CWU Living History Project

Gail Jones

Putnam: This is June 26, 1995. We are in Gail Jones’ office in Barge Hall and we are going to be interviewing Gail, who is just retired as Director of Alumni Affairs... Gail, what we would like you to do to start with is to give us a little of your background...

Jones: I was born in 1935 in... Oklahoma. My parents were Oklahomans as well. There were 13 of us. I met and married a young student at Oklahoma State University... So we married in 1954... two years of army life together and then we had our university time at a New Hampshire school and he went first of all to Texas A&M as a professor where we were for six years and then he decided that he wanted to get back to an institution that truly focused on education rather than research exclusively. At Texas A&M we had fifteen people working on research all the time and loved that but it was not the teaching career that he wanted so we came to Central Washington State College and I went back to school at that point because I had only had one year of the university life before we married - I mean after - no, before we married. Yeah, before we married. So I finished my degree at Central in three years and then I had not planned to work at all. I had planned to retain my status as housewife and professor’s wife and all of those things. But after having gone to school for three years, I decided to do something just to have some fun. I wound up working at the Public Library - created a program called Outreach funded with federal dollars and then I became Outreach and Circulation Director there. I was there six years and then decided that I was ready to leave that and again become housewife when I read an advertisement for a one year position as the acting Alumni Director because Rob Lowry wanted to take one year off to get his master’s degree. He was the director of Alumfli Affairs at that time. So I applied for the position and I teasingly say no one else did because - and I don’t know how many people did - but I was selected to do the one year for him and came in and decided that rather than just do everything the way it had been done that I would have some fun doing things a little differently, but not so different that it would upset him. So I had a really fun year. Then the next fall when he came back, I stepped down and thought I was through with university life and, lo and behold, he asked Dr. Garrity, who was our new president that year, if he could leave after he had been back for about a month and Dr. Garrity said, ‘You may leave if Gail will fill in for you while we do a national search,’ So Dr. Garrity called me up, I was on a business trip with my husband in Seattle, and he called me in Seattle and said, ‘Gail, if you’ll take over for Rob I will release him of his contract.’ So I said, ‘Sure, I’ll do it another year.’ So I came back and did it another year and decided to apply for the permanent position and I did. Interestingly enough, the selection committee did not have one single person on it who I knew and I thought I knew everyone in Ellensburg and I walked into the room for the interview and it about scared me to death because no one there I knew, they knew me because my picture had been in the paper for six years for the library but I did not know them and so I was selected and have been here doing my thing.

Putnam: Good. I neglected to say at the beginning that I am Jean Putnam. I am the interviewer in case there are any people who are having any problems with that and Ham Howard is behind the camera and Helen Smith is behind the tape recorder. So, the next thing I would like to ask you, now the Alumni Director serves closely with the president and the President’s office. I wonder if you could share with us some of your recollections of your relationship with him or some things about the presidents you served both Garrity and Nelson?

Jones: And actually Dr. Brooks as well. I was in charge of Dr. Brooks retirement...

Putnam: Wonderful.

Jones: . . .which was truly an experience. We sent all of the documentation on that to the library. When we tried to find it, when we got ready to do the retirement for Dr. Garrity, we couldn’t find all of the stuff we had sent over but it was a wonderful experience as a new Alumni Director to have that responsibility. So I learned a lot in a hurry and learned how to work with the Governor’s office because Governor Ray?, that would have been, she was one of those who really required a lot of - what do they call it for a governor? We call it Secret Service type of thing and F.B.I. to the President but whatever the Governor has, we had to deal with all of their special security needs. So that was an interesting challenge. And working with - I know Dr. Brooks could tell you some wild stories about that first year because as Acting Director I had absolutely nothing to lose and the governor at that time was Dan Evans, Dixie came a little later. But Dan Evans had to do one budget cut after another to the universities and it came time for them to do another five percent budget cut and I got the memo on my desk from Jimmy Applegate, who was my boss that year, saying that I had to do another five percent cut and I sent back the memo to Jimmy Applegate telling him that we might as well close the office (laughs) and of course that didn’t go over too well. So Dr. Brooks I think was upset with me and Jimmy laughed but it was necessary for Jimmy to also take it seriously so he came in to have a nice serious chat with me about - you just don’t say you’re not going to do another budget cut - but I did. But I did retire that first year. Dr. Brooks wrote one of the most beautiful letters of recommendation for my permanent file I have ever read so he didn’t hold it against me. (laughs) Needless to say the Alumni office budget has never been exactly plush so every little bit counted in those days. The Alumni Association had $1100 when I came aboard and now we have close to $200,000 in addition to a spending agreement. Then, of course, I worked under Dr. Garrity and one of the most humorous elements of that was that when he hired me he really was not as eager to hire me as the committee. The committee had advised him to select me and he was very very reluctant to because he knew that I was an elder in my church, that alcohol was not a primary interest of mine and that, you know, I wasn’t a good old boy. I wasn’t a typical Alumni Director of early years. Most Alumni Directors were super jocks and that kind of thing. So I was really going against the trend by coming in as the person with a different set of values and maybe a different sense of humor and a lot of other things. So he was real up frontwith me about his concerns and of course I learned a lot of things along the way that - one thing is I had already learned is that my particular values are my values and what other people’s values are - that’s up to them. So I’ve never been one to try to influence other people and so it did work out just fine. One of the first reunions we had though, after I became Alumni Director, I did provide, of course, the hard alcohol and the wine and it just blew me away to see older people drinking hard alcohol. I just didn’t know they did it because I came from a state that was a dry state and our family didn’t serve alcohol at anything we did, you know it wasn’t a part of our social life. So here these people were drinking all of this bourbon and scotch and all of these things, you know, and so I learned a lot real quick about all of this. I had the most beautiful alcohol cupboard in the country, I think, because I buy everything by the label, if its a pretty label I buy it. Anyway, our alums, I think, had no trouble with my different morals. Then of course after Dr. Garrity, Dr. Nelson came and the - it was a difficult transition for me personally because of course my husband had been Special Assistant with Don Garrity for 13 years and my husband was the caliber of person that when Dr. Garrity walked down the hall and asked him if he would consider being the Special Assistant, my husband said to him, ‘I have to check you out before I decide that,’ and proceeded to call and talk with people in San Fransisco and all around to make sure that this was a man that he could respect enough to work with and have his name associated with that closely. So when Jerry did say he would take the position it was a major commitment. He never for one minute lost respect for Dr. Garrity. They did not agree on everything, but then Jerry and I don’t agree on everything either, and we’ve had a good relationship, so when Dr. Garrity did choose to leave that was very difficult for me personally but even more so professionally because it was the Centennial. I was chairing the Centennial Committee, which had been appointed in about ‘87 and we functioned for five years as a team. So when Dr. Garrity told us that he was leaving in the middle of the Centennial year, I tell you, I cried buckets because of the impact I felt it would have on our Centennial. It did have a major impact but on the other hand there were some wonderful things about having it at that time too. You know, some good things come out of bad things often times. Anyway, Dr. Garrity - I think his major criticism probably was he told my husband at one point that he wished that I considered my position a job rather than a mission and I think that you can never be an Alumni Director and consider it just a job because you have to love too many people, you have to be involved on such a personal level with so many people. Jerry and I have cried together over so many incidents in the lives of our board members. We developed together a group called our Alumni Legislative Board, 150 people, and so we traveled all over the state nurturing this group. We’d just grow to love them and they do things for the university and - so there’s an affection there that is beyond belief. So, as I say, we’ve cried over a lot of people. We’ve had divorces and we’ve had deaths and we’ve had all of these things that affected us personally. So I don’t think you can ever consider it just a job. It just doesn’t work that way. But that was Don’s question.

Putnam: To interrupt you here just to get a little more information about this Legislative Committee. Can you speak a little more to that?

Jones: Certainly. It’s a real thing - it’s a thing that we’re very proud of as a couple and as a board, our Alumni Board is very proud of it. We decided early on in my professional career and as Jerry was taking his role with Dr. Garrity that a real effort had to be made to cultivate alumni who could pick up the phone and call legislators whom they knew personally and say to them, Hey, Central’s got a problem we need you to help us with it and we need help right this minute,’ and we also felt that it was important that they, in the nurturing of their own legislators, let them know the good things that they did, show appreciation and approval. So we set out to develop this committee. What we did, we went to our major donors primarily - initially - because we felt like that those individuals had shown enough interest to want to write a check and you know that thing about your heart is where your money is or whatever the saying is we felt that in this instance that would be true and so we just started out meeting with the people. What we requested them to do was to have a training program they would come in once a year for work with the legislative liaison Bob was chairing he did with his people and they would have training about how to approach their legislators on a personal level and on a professional level. Sometimes those training programs were in Olympia, sometimes they were here on campus. Jerry and I joined the Columbian Howard Club when it was founded so that we would have a place we could take the people who enjoyed that environment. So we would have the major committee members meet there with the members of ICOP, which is the Council of Presidents as far as the representatives of each university. So they would meet there with us. Other staff people from the info office would come. So they had a lot of input from the people in Olympia who were on our side. We had legislators come meet with this group. We did all kinds of different things over the years to nurture this particular group. When we - we didn’t use them every session. Probably the most we ever used them in a given session was three times because we felt like it had to be used very cautiously so that they did not get to thinking that there was just a campaign for Central out there but when we did use them they were effective. We got phone calls from legislators who would say, ‘Hey, you’ve done your thing. We got the message. Call them off.’ (laughs) Wonderful letters - we have copies on file of letters that our legislative board members wrote to their legislators. We had every type of person. We had people who were presidents of corporations, we had people who were custodial types after retiring they had thought of doing that type of thing for the school system. Just all types because we found out that these - that the legislators respond to all types. So it was a really good group. They’re still intact but they have not been used for - well with any organization behind them - for about three years.

Putnam: Well, I may be jumping to that but let’s continue to pursue the question I had asked you before regarding your...

Jones: Presidents.

Putnam: Yes, the presidents and your perception of them and you’ve kind of - did you have - were there any other things that you can remember about Dr. Garrity aspresident and then maybe you could go to Nelson - Dr. Nelson.

Jones: Okay. Dr. Garrity, when he first came, I was working with Corky Bridges and John McGultry who were in admissions and registrar and we did some wonderful receptions around the state and that was fun. One thing is that I was still new enough in my position to really find it challenging to go plan and execute these events. There again, we met all types of alumni, It was good for Dr. Garrity because he found out the essence of what we are and as you know I have some strong opinions about what we are as an institution and what our alumni think of us as an institution. So it was really good exposure to Dr. Garrity of our alumni but in turn they got to know him. As you know, Dr. Garrity could be extremely charming and particularly with people who asked good questions and what we found inevitably was that these people asked good questions. So they challenged him. They made him think about what he wanted to see happen while he was here and so it was really a fascinating time I think for all of us. He was always available to doing those things and he came to all of our special events like Central at Long Acres and the Mariners. He pitched the first pitch at the Mariners when the alumni had its big wing-ding there. Of course, we had the Tut, the King Tut show. All of these things he was very supportive of. I think that that was probably the thing that encouraged me most was how he was always willing to be there when I planned something and of course, Virginia, his wife, was just super about that as well. Our friendship was primarily professional. Jerry’s and his was personal but mine with him was very professional and it worked extremely well. So when he left we went on, of course, to Dr. Nelson, and the closing elements of the Centennial came up almost - well within two months after Dr. Nelson came. And as you know, that was also when my husband became ill and started chemo and all kinds of things were going on in my personal life which I had not ever faced before. So Dr. Nelson didn’t arrive ‘at the best time in my life, but on the other hand, he stepped in and he actually would call me at home and say, ‘Gail, now what do you need me to do about the Centennial?’ He wanted to know whether he should wear a tuxedo to the closing ceremonies and I said, well, there will be a few men in tuxedos and had my husband had been well enough, he would have been wearing one that night but I said, ‘I’ll leave that up to you,’ and he said, ‘If you want me to wear one I’ll wear one.’ So he did. He and Wayne Hertz and Walt Marial and others were in tuxes and looked super but if you were not at that evening, that was probably the highlight of my career and maybe Central’s.

Putnam: Why don’t you collaborate a little bit more on the Centennial for us because it is not going to happen in our life time.

Jones: (laughs) Well, I don’t know, I’m working on it.

Putnam: Yeah, I know but there were so many things attached to the Centennial maybe you could give us just give us an overview of what was happening and then of course your perception of this evening, the culmination.

Jones: Yes, the Centennial Committee started out as a group appointed by the president and it wound up that only two of us lasted the duration of it, but that was in great part due to health problems and other things that came up. It wasn’t because I chaired it, I’m sure. (laughs) But Bill Hawk stayed on with us. Jim Hawkins came aboard about four months after we started. Phil Dumas was the original chair and his health failed so he stepped down and I became the chair and Jim Hawkins became the Faculty Rep. We had about ten people on our basic committee and then we formed I think it was 24 sub committees. It was the most intricate webbing of activities you could have possibly imagined and what Dr. Garrity instructed us to do we did and that was we told each committee to design what they wanted to see happen for the Centennial - the very best that they could see happening and to come up with both the programming and the budget. And of course when they came back with that budget (laughs) $200,000 plus and so we took that to Dr. Garrity and we took it to the trustees and, of course, there was no way at that time. As you know, we’ve had cuts constantly since the early 70’s and so to even dream of having that kind of dollars we knew would be very impractical. But in support of Dr. Garrity and the committees, we did take that budget initially. We then determined that there was no way that we would have those dollars so we had to take a look at the overall program and determine what really projected the image of the institution and how we could engender those feelings that we wanted spoken both from our alumni, our staff, and the upcoming alumni, the current students. So we looked at all elements of the program and selected the things we felt would do that and then we realized that we would need a minimum of $36 to $40,000 to do that because one of the primary things that we saw in this was the Symposium. This was a faculty event and we felt that we just had to have that. So we had to have a $10,000 element for that and then of course the opening and closing amounts had to be there and the concerts and plays in between. So we had to figure out how to get the money. Well, fortunately, Dr. Garrity said that he would provide from $25,000 and we had to get the rest on our own. So we did. We went to work and we developed the little fund raising program among our faculty and major donors and came up with $11,000 just very, very quickly and then we did a couple of events during the Centennial which actually raised money to help the cost. So we came up with everything we needed and wound up with enough to help with some filming and things that we needed. So we did the Symposium was designed by faculty, primarily for faculty, and I think was kind of a rejuvenation to many people who participated in that. One thing was to just to see that the university valued that again was really important. And of course we started Founders Square, which was the beginning of the Alumni Walk and that monument itself represents the essence of Central itself - it’s small, its sturdy and it’s going to be there forever. So - I actually did the original design of that. The architects took it over and did things to it but I had the fun of doing the initial design of it. So it’s in the file but that’s a Gail thing. And eventually we want a little statue on top that will depict what Edison Hall was about, the instructor and student relationship and we have the money to do it if the next director will do it but I’ve set aside money for it if that’s the wish of the next director. The closing ceremony consisted of a musical presentation that was written by Professor Bob Panerio and I think that probably in his very long and distinguished career, that that is the ultimate for him. He believes that it is his greatest work and I think that it depicted again the strength of our music department and the strength and dedication of our faculty. So to me, it was just an awesome experience to sit there and to be a part of it. In addition to that ? which is so gorgeous and energizing and emotional. So the concert was absolutely superb. Prior to the concert, we had a banquet at which we had the entire James Brook’s band. Jim and Lillian and all of their children and all of their in-law children were there and just that beautiful family sitting all at one big table had me in tears all evening and then the - another ultimate coup was to have Alan McConnell. Bob McConnell died several years ago but his two sons and their two wives came and were a part of that evening and both Jim and Alan spoke at the banquet. Then of course we had Dr. Nelson there and we had many of our long term alums - I focused on them because they really depict the strength of Central. When you talk to the Golden Alums, which has been a favorite group of mine from the beginning, you really do get inspired about what education is all about and the dedication of the Central faculty all though the years. The way they talk about faculty - you don’t hear students talk about them that way that much any more. They may twenty years from now, but current students don’t talk about faculty in the same way. So, they have a very special feeling towards Central. So we have been there a great number of years. And we had a lot of community people. It was really uniting all of the elements that make Central great. Just an absolutely perfect evening in the largest dining facility that we could use and we sold out of everything else and it just grew and grew and grew like toffee but it was a wonderful night. Dr. Nelson, since that time, I work with him on occasion on special events but I don’t work with him on a day to day basis. That’s more Marla Mathews role and now Mark Young’s and others so we just don’t work together that much now.

Putnam: Speaking of that, with Mark Young and the formulation of what is now called the University Advancement, can you give us a little history of that. We only - don’t think you were ever related in any way. You had your own separate area, office, and any university development was done in the President’s office, was it not? How did that get organized and get where to it is?

Jones: Actually, I’m kind of to blame for the whole mess because when I was in for one year I was involved in hosting all of the wives of the presidential candidates. So Dr. Garrity’s wife I took out and all of the different wives I got well acquainted with as they came to campus. Then when I left at the end of that year I had - you know I wasn’t planning to come back. I thought I was through as Alumni Director. They had just hired Dr. Garrity and so I just sat down and sat down and wrote him a long letter about Gail’s view of Central. You know I think I know it all. (laughs) So I told him what I had learned about alumni work during my one year and how I viewed fund raising because when I came aboard that first week of that first year Jimmy Applegate said, ‘Now Gail, we’ve got to get an annual fund campaign in the mail in six weeks.’ Well needless to say I had never done an annual fund campaign, nothing like that. Fortunately, I had a lot of good books and so I went to work and we had a whale of a good campaign. We didn’t make all that much money because it was an expensive campaign but it - that’s the way it works. There’s a lot more to that story later. But anyway, I said in this letter to Dr. Garrity, that we desperately needed an individual who would be primarily responsible for the public relations and development of our university. Under Jim Brooks we had Dr. Brooks and then had Dr. Applegate who was Special Assistant to the President and he had a lot of different elements reporting to him but that was not his area of expertise although he was excellent at it. His area was education and other things and what I was saying was that since Applegate was going out and I was going out, let’s get someone in who can head up the whole public relations area who really knows what it’s all about and how to get the most out of us. So I recommended that he have a Director of University Relations and Development. Well, Dr. Garrity when he came, the very first thing he did was appoint my husband to design that job position. So Larry Lium came as the Director of University Relations and Development and was here for good many years and took us from about 60 something thousand dollars in the foundation to several million by the time he left and Dr. Garrity worked very hard on it and of course Larry was just superb. So a lot of people pitched in and got us out of the pits financially. In the mean time, I continued to run the annual fund drive, which was directed at alumni. The - when Larry left the title was changed - well actually while Larry was still here I think. It was made Vice President - he was made Vice President of University Relations and then when Mark Young came to replace him he had chose to have the title of Vice President of Advancement. In our professional organization, which is? ,that is the direction all of the universities are going and of course after he came, one of the things I had also requested for many years was a person who would truly know fund raising and would focus on fund raising and so we hired our first Director of Development and that is Maria Thompson and she’s been doing it for a little over a year. So we finally have someone who can focus exclusively on fund raising. The beautiful thing is that these people coming in had $250,000 assigned to them by the foundation from an estate which I won’t name, that’s up to someone else to say that it’s appropriate to name them, but from an estate of an alumnus and a former trustee ? considerably more than $250,000 but this development group now has that money to use to expand our whole Development Program and as you can see the very first thing we did was upgrade our “Central Today” to a glossy, color, really, really fancy but also expensive, which we could not do. And of course being the old lady on the block, the most difficult thing I have faced in the last two years is people talking about the things we haven’t done rather than the things we’ve done but we simply didn’t have the money to do and so fortunately because of what we were able to do the new team coming in has the money to do and that’s exciting to us and thrilling because I think that in another two or three years the outcropping of what they’re doing will be so great that we’ll think that $250,000 was just money well spent. But it takes time. The most difficult thing for any university like ours to do is to educate our alumni to give and we have tried all through the years to work on that and it’s difficult, very difficult. But the advancement team is getting to where it should be. They need a lot more support staff than they have and we don’t see that that’s going to happen but that’s what the things we’re dealing with because there’s so much to do. Everyday you walk in this office you feel like you’re starting a new career because there’s so much out there.

Putnam: Well, I know you mentioned some of your special events and some of the other things. What special events come to mind that you feel are sort of special for you or for the institution that are either a part of our tradition or something that we’ve just begun to do? You mentioned a couple things but, you know, like the Mariners game and the racetrack and the baseball games.

Jones: Right. Those events were fun to do and the reason we did the different types of events we did was because we felt like that we would attract different types of alums to different things. So that is why we did that and they were fun to do but I think the things that I would focus on more would be our reunions on campus. The reunions we did for our older alums in the spring were our favorites. And we did things - you know we tried something different every year. One thing is, we always would - like we did this last year bringing them in to see the chimpanzees. We’ve taken them to see everything on campus in one format or another. The computer center, we’ve had them have lessons in computers, sit right down - because I know my mother thinks that that’s the ultimate, you know, to learn to use the computer. So we actually had classes one year for the returning alums. They’ve been to the G.I.S. Laboratories. They’ve done all of these kinds of things, but I think that probably when we would be at our dinner at our banquet or whatever we chose to call it that given year and we had themes - one year we had a train station - I mean a train, like the dining car in a train and had all of the decorations and we wore tuxedos and all of these things to make them feel like they were having an elegant dinner on a dining car. So we tried to have the different moods for them. In order to get them to talk, we did a lot of interviews. Some of them I think you’ve seen of returning alums. We had open microphones and they would share stories on the open microphones. So those kinds of things I think were probably most emotionally rewarding for me personally and I think judging from the letters we got from alums that it was very important to them as well. The things like our Alumni Walk, the bricks, Founder’s Square Monument, the Class Tree Walk where the graduating seniors actually are there for the dedication of their own tree and the placement of their plaque, we’ve had up to 300 seniors come to that. Usually it’s around 100-125 but one or two times on a really pretty day we’ve had 300 or so students show up. So that has made me feel really good to start some traditions that will go on long after I’m here, they won’t even be associated with me but they will still be going on and I think that that’s really important to have. There are other things we’ve wanted to have happen out of the Centennial. We wanted to imitate Oxford’s way of introducing the students to the university library where they officially go in and sign in and have a ritual and that kind of thing. So those are things we wanted to instigate but just didn’t have the backing to do. But I think seeing the banners around campus is a real plus for showing the esprit de corps of the institution and - but as far as all of the different kinds of events we have a historical record in books up there of all of the things we’ve done and each activity and I think that I could quote Larry Lium saying that he could never understand how we did so much with so little because we had very little money for so many uses and we had a very small staff. So he always felt very good about what we accomplished.

Putnam: All right Gail, let’s just continue to pursue this question a little bit more on some of the things that you valued in terms of some events. You just mentioned your alumni reunions as being particularly important to you and to certainly to the alumni. Can we pursue that a little bit more in terms of maybe some other things you have done within your realm as Director that might be of importance?

Jones: One of the things that I think probably all of you have noticed is our Tea Cup room. When I first became Alumni Director and as I mentioned I had to do annual fund, the first thing I found out was that many of our alums were and are retired teachers from the 20’s. A long time ago they started in teaching so their incomes are not as good as our teachers who are retiring now and to write checks to give back to the university was a little awkward for them. So I decided to encourage them to feel a part of what we are doing here by asking them to share a cup from their collection and so that’s what we did. We wrote them and said that we would really like it if you would send us one of the cups that you have added to your own home collection over the years that you would be willing to share with Central and to our history. So we got more cups than we had room for and so I had to discontinue that practice but we do have a beautiful collection of cups from many of our older alums. One in there was given to me in 1979 and it was 50 years old at that time. I’m sure others were equally old and beautiful. So this is a treasure that we had. As you may recall, the Alumni Suite, by the way that’s another thing we did. When I became Alumni Director the Alumni Director office had been shifted all over campus and any time they needed a space that space was taken over and the Alumni Director was moved out so I asked Dr. Garrity if we could have the offices on the third floor when the President and all of them moved to Boullion and so -

Putnam: So you’re speaking of Barge Hall?

Jones: Barge Hall, third floor. It was 310 at that time. So I asked for that space - it’s a big barny room with two small offices and a little kitchen/storage area and Dr. Garrity came over and looked and he says I will write a letter authorizing you to have this space. So we went to work to get money to fix up an aura for an Alumni Suite. We had it carpeted. It was commercial carpet but it was plush and we bought a velour - we had a committee of alums, which included some interior decorators, come in and help us to decide what look we wanted that would depict the Victorian Era in which this building was actually built. So they told us to have lace drapes, they told us to have velour, they told us to have oak but not just one color of oak but several colors of oak. So we got money together from different pockets and fixed up an Alumni Suite - first time in Central’s history. We had it until they chose to renovate Barge Hall. We no longer have an Alumni Suite. We’re now the Advancement office and I’m rebelling against that and have very strongly but anyway for a few years there we had an Alumni Suite that the alumni identified with exclusively and we had their cups. We had no elevator but the alumni would drag themselves, literally, some of our older alums now there are a lot of older alums who can run up those stairs, but some of the older alums would actually drag themselves up the stairs to see the cups because their cup was there. They sent money to buy a coffee table for the Director’s office. They wanted to see the coffee table. They sent money to help buy the clock. They wanted to see the clock. So they actually got up to the Alumni Suite to see their part of it and so that was something that I was really proud of and I hope eventually we will have again. Anyway, the - in the renovation of Barge Hall we were asked what we wanted for our area. Well, I again requested an Alumni Suite and adjacent to it I wanted an area that would be similar to a museum or a showroom or whatever you wanted to call it so that we could have all of the alumni memorabilia we’re given. We’re constantly getting little things like this sweater and so that was the way the original design was. I asked to be on the second floor so we could be close to the building. Everything was just the way I wanted it and then all of the sudden they decided - Larry decided that he wanted to have all of his people on the fourth floor and so we lost - we got this space which was too small for what it should - for what we need. It was supposed to be for Affirmative Action and so we got this smaller space and with the room that we wanted for the exhibits or whatever was made the Showcase Room and it is a very lovely room but there is no one there to monitor it. So that became the Showcase Room and I was asked to chair the committee to see to it that we had appropriate shows and develop the policy and all of that for that room. So I’ve had the fun of working on that for the last two years and we’ve had I think very interesting shows. The future for that room is very great because we’ve added a few things. If you look in there we’ve have a dais or roster whatever you all choose to call it, a speaker stand, that was found in an old storage room just full of junked furnishings and Dave in - he’s in the area they take all of the discarded items - anyway he found this and he put it in storage in a safe storage space and then for this committee he said, ‘Hey, I think you’d like to have it in your Showcase Room.’ So the Alumni Association had to have it refinished and we had a stand ‘ready for it so it’s on big coasters, it rolls around and it’s beautiful. It has all kinds of carving on it. So it’s just a beautiful piece for the Showcase Room. Then we had additional shelves and cases built. We have Dr. McConnell’s desk in there. We have Christmas decorations that are from the ? and of course two large television and VCR units. One is international and one is very? So that room is a wonderful room for the university and will be used extremely well, but we should have had the Alumni office down there along with it so we could take care of it and have it open during the day because to get volunteers to come and sit and for many many days no one comes you know, it’s awkward, it’s embarrassing to do. So we just have not been real aggressive about getting volunteers but anyway, maybe one of these years another dream will come true and we’ll have our suite again or an alumni house, or a whatever. If I ever win the jackpot (laughs) they’ll get my money.

Putnam: Well, are there any other kinds of projects or anything that you recall or you want to mention?

Jones: One of the projects of the Centennial was Central Remember. Remember? And it was added to Bell Hawk and that I think is something that I am particularly proud of because she and a committee did interviews for a long time of the faculty and different people and I ‘m sure you’ve all seen the book but anyway that was something I am very proud of and had very little money to do it with but we got it. And up here on the wall you can see a picture of the International Flag Pavilion which is - you can do it when we’re through if you want - but anyway it was a project that the Centennial Committee really wanted to see happen and again we had no money but a few months before the end of the Centennial the students came to us and said, ‘Gail, what would you like to be our part in the Centennial?’ I gave them about four items that we really wanted to have happen. And they said, ‘Now Gail we’re asking you. What do you really want to see happen?’ And I said well anything we can do to bring color and a sense of history to Central is what I would like so I would like us to have an International Flag Pavilion and so that’s what they did. We had an official dedication. Dr. Garrity was still here for that and so it - that - those flags fly for every special event on campus. Commencement, Homecoming, all of those very special days and if it’s just a special day that Gail favors I call and say to have them put up for that day because I think that it does bring - well like the day we dedicated the ball park down there - that’s another one of my fun projects - but the softball field for the community we did at the corner of 18th and Alder. So on that day of the dedication we had all of our flags up. The Edison ? we did too.

Putnam: Very good. I know that you’ve seen a lot of growth from the beginnings of your tenure up until today. Can you - in what ways was growth reflected or how - maybe you could just comment on the growth of the Alumni Organization in your thirty years?

Jones: I think I hinted at it a bit earlier to the fact that alumni of a state institution in our time just traditionally are not educated to give. All across the country institutions of our time have had troubles. We’re not the big institutions like the U of W with the big sports program and all of that although I would pit our sports program against any. It’s a matter of they have the name and the bucks behind them. So we - I think we have worked very, very hard to educate our alumni to the need to give to our institution. That’s why I am so thrilled about the development people coming in now because 1 hope that they can capitalize on that. The - I think that one of the things that we have to remember in dealing with our growth is that we have to convince the legislators that they have to help us with that growth. That it cannot be all donated dollars. Personally, I pay taxes to support this institution and I would love it when I write my annual gift with the major donors of the institution - when we write our checks I’d like to think that that’s used for scholarships, for supplemental things. I don’t like to think that it’s necessary in order to support the day to day operation of the institution. That’s what they have to do at private institutions but at a public institution I think that that should not be necessary. So I think in looking at growth, that’s the thing that I want us to be careful about is that we continue to consider ourselves an institution for public use and use public funds to support us. But I do think that we’ve done a good job of nurturing our own alumni. We, as I commented earlier, we’ve gone from $1,000 in our pocket to almost $200,000. We have endowed funds, the Ena Harris Berger endowed scholarship fund, the Limited to Fifty endowed scholarship fund, the Alumni Association has a scholarship - an endowed scholarship fund, we have the All of Ireland endowed scholarship fund. We have been instrumental in most of the major gifts that have come to the university. Initially, the alumni contacted me and our returning ? and along the way the alumni got? in the process and so that has been something we have really worked on and it’s not an intentional thing but because the foundation is the recipient of major gifts, they get the credits. I keep telling all of the people - I’m putting this on tape deliberately - because what I keep saying is that Gail has not been out for the grandizement of Gail or for the Alumni Association but for the university but its imperative that the alumni out there feel an identity with the university and the first - many of them need to feel an identity with a smaller entity of the university, that’s the alumni body. There are many who don’t need that and so that’s why we have the foundation they can go directly to that but many people need to feel closer to an office, to an individual, to someone who really cares about them. That’s how we have gotten those endowed gifts. That’s how we got the land gift from Don Ross, $150,000 piece of property because I wrote letters to him expressing interest and concern about his interests and concerns and someone cared enough, If I hadn’t been here someone else would have done it, but it happened to be me. So he feels very close to us as an institution because he got that personal attention. I could tell you about another major gift that was given - I can’t name them but I sat in their home and the person said the reason we’re giving this gift is because of the efforts being made by the Alumni office for Central. They told me specifically that that wasn’t the point. The point was there was someone here who cared and showed special interest in them. So those are the kinds of things that I think represent growth. We didn’t have those kinds of things happening so frequently a few years back. Now there has been about a $5,000 gift this week from a will. Last summer we got $7,000 initially and then when the McConnell’s wife dies we get the rest of the estate. You know, so there are things just happening all the time. Not just because of Gail but because of the university showing that caring and that’s I think what we’re about. The growth we will experience, have experienced and will experience because of that. One of the things that you probably heard about is the alumni logo. An alumnus, Ken Miller, did that for us. He was here in 1927 - I think graduated in ‘27 or ‘28 and I asked him to do a drawing of McConnell Auditorium for us and that has been the Alumni Association’s official logo until two years ago and under the new policy we can no longer have our own logo which again I think is a mistake. It’s losing identity that I think is not appropriate. Everything that the Alumni Association does is for Central, but again for those people we need to have special affiliation with a special entity for the Alumni Association to have its own logo I felt was very important and will always feel that way. So he did that for us. He also did a drawing of the Manashtash Ridge for us that’s out there. But speaking of alums who are to be treasured, he was one. He passed away a few years back. But people like that, people like Ena Berger, people like?. I car’ name dozens. Milt Kuolt, primary donor, he was the one who got our annual fund drive off the dime. He gave us free airline tickets. Are you telling me time’s up?

Putnam: No, just that a minute is left in our time.

Jones: But Milt Kuolt gave us free airline tickets for people donating $100, $300, $500 and for two years and so our annual fund skyrocketed those two years because - I got four, you know, and you could fly anywhere in the system with his - with those tickets. So we did genealogy in Salt Lake City two different times. But Milt Kuolt was a wonderful man, Larry Pint. We could just go on and on.

Putnam: Good, it’s near the end of that tape so now I think we’re ready - we’ve got a couple more - we won’t obviously fill another tape but we’ve been running over with some people because you’ve got a lot of this history we need to have. So we’ll go on here with this other tape and probably you don’t need to do anything on the other side of that, Helen, because we won’t get that far probably but... Well, Gail let’s continue then with you remembering some people who made significant contributions both to Central and as alumni to this office and you had mentioned several and may want to continue here with several.

Jones: I have mentioned Milt Kuolt and I think that just a really brief history on him is good because Milt is a true entrepreneur and I think in my opinion represents what I think maybe all of us would like to be but most of us are not quite brave enough to be. He started off in a very normal situation career wise. He worked for Boeing for about 20 something years and then he decided to go out and do some things on his own and he was the gentlemen who developed Thousand Trails. He made a very great success of that, sold that. He bought Horizon Airlines and made that into a brimming airline, sold that. Bought a resort, the second largest resort in Sun Valley, Idaho. Made a big success of that and now has sold it and now has condominiums on the golf course in Puerta Vallarta and I believe is developing another resort in another place. Larry Lium works for him now. So he has been a very colorful figure in the professional world of our state but also for Central because he’s been a major contributor to various departments on campus and of course to the Alumni Association. He was our Distinguished Alumnus, he’s a personal friend now and he’s married to a wonderful woman and he’s just been a real asset to our program. Another person I think you’ve probably heard of is Louis Richards. He’s the alumnus who developed the hamburger patty making machine. Made a fortune because all of the major fast foods corporations use his machine. He’s a major donor to the university or was when he was living. He developed a three-wheeled car and he brought that to the PINE Spring Show that they have every May. The saddest thing that happened concerning him was that he wanted me to go for a ride in that car and it was one of the few days that I wore a skirt to work. So I couldn’t go for a ride in his car and he died that winter of a brain tumor. He and I were the same age and he died that winter with a brain tumor and I felt - it’s one of those regrets, you know, and I don’t have very many regrets. I usually just go ahead and do but there I was in a skirt so I couldn’t ride in his little - you had to climb in. But anyway, Louis Richards was a major supporter of Central in so many ways and after he died his will continued for some time. The - there are people like Geraldine Six who’s a part of the Brain family trust here in the - as you know we had several members of that family who went to Central. Mildred Masterson McNeilIy was a writer, she wrote historical novels in the Northwest. An interesting lady and she traveled on the first campaign train of President Roosevelt and became personal friends of the entire Roosevelt family until she became too ill to stay involved with them but a wonderful lady, she was named as the Distinguished Alumnus one year. She was a personal friend of John Wayne and of Richard Nixon. Probably one of the funniest stories, when Larry Lium first came here as VP or Director at that time of our fund raising program, he wanted me to go to California to cultivate Mildred because she obviously had tremendous donor potential and also had been nominated for our Distinguished Alumnus Award for two years and so she lived in the Balboa ? and had a condominium there. So here I was flying down to California in January to meet with her and have lunch in this golf club and meet all these people and I was a nervous wreck. This is a woman who rarely gets nervous about anything, and particularly not meeting people but this was something that was a little bit unique. So I was really concerned about what I should wear and all of these things and so 1 went down to Newport, California and went to have lunch with Mildred Masterson, a very glamorous woman, very stunning. You’ve probably seen pictures of her. I saw one yesterday in my collection, but very glamorous woman and very sophisticated. So I met her in the lobby and she took me to her condo. Ruby Keeler had the adjacent condo and at one time Mildred and her husband had both of them but when her husband died she - Ruby decided that she wanted to live closer to Mildred so they had a wall put in, you know replaced, and they had their separate rooms but anyway, personal friends with Mildred Keeler and so I went into the dining room for lunch in Mildred Masterson’s room and I was over dressed. (laughs) I had a gorgeous pant suit, you know, very elegant and no one else there cared, you see. I was the only one there who cared. So I sat there - and of course these people drank Bourbon and water and stuff for lunch, you know, and I would have been like woo woo like this and the woman who ran the club had lunch with us and all of these things. Mildred had a key to John Wayne’s gardens so she could go walk in his gardens every evening and on and on it went and hearing about all of these people - these people who were personal friends of hers. But she had helped write scripts for films, movies and television and of course was I think the first woman reporter for the P1. It wasn’t called the P1 in those days. But she had a really interesting career so really a fun week but there I sat in my gorgeous pant suit and everyone else was much more casually dressed. But I had a pant suit that I wouldn’t need for years. (laughs) Not many occasions to wear it but anyway that was one of the fun events of my life. Other Distinguished Alums include people like Larry Pint, who was a major mover and shaker in the Seattle business world but also just such a quality person. And then Les Reid, who was the gentleman who developed the whole emergency room processes that are used throughout the country. He was the man - he was a doctor and he was doing work in Chicago and one night was assigned emergency room in a Chicago hospital and discovered how poorly equipped most hospitals are to be able to deal with emergency type situations. So he went to work and got federal funds and developed this whole thing that many of you have had to use, emergency room - 911 type things and we’ve done it in several states and it’s amazing that the system is so good and Ellensburg has saved lives for my family three times and its happened in other states as well. So it’s a great service and to realize a Central alum developed it. He was chosen Outstanding Alumnus he had on his guest list Jerry Ford, some of the Kennedy’s, and Nixon - Richard Nixon. We had to send invitations to Commencement to these invitations. It was fun signing those letters. Anyway, we have people out there who have done so much for the world and then of course our young alums like Ron Sims and the woman who’s the President of the Indian College - Wendy Boyd. Anyway, she’s outstanding. We’ve had both of them back as our Special Achievement Awards and Candace Barker, the actress and this coming fall we’re having Brian Thompson, I’m sure you know Brian?

Putnam: Yes indeed.

Jones: And he’s doing quite well and he will be coming back as our Special Achievement Award. The Special Achievement Award was begun to honor the young alums who have done exceptional things within the first 20 years after graduation. By young, I mean time after graduation, it’s that 20 year span that we’re looking at because some of them could be older, you know, but it’s the fact that day to day that they have been able to do something unique during that early time frame. Then, of course, the Distinguished Alumni Award is for an individual who has achieved the ultimate in their professional goals and that does not mean that it is exclusive to CPO’s and that kind of thing, our board considers a person who has been an outstanding public school teacher, done what they’ve really wanted to do and have gone as far as they really wanted to go. So those two awards reflect that.

Putnam: Well if you think of any other names jump back in again, Gail.

Jones: Well I could name all of my board members, you know, all of the presidents of the association. I could just keep you filled with things because there are so many people that have been involved in Central.

Putnam: Well, I wanted you to talk now just a little bit about how your offices function and how it has recorded alumni records and that sort of thing and I recall when I worked across the hall from you as a dean and you were in Barge 310, I can’t remember the number, you were in 3 something and I used to go by your room and 1 just was amazed at the activity in there. Particularly when you got your computers and you were really much ahead of the most of the campus in terms of the records because I do know that we relied heavily on the Alumni office for most of the labels and names of alumni and that sort of thing. Could you share with us sort of the development of that whole record keeping.

Jones: I have to start by giving credit to Bob Lowry who is my predecessor for three years. He actually took the alumni lists from file boxes, from all kinds of - you know the records were kept in a very haphazard way - just on paper like how I like to do things but he took all of those and put them into a computer program that was designed here on campus by Will Garnish and it was a very good program. It was very simplistic but it did what needed to be done at that time and that was to get in the system the names, addresses, the year of graduation, telephone numbers, you know, the basic information about our graduates. What we did in our office after that material was put in to our mainframe computer - what we did then to update material and as we had new graduates, we were given these little cards - remember the old days with key punch and all of that stuff? So, when I came aboard they had one student who worked ten hours a week filling in these little cards with information, address changes, whatever we had that came in through the mail, and then we had - put a new list of graduates when they came in. Whatever we had, 1,000 each year or 2,000, that all had to be written on these little individual cards and sent over to the people in the computer center and then they had to feed it into the machines. Well, about the time you became involved was when we actually got terminals put in our office so we could start doing all of this ourselves. So at that time, we also after a lot of rebel rousting and a lot of letters to Dr. Garrity, to Larry Lium, to everybody I realized we needed more sophistication in our program and - because here we were running fund raising program with no way to keep official records on our fund raising. It all had to be done by hand, paper-wise, and so I went to work to get a new program designed. So we were working on that as well. And we did, I think, finally lined up with probably the best alumni records program ever. We have had people from the SIS company, we have SIS over in the Registrar’s Office and Admissions, and they have an Alumni program that is comparable and they came and looked at ours and they said you don’t want our program because your - our alumni program was so much better. So they did not recommend that we change. So now, for the last umpteen years, probably ten maybe, we have been doing all of that in our own office. We do about 1,500 updates a month. The amount of moving around by alumni is awesome. Now the new seniors are automatically transferred into our system. The thing that we also do is we help a lot with the special organizations. We now have alumni chapters and so we have all of that information. But we can identify every group so that if you need to know who is a member of the Lynnwood Alumni Program and graduated in 1979 and who is a major donor and all of this, we can pull up that information out for you on our system. So there is a lot of detail in that program and it is just absolutely wonderful. But it took a lot of blood, sweat, and tears. I didn’t ever have to cry but I did have to get angry a couple of times because to convince people what we needed wasn’t always easy. And, of course, the powers that be always had to worry about where the money would come from. So I had to pretend like I didn’t know that. (laughs) But anyway, we do have currently a wonderful program. Now that we are doing more fund raising, the new members of our staff realize that our donor program within our system was insufficient and so what they are trying now to do is to find a program that will both cover alumni, major donor program, and also the primary bookkeeping for our area. So they’ve spent a year looking for a new program. They considered me an obstructionist on this one because what I have said to the committee and what I have said to Dr. Nelson personally, repeatedly is that my only concern is to protect alumni in the system. I don’t care whether it’s in an automated fax or where it is but be sure that what we’ve put into this system over all of these years will not be lost. Right now they are looking at the PC system. It’s a small internet that will exclude department from access to the files. So I have been an obstructionist in a sense about this and we’ve laughed about it a lot but I really don’t want us to go back in time and wind up with the alumni the big losers. A year from now I hope I can be cheering about the new program but right now I’m kind of worried.

Putnam: Right, well, I wanted you to sort of end with any contributions you want to make with kind of a statement - a philosophical statement, you know, what is your philosophy as Director of Alumni Affairs and maybe 1 should say before you answer that question, do you have any other comments that you wish to make, any other directions you think maybe we need to go, that we need to pursue? Of course we’ll forget and want to come back to that.

Jones: I think for historical record we probably should mention that we did do the Shaw and the Smyser portrait dedication this spring. With the renovation of the ShawSmyser Building, it was discovered that there was a very wonderful portrait of Professor Smyser but all they had was a photograph or Professor Shaw. So it was decided that a portrait would be commissioned to be done of Professor Shaw and we did that. Kay Crimp, a local artist, was recommended by about ten different people and because she is an alumnus, she did the portrait for us at a very reasonable price. We had both portraits framed in comparable framing and had a wonderful dedication. That was April 21 st, a very memorable day in the lives of the family members and many people returned, both alumni and friends of the university because of the S haw...

Putnam: And this was 1995? This was this year?

Jones: Nineteen ninety five, this year, April 21st. Just a beautiful day for everybody concerned and about three weeks later the portraits were ripped from the walls and have not been found. So that has been a real, real sad thing for me because the daughter of each of the individuals, each daughter has become a personal friend and so to have that happen was just a real blow. I think historically that should be acknowledged.

Putnam: Yes, right.

Jones: I guess that in looking back over what we’ve tried to accomplish, the board and my husband and myself, is that Central has a tremendous history with its alumni. I think it has much much more love and dedication from its older alumni than any institution I’ve ever heard of. I’ve talked to other Alumni Directors, I’ve talked to alumni whose friends have attended universities and they just - they say that their friends don’t have the same feelings toward their institution that these individuals have. So all through my career I’ve tried to figure out why there is a difference. I use the term unique and I used that one time in a meeting with the deans in the Development Council and Don Cummings, knowing that I’m an English major, kind of chided me. He said, ‘I think you’re misusing the word,’ and I said, ‘No I’m not.’ Because I said in talking with alumni, I find that indeed they believe Central is unique because they found that when they were here at Central that the faculty really cared. That the administrators really cared. Most of our administrators through the years have been back and become administrators so that they felt that there was a bonding between them and the faculty and administrators that they did not sense in their friends about other institutions. So that, I think, is the essence of Central. I think the reason we are here still and will be here 100 years from now is because we have a tendency to get people to come to Central with that caliber. Those who aren’t leave. The great majority of those who stay understand what we are all about. The beautiful thing that I have seen is that - like in our area, the advancement area, we hire people to come in as professionals, professional people in the area of fund raising and that in very few months, they become Central people who are professionals. When you can see that happen you know that we are Ivy League. We are not run of the mill. We are not a major research institution. We are not a Julliard. We are not whatever. What we are is basic elements of life institution and that’s how it should be and so I think that we have a mission in this office and every office on campus to continue to educate in this way.

Putnam: Well, thank you very much Gail for your?

Jones: You betcha.