MS: Let’s talk for a moment about some of the prices of that particular period. They will be in direct contrast to much of what will be the current prices of people who choose to look up this tape. A gallon of gas, Jim.
JC: Uh, a gallon of gas, I think, was somewhere – when I worked at the filling station down on 8th Street – 8th and Main – I think the gas was about 21 cents a gallon, and by the time I got out of college it might have been 25 and a little less a gallon of gas.
MS: Do you remember what hamburger cost?
JC: I think the hamburger about that time was maybe about 20 cents, 25 cents – something like that. Maybe a little more, but not much.
MS: Did you date while going to Central?
JC: Yes, like most veterans. But you’ve got to remember, at the time that I came to Central, that most of them – the students starting as freshman – were almost adult, and the lifestyles that we had were completely different than the lifestyles the kids have today. But I remember so many things on campus that you may – you know – a weekend you’d walk down to the theater and go to a show on a date, or you’d spend time on campus. Then on Wednesday nights in the Ad Building in the basement – every Wednesday they had a dance, and most of us would go to those dances. And then, like nowadays, they [inaudible] Junior Prom, they had formal dances and so forth all through the year.
MS: Do you remember whereabouts in the basement of the old Ad Building that you used to dance?
JC: Oh yes, I can remember that. I’ll tell you how to get there, but I don’t know if you could. From the back side of the Ad Building –
MS: On the north side –
JC: North side, and you’d walk through the door and take a quick left and just take a few steps down, and there you were in the [inaudible].
MS: Do you remember what that gym was called at the time?
JC: No, I don’t.
MS: The reason I asked is because when I came here, that was called the old Women’s Gym, and of course you know what the students did to that one – it was for the Old Women’s Gym. Do you recall any new buildings being built on campus during your four years, Jim?
JC: Yes. The um – I don’t know – I’m not sure what it’s called now, but it used to be the Science Building.
MS: Ed Lind Hall.
JC: Pardon?
MS: Ed Lind Hall.
JC: Ed Lind Hall. And that was being built when I was here. Let me think.
JP: Was Shaw-Smyser the library at the time?
JC: Not – the library was on 8th Street there.
MS: Dr. McConnell’s office in the front.
JC: Yes.
MS: The Donald Shaw-Smyser Classroom Building.
JC: Mm-hmm.
MS: Let’s see – I thought of something I needed to ask you about that. Um, you recall – did you date girls from the dorms?
JC: Yes.
MS: Do you remember what time the girls had to be in?
JC: On weeknights they had to be in by 10:00 – maybe 9:00. I’m not real sure, but I know it was early. On weekends they got to stay out until 11:00 or 12:00.
MS: Wow!
JC: You were not allowed past that front door – that little reception room there.
MS: Now if a girl did not get in by the stroke of – well, 11:00, what happened to her?
JC: I think she was campused.
MS: They were campused. Which meant?
JC: They were punished some way. I know they were punished, because the girls didn’t want to get punished – whether it was grade-wise, or –
MS: Campusing usually meant that they were confined to the dormitory for a week, or whatever – that their social life was stopped.
JC: Immediately.
MS: You know, of course, that that no longer exists – that there have been law suits throughout the United States concerned with in loco parentis, meaning that the school was in the place of your parents, and that – the laws have pretty well liberated women so they do not have those hours now. They can stay out and flunk classes just like the fellows do. Now Jim, do you recall any regulations that students got uptight about in those years that you were here at Central? Regulations that the Administration passed, perhaps, that students didn’t care for?
JC: Not really. No. Um – I can remember one year the code of dress – the college didn’t establish it, it was a national thing. The girls wore dresses down to their ankles, and in those days you saw very few girls in slacks.
MS: You remember what those long dresses were called then?
JC: No, I don’t.
MS: The new look.
JC: Oh yes, the new look. That was it – the new look. And they used to have a slogan on the campus at the time. They boys would roll their pant legs up to their knees, and they would – somebody would carry a sign saying, “Up with the skirts and down with the pants.” And naturally we thought there would be discipline, but – [inaudible] about the slogan, but they never said a word.
MS: Well good. Good. Since I was a returned service man in exactly the same years you were here, I can recall that the campus changed considerably because all of us fellows that constituted the majority of students – we would not put up with a lot of childishness such as hazing, and punishments – that is, discipline and – oh, various punishments that the administration would try to pull off that used to work, didn’t work with Veterans.
JC: It didn’t at all. It didn’t. Because like I said earlier, that – you stop to think – when we entered campus, if we hadn’t have gone into the War, we’d have been Seniors graduating the year that we entered in the campus. And so most of the – lots of the military men were married, had children – they were not about to – they wanted to be treated as an adult, and not as a kid. And – it was completely different than it is.
MS: Now there used to be a number of very temporary type buildings on the northern half of the campus that – when I came here they were simply called the pre-fabs, and – what were those meant for, Jim?
JC: They just didn’t have room for all the students at that time, so they bought these buildings from the airport out there where the – they called it the military airport out there – and the college bought them, and brought them, and stuck them on campus. They made girls’ dorms out of them, men’s dorms out of them, and they made some classrooms out of some.
MS: Married students were allocated a number of those buildings. I can simply remember that I had married students who would talk about freezing to death, and their children would be freezing in the winter in those old pre-fab buildings up there.
JC: That’s right. They housed the married couples, a lot of them. I think that was at the – about where the new Gym is now – a little bit on this side.
MS: Right in front of the new Gym, yes, on the south side of the Gym where the Art building is now, and the Industrial Arts building.
JC: That’s was a long ways off the campus then.
MS: Pardon?
JC: That was a long ways off the campus.
MS: Oh yes. Yes indeed. We’ve spread considerably just in the few years I’ve been here. Do you recall how those buildings got named? Those pre-fabs up there?
JC: Yes. A lot of them – a lot of them were named after Veterans that were killed in the War, like the first building my brother was named was after the War in Monroe buildings called Carmody Hall, and Alfred Hall, and Monroe Hall, and they were all boys that were killed in the War. And then I think they had some other names, but I can’t really remember those.
MS: Those buildings were made so temporary that I can recall students bragging about how they could come home from a beer party and put their fist right through the wall.
JC: Very flimsy, and – oh, I remember we used to put – they were just as strict with the girls that lived in those dorms as they were with Kamola and –
MS: Sue Lombard?
JC: Sue Lombard. The girls that lived up there. But I think they were maybe freshmen that were up in the pre-fabs.
MS: Do you recall what the Administration building was used for at that time? Were there classes in there?
JC: Yes. The Ad building?
MS: Yes.
JC: Yes, there were classes in there.
MS: They’ve been eliminated now, and it is truly an Administration building.
JC: I remember I had English classes in there, I had Science classes in there – I think that’s the only two that I had in there.
MS: I know that McConnell Auditorium would have then been the center of various kinds of productions. Were there plays and musicals being performed then?
JC: Oh yes.
MS: Good.
JC: There were plays, and band concerts, and they’d bring other things in to the campus. They would perform in there for the campus and the City people, just like it is now.
JP: I wanted to just interject that you are talking about the Ad building and you mean Barge Hall – what we call Barge Hall now.
JC: Yes, yes.
JP: You two old timers have to remember that somebody that might look at this tape needs to know that it is Barge Hall today.
JC: That’s right, yes.
MS: When you were in school here, and when I came here, 8th Street was a cross-state highway.
JC: Yes.
MS: Were there any regulations concerning the use of the lawns out in front of the buildings along that highway?
JC: Not that I can remember, no.
MS: The reason I ask is because when I came we had a Dean of Women who was terribly embarrassed, Jim, because students would lie down on the lawn out in front of those buildings, and she said they would start sitting with their girlfriends, but they wouldn’t stay sitting. They’d always end up lying down. And she says, “Can you imagine what kind of an example we are making for the people driving by?”
JC: [Laughing] I don’t remember that. I wasn’t involved in that.
MS: No, that’s true. Do you recall any campus protests of any kind?
JC: No.
MS: None?
JC: No. Not that I can think of.
MS: Such as the protests that took place during the Viet Nam War?
JC: No.
MS: None.
JC: No.
MS: We students were much more apt – because of our military service there were limits beyond which we could not be pushed, but we were also used to taking orders, and so the regulations of the military service were just simply substituted by the regulations of the University.
JC: That’s right.
MS: Do you remember any – do you have any idea, Jim, what a full load of credits constituted?
JC: Fifteen.
MS: Fifteen hours?
JC: That was a full load.
MS: Could you take more than 15 if you had a good academic record?
JC: They didn’t recommend it at all, and most – if I recall, most kids would take maybe 12 – 12 credits, or something like that.
MS: Now during the War, Jim, because so many young American males were failing their military examinations and the draft examinations, Physical Education became mandatory for all males. Was it still mandatory when you went to school here, unless you played football or baseball, basketball?
JC: Well it may have, but I never was involved in it – I mean, since I was involved with athletics, I was never required to take it.
MS: We were allowed to substitute athletics for a gym class that we would have taken at the same time.
JC: Right.
MS: Were there any tragedies on campus, can you recall?
JC: Tragedies?
MS: Tragedies. Anything that burned? Anything explode? Any tragedies – people knifing people, disappearing from campus?
JC: Not that I can think of.
MS: I’m thinking of a few years back when there was a young woman disappeared from this campus, and she ended up having been the victim of Ted Bundy, who picked her up on this campus and disappeared with her.
JP: I don’t want to talk about that, but I have a –
JC: He tried a couple of others, too.
MS: Oh yes.
JC: Yes, later on. But nothing like that when I was here.
MS: How about electrical service? Was it continuous on campus? Do you recall black-out periods when they – it seems to me that some of the old-timers told me that the campus simply wasn’t wired to accommodate the load that had to be put on when students came back from the War and flooded into college, and that they were blowing fuses and circuit breakers all the time.
JC: That’s probably true, but I didn’t live on campus so I don’t recall that.
MS: And you wouldn’t have cared if classes had to be dismissed as the lights wouldn’t come on.
JC: No. [Laughs]
MS: Among the profs that you had at that time, Jim, who do you remember most clearly as having been significant in your life?
JC: Oh yes, Professor Stevens, one. Professor Funderberg.
JP: What did they teach, and what do you remember about them?
JC: Stevens was a Psychology teacher. He was – to me, he was an extremely outstanding man. He’d put away his class – in – they had to get bigger classrooms for him. Every kid wanted to take a class from him. And he’d tell you how he graded. He said, “I go to the top of the stairs, and I take your cards and throw them. The ones that make it to the bottom are A students, and on up the stairs.” And we all thought he was joking, but end of quarter you’d see him out there with those cards, throwing them down the stairs. [Laughs]. And Dr. Funderberk –
MS: What do you recall about Dr. Funderberk?
JC: I just felt that he was a [inaudible], sincere man.
MS: Do you remember his accent, Jim?
JC: Yes.
MS: He was a Southern gentleman, wasn’t he?
JC: And a minister.
JP: And what did he teach?
JC: He taught – let me think – Geography, I think. I think Geography, or something like that.
MS: The thing I remember about him is a number of us were in Webster’s drinking coffee, and he was sitting there, and I was brand new on campus so they were warning me about who not to ride with. And they said, “Don’t ride with Samuelson, because when he talks to people in the car he’s got to turn around and face them in the back seat. And don’t ride with Funderberk, because he drives so slowly.” And he spoke up and says, “Well, y’all can make fun of my drivin’ if ya want to, but just remember this. I don’t have to slow down for towns.”
JC: He was a good driver compared to Leo Nicholson. Lee Nicholson would draw basketball plays as you’re traveling – on the windshields, and on the side of the windows as he was driving. Um – the thing I remember about Dr. Funderberg that – one statement that he made, I think, affected me more than any other professor said to me, but he said it to the class. And that was my Senior year. He said, “You students are going to be graduating, and you’re going to go out into the world,” but he said, “Some of you are going to get into professions, and may be the only college graduate in that professions. But you’re going to find out you’re the [inaudible] one, not [inaudible]. And why I remember that so well is that’s what happened to me. I went out in the field of construction. They hired me as a timekeeper, and man, I don’t think there was five people on the job that I was on that even graduated from high school, and I was the dumbest person there. I mean, I didn’t understand their lingo, I didn’t understand what they were talking about, I didn’t understand a grade on the road, I didn’t understand anything. So that had been burned in my mind, that he made that statement. Never forgot it.
MS: Now Jim, I know that you were involved with construction for quite a while. Do you remember any of the projects that you worked on with your college degree?
JC: Oh yes. I could name a lot of them.
MS: Highways from where to where?
JC: Well, the Snoqualmie. We built a portion of that. We built from Okanogan to the Canadian Border, we built [inaudible]. With each job it seems that I progressed in the field of construction. When I started we were up in the Methow, and I was a timekeeper, and eventually became a foreman, and –
JP: What is a timekeeper?
JC: Pardon?
JP: What is a timekeeper?
JC: A timekeeper – they didn’t have machines in those days to punch your cards, and so you took care – they would hire college kids right out of school to write the names down, and when they showed up for work, at the end of the day you wrote it in your time book – eight hours, etc. etc. – then at the end of the week you made out the payroll sheet and sent it to the office. And that was a timekeeper. But you had other things to do, too. They made you a roustabout where you had to go – different places.
MS: What was your major, Jim, here at Central?
JC: It was Business.
MS: Business?
JC: Mm-hmm, Business. And eventually I took over the construction firm.
MS: And eventually you developed your own business, too, then, didn’t you?
JC: Yes, I was in several businesses. I became President of a construction firm, and like most women in those days, I loved it, and my education doing me great with the – but my wife said, “You be home from the kids, they’re teenagers.” And there was no way that I was going to make it home. I mean, I had to go to these road jobs, and we had jobs down in Oregon, and Idaho, and Montana, and Dorothy just would not tolerate me being gone all that time. So I liquidated the business. By that time I was also in the cattle business – and there’s another field I was illiterate in – and I was in the cattle business – had a ranch down across the river from [inaudible], Oregon, and then, eventually, after I liquidated the construction firm completely still had the cattle business – ranch – and we had a home down there, and then I was searching for something else to do, and so I got with the high school teacher that graduated from Central, and he had some ideas for what to do around Ellensburg, and I thought, “Well, get involved in that. Keep yourself busy for a while.” So I bought a little candy business and thought, well, we could incorporate the two ideas together.
MS: You became a distributor?
JC: He was already a distributor, but it was very small – very small. And so I bought that, and it kind of boomeranged on me. All of a sudden it was into everything, not just candy, and we had three, four more houses, fifty towns, and – [inaudible] interesting business.
MS: Jim, do you recall any problems between faculty and students such as the faculty requiring – making requirements that the students would not accept, and so there would be a temporary period during which time there would be student protests for – against the faculty?
JC: No, not – not as a whole group, but individuals. Like you said, being [inaudible] and in college, you wouldn’t tolerate certain things that professors would want to do, and I can recall – I won’t mention the professor’s name – but I can recall that in her class I was doing A and B work, and all of a sudden she got with her husband and they looked up my high school transcript and found I was a C student, so just all of a sudden like that I started getting Ds on my papers and everything that I turned in. So I – like I said, being older, and so forth, I wanted to know why. Well, she told me that she looked up my high school transcript and I was a C student. But in her class I was doing A work. And so she was getting me back down to the average she thought I was supposed to have.
MS: Wow!
JC: So we had words over that.
MS: Yes.
JC: And I went to the head of the department, and we [inaudible], and discussed it with him, and he said he would see what he could do about it. And – but he didn’t do anything about it. I just didn’t go to class any more.
MS: Now, let me take you back all those years. Was there such a thing on this campus then as freshman initiation?
JC: Not that I remember, no, because –
MS: They pretty well went out because [inaudible] service men refused to be initiated.
JC: That’s right. They did.
MS: I can recall that even when I came here we’d get some returning service men who said, “I’m not going to have some pink-cheeked freshman paddling my butt.”
JC: That was true. The only thing that I’ve ever heard that they really grumbled about – and they couldn’t speak up – they were tired of standing in line, and they had to stand in line to go to chow.
MS: Yes.
JC: And they did grumble about that. They grumbled. But there was nothing the college could do about that. They could only get them in so fast, and –
MS: Did that – did those lines – do you know if they existed all through your four years?
JC: I don’t know. I’m sure they did.
MS: Do you know if any of the dining halls in those later years started having sit-down meals so that everybody could come in and grab a tray, and by buffet style they’d go by and pick up their food and go to a table?
JC: That’s the way they did it when I was –
MS: They cut down lines up here considerably when they let students go on in where they wanted to go.
JC: Yeah. I think they did that when I was here. But I didn’t eat on campus, so –
MS: Among the questions that we sometimes find good answers to were moments of shame that occurred during the time you were here on this campus. I’m thinking, for example, we have at various times had some exposes of student cheating – students would sneak into buildings at night and would ransack offices and find exams, and would run off copies of exams and salve them in the dorms.
JC: I heard of things like that when I was here, but I didn’t see it.
MS: Didn’t know it actually did exist.
JC: The only – the way they cheated when I was here – they would tape a piece of paper to their wrist.
MS: Oh yes.
JC: And especially if they were in the back of the room they would pull that paper out, and look at that paper for these tests. And they would write on their hands. But the unfortunate thing about that is that whatever you wrote on there was never on the test paper. So it didn’t do you any good. You just went to a lot of useless work.
MS: My roommate in college stayed up late after I had gone to bed – he stayed up and he wrote a pony on the heel of his saddle shoes – very fine. He took his shoe off, put it on the table, and very carefully put a pony on there, so anything the prof would ask, he’s got it there someplace. I had the same class with him. I sat across the room, and I kept looking over, and he never crossed his legs. He said, “All you’ve got to do is cross your legs underneath that desk arm, and then you pull your heel up, and there it is, you can read it. And he never crossed his legs. And I waited outside the room for him, and when he came out I said, “Why didn’t you use your pony?” He said, “I worked so damn hard making it, I learned it!”
JC: You did. I did too. The thing, though, is that – that’s surprising to me, and I don’t think it happens nowadays – is, we had a professor that was paranoid about students cheating, so all of a sudden he decided that they had to stack their notebooks outside of the classroom. You could not come in the room unless you – the only thing you could come in with was a pencil. And I’m not real sure, but I think eventually he even passed out the pencils to take the tests, because he was so afraid. You had to pull your sleeves up, your pant legs up – he was just really paranoid.
MS: Wow! That’s a little extreme.
JC: And like you said, most of the students were older, and they resented it. They resented even it. Even if this kid here was cheating, they resented the fact that he would do something like that.
MS: Do you recall that the veterans pretty well hung together?
JC: Yes.
MS: I found that to be true.
JC: If one got in trouble, then the whole –
MS: I can recall – I didn’t do this, but I can recall seeing veterans backing up freshman students who were non-veterans – backing them up against the wall and saying, “You’re going to start doing your own work. You’re not coming in with any pony in this class, because we’re competing with you for grades, so forget it, Buster. Don’t bring your pony in here or you’re going to be sorry.” And it worked.
JC: [Inaudible] it was true – you were competing against these kids, and these kids were just out of high school, and they had been studying for three years and you hadn’t, so they were better at it than you were. They were much better. They didn’t have to cheat. And so – there was resentment.
MS: Jim, where was the heating plant and the – where was the heating plant for the University at that time?
JC: The heating plant at that time was right where the high-rise dorms are. It was to the west of the one high-rise building.
MS: The [inaudible] high-rise dorms, right. With a tall chimney. Now do you recall what the fuel was?
JC: No. I think it was coal.
MS: Coal. Coal from the upper valley. Soft coal brought down. Do you recall anything – now you’ve lived around Ellensburg, you might remember this, but I recall an awful lot of women in this town resented the fact that the University – the college – burned soft coal because they’d hang their sheets out on the line to get dry, and they would be streaked with soot.
JC: [Laughing] I know one of those women.
MS: And eventually there was enough pressure put that we had to eliminate the coal, and went to other forms of fuel – electricity and gas.
JP: I want Jim, while we’ve got him here today – I want him to focus, because we know him for his contributions to athletics and to the team, and I would like to go back and ask you what do you remember – some of the memories that you have playing on the teams – the coaches, the friends that you played with.
JC: Like the people I played with, and so forth?
JP: Yeah.
JC: Um, [inaudible] practically all the way through school. Some of them are kids that I competed against in high school – the kid from the lower valley, and so forth – and others were on the same team with me in high school, like Dean Nicholson. And – but there was a fellow from Oregon by the name of Ted Barnett, and one from the coast that was a very close friend of mine, Frank Sevola, and then there was Bobby Oscar, who was a little All-American also. And then there was the Connas boys, Buck and Barjarney [???]. These kids played with me almost all four years. Some of them were more devoted to the sport than I was. To me, by the time I was a senior I cared less if I played or I didn’t. I might be able to [inaudible]. Then we played all over – like, we didn’t travel like as far as they travel now, but like I played against Milo. And some of these kids that I probably just mentioned, Milo probably remembered playing against them. And my brother, L.G..
There was Russ Victor – these are the older ones, that graduated –Russ Victor, and Bill Langbacker, and there was – I can’t think of some of the older ones, too, but – Hal Niemeyer played with us, and his wife was Kate, and represented him when they took the football team into the hall of fame, and Russ Victor was [inaudible], also. The coaches were all different. They were all different. Coaches in those days – until you became a freshman – I mean, became a military man, were mean. I mean, they were right down mean. And [inaudible] happen. I mean, if they felt like kicking you, they kicked you. And you didn’t resent it. But then when you came back from the service, that kind of coaching all stopped because, like Milo was saying, you didn’t tolerate that any more. But –
JC: [Inaudible] think you were going to die if you smoked then, so every one of them smoked, and you’d go from one town to the next on the bus, you’d all light up and you smoked your cigarettes on the way, and then you’d run halfway down the field and you’re so pooped you couldn’t – [inaudible]. But the – most of them played, I would say, they got more fun out – they got fun out of athletics, rather than today – it’s more a business, and the glory of it that you can get from it. And in those days it wasn’t, because if you didn’t have fun, you didn’t do it. And that’s the way games – and then you would [inaudible] – especially with the ones you play with, you get a lifetime friendship. You just – that friendship never ends. You go to school, the other kids in school and so forth – you remember their names – you remember them, but you don’t remember them like the ones you [inaudible].
MS: You remember Phil Sarbo?
JC: Oh yes, he’s – Phil Sarbo was coaching here while I was in high school, and he refereed our games. And it really wasn’t fair. We had an awfully good team, but Phil Sarbo was the referee, but he’d call our plays for us. [Laughter] He’d walk by – “Jim, take it on tackle.” I’d go back and call the play, come back, and he’d call another play – he was a referee.
MS: I know two ball players who came here during your period – one from Clarkston, one from Lewiston – Al Martin and Jack Spino.
JC: Oh, Jack Spino.
MS: Do you recall him? Jack was short, and very sturdy –
JC: Who’s this?
MS: Jack Spino.
JC: Jack Spiddle, or Jack Spino?
MS: Spino.
JC: He wasn’t here when I was here.
MS: From Clarkston.
JC: If he did, he –
MS: Al Martin was from Lewiston, and he came over here – Phil Sarvo –
JC: Well that – were you thinking of Sarvo?
MS: Uh – Spino had played for Sarvo at Clarkston high school.
JC: Oh!
MS: And is one of the [inaudible] – when Sarvo came here to coach, he reached out and grabbed Spino, and Spino got a college education because he played football, and Al Martin from Lewiston – Spino, or – Sarvo’s teams had played against Al, and he talked him into coming over here. Coaches used to do an awful lot of recruiting from all these high schools, not just in Washington, but across the border.
JC: Oh, they did. Now they go across the United States.
MS: Oh yes, absolutely, and –
JC: I don’t remember them, Milo, because – evidently they were playing before I got here. See, Sarvo coached here before the War, and I didn’t come to Central until ’46.
MS: I can recall Leo Nicholson sitting and [inaudible] at coffee in 1947 saying, “We’ve got to get on the ball and start recruiting out of the Hawaiian Islands because other schools are finding awfully good athletes over there now, and other places in the South Pacific down in Samoa, and so forth. The University is already looking at Samoa,” he said, “Central’s got to start recruiting from the Pacific area.”
JC: Well, [inaudible – could be “I wouldn’t doubt if Leo”] – I shouldn’t say that about Leo. They were stopping Leo. Sometimes I’m not real sure all the kids could even read that Leo recruited, and they were older – much older, much bolder – boy, it’s like one was an ex Merchant Marine. I remember that in high school a kid [inaudible] – Boscanero, his name was, and he was much older, and he recruited him from somewhere. I don’t know. But I’m not real sure he had a high school education, but that was before my time. I don’t know. He could have. He was no dummy, I know that.
JP: Now was Leo coaching just football, or did –
JC: He coached football, basketball and track.
JP: Okay.
JC: But I didn’t – I wasn’t under him.
JP: No. Do you remember anything else about Leo?
JC: Oh yes, I can remember lots of things about Leo. Leo – when I graduated, two or three or more professors became [inaudible] friends of mine, and Leo was one of them, and Dr. McConnell was the other. But I admired Dr. McConnell, and I got acquainted with him while I was in school. So I admired Dr. McConnell a lot. But Leo – but Leo had me come up to college. They started cutting his finances where he couldn’t get money to recruit these kids and so forth, like that, and they wouldn’t give him any assistant coaches. So he would get me to come up and work with him up there, and I really enjoy this. I really enjoyed [inaudible] ornery man. If you played under him – he was from the old school that “What I say goes, and you better not talk back.” But he could handle the veterans, too, because most of the veterans were used to being told “You do this,” and not in a nice way. And Leo had that knack, and I don’t think he ever told anybody to do anything in a nice way, but you went away loving Leo. You hear it [inaudible] – if you came to the college in those years – later on in those years – you’d hear bad things about Leo, and I think they really had to dig them up, these bad things about him, because I don’t recall ever hearing – he had a – different than most coaches on campus – his probably the best friend was a Music teacher, which was unheard of of a coach that was Wayne Hertz.
MS: He sat on the end of the bench –
JC: [Inaudible – he’s talking at the same time as MS.] And Edwin Odell – he would come out on the field and work with Leo out there, and - but everybody thought it was such a strange combination between Leo and Wayne Hertz.
MS: Oh, sure.
JC: But you didn’t pick Wayne Hertz as a Music professor, either, in those days.
JP: No.
MS: Now, outside of women’s hours in the dormitories, do you remember any other ways in which women were discriminated against?
JC: I really can’t.
MS: They were second class citizens when the War was on, and even for a few years after the War when I came to campus.
JC: I think they [inaudible – speaking over MS] class.
MS: In loco parentis was a legal decision that University was taking the place of their parents, and so the University could make such rules as parents would make, and that’s where the dorm hours came from. How about women – uh, women’s dress on campus? Do you recall any discrimination there?
JC: No, not really, because like I was telling earlier about the long skirts – the new look, and so forth – it was never said anything from the campus about – I mean, if the campus had rules for them – for their dress, or anything like that – I don’t recall. I don’t recall any – well, I guess I do take that back. They would not have – they would have never allowed a mini skirt. I mean, girl’s skirts had to be at least down to your knees, and a mini skirt was just unheard of. And they weren’t allowed, I don’t think, to wear slacks to class either. I’m not sure, but you don’t recall them, in those days, wearing slacks.
MS: In the middle 40’s I can recall a Dean of Women here on campus, Dean Hitchcock – a building is named after her, also – she was able to enforce a rule that discriminated against women in that they could not go to town unless they wore dresses or skirts. They had to look like young ladies. You go downtown, you will look like a young lady. You won’t go down there in shorts, or Levis, and oh, there was lots of go-arounds about that decision.
JC: It’s strange, but I was thinking about that the other day, how there were very few girls that wore slacks and jeans, and things like that in those days. Very few. So they did have a dress code.
MS: Now Jim, can you think of anything that I haven’t asked you that you’d like to get recorded on this tape?
JC: Not really, Milo.
MS: Okay. Do you recall any student activity concerning political parties? Were they very active? The veterans were older. Most of them were of voting age, or many of them were. Do you recall that politics on campus was of any significance?
JC: Yes [laughs], but it was really strange that – most students, at least I feel – most students that went to college and came from conservative family, when they hit college they were very liberal. Very liberal. And there were many parent, son, and daughter conflicts, and usually the student doesn’t come back to the way his parents thought for about five years – maybe a little longer. I was one of those students, and my wife was too, and we felt that – and I still feel that way – I could be wrong, but I still feel that college sometimes is far more educational than people even realize, for the mere fact that if you come from a conservative family and you got to college, I’m not saying that it affects every student that way, but you’re going to come out the way your Professors think, and then you have to learn which way you want to think when you’re out – whether you want to think like your parents did, or like the new look, so to speak – like the professors thought.
MC: Well Jim, we’ve just about trotted all avenues here. Have you maintained a contact with some of your student friends? Are they still among your closer friends?
JC: Oh yes, yes. Like the – this reunion that we had. I’ve stayed in contact with most of them all the time.
MS: Well attended?
JC: Well, I don’t know – we’re getting older now. We’re in our seventies.
MS: Sure.
JC: And it’s hard for – to get different places. But the thrill that you have when you meet these people – like at that reunion where you met these people – the thrill that you have, you can’t put in words. You just can’t – you can’t – you can’t seem to relinquish that love you had for them. You just can’t. And the – I wasn’t even going to go to that reunion, but it was one of the most satisfying things I ever did in my life.
MS: That’s a good note on which to end, Jim, and we thank you very much for your time, and allowing us to prod your memory.
JC: Well I enjoyed it. The football team – and he just idolized all football players.
JP: McConnell.
JC: Well, idolizing the football players, he asked his Dad if he could bring home every week someone that scored – you know, that would score. Well, it seemed like I scored every week, because I was a kicker. Because I kicked [inaudible] after play. So I went to their house almost every week for dinner. And maybe I saw a side of McConnell that most people didn’t see. Because we’d go eat – and Mrs. McConnell was a lady, and – a tremendous lady. And we’d eat, and there’d be maybe four of us ball players there, ad Mr. McConnell would say, “Jim, let’s you and I go in the other room.” So the other players would sit and talk with the boy and Mrs. McConnell, and Mr. McConnell and I would go in the other room and sit and visit. So I learned another side of him. I thought that – I really admired the man. I liked him. I just felt he was really tremendous.
MS: He was the most distant man on campus where students were concerned.
JC: Yes.
MS: He did not go to student activities, he didn’t mingle with students. I don’t know that he ever had student friends, simply because - [recording ends].