Interview with David Weidemann, 05/02/2016

TP: Alright, my name is Tyler Pugh and today is the 2nd of May, 2016, and this is for the Campus Stories Oral History Project for UW-Oshkosh, and I am here with David Weidemann-Weidemann?

DW: Weidemann.

TP: Weidemann, okay. And today we're going to be talking about his experience at UW-Oshkosh, as well as some background information of his life and as well as some post college information. So, to start off basically I wanna talk about some background aspects of your life. First, where did you grow up and what was it like?

DW: I grew up on a dairy farm in Columbus, Wisconsin. Went to Columbus High School and graduated there in 1961.

TP: Okay, and where's Columbus, Wisconsin exactly?

DW: Columbus is about 30 miles from Madison.

TP: Okay.

DW: It's about 60 miles from Oshkosh.

TP: Okay. You said you grew up on a dairy farm. So did you have to work on the dairy farm a lot?

DW: I had a brother and he and I helped with the... it was 160 acres and he and I helped run the farm. We were fortunate because he liked livestock and I didn't and I liked working the land and he didn't. So we had kind of a natural split there and my dad could... put me on the tractor and put my brother in the, milking the cows and just keep track of both of us and...

TP: Okay

DW: It worked out good.

TP: Okay. So what were your parents or even your grandparents like? And maybe 00:02:00other family members; what were they, what were they like?

DW: Well my mom and dad were... neither one of them went to college and they were very accommodating for everything I did in high school, and I had a sister also who's 10 years younger but when I was at home, she, you know she was ten years behind me, so there was

TP: Mmhm

DW: Quite a difference there, but my folks always managed to get the milking done, get the chores done, and do whatever needed to be so that they could come to a ball game, they could come to an event. Whatever it might be and they were...they were pretty neat people that way.

TP: Okay. Now you mentioned I'd go to a ball game or something, were you involved in sports as a child?

DW: I was out for football, basketball, and track in high school. And I was a 00:03:00letter winner in all three of those. I was in the high school band, I was on the student council. Kind of just involved in a lot of things but I was not into the dramatic stuff and plays and all that.

TP: Okay. [unclear] you said you lived with your parents obviously, but where did the rest of your family live, were they in the same town of Columbus or were they in Wisconsin or were they out of state?

DW: The rest of my family meaning?

TP: Meaning like your grandparents or other relatives.

DW: I only knew one set of my grandparents and they lived in Waterloo, which was about 20 miles from Columbus. The other set of grandparents had passed on before I rem- before I knew them. Yeah, then my brother is a year and a half younger than I am and my sister's ten years younger than I am, but other than that 00:04:00[unclear] was...that was pretty much it. My mother had a sister who lived in Waterloo, my aunt, and my dad had some brothers and sisters who lived in the Madison area and some other small towns around Columbus.

TP: Okay. Alright. So can you give me some, I guess information about the, your neighborhood? Did you have a lot of friends or did you live near a lot of your friends or anybody?

DW: Well we lived on a farm

TP: Mmhm.

DW: And [unclear] we were 4 miles west of Columbus.

TP: Okay.

DW: And...you know it's a little different living on a farm than it is in the city, because when you wanna do anything, you have to either ride your bike there and you know, I'm talking in the, in the 50s now...

TP: Mmhm

DW: And either ride your bike there, or friends had to get to your, your place, and friends always enjoyed coming out to the farm.

TP: Oh really?

DW: Some of the stuff that we would consider chores and work, they considered fun.

TP: It was kind of a new experience for them.

DW: It was new experience, you know, and it was one of those deals where when I look back on it, it was, it was...we took a lot for granted that was, was really really a great experience, and...You know we'd, I learned to drive when I was probably nine or ten years old.

TP: Okay. So your family had a car then, or had...

DW: We had a car, and then we, my dad bought an old, he always bought old [junkers?] that we would take the trunk door off and then we would, we had chickens out in the field and we would have to haul water and feed and stuff to 00:06:00the chickens and that's how my brother and I learned to drive.

TP: Okay so [unclear] chores on the farm?

DW: We also put up hay, with what was called a hay loader at the time, and you don't see those anymore, but it'd cut the hay and rake it into a windrow, and then you'd straddle that windrow with a vehicle, and then that hay loader would, would kick the hay up onto a truck and you'd load it. And I remember driving a ton and a half truck. They were all standard shift. And my dad would get the truck going at the speed that he wanted it and then I would sit on the seat on my knees and steer the truck straddling this row of hay

TP: (laughs)

DW: And he would be up on the truck loading it and stacking it and then when the truck would get full, I remember he'd go from the top of the hay, jump to the 00:07:00top of the cab on the truck, from there down to a fender, and then fender onto the ground and then he would stop the truck. The only way I could stop it would be to turn the key off, cause I couldn't reach the brake, couldn't reach the peddle, nothing. And all I did was steer, but I mean that's all we, that's how [unclear] farming back then, that's how you got along. And we learned to drive tractors and all that stuff too. So it was, it was a neat experience and you know, we used to have to drive tractor and cultivate corn and this or that, and, my friends from, from Columbus, from the city of Columbus would come out and they'd just think that was the coolest thing. In fact, I have a best friend who, when my dad passed away twenty years ago or so now, [unclear] got a note from this best friend and what remembered about my dad was how patient he was and he 00:08:00let this friend of mine drive the tractor, and one day he drove it into a fence and my dad didn't even get mad. But, it's those kinds of things that we just get, you know that's that's [unclear] the way we were brought up and like say these other people, the kids from the city just used to think that was [unclear] cool.

TP: Right, right. Some of them have maybe never even seen a tractor before, maybe they haven't been out of the city at all.

DW: Well it's a farming, it's a small community so they knew what tractors were, they never had a chance to drive them or anything and you know, we'd have to harvest our crops and back then, farmers were pretty self-sufficient. Small family farms as opposed to the big mega farms now.

TP: Mmhm

DW: And everybody kinda, every farmer kinda had their own set of equipment and then some farmers would share it and you'd go together on it, [unclear] more 00:09:00expensive then you'd say go together, but yeah it was one of the, it was a, it was a culture that was, was really a, a great environment to grow up in.

TP: Okay. How long everyday would you say you had to do chores, did you have to do them, like maybe before school and after school, or just one or the other?

DW: My dad and, well my mother too, they were really good about it because usually, I didn't have to do, nor my brother, we didn't have to do many chores in the morning.

TP: Okay

DW: And at night both of us were involved in athletics so we had practice afterwards, so we would do what we needed to do, and sometimes we'd have to go down before we went to bed and make sure the cows were all okay in the barn and stuff and we'd...on weekends we'd be driving tractor a lot and, course, you know there's a lot more work on the farm during the summer than there is in the 00:10:00winter. So all that crop, planting and cultivating and harvesting and all that stuff that took place, you know basically from April or May until October, so a lot of that was done during the summer months.

TP: Okay. Okay this kind of goes hand in hand with your, with your family background, but how important would you say religion or church was in your household?

DW: It was pretty important, my, my folks always wanted, wanted me to go to church on Sunday, they'd take me, you know back then you couldn't drive of course, they had to take me in and...I really...how would I say this...I learned, I learned to grow in the church also and I became active in the church 00:11:00and I would be a lay reader for scripture and things like that. I remember our church used to have a Sunrise Easter Service. And we had a cemetery in Columbus that was up on a hill, and we'd always have the Sunrise Service on that hill so you could see the sun come up, and I remember taking part in that. As for the church, I'd, I'd be a reader or something for that and so. Religion got to be a pretty important part of my life and then when I left high school and came here to college, I went to church regularly, and, when I got married we, we stayed active in the church at that time too. Still am.

TP: Okay. What denomination was your church, was it Lutheran or Catholic?

DW: It was Methodist.

TP: Okay, Methodist.

DW: Yup, when I grew up it was Methodist. And then I went to the Methodist 00:12:00church here when I went to Oshkosh. Algoma Methodist Church is where I went. And then when we got married, my wife was a member of United, Emanuel United Church of Christ on the south side of town and then we moved from Oshkosh to Winneconne and joined the Presbyterian Church there, and have been Presbyterian ever since. It's been Protestant all the way through.

TP: Okay, okay. Other than the other activities you mentioned for church, like being a lay reader, or this Sunrise Easter Service, were there any other activities you did with your church, like any, maybe like any service projects or anything like that?

DW: There was a youth group that was mainly social, and back then there wasn't a lot of service component to the youth, it was more social, and, and church related as opposed to programs in the community and things like that.

TP: Kind of community building, it wasn't really focused on that?

DW: We didn't, we didn't do much of that.

TP: Okay. Okay. Aside from church, were there any other organizations you were involved in in your community?

DW: When I was younger I was involved in 4H. Which at the time was agricultural...youth group type of thing. And now 4H is open to, even the high schools here in Oshkosh have 4H clubs and stuff. But that would've, would've been about the only other thing.

TP: Okay. Alright, nothing else really stood out at all?

DW: No.

TP: Okay. Alright, with that we can move on to education, and this will be mainly focused on elementary up through high school. So can you tell me a little 00:14:00bit about the, the schools you attended? Maybe start with how your elementary school was and then move up to high school.

DW: Well as I said before, we lived four miles from town, so we rode the bus every day.

TP: Okay.

DW: We got picked up at the, at our driveway, and then, then we rode the bus into town. It was a typical small town, educational set up, elementary school was, I remember my first male teacher was a sixth grade teacher. Other than that I had all female teachers. And it was...it was just a small town, small town school.

TP: Right, right.

DW: And you knew everybody, everybody knew you.

TP: Okay. What were some of your interests in I guess mainly in high school, but 00:15:00did you have any that you enjoyed in elementary or I guess what we would call middle school now or junior high school?

DW: Nothing stands out, at that point. I always liked math and I wound up coming to Oshkosh here and wound up with graduating with a math major. I did enjoy it. And I had some good math teachers that helped, I think helped, for you know, helped instill that, that interest in math. I didn't care for history (laughs) and English and stuff like that. So, yeah it was, but that was, from the academic side, that was probably my favorite.

TP: Okay. Did you take any foreign language in high school at all?

DW: I did (smiles). At the time they only thing they offered was Latin

TP: Oh really?

DW: I had two years of Latin.

TP: Okay.

DW: Yup (laughs).

TP: Did you ever continue that in college or no?

DW: No, (laughs) no.

TP: Okay, how important was school to you, like high school?

DW: I look back on it, high school was, was really a great experience. I was involved in athletics and I was fortunate that I had some skills so I was on the starting teams for the sports I was involved in and, you know you learn to appreciate friends and you make friends and you learn some discipline and you learn some skills and you learn teamwork and you learn how to win you learn how to lose, and all of that, it's all cliché, but it does translate over into 00:17:00other phases of your life and, and I think that really, the whole athletics, was a big part of my high school career.

TP: Okay, so throughout high school when did you start to think about college?

DW: I guess I probably started when I started high school, I'm thinking what am I gonna do beyond high school, I didn't wanna go into farming. My brother did. My brother wound up buying the farm from my dad.

TP: Okay.

DW: And so he, he was interested in the agricultural farming end of it, I was not and, I guess, I really, I really didn't think of anything other than 00:18:00teaching at the time, because nursing wasn't a big, it wasn't a career, business wasn't a career. Most of that stuff at that time was pretty much self-taught, you didn't get into a lot of that. But as I got into college, then some more of those professional curricula started to develop. But I'd always been interested in teaching and that was my, my goal was to be a, a math teacher and a coach, and then...well after I graduated some things changed here, (laughs) so I never did wind up teaching.

TP: Alright, did you have a lot of friends growing up in high school?

DW: A lot of friends.

TP: Okay.

DW: Lotta friends, in a small, I think it's indicative of a small town. Everybody did that and we, we were, we did things as a group of friends, both at 00:19:00that time the boys and girls, we just did things as a group. It wasn't a boyfriend girlfriend necessarily, but it was, we had probably eight or ten of us, a dozen of us, and we used to do a lot of things together.

TP: Okay.

DW: And parents were, parents were big there too and they took an interest in us and we respected them and they looked out for us.

TP: Okay. You mentioned it wasn't really like a boyfriend girlfriend thing, but did you have a lot of girlfriends growing up or no?

DW: I didn't have any girlfriends till high school.

TP: Okay.

DW: I'd go I'd, I would date quite a few people and I wound up, my senior year I wound up dating a person regularly. Then when I went to college, she was still in high school and then that fell apart too.

TP: Right (laughs)

DW: (laughs) As so often it does.

TP: Yeah. Did any of your friends decide to go to college as well?

DW: Almost all of them. Well, I shouldn't say almost all of them, I [betcha?] half, three quarters of them [unclear]. And you have to understand to, that when I graduated from high school, and I was in college, the Vietnam War was just starting, so a lot of people in the 60s, went to college to try to avoid the draft.

TP: Right.

DW: I never went to college for that reason, but it did help me not get drafted.

TP: Can you explain that a little further, like how did it, how did it specifically, or if there was a specific way, how did it help you not get drafted; was it just because you had an intention of furthering your education, or?

DW: Well, two things. One is that there's, there were, my brother avoided it, 00:21:00avoided the draft by being on the farm cause he was, they were raising food for the economy, for the nation. And then you had what they could get an educational deferment, so that if you were enrolled in a school pursuing a degree...that entitled you to a deferment. But, sometimes when you graduated, that deferment was up. I actually got draft orders when I was in college.

TP: Oh really?

DW: And I contacted my congressman and told him what program I was in and stuff like [unclear] and this is all done by what we now call snail mail; at the time U.S. Postal Service was the only way there was. No computers, no email, no cell phones, nothing. And so that was all done by regular mail and he intervened and 00:22:00I was able to get the deferment to continue and then I started working here.

TP: Okay, so that was around, what year would that have been that you got your draft orders; 1965 maybe about?

DW: Probably '64-5 somewhere in there.

TP: Okay.

DW: And just to reflect back to when I'm talking about telephones. We were out in the country, and we had what was called a party line. And there were six of us on one telephone line. And you pick up the phone and if somebody else was talking, you either hung up or if it was important, you'd say I'm sorry Mrs. so and so, but could I have the line for a few minutes, I have something important 00:23:00or whatever it might be. And there were no dial tones, no dial phones, no rotary phones. You pick up the phone and a operator would answer, and you'd say whatever number you wanted, and they'd plug it in a switchboard, and connected [unclear] to the telephone. But it was all, I mean it, what we now know as...a phone system was not even dreamt of in concept at that time.

TP: And now there's not even a lot of land lines out there, it's mainly all cellphone based.

DW: And we have, we have a rotary phone at home. Do you know what a rotary dial is?

TP: Yeah I have my I have great grandmas actually, from when she passed away.

DW: And when our grandkids come, we don't have it hooked up anymore; but we used to, they used to just love to dial-

TP: Oh, to spin the dial?

DW: To spin the dial, to do that you know, and that was a real advancement in technology when you had that.

TP: Alright. I forgot to ask this, but do you have any children currently?

DW: We have two grown daughters, [Jodi's?] the older one, and lives in Clintonville, and teaches math up there, and she's married, and no children. And we have another daughter, [Gretchen?], who lives in Manitowoc, she works for the Manitowoc Company which makes the cranes and stuff like that. And her husband is a junior high physical education teacher and he's also the head baseball coach at Manitowoc Lincoln. And they have two boys, we have two grand...two grandsons.

TP: Okay. Did you put any specific emphasis on your daughters' education or were they kind of free to choose what they wanted to do?

DW: Well they were free to choose what they wanted to do, but we did have an 00:25:00expectation that they'd go on from high school. And the older one went to Steve-, in fact I was working here at Oshkosh when we had our kids and when they graduated from high school. And the older one went; we visited two or three campuses and she wound up going to Point. And the younger one, same thing, we visited a couple of campuses and she was kind of leaning toward Oshkosh, and we told her if she did go to Oshkosh, she had to live in a residence hall. She had to treat going to Oshkosh like she would treat it if she were going away to school. We didn't want her to live at home and commute. Because my experience had been that just as a commuter you miss a lot of social and cultural involvement and interaction and that you just don't get...

TP: You kind of miss the, miss the whole experience.

DW: You miss the whole, whole flavor of campus. You go to class and you go home. 00:26:00Whereas in living in a residence hall and stuff, you're on campus. So she went to Oshkosh and she lived in a residence hall.

TP: Okay. Which daughter went to Oshkosh?

DW: She lived in Fletcher.

TP: No which, which one of your daughters went to Oshkosh?

DW: Oh, the younger of the two, Gretchen.

TP: Okay. Okay now we can start getting into more of the college based questions in the interview. So you mentioned that you wanted to be a teacher in Math. Is that why you chose UW-Oshkosh? Or were there other reasons?

DW: Well there was a high school friend of mine. And we both had kinda narrowed 00:27:00it down to La Crosse and Oshkosh. And I went with...no lets see...I went with...we went over to La Crosse together to visit and then we came to Oshkosh together to visit. And we both liked Oshkosh; and back, basically back then, you know there wasn't even admissions office, the applications just processed by the registrar. There was no admissions office and I'll get into that when we get into my working here. But we both liked the campus and we wound up both choosing Oshkosh and we wound up living together for the first semester.

TP: Oh really?

DW: Yup.

TP: Okay. Before you decided to come to Oshkosh, did you really have any background about the school or did you know anything about it?

DW: No, only what we could get from the mail. And they'd send you a college catalog.

TP: Right.

DW: Back then there weren't a lot of the recruitment brochures and things that there now are.

TP: Mmhm.

DW: So a lot of it was just factual information that you had to digest and pick out what you wanted.

TP: Kind of make your decision off of the pamphlet or whatever you got.

DW: Right.

TP: Okay. So you mentioned 1961 you graduated, correct?

DW: From high school.

TP: From high school, yeah, okay. Is that when you, did you go to college right after high school?

DW: I did, I went right from high school to college.

TP: Okay, so the fall of 1961? Okay. What were your first impressions of the campus? I mean I know, I know you mentioned you visited before, but I mean I guess, once you moved in and were settled in and everything.

DW: Well it was my first time away from home.

TP: Ever?

DW: Yup. Well I mean you know to stay.

TP: For a long period of time.

DW: I'd been to like church camp for four or five days, that was it.

TP: Okay.

DW: And...just a little bit of, of background, there were two thousand students, that was all. There were only, we called them dorms back then, three dorms. Webster was a women's hall, Radford was a women's hall, which is now health center and offices, and Clemens hall, which has now been demolished to make room for the new village thing here.

TP: Mmhm.

DW: And Albee hall had just been built in 1959. The only classroom buildings were Dempsey, Harrington, Swart, and Albee Hall.

TP: Okay.

DW: That was it.

TP: Okay, so it, it was relatively smaller than it...

DW: Very small. On the, what would you call this the south side of Algoma Blvd.? Toward the river?

TP: I guess the west side.

DW: Yeah, between the river and Algoma Blvd. there were, there were no college buildings. That was all residential and, and [unclear]

TP: Oh really? So this was all housing before?

DW: It was all private residence.

TP: Okay.

DW: Or, well actually, where this, where we're sitting now, was a...it was called Deltox Manufacturing, it was a warehouse type of thing.

TP: Okay.

DW: And over where Gruenhagen is there was a, an old factory there, was called the Diamond Match Factory. And they made these farmer kitchen matches, wooden matches. And the university acquired that when they, when the building, when the 00:31:00company went out of business, and I remember they were demolishing that my freshman year and the walls were like three foot thick.

TP: Really?

DW: Because of the nature of the production of the, of matches they had that be explosion tolerant. So these walls were just huge and thick and big and it took forever to get that building down because of that. But, yeah in terms of the campus, I mean, what now is the campus, there was virtually nothing. Polk Library was just being built.

TP: In 1961?

DW: (nods) And...on second floor Dempsey, it used to be the career planning and placement office. And I think they're now over in Elmwood Commons, Student Services over there.

TP: Mmhm.

DW: And I don't know what's in that place right now, but it, it was the big room with the real high ceiling on second floor across from [unclear] office.

TP: Oh right, yeah the...up until last year that was the...or up until this year that for foreign language teachers, foreign language teachers had their offices there.

DW: Oh yeah?

TP: Yeah.

DW: That's the one with the big mural in the, in it? That was the library.

TP: Really?

DW: When I started in '61. That big room was, and some surrounding, some adjacent areas, that was the library.

TP: That was it?

DW: That was it.

TP: Was it completely filled with books or was it-

DW: Only thing that was there was books.

TP: No study areas or anything?

DW: Some tables, you know what we call a library table?

TP: Mmhm.

DW: That's what, that's what it was, library tables and books.

TP: Okay so you knew pretty well, well off right into going into college that you wanted to go for, you said math right?

DW: Right.

TP: Did you also go for teaching for math or was it just specifically for math?

DW: I was in math education, I graduated with a Bachelor's of Science in Education, a major in math and a minor in Phy. Ed. Back then they did not have a major in Phy. Ed.

TP: Oh really.

DW: Only a minor. A lot of bare basics compared to what's now there (laughs)

TP: Right. Can you tell me a little bit about what your classes were like at first when you first started here? Maybe tell me about your first semester?

DW: I think my first semester I had sixteen credits. I remember I had a college 00:34:00algebra and trigonometry class that started at 7:40 in the morning. And it was in...can't remember if it was in Dempsey or Swart. And I remember the teacher was a former employee of what is now NASA. And he had a practical slant to the course because of his background. And yeah it was, and and you know of course just like any freshman going from high school to college, everything was different. The biggest thing I think was the fact that, you know we were away from home. You just couldn't pick up the telephone and call your folks or anything. And you had to fend for yourself and just making that adjustment was huge.

TP: Did you have any problems studying or did you have to study a lot in high school or no?

DW: Well I always took studying seriously and I was a good student, I wound up that way and I wound up with good grades my first semester. And part of it was because you know that was why we were in college.

TP: Okay so everyone; everyone on campus took college pretty serious then?

DW: Pretty much, yeah.

TP: Okay.

DW: It's not that we didn't have fun,

TP: Yeah.

DW: But I mean it was, that was, that was the whole thing.

TP: Okay can you remember any other classes, like what kind of gen. eds. you had to take? Or was it mainly classes specifically for your major?

DW: Well you had the core classes just like you do now. I remember I had college algebra and trig, I had western civ., I had English...can't remember what my 00:36:00other courses were. But yeah the first year was, oh I had biology, zoology, I had a five math course, a five credit biology course, and I think two three credit courses, history and English.

TP: Okay, you mentioned your math class started at 7:40 in the morning, aside from that math class, do you remember any of your other classes? Did any of them leave a-

DW: In my freshman year?

TP: Freshman or overall.

DW: No cause my major was math, so you know, a lot of courses were, and even though I liked math, I had to work at math. I had to do a lot of studying. There was, I think it's probably true today as much as it was then, but a lot of it 00:37:00was who your instructor was was a factor in how much you liked the course, rather than the subject nature of it.

TP: Mmhm.

DW: I had a history professor who has since passed away, but he was, he was American, but he had gone to school in Germany and had his doctorate, and he was brilliant. I mean brilliant, he was a true scholar, and he expected the students to know his discipline. And-

TP: You said that was history right?

DW: And then, I remember my English professor was kind of a, an easy teacher.

TP: Okay.

DW: And so didn't have to do near as much work for there and I got a good grade. 00:38:00But history I had to do some work, math I had to do some work. And history I didn't really care for, but the instructor made it interesting and that's you know, that's true today too, you get some real duds for instructors and you get some real dynamos.

TP: And that can really make or break your first semester.

DW: It does, it really makes, it really forms your impression of that discipline, of that subject. So yeah it's, it's amazing how the personality of the instructor can affect your perception of that subject.

TP: You mentioned the one instructor, you said was with what is now called NASA, correct? You said he had a particular slant on the course, can you-

DW: Well yeah, he could, he could explain the theories that you were learning 00:39:00and the math concepts you were learning in practical sense. Here's what this means, and he'd apply it to a given situation or give an example and you know, we could identify with that.

TP: Okay, so he made it more relatable then?

DW: Yup. Definitely.

TP: Alright, where did you spend most of your time on campus?

DW: Well, first of all, I lived in Clemens Hall and then I applied to be a dorm counselor they were called back then, now an RA, and I'd applied for that for my sophomore year. Over Christmas of first semester my freshman year, I got a call and one of the counselors had...I don't remember if he had gone into the service 00:40:00or he'd been, he didn't get drafted, he may have been in and re-upped or something, I can't remember. But they had an opening for a counselor. So very unusual, but I was asked to be a dorm counselor second semester of my freshman year. That was in Clemens Hall. In the fall of '62, my sophomore year, Breese Hall opened, and I was an RA then in Breese Hall for two years. So I spent a lot of my time in the residence halls simply because I was an RA. But I was also out for athletics. I was out for track, I was out for football.

TP: Okay.

DW: I was involved in, there was a student "O" club, student letterman's club 00:41:00and wound up being president of that. [unclear] you were involved in, as a small school like that, you just involved in a lot of things cause you knew a lot of people.

TP: Okay, you mentioned the dorm counselors, that's basically what you would call an RA now?

DW: Mmhm. Right.

TP: Did they have one, just one per hall or was it every floor?

DW: There were two per floor.

TP: Okay.

DW: Are you familiar with the layout, let's say...Donner Hall? It's basically a rectangle with a hall down the middle and the rooms on each side. There would be an RA on each end and the middle of each side, the bathrooms were in the middle. Back then too, all of the dorms had an internal PA system. At the front desk on 00:42:00first floor, there's a big console and we could talk for hours about the rules and regulations that were in affect at the time, but women had hours; you could not go onto a women's floor in a residence hall except on Sunday afternoons.

TP: Really.

DW: And if you'd go to pick up a girl for a date or something, you'd go to the main desk and say I'm Dave, would you ring so and so, tell her that I'm here. And they'd go to the console, flip the button, and say your date is here. And...so everything like that was very different, and the other thing I was going to tell you was that when I was a student here, in the residence halls, they were basically rectangular, there was a payphone on one; do you know what a 00:43:00payphone is?

TP: Yup!

DW: A lot of people today don't.

TP: They're not even around anymore.

DW: No, they aren't. But there was a payphone on one end of the hall. And an extension of that on the other end. And the phone number that you gave your parents, was that payphone number. And whoever, and my freshman year, I lived on the end room right where the payphone was, so whoever lived closest to the phone wound up answering it all the time cause it was just a phone in the hallway.

TP: Mmhm.

DW: And that payphone and that extension, that was our phone system.

TP: Okay.

DW: For the whole, for the whole floor.

TP: Really.

DW: Sixty, sixty people. Thirty rooms, two to a room, living there and ya had one payphone and an extension that was it.

TP: Okay, now you mentioned, it's still, it's still the same way today, but at 00:44:00least for freshman year, but did you have to have a roommate? Right away?

DW: Yup.

TP: Okay, that was required.

DW: There was, there was no single room.

TP: Okay, ever?

DW: No, you had a roommate.

TP: Okay.

DW: You had to have a roommate. And then if for some reason your roommate left at semester and they didn't have somebody to fill it, you'd wind up with a room but you, you could not request or pay extra for a single room. That concept wasn't even there.

TP: Okay, was there, so I mean the concept wasn't even there but was there, was there I guess any rule about it, or was it just kinda the culture at the time that everyone was going to have a roommate?

DW: Well that's it, you were assigned a roommate.

TP: Okay. Could you request a roommate?

DW: Mmhm. That's how my friend and I lived together that first semester.

TP: Okay.

DW: And women had hours they had to be in their dorm, by ten o'clock on 00:45:00weeknights, midnight on weekends. We had quiet hours, you got, if you had if your room was dirty, if you made too much noise, you got demerits.

TP: Really?

DW: And if you got too many demerits you were [campused?], and you had to be on a weekend, you had to be in your room from seven p.m. till seven a.m., you couldn't go out.

TP: (laughs) Wow!

DW: And you know, when you'd go home for a weekend you'd have to sign out, and sign in you're going to be back at seven o'clock, and if you weren't back within an hour or two of that, the head resident, then called head resident, now called hall director, made a phone call to your parents. Dave said he would be here at seven o'clock, it's now nine o'clock, he's not here is everything okay.

TP: Really.

DW: Oh yeah. Yeah and it just, all kinds of stuff, the whole thing was...and everybody accepted it. It was, that's just the way life was.

TP: Did anybody ever, I guess was there ever any backlash to any of those rules in your dorms?

DW: No, no, everybody just kind of accepted it.

TP: Okay. Did you go home a lot?

DW: My first semester I went home quite a bit, and I had the girlfriend back there then.

TP: Right.

DW: Then when that fell apart I started to go home less.

TP: Okay

DW: And then my, my freshman year I went out for track in the spring, so that took care of almost every weekend. Yeah and as I graduated and got to working here, I was in the admissions office for ten years. You get to tell parents about what to expect here and there and a lot of it was personal experience of what you yourself had gone through.

TP: Okay, so you mentioned you lived with your friend from high school, but 00:47:00other than him, did you have a lot of friends at college or did you meet a lot of friends.

DW: I made a lot of friends, yeah.

TP: Okay.

DW: Because there weren't, there weren't that many, I think we were the only two from Columbus who came here that year. There may have been one girl in our class who came here. But yeah you had to make your own new friends.

TP: Okay.

DW: And I made a lot of them and some of them to this day I'm still in contact with. In fact I'm godfather to one of my friend's daughters.

TP: Oh really?

DW: Yeah in fact, he was, he and I were RAs together, dorm counselors together for one year. And we got to be really close. We were at each other's weddings.

TP: Okay, you said you yourself were a good student, what were other students at 00:48:00UW Oshkosh like? Did they seem committed or were they kind of slacked off?

DW: Well you had the whole run of the mill, I mean, people were there just to goof off and get out of the draft, people were there very serious. People in between, and people that would do just nothing but party. They'd be there for a semester or a year at the most and they're gone. And people who were very studious and very committed to what they were doing so I don't think that overall it was that much different in terms of the spectrum.

TP: You mentioned you were in, we can talk about that now, if you'd like. So you mentioned second semester, spring semester freshman year you started track here? 00:49:00(nods) Okay.

DW: That would have been the spring of '62.

TP: Okay. And then you also mentioned football, right?

DW: And then I went out for football, I did-I purposely didn't go out for football my freshman year because I wanted to get adjusted to college. And I wasn't sure what to expect. So I didn't want to complicate it by overloading myself. So I went out for football my sophomore and junior year, and then I was out for track all four years.

TP: What were sports like? For you? Did you enjoy them, or?

DW: Oh I, they were, they were very important to me, yeah very important. Back then there was a practice, that in order for a coach to be the head coach of a 00:50:00major sport, like football or basketball, he had to be the head coach of a minor sport, like track. For one year. In my four years of track, as a student, I had four different coaches. There were no assistant coaches. My freshman year I had Bob Kolf. He was a legendary person, whom Kolf Sports Center is named after. My sophomore year I had a person who was going to be the football coach [Ross?] Young, My junior year, the wrestling coach [Ed?] Brown, and my senior year the basketball coach Bob White.

TP: Okay.

DW: Those three, the last three, Bob Kolf had coached everything. The other three came right out and said guys, I don't know anything about track. You guys know what you're doing, you know what you're supposed to do, do it.

TP: So they were just kind of there then?

DW: Yeah!

TP: Okay.

DW: But that was the deal, you had to be head coach of a minor sport in order to 00:51:00be only the head coach of a major sport. And track was that swing sport (laughs).

TP: Okay, why was that?

DW: It was-I don't have any clue why it was.

TP: Okay.

DW: That's the way it was.

TP: It just wasn't considered as important as football was?

DW: Probably. [Unclear] why they called it a minor sport.

TP: Okay. Were you involved in any other clubs or organizations? I know you mentioned-

DW: Student "O" Club.

TP: Yeah, Student "O" Club.

DW: And back then, we actually got letters.

TP: Kind of like the same letters like you would in high school, then?

DW: Yup, exactly the same. The [chenille?] thing, it was a big "O", and we all wore letter jackets, and the letterman's club had white, cardigan sweaters, and the letters were gold, the "O" was a gold letter, and so, a lot of us had a 00:52:00letter jacket with a letter on it, and a letter sweater, with a letter on it. And the letterman's club was socially active. I mean the homecoming, and we had something called brat days, and we had, there were all kinds of contests, you know winter carnival and stuff. The student "O" club would be a, just like a residence hall or a fraternity or whatever, they'd be a group that would participate. It was big. It was a big deal.

TP: Okay so they were pretty active in-

DW: Yup. Very definitely.

TP: Just the campus or the community as well?

DW: No, just the campus.

TP: Okay.

DW: Hardly anything went on in the community.

TP: Okay, so the campus was pretty...pretty segregated from the community?

DW: Yeah it was, they called it town and gown, and there's a lot of separation there between the city, the city of Oshkosh residents and the university. And 00:53:00the other thing that contributed to that separation is that I said that there were no university buildings on this side of Algoma.

TP: Mmhm.

DW: And the same thing is true now where Fletcher Hall is and all, that was all residential houses. In order for the university to grow and expand, they had to acquire houses, and then tear them down. And that did not sit well with the city, with the residents. So there was some, there were some strange relations there for a while because of that. But, yeah it was, it was, we were going through growing pains and because we were locked in by the river on this side, you had to go that way and so on so. It created some problems, but we overcome 00:54:00that, but there were some beautiful, gorgeous houses and they were, some were actually moved. One of them was a huge house that they wound up moving from, I think it was from Elmwood and Irvine, some place over there, and they moved it down to the river and put it on a barge and they had, I think they moved it at like four in the morning, when the wind was down. And they had to take the roof off to that they could get under the Butte des Morts Bridge, and they took it out to Lake Butte des Morts and up against the bank there and then they moved it onto a lot that way. But there were just very ingenious uses for these houses. Some would be demolished, some would be moved. Some would be used for other 00:55:00purposes, but there, you know, where the library now is, that was, you know when you go between Albee and Dempsey that goes right up to the library?

TP: Yup, mmhm.

DW: That was a street that when through to Elmwood. And there were all houses where the library now stands. And I remember when I graduated in '66, January of '66, I started as assistant track coach. The head coach had his office in one of those houses. So those houses were used by the university until such time as they needed space for their other growing plans.

TP: Okay, so student "O" club was really the only organization you were involved in?

DW: I was also involved in a fraternity. And do you know the difference between a national and a local fraternity?

TP: No.

DW: Ok. A national fraternity is affiliated with the group on a national level. The local is campus only. No affiliation with any group other than just that. And I was a member of a local fraternity, called Pericleam, P-E-R-I-C-L-E-A-M. And my senior year, they went national, they affiliated with a national group, but almost my whole college experience I was with that fraternity as a local.

TP: Okay, what were your impressions of the city of Oshkosh?

DW: Well, there again, some of the things are so much different then than they 00:57:00are now. Back then, Wisconsin had a law that you could drink beer at eighteen but hard liquor at twenty-one, and there were a lot of what were called beer bars. And that's all they served was beer. You had to be twenty-one to go into a tavern, even if you wanted beer but they sold hard liquor you still had to be twenty-one to go in. So a lot of the drinking that went on was beer. Because eighteen, nineteen, twenty year olds could all drink beer legally. Now it's of course it's not that way, but back then you could, and so there were a lot of wild Friday nights and Saturday nights.

TP: Mainly at the bars or?

DW: At the bars.

TP: Okay.

DW: And then, there was another program that the university initiated I think, it was called town and gown, and it was, they'd bring in some class performers. And you could get tickets for, it was open to city as well as the university. And, I don't know if you've ever heard of the Smothers Brothers?

TP: Mm-mm.

DW: They were a folk singing group, and they came, and there were just a whole bunch of name, big name entertainers that you could, for a student rate you could get in to see those. So that was, that was an attempt to bridge this whole thing between the university and the city.

TP: Okay, was it kind of to maybe keep the kids from getting in trouble as well?

DW: No, because it was all, it was all, I don't want to say voluntary, but there was no requirement for anything. And if you wanted to go you had to pay to go.

TP: Oh okay.

DW: Yeah it wasn't a mandatory program.

TP: I believe when I talked on the phone with you earlier, you mentioned there were two women's dorms, dorm halls, and one men's. Correct?

DW: Right.

TP: When you first started.

DW: Right.

TP: So what would you say the, I guess, the student ratio for men to women were, there obviously were more women if there was more women's dorm buildings?

DW: I don't remember what that breakout was, because back then, you know it was just the beginning of, I think there were probably more men than women, because 01:00:00it was kind of the beginning of women becoming educated. And that whole thing there, the thing was, women had hours and they had more restrictions than the men, so I think that was another reason for the fact that there were two women's halls and one men's hall. But the other thing too, was that the society's expectations that the university had better protect and take care of the women. And so I think there was another reason that we two women's hall and only one men's hall. And then my sophomore year, Breese hall, which has now been demolished, Nelson, Breese, and Clemens all got demolished for that, the new housing project there. But Breese and Donner were identical halls and Breese was 01:01:00a men's hall and Donner was a women's hall, there were no coed halls, that was unheard of.

TP: Really?

DW: Just no way. I mean you could only go into a woman's residence hall on a Sunday afternoon. And then you had to, if you were in a girl's room, you had to leave the door open.

TP: Okay, so there were no little sleepovers or anything?

DW: Ohhh no, not legally (laughs). And even as a parent, if I had a daughter here, and I wanted to come visit, I couldn't go into her room during the week.

TP: Oh really?

DW: Yeah, oh it was strict (laughs). In fact, I have, I don't know if your group would be interested in it, but I'm positive I still have excerpts from the 01:02:00student handbook for residence halls, which outlined all these rules and regulations.

TP: Really?

DW: Oh there just listed, bing bing bing, right down the line. And some of them are the, the wording of it is so funny now, but at the time you just never questioned it. You know what curlers are for women in their hair?

TP: Yeah.

DW: I remember one thing was that, it was for the handbook for the women's halls, you know, be careful that you aren't seen by a boy with curlers in your hair, and stuff like that, it's old fashioned stuff but that was the way it was. (laughs) And those, when I worked here, I, the residence life department had a program called the friends program, and they had people come in, people would 01:03:00associate with a floor of a hall, and you'd kind of be there...you'd be the staff member that they'd identify with. And so I used to do programs, and I'd take these handouts along with me, and I'd go through what all these rules used to be. And we used to have a yearbook called The Quiver, the last year it was published was 1974. I used to bring those yearbooks from when I was in school, and when I was talking to the students who were in school, I'd take some of those yearbooks and they would find their parents in these yearbooks.

TP: Really.

DW: And they used to think that was a hoot, oh my God, oh there's my dad, there's my mom (laughs)

TP: Yeah actually, we did an activity in class where we looked through the yearbooks.

DW: Oh did ya?

TP: Yeah, I believe my group got, it was one of them from the 1960s. What we found really interesting I mean, I guess apart from the hairstyles (laughs), was the dress, how proper the dressing was.

DW: Oh yeah, definitely, and it was, I mean you didn't wear, if you wore jeans, they had better be nice jeans. But jeans back then weren't the big thing, you wore what are now called khakis, but basically that's what you wore. Or dress pants.

TP: (laughs) So no going to class in your pajamas like now?

DW: Oh no, oh no (laughs) Nay, nay. Not at all. And you know, like, when we'd go to church it was a dress up. You'd wear your suit and tie for the men, and women got all dressed up and it was a, and on, I think there was one, it might have been Sunday at noon, it was basically an expectation dress up dinner. At that 01:05:00time, there was only, there were two places to eat at on campus, one was in the Union, which was probably, well you know the, where it faces Algoma right now?

TP: Yup.

DW: That front hundred feet was all, that was the whole union. And there was a room in there that was a dining room. And then Radford had a cafeteria.

TP: Oh really?

DW: Yeah.

TP: Okay.

DW: In the basement.

TP: So there were no actual...like today there's Blackhawk Commons, there wasn't anything like that?

DW: Nothing.

TP: Okay.

DW: And there were no choices of meal plans, you bought a meal plan that was it. You didn't have a choice of ten meals, twenty meals, nothing.

TP: How was, how was the food?

DW: Well I liked it, and I was, I grew up on a farm, and I was used to getting up in the morning, and I used to go to breakfast very morning. I still eat 01:06:00breakfast every day. I get and go fishing, like this morning, got up and went fishing, I eat breakfast before I go fishing. And breakfast to me was the best one. And that just, I mean it's, its cafeteria food (laughs). It's not like your mom made.

TP: Yeah, exactly.

DW: But it was cafeteria food, and you knew that that was the only choice you had. You couldn't have, there were, there were things called dorm size refrigerators, you couldn't have a TV in your room, anything like that. And so you know, there was no keeping or preparing of any kind of food. Microwaves weren't even invented yet, so there was none of that kind of stuff. What you ate was at the commons and you could have some potato chips and stuff like that that didn't need refrigeration.

TP: So you really didn't have a whole lot to go off of, unless you had, like you said, had stuff that wouldn't need to be refrigerated?

DW: Right. You could have a coffee pot that was the only thing you could have.

TP: Okay. How would you describe social life back then? Like what were some of the big events on and off campus? I mean I know you mentioned homecoming and winter carnival and stuff like that.

DW: Yeah there would be, some a like a winter dance, and a prom. There was always a prom in the spring, and homecoming was big, and winter carnival was big. And...and a lot of it was the culture back then. There was a lot of drinking. Just like there is now. But back then a lot of it was beer. But you couldn't drink on campus.

TP: Oh really?

DW: Oh no. You couldn't have, in fact, as a counselor, or, RA, we had the 01:08:00authority to do room checks. Even if you weren't there.

TP: Really.

DW: (nods) And if you went in the room and you found a tap beer glass that didn't have any insignia on it, that was okay for them to have. But if it had a PBR label on it or Old Style or anything like that, that was illegal and we'd confiscate it.

TP: Really.

DW: Yup. It was that strict and that literal.

TP: It's kinda similar now, I remember last year, my freshman year, they, they...we call them CAs now, it'd be the same thing. They actually said if they're talking you in your doorway and they can take it and confiscate it and everything.

DW: Really?

TP: Yup, I mean it's mainly because I lived in a freshman dorm last year so none 01:09:00of us were...

DW: Of age.

TP: Yeah of age, so I think that was their thing. They also said something like, well if we hear a lot of noise or a lot of, like, you know bottles clanking around and stuff like that they can, they'll probably knock on your door so to speak. So there was no drinking allowed in the dorms?

DW: No.

TP: Even if you were-well I guess you would have been of age, for beer but I mean even hard liquor, even if you were twenty-one?

DW: Nope.

TP: Okay.

DW: Beer was legal at eighteen, liquor at twenty-one, you couldn't have either one.

TP: Okay. Do you remember any major campus issues? Or any major issues in 01:10:00general? From your time at UWO?

DW: Well the Vietnam War was big, that was a big social deal nationwide. And that was on this campus too. Black student enrollment was starting to increase in the late 60s, 70s, and there was an incident called Black Thursday, in which black students took over Dempsey Hall. They demonstrated, they went to the president's office. Cause back then it was called a president rather than chancellor. Financial aid, they destroyed a bunch of stuff, bunch of them got expelled. And the whole black student issue; education, culture, 01:11:00extracurricular, all of that was big all over the country and it was true here too. And well, a lot of people, if you weren't from Madison, Milwaukee, Racine areas, you just never were exposed to non-whites. I grew up I didn't, I never had any black friends, we didn't have any black people living in Columbus. We'd have migrant workers in the summer, but we just never had exposure to that. It turns out, that when I was in track, one of my very best friends was from Kenya. And he and I got to be very very close and he's since then passed away, but that was, that was a different experience for a lot of people. There was a lot of uneducated people about other cultures. When I was in the admissions office as 01:12:00assistant director I was in charge of international student admissions. And you had, I had to basically learn some of the education systems; mainly of Hong Kong and Kenya and some of the African countries. That's where most of our students came from, but I mean, that was, at that time, the black and...at that time even...and it wasn't until after the Vietnam War that the Hmong population started to become big. But there was very little programming for non-white students. And with the increase in enrollment, the need for that increased. Staffing needs increased, program needs increased, everything. So that you could offer these experiences and programs for the minorities.

TP: How many, how many I guess, African American students were on, were enrolled 01:13:00at UWO during your time when you studied here.

DW: In a given year, no more than six to eight, maybe ten. You mean African American or the African black?

TP: Not African black but what we would call African American.

DW: Very few, I betcha there weren't eight or ten. Very very few, I'm trying to think, I know we had one in our fraternity, one black...but it was, I mean, when you talk minority, it was minority.

TP: Okay. So other than the Vietnam War and the event of Black Thursday were there any other events that you can remember that stood out to you?

DW: You mean social issue type thing?

TP: Well it could be political, educational, cultural, anything like that really.

DW: Nothing really sticks out, I know we've talked about town and gown, we've talked about athletics, school spirit, that was all big.

TP: What was the, how was the Kennedy assassination taken here on campus?

DW: It hit everybody really hard, I, I remember the day that it happened. I was coming, no I was eating in the union, I was eating lunch in the Union and word came over the loudspeaker what had happened and there was a girl from my home town who was a year or two behind me, and we were eating lunch together, and I remember that happening, that just knocked everybody's socks of, I mean, everybody was just kind of in a daze, you just never...

TP: Right, yeah.

DW: You didn't, you didn't know how to deal with it. You really didn't.

TP: Alright, other than your major and everything and what you learned in your classes, was there anything else that you, that you learned at UWO? That you took-

DW: As a student?

TP: Yeah-

DW: Or once I started working here?

TP: As a student, is there anything that you just learned in general?

DW: I think I probably learned to appreciate and respect other people, cause being from a small town we had eighty-nine people in my graduating class at high school.

TP: Okay.

DW: I mean very small. So you just didn't have a lot of diversity, you didn't have a lot of exposure to other things than small town life, and it just, it 01:16:00opened my eyes.

TP: Alright, now we can move on to some post college questions, you said you went from 1961 to 1968, and you during our previous phone call, you mentioned a bachelors it math and a masters in-

DW: Well my undergraduate days were '61 through January of '66.

TP: Okay.

DW: And then I started working here in January of '66. While I am working here I took one course a semester at night and then full time during the summer. And then I earned my master's degree that way. And I got that in June of '68 in guidance and counseling.

TP: Okay. You mentioned that right after graduation you started working here?

DW: Right.

TP: Okay and that was in the student programs-

DW: No in admissions.

TP: Okay admissions, yeah.

DW: The story on that is that I had, I had a major in math and a minor in phy. Ed. And then I had decided that I was in education but I decided I wanted to get a masters in phy. Ed. So I'd been accepted to La Crosse because they had a master's in phy. Ed. Well again over Christmas of 1965, I got a phone call from the vice president of student affairs here, no it wasn't from him, it was from the director of admissions, wanting to know if I'd come in for an interview. He was the first director of admissions that, at that time, the college had ever 01:18:00had, and there was a lot of pressure put on staff members to get their doctorate. Well I graduated in January of '66. He was the director of admissions and he was going on for his doctorate residency in the summer of '66. So he was looking for somebody to work in the admissions office that he could train in a semester to basically babysit the office while he was away for his residency. And as it turns out, I had two staff members had given him my name, so that was before affirmative action and all this other stuff. Would you want to come in for an interview, got the job. Changed my mind, cancelled everything in La Crosse, started working here and never left (laughs).

TP: How long did your career at UWO-

DW: I retired in 2000.

TP: Okay.

DW: September of 2000. Almost 35 years as a staff member, 39 years student and staff.

TP: Was it primarily in admissions?

DW: My first five years was admissions counselor slash assistant director of admissions, and I had [unclear] student admissions, I was in charge of freshman orientation and stuff. And then in '66 to '70. In '70, the person who was then director of admissions, became registrar and then they asked me if I would want to be director of admissions. So I knew if I did that, I had to give up coaching. Cause all this while I'd been coaching, as an assistant coach in track. So I took the director of admissions job, I had to give up coaching. So I 01:20:00was with a dilemma there.

TP: Mhm.

DW: But I knew professionally that's what I should do. So I did it. And then I was director of admissions form '70-'75 and then in '75 the vice chancellor for student affairs asked if I would come over and be his assistant for the division of student affairs, and then I handled budget and personnel. And then I worked from 1975 until I retired in 2000. In the assistant chancellor's office, vice chancellor's office for student affairs.

TP: Okay, so you mentioned you wanted to continue your education and get a master's in phy. Ed. Correct? Other than that, what other opportunities were 01:21:00available to you, I mean, probably, you mentioned the bachelor's in math, so was it mainly teaching, or?

DW: It's not much that different than today, you get a bachelor's degree, you want to go out and work, you wanna teach, you wanna go into business administration, whatever it might be. Or do you wanna go get a master's degree. Well, because of the job opportunity here, I just threw that out the window and I started working on my masters here, and one of the reasons I got my master's here, was it was free. Staff members didn't have to pay any tuition. So I got my master's degree free.

TP: What other involvement did you have with UWO besides your career here and 01:22:00then you mentioned coaching as well.

DW: Well I coached and then when I had to give up coaching, I got into officiating track and field. So I was a starter track official for, and still am, for the athletic department. And then I also, athletics was still a big part of my life, and I got involved in the athletic department and did a bunch of volunteering. In '71, titan stadium opened. I was on the football stat crew form 1971-1991. Where we typed a play by play of every game. So at the end of the game you could go back and see who carried the ball how many yards, who made the tackle. We typed that. And that was on a typewriter.

TP: I couldn't imagine doing that!

DW: Do you have any idea what a ditto machine is or a mimeograph?

TP: Mm-mm.

DW: It's a paper that had, that was chemically treated, and then you'd put a liquid on it, put it on a drum and turn it around and it'd run off multiple copies. We had to type it on to that, and if you made a mistake, the only way to correct it was to strike over, or take it out of the typewriter, peel it back, take a razor blade, scrape the stuff off. I mean it was on the spot, have it done. So I did that, and then I started getting involved in fundraising activities and booster clubs and after that then I got involved with volunteering and stuff. I still have a good relationship with the athletic department, they still ask me to do things, I volunteer to do things, over the 01:24:00years I have run the scoreboard and the gameclock for football, I run the play clock for basketball, I run the shot clock, I run the scoreboard and the game clock, I've done the book, when we hosted national gymnastics meets, in '96 when the woman's basketball won the national championship here in Kolf, I volunteered and I was menial stuff, to very involved stuff. For the national basketball thing I was crowd control (laughs), and it's fine. It was my volunteering to do it, it was my way of supporting athletics. And other than being the track official, everything that I've volunteered to do for the athletic department has been [gradus?]. I've not received one penny. I've told them that the day when I 01:25:00get my first check, is the last day that I work. And the athletic directors, secretaries, administrative assistants, they have all been great. They ask me, when they need help, I know they need help. They don't abuse it, they know that if I'm available and willing to, I will. And I enjoy it, I developed relationships with athletes outside of track and field that I wouldn't have otherwise had, hadn't I had that opportunity to do. And athletics was and continues to be a big part of my life. Spectator, volunteer, participant, whatever (laughs).

TP: Okay, not sure if I asked this earlier or not, but what first made you 01:26:00interested in sports in the first place?

DW: When I was in high school that was, that was, and I just continued on.

TP: Was that kind of the thing to do in your high school was join sports?

DW: Well I liked it, I had some abilities, and it was enjoyable. And I still identify with sports. And I'm a terrible (smiles). When I go to a basketball game, football game, I sit there, I don't say a word, I don't cheer, I don't jump and yell, I'm going and I'm watching, I'm watching officials, for patterns, for plays to develop, that's part of athletics I enjoy. I'm not a ra ra ra guy (laughs).

TP: Okay, to end, I have one final question-

DW: You know before you get to that, I was talking about athletics, while I was in college, I won the conference championship in the 220 low hurdles my junior year, and in my senior year, I won the 120 highs and the 220 lows. And set a conference record in the high hurdles. That would have been spring of '65. I've enjoyed it but I've also been blessed with some natural ability. And a lot of that, those accomplishments are partly because of ability and partly because some hard work. Everything else, but I've had success in athletics and I think 01:28:00that also makes me prone to staying involved in athletics.

TP: Would you say your involvement and success in athletics has also helped you in certain aspects throughout your entire life?

DW: Oh definitely, yeah yeah, you learn how deal with adversity, you learn how to handle when something doesn't go right. You learn how to be appreciative and thankful and all of that, so there's, there's a lot of spin off to other things in life that athletics provides. And I guess the only other thing you haven't asked was that when I was working, for the assistant chancellor's office, vice 01:29:00chancellor for student affairs, when there would vacancies, directors of departments, they would call on me a lot of times to be the acting director of that for a year. So over the years, I was acting director of athletics, acting director of housing, acting director of the student health center, I was in charge of the daycare center for a year, the director of the Union, became terminally ill, so I handled the union even though I didn't have the title, I handled that for a year; budgets and personnel evaluations and all that, the 01:30:00food service director died unexpectedly I handled that for a year. I was very fortunate that my boss trusted me with those kinds of things, and I was never and I made it known, I was never a candidate for those jobs, which I think laid the groundwork for all I'm going to do is keep the ship afloat (laughs). But that was, those very experiences were very valuable to me, very important to me, and I really enjoyed them. Okay you had a last question. (both laugh) Had to get my two cents in there.

TP: This can be as broad as you want, but what advice would you give to current 01:31:00students, or maybe even future students? What can you take from college and apply it to the real world?

DW: They should get as much out of there college experience as they can, both in the classroom and out of the classroom. And when they do graduate, what they should do is make sure they stay in contact with classmates. Cause those personal relationships are really important. The big thing is, there's such a 01:32:00thing as being book smart and being street-smart, and you have to learn not to balance the two, but you have to have a good fundamental knowledge of subject area in order to do well in it but you have to get along with people, you have to understand reality, you have to be able to put up with setbacks and success and a lot of that you have to experience in order to do it. But the big thing keep your eye on the big picture. So when you go out into the real world, don't be surprised, there will be some surprises but don't be surprised that there are surprises. (laughs) That make sense?

TP: Yeah that makes sense. Alright with that being said, then that will conclude 01:33:00out interview, and I just want to thank you again for-

DW: Oh you're welcome!

TP: Coming over to the campus and doing the interview with me and providing hopefully a good interview for the Oral Histories Project.

DW: Good!

TP: I think they'll appreciate it a lot. And with that we will conclude the interview and move on to the Deed of Gift.

DW: Sounds good