CWU LIVING HISTORY PROJECT

JANE JONES

Putnam: This is June 27, 1996 and we are interviewing Jane Jones, a member of our music department for a number of years. I am Jean Putnam. I am going to be the interviewer. Helen Smith is our camera person. So let’s start, Jane, with - we’d like to have you tell us a little bit about your background. Where were you born, a little bit about your family, and then maybe leading into your education and then ultimately coming to Central.

Jones: Okay, I was born over in Centralia in 1920 if you can believe that. My father was a jeweler there. My mother taught piano for years and had one brother two years younger. I went through schools there in Centralia and onto junior college in Centralia. Graduated in ‘40 and that immediate summer in June I came to Central and Wayne Hertz immediately put me on the piano bench in the choir rehearsals and I stayed there for quite a while. So, I went that summer plus the next year - that was 1941 - or ‘40 and ‘41. The next summer also - the summer of ‘41. So I came out with a three year certificate because you didn’t need a B.A. then. Immediately went to teach in Renton that fall and that was the year that the war broke out and there were blackout shades and blinders on car’s headlights, you know, and it was a pretty upsetting time. Of course, we all walked to school and lived in a rooming house with three other graduates from Central and walked across town to school. Well, I taught music that year to the - in this elementary school and also P.E. every other half hour. It was a real good arrangement. Then the second year I taught instrumental music every other half an hour and I had violins and violas and cello and the brasses and the woodwinds and I started all kinds of people on instruments and it was fun. Then that following summer which was ‘42 I came back to school and got my degree. Then I stayed one more year in Renton. Enjoyed it very much and decided I wanted to go closer to Seattle because I was studying organ with Arville Belstad who was the organist that played at Plymouth Congregational Church. So, I got a job at Meany seventh and eighth grade center up on Capitol Hill and it was a good two years. Homer Davis was the principal and during those days the wonderful thing was the fact that we had a subsidy from the government to pay four teachers to stay after school until five o’clock because so many parents were working in the war plants - Boeing and so forth. So, the two P.E. teachers and I was the music teacher and a shop teacher all stayed two extra hours every day so that these kids didn’t have to go home while there was nobody at home and I think that’s something that could be repeated at this point. So I stayed in Renton two years and then the war ended and I married a fellow who was the cello player in our high school orchestra. I played string bass and piano and we moved to Eugene because that’s where he wanted to live. He’d gone to the University of Oregon. So we lived there I think - oh many years. I think about 27 and eventually in ‘59 I took a job at the Eugene Public Schools. I made - I had substituted from January to June that year at junior high teaching chorale and they wanted me to take the job the next fall and I declined because I had children and I had to help with our insurance office. Then five days before school started I got a call, “Jane, would you take the job of assistant elementary music coordinator? So and so just resigned.” Five days before school started. Well, I took the job and was there for, let’s see, 13 years I guess. After one year the coordinator went to Columbia to get her doctorate and they didn’t replace her so I was the only one to help over 500 elementary school teachers with their music in the classroom because we had no music specialists. Well, it was a pretty big job but I enjoyed it very very much. We had some wonderful things that happened in Eugene. We used to have the San Antonio Symphony come and the Cleveland Symphony every other year and we had 90 bus loads of fifth and sixth graders brought in from the surrounding county and we would have concerts in MacArthur Court there on the campus, you know. It was wonderful, just wonderful. I’d send out music to prepare the children for what they were going to hear and it was a good 13 years. Then about the time - well, let’s see, I started in ‘60 - ‘60, ‘61, and ‘62 in the summers and came back to Central and got my masters and brought my three little girls with me and when I finished that I got a divorce. So from then on I was raising my kids by myself. They all graduated from high school there in Eugene. Donna was the first to graduate and I sent her to Central and Wayne Hertz gave her a part time job in the music office which helped her get through school and she graduated in ‘69. Went over to Kirkland to teach and Evie went one year to Bellingham and then she got married. She didn’t want to go to college anymore and Kathy graduated I guess it was in ‘70 - no ‘7 - anyway, she graduated. When she graduated, she went to the University of Washington on three scholarships. So that year which was ‘70-’71 I decided to take a sabbatical from Eugene and they covered my job with somebody else and I went with the University of Oregon German Music Center program to Germany and it was a wonderful year. I would not trade that year for anything. It was so great and I lived with a German couple who are like a brother and sister to me and the amazing thing is, 20 years later - 25 years later I discovered I had German ancestry 10 miles from where I lived with them. I went back and we had a great time digging my roots. Anyway, so much for that. You can tell, I’m an avid genealogist. So, let’s see, when I got back from Germany - oh, Donna got married that summer and then in November I got a letter a letter from Wayne, “Start thinking about next year.” Meaning coming to Central. And so the next year I did come to Central. That was 1972 and you know some wonderful things have happened in Eugene that really prepared me well for working with future teachers. We had gotten from the Ford Foundation a grant for $200,000 to create an arts core curriculum and so in one school, at Edgewood School, we had an art specialist, a music specialize, a P.E. specialist and so forth, you know, and some wonderful things happened during that program. Anyway, I came up here in 1972. Started my teaching. I came as an Assistant Professor. I didn’t have a doctorate. Never did get a doctorate. But, shall we just take a little tiny break here?

(turned tape off)

Putnam: Well Jane, let’s continue here. You had mentioned that you had arrived

and Dr. Hertz asked you to come. Do you want to kind of start from there?

Jones: Okay. I think the reason, of course, Dr. Hertz had known me since 1940 and I’d played for - accompanied lots of his students and his choir but just before that year - it was in 1971 that the national conference was in Seattle - the National Music Educators Conference and I gave a presentation on the stage of the Opera House with about 15 other elementary people and my assignment was to work with a class of first graders developing concepts of melody. Well, it went over with a huge success and I had a first grade classroom from Charles Walgren’s first grade school in Seattle and Charles was Wayne’s son-in-law. So anyway, it was an exciting time because I worked with this class of first graders on high and low, loud and soft, you know, and these sorts of things and gradually developing into the major scale which they did a lot of interesting things. The last thing that happened was they were - eight children were to pick up tone bars for the C major scale and then they were to get themselves in the proper order and so F was stationary, that bar, and each kid had to come up and listen to his and listen to the F and if it was higher they had to get on the right side of it and if it was lower they had to get on the left. If there was anybody else there they had to listen to them too. Well, when it came time for the G and the A they got mixed up and they were reversed and I didn’t say a word. My daughter just kind of flinched. She thought, “Mom, why didn’t you do anything about it?” I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to. So when they played the scale those kids just switched like that and it brought down the house. The Opera House was full of people. Well, anyway, Wayne Hertz started after me to come back to Central and since it was my alma mater it wasn’t a very hard decision. So –

Putnam: What were some of your assignments when you got here? What kinds of things did you teach or did you do? What were you assigned to?

Jones: Okay, I was teaching the music education courses. I had the beginning one for the education majors, the people that were going to be classroom teachers. Then I also had another one for music majors, for people who were majoring in music who were going to be specialists. Then I taught some class piano also and a little tiny bit of private for the people who had to pass a proficiency exam. Those were the music majors and they didn’t have enough skills to pass the exam so I had some of those privately but most of my work was in music education which I enjoyed very very much. One very interesting thing that I found working with music majors and working with education majors was in their outlook on children was completely different. The music majors were oriented to performance and the ed majors were more child oriented and one time somebody - a music major couldn’t take the class at the right time or maybe it was - yeah that was it. So I allowed him to come into the non major class, and you know, it was amazing. Then I started letting some of the non majors come into the major class because these two groups of students learned so much from each other. The non majors were such creative, such child oriented people and the music majors, you know, were not like that so much and they learned a lot from each other. Every now and then there would be a super lesson in a non major class that I wished the majors could see, you know. So I started letting them cross and the registrar was willing to double list them so I had quite a few non majors in with the majors. They learned a lot from them and vice versa. So that was interesting. Let’s see.

Putnam: So you - basically you were in music education and now how long did you teach at Central? Do you know approximately how many years?

Jones: Thirteen years. I came in as an Assistant Professor, was promoted to Associate and eventually to Full Professor. Then I retired in 1985.

Putnam: Good. Well let’s go back here a little bit and let me pick some things up that we might be interested in. First, what faculty and administrators in your department or outside your department - faculty and/or administrators - what were some of the people that were outstanding that kind stuck in your mind as being - making a rather valuable contribution to the University?

Jones: Well, of course Jim Brooks was president and I always enjoyed him and then Dr. Garitty came and some of the people in the ed department, Ron Frye, Bob Carlton, Doris Jakubek, these people, you know, and I always went - in fact I was on the teacher ed council. You remember, Jean, that sometimes we went up to the Old Camp Field to retreats and that of course now is Sleeping Lady which it has been purchased by Harriet Bullitt and Central is even having Elder Hostels out there and I went to one a couple months ago and it was wonderful. She’s redone the old stone church and two of our people on this campus - string players have a quartet with the two people that are running the music center up there. So, there are I guess 50 students from Quincy, Wenatchee, Leavenworth, and Cashmere in that music school. So, it’s kind of exciting what’s happened up there at Old Camp Field where we used to go for education retreats. You know, one thing that I should have mentioned was my sabbatical from Central. When I went to England for a year it was with the same program from the University of Oregon. The first one was the German Music Center Program and that year we traveled all over Europe looking at music education in various countries from the high school, the Orff Institute, we went to Britain and watched an arts corps curriculum. Then in ‘78 and ‘79 I went on the same program to Reading, England through the University of Oregon and that year I was also teaching a class for them. Again, we went around Britain looking at music education and that year I did an exciting project. I got so infatuated going to all of the art galleries and of course we had gone to so many in Germany. They used to say one art gallery is like them all. One cathedral is the same as all the rest, you know. We’d go to so many things like this but anyway, I got so infatuated with the paintings and I started researching the lives of painters. I was interested to see if any had musical associations. Well, I found one painter played Bach every morning to warm up before he painted. Another was from a musical family and his father had musical get togethers every Monday night. It’s amazing how many of these people have interests across the arts and I did quite a study of that and even made a presentation here on campus with art prints and things like this. It was fascinating.

Putnam: Before you go on, Jane, I’m interested, you know, you studied - you went to all these schools - districts whatever in Europe, how different did they approach music education than we do here or did it seem to be quite similar?

Jones: It was similar in many ways. They didn’t have textbook materials that were as good as ours and they were very interested at that time with the Silver Burdett materials that I was able to show them and eventually I think Silver Burdett even marketed over in England.

Putnam: So it was very similar, in other words?

Jones: Yes.

Putnam: To what we were doing here in the United States. Now, I had started out by asking the question what administrators and faculty come to mind and you mentioned a few. Can you describe some of your recollections of what were they like. Like - and I don’t know - you, of course, worked for Dr. Hertz. What was he like to work for?

Jones: He was a - he’s still a great guy. He’s still living. He just had his 88th birthday but he is not doing well. Everybody knew Pappy Hertz was the boss but he had such a jovial manner, you know, that people accepted him, you know. He could usually get what he wanted and he ran a very tine department. High standards.

Putnam: Good. Do you remember, since we are speaking of him and I know we were going to speak about this maybe later, the building was named after Hertz. Was that while he was still here?

Jones: Yes.

Putnam: How did that come about?

Jones: I think he was the first employed person, was he not, to have a building named after them?

Putnam:  I think so.

Jones: I think so. Yes. And I have a picture of him. I’ve been gathering a lot of pictures to make a collage of his life at Central and I have one that I found. He’s in the

- one of the door ways by the foot of the stairs going into the concert hail and the workman is working down in the threshold and Pappy is pointing to something and my comment under that tells him how - “Pappy tells him how to do it.” That’s kind of the way he approached things, you know.

Putnam: Do you remember anything about either Jim Brooks or any of the others that you have mentioned? What they were like or what your association with them was?

Jones: Well, you know the thing that always pleased me about Jim Brooks and also Don Garitty were they were both so interested in the music program and they came to concerts. Don Garitty, of course, was a clarinetist and he came to lots of concerts. They really were very supportive of what went on in the music department.

Putnam: Okay, let’s move on here and ask - do you recall - do you have any memories of the relationship between faculty and the administration? Was that ever - you know, did you ever feel there was any distance between the two or why there might have been?

Jones: Well, you know, there’s always problems on campuses no matter where you go and sometimes they are more serious than other times but I don’t think there was ever a problem on our campus that will equal doing away with the Hertz parking lot or this business about putting a taco restaurant in the SUB. You know, those two things have really nailed a wedge between the community and the campus. It’s sad. It’s very sad.

Putnam: Now, the Hertz parking lot was - is being removed at the present time for the science building - the new science building that is going in.

Jones: It is closed down now for the summer. I understand part of it will be - will remain, but I don’t know how much exactly.

Putnam: Okay. Let’s move on here and see if we can find - you talked about the parking lot and did you want to say anything about the taco incident or just the fact that it did kind of split town and gown?

Jones: Yes. They are making tacos, I think, now on campus or else they are going to. They are making them I think.

Putnam: What about - now, let’s see - we named - we talked about Hertz being named after a living person. What about the publish and perish philosophy of many universities? What do you remember? Did you do - feel that you had to do any publishing in order to maintain your - or to get a promotion? How do you feel about that?

Jones: Oh yes, I think everybody has to publish in order to get promoted. One that I - one article that I wrote for Voice, Voice of the Music Educators - Washington Music Educators was on homogenized music methods classes and that was what I already described to you, mixing the majors and minors because they do learn so much from each other and that was published February of 1981. Then I wrote another one which my daughter was so impressed with that I called it, “Gee Mom, What Great Ammunition.” It was quotations in support of the arts and music education and that was published also in the Washington Music Educators Journal in March of 1988. Then I did another one in May of ‘92 in that journal after I retired and I called it, “So You’re Over the Hill,” and it was just the importance of keeping occupied and doing worthwhile things after you retire. Of course, after I retired, let’s see it was in 1987, I guess, that I started the reading program, the literacy program and I did that for seven years.

Putnam: Here in the community.

Jones: In the community, uh huh. It was kind of attached to YVC in Yakima - Yakima Valley Community College because they - all community colleges I guess have literacy programs. So I did that for some time and then finally decided that it was somebody else’s turn and I got some certificates of appreciation for that. Another thing that I published was The Pocketbook of Theory For the Classroom Teacher and that was a simple little theory book - basic theory simply stated for people that don’t know one note from another or the scales or the chords or anything like this which helped the non majors play the autoharp to songs that the kids were singing and I have since redone that and gotten in copyrighted and they used it last fall again in the music classes and even the community people have purchased those. Let’s see, and then in 1972 I published an article in the Oregon Music Educator, “My Year in Deutchland,” and looking at music education here and there. Then, let’s see, I did one on music and international language, March 1985 in the Music Educator’s Journal in Washington. Then I did a presentation on campus before I retired on “Music and the Painter’s Canvas.” It was an outgrowth of that research I did in England the year I was there and I had slides of paintings, you know, and told about the painters and their association with music and it’s really quite interesting. One man had painted a picture of an orchestra that had four bassoons in it which is quite unusual and well, one man had a brother who was editor of a Paris music journal or something and always giving him tickets to the concerts and other things and he would sit where he could sketch the positions of the players in the orchestra, you know, and then he would paint it. Several paintings of orchestras and operas and things like this, So it’s - one composer even wrote a group of pieces. One of the pieces is “The Twittering Machine, “the painting by Paul Clay and it was written - a piece of music was written to represent “The Twittering Machine.” So some interesting things I discovered on that research project.

Putnam: Sounds like you were very busy with all of those things.

Jones: I had lots of fun.

Putnam: Well, let’s move on here and I’m not sure - you already mentioned some of the contributions that you’ve made to the progress of the department and school. Were there any other comments that you wanted to make about that?

Jones: Well, I was also active in some campus committees, symposium committees. One year we had a symposium called, “Big and Small: Visions of the Human World” and that was fun. As I remember Barry Toelken from the University of Oregon came and participated in that. Then there was a musical group in California called Footnote and we brought them here for two concerts and part of this as I remember was to raise money to buy Orff instruments. I was always selling T-shirts and - chocolate bars - Ron Fry I’ll never forget all the chocolate bars he bought from me so that we had money to buy Crlf instruments that I learned about so much in Germany. Then we had another one, “The Festival of Arts: King Tut” and that was in ‘78, the year they had the similar festival over in Seattle. So I was on those committees and, of course, always on the teacher ed council. Then when I was in Germany I went to an Orff instrument institute that following summer for two weeks and there I met Trudy Hall who’s a fabulous Orff clinician and several years later in 1975 with Al Eberhart’s help in the business office we managed to bring Trudy to this country and - to do Orff sessions here on campus for two weeks and that was an exciting thing and she came back a second year. Three years ago when I went to Germany I went to visit her in Hamburg. She’s now retired also and so we’ve kept up our friendship all these years.

Putnam: That’s great. Okay, so those were the major committees, lot’s of them, and what about the programs? Were there any other programs or activities on the campus that you were involved with or are there any of the activities or the programs that you want to make any comments about that you felt were strong and played a valuable part in the University? Were there any that you were not as supportive of for whatever reason?

Jones: Well, you know, we’ve always had Japanese students come into our campus and the year the mountain blew, I’m sure it was –

Putnam: Eighty?

Jones: Eighty, yeah. Did we have Japanese students here that early? Anyway, I had some Japanese students that had visited a class or something and they came to my house - I think it was my birthday and I made a big birthday cake so they would see how we celebrated birthdays. I had this big tub of ash by the back door and they were so infatuated with it, they all wanted to take some home. So I got little medicine bottles from Ostranders, you know, little prescription bottles and each took a bottle of ash home with them. Then later when Shimane University students were here they used to - there was one hour in the day they used to like to send them to visit classes and three or four of them had gone to a math class and they didn’t like it. I don’t think they could understand it but anyway, the next day they came to my class and I only had five students in that class that summer. It was an advanced music methods for people who had already been out teaching, you know, so they were in that class and the next day three or four more of them came so I ended up with about eight Japanese in that class and my own five and we worked a lot with the Orff instruments and composing music. I gave each group a different scale. As I remember, I had three people in a group and each was to write a song, you know, with some certain scale. Then we ended up - well let’s see - yeah, we ended up writing new words to happiness and the Japanese have to come up with the words too. What had been happy things that happened to them in that class? Well, it was just great. Then, let’s see, we did something else. What was it? Anyway, oh I know, I tried to work some things into that class that would give them some background in music in our country like Stephen Foster and some of these names. They already knew about Stephen Foster. My music students didn’t know much about Stephen Foster. That really amazed me.

Putnam: It should have amazed your students.

Jones: Yeah. So anyway, that was such a wonderful experience that I ended up

- I had pictures and I ended up compiling it in a booklet and Dr. Garitty was so impressed with it that he had it printed and he sent one to Shimane University and the people who were in the class.

Putnam: That sounds neat.

Jones: So that was fun.

Putnam: Any other programs or activities that you recall instances in?

Jones: Well, let’s see. I can’t think of anything right now. Why don’t we take a tiny break and let me go through this and see if I’ve missed anything.

Putnam: Okay.

(turned tape off)

Putnam: Okay, let’s continue here Jane. Could you talk to us about the honors and awards that you received throughout your career?

Jones: Well, when I was at Central I was a member of Sigma Mu Epsilon and in Eugene I became a member of Mu Phi Epsilon alum chapter and also was invited to belong to Delta Kappa Gamma and then here at Central, Phi Delta Kappa. Then, let’s see, in 1990, that was the time I was working at the literacy program after I retired. Phi Delta Kappa gave me an award for that year, Outstanding Educator Award for working with literacy and then in ‘91 Governor Pritchard traveled around the state visiting the literacy locations and I was awarded a Washington Distinguished Citizen Award for my work here in that respect. Then in ‘92 the Soroptomist Club gave me Soroptomist Woman of Achievement Award.

Putnam: Well that is very impressive, Jane. Before we leave the literacy program, would you tell us a little bit more detail how you set it up, what it involved, which students you worked with because I think that’s very important?

Jones: We had all kinds of students. The reason I got into it, you know, I wasn’t an ed major. I mean, well I was music but I had never really even taught reading except in my student teaching but I heard a come-along I guess you call it on T.V. from Yakima about helping people who had trouble reading and I thought, “Well, gee, maybe that’s something I could do now that I’m retired if they tell me what to do and how to do it.” So I called and they invited me to a session and ended up coercing me into starting the program over here and with their help I did. Dee Tadlock was in the program then and so I don’t know. I prevailed upon some retired teachers here - Irma Smith and Anna Sullivan and some people who knew a lot about literacy and teaching reading and they joined us and we really got quite a fine program going. It met Monday, Wednesday, and Friday from nine until eleven at the YVC location here in town and you know, we had over the seven years I was there, I don’t know how many students we had but we’d have anywhere from five to 18 in there, you know. It was really exciting. We had people from Thailand, from China, from all kinds of places, Poland and from Peru. We have a person working on the campus now at the library who was a Polish refugee. She came here and couldn’t speak any English. She was in our program six months. She is working in circulation in the library now and has been for several years. We had a Peruvian couple. Just the nicest people and he is now head of one of the housing groups of men that take care of several dorms and his wife is on the payroll - the whatever you call it - the work force at the cannery, Twin Cities and she even gets called now in the winter if they need people to do packaging. So we’ve had some outstanding people that bloomed in our country after they were in that program.

Putnam: That sounds absolutely wonderful, the contribution to the community.

Jones: And then we had people who had never learned to read in school, you know. Several people who had injuries in industry or something but their reading skills weren’t good enough to get a job. So it was kind of exciting to see what you could do and help people like that.

Putnam: Good, well Jane, as we conclude our interview here, I’d like to have you first focus back on your years here at Central and I’d like to have you - could you share with us just in general your philosophy of teaching? How you approached your subject matter with your students?

Jones: Well, I guess I’d say you take everybody where they are and you take them as far as you can.

Putnam: Good, so you’re individualizing more or less?

Jones: And try to instill in them the joys of imparting music to other people or whatever it is you are imparting to other people.

Putnam: So it is more of a whole approach instead of a –

Jones: I had wonderful friendships with any number of students and still in contact with a few.

Putnam: Good. Well, as we end, I don’t know if you have any other things that are coming to mind. But we would like to have you just give us an overview of what has Central meant to you? How do you perceive Central here as we leave you?

Jones: I’ve always had a warm spot in my heart for Central. I still do. Sure there are problems when you are employed and teaching, you know, but the joys and the positive things that happen overshadow the other things and I don’t even think about all the turmoil, you know. It’s the happy things and associations that stay in your mind.

Putnam: Well, thank you very much, Jane, for being willing to be here with us today.

Jones: I’m so glad that I came here as a junior in my undergrad work, did my graduate work here and taught here.

Putnam: Wonderful, thank you Jane.