Interview with Robert and Shirley White, 06/27/2019

Joshua Ranger: Alright, we’re rolling. This is Joshua Ranger, I’m along here with Stephen Kercher at the home of Bob and Shirley White in Stillwater, Minnesota. This is an interview for the campus stories’ Oral History Project. It is…

Stephen Kercher: June 27th.

JR: Thank you. June 27th.

SK: 2019.

JR: At 10:13AM. So, can you tell me who you two are?

Shirley White: Well, I’m Shirley White and we went to Oshkosh in 1964, was it? And I taught health and physical education all those years… and I absolutely loved it (laughs). And when he, when Bob, decided he wanted to retire, I said I don’t think I’m going to (laughs). And then I taught something like maybe 11 years I finally retired.

Bob White: Twelve.

SW: Twelve (laughs). I retired in 2005 when our daughter and family lived up here and we sort of saw where we could be helpful in that respect. So… it was very difficult.

JR: To leave?

SW: To leave.

JR: Yeah. And Bob, you are?

BW: Bob White. And I grew up in Ohio. Shirley’s from Pennsylvania. And we met at Muskingum College [University]. Which is…

JR: Where is that?

BW: That’s New Concord, Ohio. Zanesville. Cambridge. Sixty miles directly east of Columbus.

SW: It’s a private liberal arts school.

JR: Okay.

BW: We met… well, we met… I came home from the service, World

War Two. I had been over in the Pacific. And towards the end of the war I went to a softball game when I got home. I saw [unclear] couple other gals sitting there. I thought, “Well this sounds intriguing.” You know? (Laughs) so I went down to tell her how I won the war and all that kind of thing. And she didn’t give me the time of day.

SK: (Laughs) is that right?

BW: Yeah (laughs). So it was a couple years later that we met in physical education classes. And we became a couple and we were married one year after we got out of school. She got out of school in ‘49 and I was about 19… January, 1950.

SK: So you went to college on the GI Bill?

BW: Yeah.

SK: And you were done… you started college in ‘45, or?

BW: No, ‘46.

SK: ‘46. And you said you’re from Ohio?

BW: Yeah.

SK: Where were you born?

BW: I was born in Marietta, Ohio. Which you know where that is?

SK: I have been through there.

JR: I know Marietta College used to give us a lot of trouble in baseball, right?

BW: (Laughs) yeah, but they didn’t used to. But they’ve gotten pretty good. But, yeah, that’s where I was born and my dad had a chicken hatchery. And he…they had a flood, that’s where the Ohio River and the Muskingum River reached the Ohio. They had a big flood and they got flooded out, so they thought they better move to higher ground. So, that’s when they moved to New Concord. But, I lost my dad. He died when I was ten. I had two brothers and…

SW: They all went to Muskingum. Everybody went to Muskingum, because that’s his home town.

SK: Can you spell that for me?

SW:

M-U-S-K-I-N-G-U-M, right?

SK: An Indian name, obviously?

BW: Yeah, I think so.

SW: I almost… it was difficult, because a cheer was M-U-S-with a K…I won’t go through all of that (laughs) but it’s all, like, how do you really spell it?

SK: (Laughs) right, right. So, you didn’t want to stay in farming then? What were you thinking as a young man that you wanted to do in life?

BW: No, I hadn’t thought too much about it (laughs). Although I took part in sports in school, you know?

SK: You were athletic as a kid?

BW: As a kid. And, of course, this was long before Little League Baseball and all of that, you know. I sort of became the one that organized these things and [unclear] we had a lot of fun doing it. And so when I went into the service, I met another sailor from Cleveland and

he ended up at Ohio West then. And we thought, boy, if we could make ten thousand dollars we were going to be really happy (laughs).

JR: He ended up coaching there?

BW: Yeah and I ended up coaching… we taught, well I taught, at suburban Dayton to start with and then we got her to move to Fairborn and we got married the next year.

SK: I have to ask you a question about your service in World War Two. So, what year did you enlist?

BW: Well, I enlisted, this is kind of a strange… well, maybe not. As soon as we lost our last basketball game in the tournament.

SK: In high school?

BW: In high school. My senior year another fella and I enlisted in the Navy. And that was in March of 1945. So, we just went to boot camp and missed graduation

and I always say I never graduated from high school (laughs) but they gave us our diplomas, you know? And so I got sent overseas real quick and served aboard a little ship, the Landing Craft Infantry [LCI]; which had been changed to a mortar ship. We were supposed to go to Japan and drop mortars which would not have been exciting. So, but the war ended a short time after October…

SK: Yeah, you got into the war late. But that must have been a very scary time of the war because Japan was not showing any signs of quitting at that point. You think about Okinawa [The Battle of Okinawa] and you know…

BW: Yeah. So I spent a year or so just traveling around the Philippines carrying troops different places.

SW: We’re the only aged people that went…The

war was four years long and that was all four of our years in high school. I mean, we didn’t know each other then but you know.

JR: Oh sure, right.

SW: Which is kind of interesting.

JR: I wonder what would have happened if you had won your tournament. Would you have stayed out of the service or just delayed your…

BR: (laughs) what prompted us to do this was the kid that played fullback on our football team got drafted and he was wounded over in the Philippines. And so we didn’t want to go to the Army and so we joined the Navy.

SK: What was your sport in high school? Basketball?

BW: Basketball was. And football and basketball. And then I played, I got to play, one baseball game I think that last year.

SK: What was your position on the basketball court? Were you a guard?

BW: I was a guard, yeah. I was, I averaged fourteen points a game the last two years. Which is pretty decent.

SK: That’s pretty good! What was your specialty? Were you a good long-range shooter?

BW: I was, yeah. I would get a lot of three’s…I liked to shoot (laughs).

JR: When you got out of the service the GI Bill obviously was available to you. Had you thought about college before?

BW: Oh yeah. Yeah, matter of fact, I had enrolled at Miami University and had a room and everything there. And I don’t know how I got to Miami. But I went down, I was a placekicker too, and I thought well I’ll go down walk-on and see if I could be a kicker for the team. They had some like two other guys out for football, so I stayed home (laughs).

JR: I see (laughs).

SW: Well, the war had ended and it was all…

SK: Yeah.

JR: Right.

SK: And you’re from Pennsylvania you said?

SW: Yes.

SK: Where from?

BW: Irwin, Pennsylvania.

SK: Is that a rural community?

SW: No, have you heard of the Pennsylvania turnpike?

JR: Sure.

SW: Well, when the turnpike

was built it was planted between Pittsburgh and, what was…?

BW: Harrisburg.

SW: Harrisburg, yeah. I couldn’t think for a second. And then, so they got as far as Irwin in the process of building.

BW: It’s about twenty or twenty five miles directly east of Pittsburgh.

SW: Pittsburgh.

SK: Okay.

SW: Irwin is. And it’s a town of… small town. I mean, I had a couple hundred in my high school classroom. But anyway…

SK: What year were you born?

SW: 1927.

SK: 1927. And what year were you born?

BW: ‘27.

SK: Both ‘27, okay.

SW: Yeah (laughs). Two months apart.

JR: Really?

BW: We’re both 29 (laughs).

SW: (Laughs) but anyway, then the war came and then the Pennsylvania turnpike construction. And it had gotten as far as Irwin. So we really became sort of famous. I mean, they got off this nice turnpike and then they had to ride

through this little town to go to Pittsburgh. Which the bulk of the people were probably going to Pittsburgh in the first place.

BW: Well, I should interject here that she was a junior queen for their big party that they had; there was a picture of her on a float.

SK: In high school, you mean?

SW: I was only twelve years old (laughs). The town was seventy-five years old.

SK: Were you an athlete or were you interested in sports or dance or…?

SW: Oh yeah. Dance. Well everything. But, if you think about how long ago that was….the sports….we didn’t play other schools. But, fortunately in high school, I had a super good physical education teacher and she ran a good intermural program and made the competition between classes. I mean we really had a lot of sports, but we didn’t go around to other schools and play. But, I never intended to major in physical education.

I mean, I never even thought of that. When I was in third grade (laughs), I announced to my parents, and the world I guess, that I was going to be a math teacher because I loved math. And it’s not usually a girl’s thing that much at that time. And so I went to college on the assumption that I was going to be a math teacher. And I loved it, it was easy. One day the head of the physical education department, I’ll never forget this, in March of my freshman year, called me in and said “what are you majoring in?” And I said “just math.” And she said, “you know I think you ought to be a physical education major because you’re here more than any physical education major we have and you seem to really like it.” And I said, “well I never thought about that, math has been

my goal since I was eight.” And she said “well, why don’t you try majoring in…” I said “I won’t give it up.” And she said “well, why don’t you major in both of them?” So we sat down and figured out how I could do it. And if I went all summer at the end of my freshman year, that year coming up, like that summer, I could manage it. So I ended up with a math major and a physical education major and a health minor and biology minor because you had to take all this science and stuff with everything. So, guess what my first job, when I took my first job, I’ll have to tell that because that’s kind of funny. He was still in school and we’d already decided we were going to be married eventually. And he was still in school so I took a job so I could live with my parents so I could pay room and board to them instead of somebody else. And so that’s what I did and my first job was

physical education and health and biology. And no math (laughs).

JR: No math, how about that? (Laughs)

SW: (Laughs) it was really funny. But then the next job, I only taught there one year, and then we got married and I went to the town where he was teaching. And I got a job that I adored and it was health and physical education and math. A little bit of both.

JR: Good! At what age? Grammar school?

SW: No, no Junior high and high school.

JR: Okay.

SW: I never taught elementary.

JR: And what town was that again?

SW: The little town where I taught?

JR: Yeah.

SW: What’s the name of that little town?

BW: Enon.

JR: Enon, Ohio?

BW: Yeah, just south of Springfield, Ohio.

SW: It’s not far…

BW: North of Dayton. And I was in Fairborn which was right where Wright-Patterson Air Force Base is.

JR: Okay, so you said Dayton area?

SW: And I commuted

up there to school and had the greatest principal and superintendent. All one person.

BW: Matter of fact, he cried when she left.

JR: Oh, is that right?

SW: He did, we did. I cried too. Yeah.

SK: You know, Joshua and I talked about the interview and how it was going to go…and Josh was the one who was supposed to be asking the questions, and I said, “I might ask a question,” but I’m jumping in a bit more than I thought I would.

JR: Please!

SK: Because it’s very interesting to me. Your stories. Let me ask you just one follow-up question about physical education. Has the place of physical education in the curriculum of junior high schools and high schools, has that changed over time? Was it a more or less important part of the educational experience of young people in the United States? Back in the 1950’s compared to what it become in the ‘70’s, ‘80’s, ‘90’s and so on?

SW:

Well, that is a good question (laughs).

BW: Well, let me throw a couple words in there. I think physical education is pretty strong at elementary schools. And there has sort of been a change going from a game-oriented kind of thing; you know, playing basketball and volleyball and all of these things, to the fitness kind of thing.

SK: Right.

BW: That’s true. And a lot of schools don’t even offer…

SK: I know that… I know that it’s been deemphasized.

BW: Mhmm.

SW: Sad.

SK: So, when you were learning how to teach physical education, the emphasis was on getting young people to play game and you structured tournaments and competitions and that type of thing?

SW: Mhmm.

SK: Okay.

SW: I never personally went into coaching. I mean, I always had cheerleaders, even at Ohio State when I thought they already had cheerleaders. But, it was just to have fun and my philosophy was “this is really good for you.” I didn’t use those words, but, you know, activity is how you stay healthy. And I firmly believe that because I taught fifty-six and a half years… if we hadn’t moved up here I would have taught two or three more I think.

JR: Yeah.

SW: And I cried like crazy when I left Oshkosh. But, so, it became more of a fitness and good for your body I think then when I first when into it. I don’t think

I went in it myself, personally, for that except that I had always been active. In high school when we didn’t have team sports, we had class sports and it was very competitive.

SK: And fun?

SW: Oh, a blast!

JR: What was your favorite? Basketball?

SW: Well, basketball was probably my favorite. But I really liked everything.

BW: You played field hockey.

SW: Oh yes, I loved field hockey. And volleyball. You name it.

BW: She was a pretty good shooter.

JR: Yeah?

BW: Yeah.

SW: Then I loved the dance part. And my high school teacher wasn’t into the dance part, so I got the sports part from her. But then when I went to Muskingum I really… I mean, I always loved to dance. I was crazy about that.

SK: It must be very gratifying for you to see how women’s athletics…

SW: Oh, yes.

SK: Like the Women’s World Cup, we were talking about that, now has become

so much more recognizable in the world of sports and society in general.

SW: Oh, I know. I always say “why couldn’t this have been when I was in high school?” (Laughs).

BW: We witnessed that when our daughter started playing basketball in the seventh grade. It was just different. I remember her playing tennis and looking at five or six tennis courts full of girls, you know? How it changed and how wonderful it was for girls.

SK: Absolutely, yeah.

SW: Oh, and our daughter is big-time into sports. I mean…

SK: I wonder how that happened. (Laughs)

SW: She had little chance of not being… (Laughs)

JR: Right (laughs). So, from suburban Dayton area you eventually got over to Columbus. Right?

BW: Yeah, we went to Cleveland. I took a job in Cleveland.

JR: Gosh, is there a town in Ohio you didn’t serve? (Laughs)

BW: (laughs) Yeah. So, I

took a job in Cleveland in a suburban high school. I was the assistant basketball coach and golf coach. So, we spent three years there and I had the bug to move to Florida.

SK: Florida?

BW: Which is kind of strange.

SW: I want to interject one thing. One of the worst mistakes we ever made turned out to be the best thing we ever did. Okay, go ahead.

BW: Yeah, so we decided to move to Florida. I took a job sight unseen.

SW: (laughs)

BW: New Smyrna Beach. Head basketball and assistant football. We had a little bit of furniture and we said “oh, we’ll get a trailer and trail up to Florida.” Well, in about two blocks I said, “this is not going to work” (laughs). There was a company in Cleveland that handled a lot of Florida back-and-forth, so we took

our stuff there to store. While we were there, there was a van there going back to Florida empty and he wanted to take our stuff. But, this guy was really smart who owned the place. He said “you leave your stuff here, because we bring a lot of people down there and they end up not liking it and they came home.” So, we did that and we went down and met the football coach. He was mad at me for being late. And the superintendent, we met him, he said, “You guys better find a place to stay.” And so the football coached said we could come to his house tonight and shack for a while. And so we did. While we were there, a retired major in the Air Force who had been at Wright-Patterson [Air Force Base]… so we had bonded a bit in that deal. I said to Shirley, “We better get out and find a place to stay.” And he looked at his wife and said, “Maggie, these kids can stay with us. Can’t they?” And she said “sure.”

They had a beautiful home on the Intercoastal Waterway--swimming pool and the whole works. We were sitting around the pool one day and he said, “You guys want a little advice?” I said, “yeah, sure.” He said, “I’ve been noticing that you’re not really very happy about this move. I’m going to give you a little advice: you go back to Ohio. You come to Florida and the schools aren’t very good and you sit around drinking ice tea and getting sand in your sandals (laughs). You better go back to Ohio.” So, we went back to Columbus. My brother lived there and we called him and asked if we could stay there a couple of weeks.

SW: This is August. About two weeks before school starts and no jobs now (laughs).

BW: So, we go back. I go over to Ohio State and talk to them about grad school to work on my doctorate. I had gotten my master’s

at Kent State. And so I ended up accepted and eventually got a graduate assistantship and she got a job…

SW: In an inner-city teaching math.

BW: (Laughs) in Columbus.

JR: Oh, good!

SK: My son goes to Ohio State, by the way.

SW: Oh, neat!

SK: So, I get to go to that campus on occasion. I love it there.

BW: It’s quite a place.

SK: Much bigger than it was when you were there, I’m sure?

BW: Yeah, yeah. Matter of fact, when we drove down Lane Avenue from Upper Irwin we lived close enough that we could hear the cows “moo.” It was their farms… and we would sometimes stop to let the cows out (laughs).

SW: Well, I took a job in… he got a graduate assistantship and was going to work on his PhD, so now somebody has to make some money (laughs). So, I took

a job. And you can always teach math if you go the day after school starts, pretty much. So, I got a job in inner-city. It was crazy. They tried to burn the school down (laughs). But, I didn’t have any trouble and I taught math and made it fun. I had cupcakes on Friday, you know, and all that kind of stuff to motivate inner-city kids. And then, because our school had such a bad reputation, they sent somebody up from downtown to get us through the year and then a new assistant principal. He and I kind of bonded and then he got a principal job at a school right across the street from Ohio State and he begged me to come with him. It didn’t

take too much begging (laughs). And I had started on my master’s then in counseling. I saw that was needed in that school. And so I taught math half of the day and then started taking graduate courses. Near the end of my first year teaching there, two or three of my professors at Ohio State called me in and asked me if I’d like to teach at Ohio State in the physical education department. And wow, I thought that was fabulous. And that’s how I got into university teaching. And so I taught all health and physical education. Okay,

now go on…

BW: I was graduate assistant for a year and then I was considering moving back to the [unclear] there, but the head of the department said “you know, I don’t think that’s a good idea. There’s a job opened up at the university school on campus,” which is now closed, and so I took the job there teaching physical education and coaching about everything (laughs).

SK: But you continued with your graduate studies at Ohio State?

SW: Oh, yes. It was a perfect set-up for him.

SK: And you eventually earned your PhD?

BW: Yeah.

SK: In?

BW: In education, health, and physical education.

SK: What year did you complete your PhD then?

BW: ‘62.

SK: ‘62.

BW: I started there in ‘55. In ‘62 I said to Shirley, “that was a long six years” and she said, “it was seven” (laughs). But I was teaching full-time and coaching full-time.

SK: Right. Oh, it took me a long time to do my PhD too for the same reason. I’m a basketball fanatic, I actually went to Indiana

University as a graduate student and Bobby Knight was at Indiana. But, was he at Ohio State back in those days?

SW: Oh, yes.

BW: Yeah, I knew Bobby quite well.

SK: What do you remember about Bobby Knight?

SW: (laughs)

BW: (Laughs) volatile.

SK: Even then?

BW: Yeah, he was. He was. And one of the assistant coaches was sort of his caretaker so-to-speak (laughs). Just to keep him calmed down a little bit. But, he was a great shooter and I spent a lot of time with Bob.

SW: Now, who was the man that just died that was your age?

BW: John Havlicek was my student teacher.

[phone rings SW says “Excuse me”]

SK: Really?

BW: Yeah.

SK: He is one of the greats of all time.

BW: Oh, yeah, yeah. He came in my office one day and I could tell he was a little upset. I said, “What’s the problem, John?” and he said, [unclear] only

wants to pay me ten thousand dollars. I can’t play for a penny less than fifteen thousand. I was making four and I thought ten was a pretty good salary (laughs) to play basketball.

SK: Right (laughs).

BW: So, he came in about a week later and said, “I got my fifteen.” Can you imagine what he would have gotten today? Jerry Lucas… I went to Las Vegas with Lucas and his wife when he got the Sportsmen of the Year Award.

SK: So the style of basketball that Bobby Knight coached, you know, it was beautiful to watch at its best. With real emphasis on passing and movement… how would you define your… I mean, we’re not there yet, but just on pure basketball, what kind of emphasis did you make on basketball?

If someone were to say that there is a trademark of your style of basketball-- what would it have been?

BW: Well, I was not a very good defensive coach (laughs). I was mainly offensive-minded.

SK: Run-and-gun, or? Fast breaks?

BW: Yeah, in sixty-eight years I only won third place in nationals. We averaged ninety-two points a game that year.

SK: That was a lot back then.

BW: That was a lot, yeah.

SK: Without three points, yeah.

BW: 133 points one game (laughs). So, yeah we liked to shoot and I had a great group of guys.

SK: We should wait until we get to that point, but I was just wondering, you know, how you developed your coaching style and your understanding of the game. Was it….

BW: I was… I had a good

college coach. I was on the college squad for two years and the football coach thought I better give up basketball, I think. The basketball coach probably put him up to it to get rid of me (laughs). But, anyway, I had a good college coach and I learned a lot from him. And then Fred Taylor was a really good coach at Ohio State at that time. Very good coach and a great guy. I learned most of my basketball from him.

SK: Do you think he had an influence on Bobby Knight, too?

BW: Oh yeah. Matter of fact, I spent two or three days at Indiana one year talking to him and watching his practices of his motion offense.

SK: Right, right. Beautiful.

BW: And I made that change from being very pattern kind-of-guy

to a motion offense.

SK: Interesting. What year was that? Do you remember?

BW: Hmm… probably in the seventies sometime.

SK: Okay. When they were really great. The seventy-six team was the only…. Joshua….

JR: This is why I bring you! For this stuff (laughs).

SW: (laughs)

SK: The seventy-six Indiana team was the only team that ever went undefeated in the Division One.

BW: Yeah.

JR: Wow.

SW: When we were at Ohio State, when I started teaching in the physical education department, it seems automatically I became the cheerleading coach. And so when Havlicek and all those guys were playing and doing extremely well we got to go to everything because I had the cheerleaders. They never paid me a cent, that’s new for today (laughs) but we had a blast.

SK: Yeah, they went far in the tournament, didn’t they? Back in those days. Ohio State? Did they win the championship?

BW: Yeah.

SK: Okay.

SW: Oh yeah, it was a blast!

BW: They lost two

times to Cincinnati (laughs). Which shouldn’t have happened but it did.

SW: (laughs)

JR: Was it basketball cheerleaders only or were you also in charge of football cheerleading?

SW: Oh, I had cheerleaders. Period. I didn’t get paid a cent, but I loved it so much I didn’t even think about it. Now I’m sure they all get paid.

BW: We got some nice trips out of it.

SW: Oh yeah, we had plenty of them.

BW: Woody Hayes, the football coach. That was an experience too.

SK: You knew him?

BW: Oh yeah, I knew him quite well.

SK: Also a volatile guy.

SW: Everybody knew Woody.

BW: I coached the basketball team and the football team at the university school and we played our games on Friday afternoon on his number one practice field. It was all set up for filming and so forth and it rained one Thursday night and he wouldn’t let us play on that field. I had to set up a whole new field for us and… but he was quite

a guy.

SW: (laughs)

BW: But I’ll tell you what he did for me. My first year there as a Graduate Assistant they gave us a pass to go to the games. It was real hot and I had a white shirt on and I put it in the pocket of the shirt and all that was left was the little crumbs in that pocket. I went in the ticket office and told them my sad story (laughs) and they said “that is a sad one. Tough. You’re out of luck.” So, I went off to see Woody. Now, I had played against Woody in college and knew who he was and he knew who I was… and so I went up to see him and he gets on the phone and calls the ticket office and says, “I got a young man here who has a problem. You take care of it.” So, I went down and they gave me a new pass (laughs).

JR: (Laughs) that’s great. How funny. Then you laminated that…?

BW: (laughs) yeah, yeah. Those were good years.

SW: We had a blast.

SK: Sounds great.

JR: And you had a lot of success with the basketball team at the university

school.

BW: Yeah, I did a little recruiting.

JR: Okay.

BW: Which I said to our principal… we had good teams. We had won fourteen or fifteen games most years I was coaching. But I said, “you know, you can recruit kids who are musicians or good students and….” It was a great school.

SW: Oh it was fabulous.

BW: It was a great experience for me and was wonderful kids. And I said I would like to get a couple kids from junior high school right near the campus. Predominantly black school. So, I went down and told the principal what I wanted. I said, “I don’t want any players that are going to go on into Columbus Public Schools [unknown]. So, I got one kid and he decided he would like to come. Then the principal said, “oh, we have a guy here that plays with

the men over in ‘the Rec’ because it’s better competition than junior high school. Do you want to talk to him? He’s really good.” So I said sure, I wanted to see him. So they came in, scared to death, thought I was a truancy officer or something I think.

JR: (laughs)

BW: (Laughs) but anyway, I get both those kids and the first year we are twenty and three. And we are twenty two and two and twenty one and one those three years. And this John Howard was a fantastic player. He made me a good coach.

JR: Yeah.

SK: And was he African American? John Howard?

BW: Yeah.

SK: So, I’m going to make a guess here that you grew up in an area where there weren’t many African Americans?

SW: Oh, I can’t even think of any.

SK: And you grew up in an area where there were… So, is it safe to guess that maybe Columbus was the first time that you lived in an area, you taught in an inner-city school you said….

SW:

Yes, I had almost all black students.

SK: So, this is the first time you really came into contact with populations of black Americans. Was it strange for you? Was it hard to adjust? Tell us about that.

SW: I don’t think it was.

BW: I never thought about it.

SW: No, I never did either. And when I took this job in inner-city Columbus on the spur-of-the-moment, there were three new teachers that year in the school. And the students were…. wasn’t all black but it was the majority of black students. And the three new teachers, this is really funny. The other two… there were three women and they were both black. I didn’t think anything about it. The one lady’s name was Mrs. White. There were two Mrs. White’s!

JR: Out of three new teachers? (Laughs)

SW: Yeah and… So, anyway, we just got along a lot. They were my two favorite teachers

in the school. And then I’ll jump forward. As I said, I left there and went to Ohio… you know, junior high at Ohio State… but this lady, we stayed friends. And then of course we moved out of Columbus and we still stayed friends. And she sent her son to UW Oshkosh.

JR: Oh, is that right?

SW: Yeah.

BW: He was the minister that gave the prayer at the [unclear]

JR: Yeah.

BW: That was their son.

SW: He has a PhD and is a minister. I mean, isn’t that an interesting story?

SK: Still though, when you started at Ohio State in ‘55, right? That was the same year that the Montgomery Bus Boycott began with Martin Luther King.

SW: Yeah, that’s right.

SK: So in that period of time, from ‘55 to ‘62, the Civil Rights Movement…

BW: Yeah.

SK: Were you very aware of the Civil Rights Movement? Or issues of race

and the racial problem in the United States at that time?

BW: Yeah, I think maybe a little bit but not…

SW: To me, just as I said, a person’s a person and I didn’t give a “hoot” (laughs). And that’s how that other Mrs. White and I were such buddies.

SK: But not everyone was like you.

SW: Oh, I know.

SK: So, what made you different? What made you tolerant?

SW: (laughs) I don’t know.

BW: (laughs) I don’t know.

SK: And is it the same for you?

BW: Yeah, and I got to know the black kids who played for Fred Taylor at Ohio State and they were just people. John Howard came to us with an IQ under 100. And it was the best thing that ever happened to him. The teachers just fell in love with him. He has written six books now.

JR:

Is that right?

BW: He went to University of Cincinnati on a scholarship and then he was drafted by the old Cincinnati Royals and he had an appendectomy during training camp and they released him. Then he played a year with the Globe Trotters. And the draft board said “you better… you don’t want to go to Vietnam you better get in college….in school.” So, he got a master’s degree and then he got a PhD. Here’s a guy with a 90 IQ and that’s one of his books. He’s written two novels. That’s a series he’s working on.

SK: That’s great.

BW: And he became the superintendent of schools at East Orange, New Jersey. Which wasn’t an easy job.

JR: No.

SK: So, you were an influence on him you think?

SW: Well, we’d like to think so! (Laughs)

BW: (Laughs) yeah.

SK: So long before Dorian Boyland there was John Howard.

BW: John Howard, yeah. And he… one day, one of the kids came in and said “John’s

got a toothache.” He’s walking around like this [gesture].

SW: (laughs)

BW: So I call his mom, his mother’s name is Bertha. I said, “Bertha, John’s got some bad teeth, [unkown] he really does. So do you mind if I send him over to the dental school? I won’t cost you anything and they’ll look at them.” So we went over and we came back. I think every dentist in the place looked at his mouth (laughs). I said, “How did it go?” and he said, “not going back there anymore!” He wasn’t real happy with it but he did it. And he grew. He gained weight.

SW: Well, he got his teeth all taken care of.

JR: Mhmm.

BW: And he became an All-State player the first game he played in the All-Star game and he was…

SW: Then he got a PhD and wrote books.

JR: And he was, when you found him, he was at the university school’s junior high?

BW: No, he was at a public school.

JR: Public schools, okay. What was the standard

student body of the university school then?

BW: It was pretty highly educated kids.

SW: Oh yeah.

BW: From good families. They were great kids. Well, one of the kids that I had was John Jacobs. He was a white kid. He was about 6”7’ and was a good player. In his senior year he called me during the summer and his dad had been killed in the Texas City explosion in Monsanto. He had an older brother and a younger sister. And he called and said, “Coach, I got a problem.” I said, “Well, you only have one. We ought to be able to handle that. What’s your problem?” He said, “Mom’s going back to school at the University of Michigan and she’s going to send Johanna and I to boarding schools.” Oh,

I said “we’ve got a problem!” (Laughs) So, I said “well, can’t you maybe move in with one of your teammates families for the year?” and he said, “no, Mom said the only people I could live with would be you and Shirley.”

SW: Get that one.

JR: You? (Laughs)

SW: Us. (Laughs)

BW: So I didn’t know if that would happen or not. A guy….coach…keeping his star player. You know? So, she had worked with the state Athletic Association and we made an appointment to talk with them. And we had a whole list of things and I said, the day we were going over to talk, “let’s take Johanna too.” We had two bedrooms. We didn’t have a daughter at that time. And let’s just keep both of them. So we went over and the guy said “I think this is wonderful. I [unknown] what she’s doing.” So John got a scholarship to Tennessee…

SW: Well, they moved in with us.

BW: They moved in with us, yeah. She got homesick after a semester and came home. They weren’t

very happy about it.

SW: Then they cried and we cried.

JR: Mhmm.

SK: And this was before you had your own children, right?

SW: Yes.

BW: He was blonde hair and blue-eyed. 6”7’ and she was dark haired and brown eyed like me. We’d go to the shopping mall or something and people would look at us…

SW: How’d they get so tall? (Laughs)

BW: How’d these kids get so tall? (Laughs)

JR: (laughs)

SW: We loved them and I feel really good about John especially because he could have been a good student but he wasn’t motivated. And you don’t get away with that with me. And so we had him, he had to study two hours every night. I would give him incentives and all of that. He turned out fabulous.

JR: How old were you at this time? To have a…

BW: Thirties. 34 or something.

JR: So, you had a high schooler and you’re 34. Okay.

SW: He’s in the hospital. He just got

out of the hospital the other day. I mean, we’ve kept this relationship just like a mom and dad.

JR: Was the university school diverse racially or was it mostly a white school?

BW: It was mostly white. I had seven black kids on my team.

SK: How did they find the experience? Did they have any problems that they came to you with?

BW: No. Our school was a wonderful school.

SW: Oh fabulous.

SK: But Columbus is a university town, so maybe it was a little…

SW: It was a little different, yeah.

SK: A little different from some of the towns in Southern Ohio.

BW: John joined the ROTC program at Tennessee and went into the Air Force and came out a colonel.

JR: Wow.

BW: So he did quite well. And he worked at Vanderbilt [University] for sixteen years in their medical school.

SW: Oh, we’re proud of him.

JR: Yeah. So it was a great school, it was a great experience. You had these wards

in an out of your house (laughs). But then Oshkosh.

BW: Then Oshkosh.

SW: We wanted to get into university teaching.

JR: Okay.

BW: I wanted to be a college coach and so the job in Oshkosh opened up and I interviewed for it and got the job.

SW: I went and checked and the university school only went two more years after we left. So, we say when Bob left they quit. Bob said it was a money thing. It was just too expensive.

BW: They had a big reunion… fiftieth reunion for the last class that we went back for. One of my other kids that I had that played football and basketball for me, Jeff Louis, went to West Point [United States Military Academy] and he wrote to me when he was in Vietnam. And he said he had always wanted to get into coaching but being

in the army he didn’t. And I said, “Well, why don’t you do this? Try to get back to West Point and get tied up with one of the teams [unknown].” So I didn’t hear from him and thought “oh Jeff’s been killed, I’ll bet.” But then here’s John Jacobs, the white kid that stayed with us…

SW: That lived with us.

BW: Yeah. And when I got cancer he sent emails out to many of the athletes as he could find and I got thirty-five or forty get well cards. And Jeff Louis was one of them.

JR: Oh that’s great.

BW: I hadn’t seen him for fifty years and he was a colonel and still lives at West Point. He went back and the first thing that happened was he got involved in the Athletic Program. So it was a good…. But we had

great kids.

SW: Oh it was fabulous.

JR: How did you learn about the position at Oshkosh? Was that school even on your radar?

BW: Well, that was a time when there was a lot of college presidents who were looking for PhDs, you know? And I’d interviewed for a job in Hawaii (laughs) and California. I had a chance to go to [unknown] college in California and I chose Oshkosh. When I called the guy to tell him I was going to Oshkosh there was a pause, you know. He said, “Don’t you know it’s cold up there?” (laughs)

JR: (laughs)

SK: Was this like another Florida situation? Sight unseen or did you know what Oshkosh was like? Did you do a campus visit and a campus interview? Or how did that process go?

BW: Yeah, I was pretty excited about getting a job in Oshkosh. I drove… I taught summer school. So I drove up and spent the summer there

and she was back in Upper Arlington. So when she moved up… and unfortunately we drove in into the bad part of town. You know? The south… where that new basketball arena is and all that junky stuff is there.

JR: Mhmm.

BW: I looked at her and tears were coming down her eyes, because we lived in Upper Arlington which you probably know is… we had a really nice home and she had a good job and I wondered why I made that move (laughs).

SK: That’s funny. That was my wife’s first reaction when we came into Oshkosh. Maybe not full-on tears but we had come from Ann Arbor…

BW: Oh yeah.

SW: Oh that’s a nice area.

SK: And she was very happy in Ann Arbor and so Oshkosh was a transition.

SW: Well, yeah. And you know I had a job teaching at Ohio State and I had the cheerleaders and, you know, it’s hard to leave.

BW: We had to leave neighbors…

SK: Tell us a little bit more about why you were so excited to get

the job at Oshkosh. What was it that excited you? Was it the idea of--?

BW: Well, I wanted to be a college coach. I had been around Fred Taylor a lot at the college level and I just thought it was time.

SK: What year was that?

BW: That was ‘64.

SK: ‘64. So, what was Wisconsin’s state Oshkosh like in 1964?

BW: You really want me to tell you? (Laughs)

JR: Yeah!

SK: Please!

BW: Here’s an example. I didn’t have a telephone and the athletic director said, “Just come in and use mine.” I said, “You know, you’re calling kids, you’re calling parents, you’re doing this…” And so I went over to talk to one of the vice chancellors and I told him my sap story and he said, “You do need a phone!” So he got me a phone. Then the athletic director got upset with me for going over his head, you know? So,

that was one sort of thing that was strange. Then I remember one day the old building, the grounds office, was in Dempsey Hall. And I went in to talk to the guy about something and a guy came in and said, “I need a ten foot piece of pipe.” Well, we can’t get it to you until next week because the chancellor has to sign the thing and he is out of town. I thought, “oh boy.” After coming from Ohio State that had the best of everything.

SK: So, the resources were not quite what you were hoping they would be?

BW: Mhmm.

SK: But does that also say something about how the university is run that the chancellor or president of the university would have to sign to get something like that ordered?

BW: Yeah and Dr. Guiles [Roger Guiles] was really a great guy. But, you know, I think the whole university

system ran that way. And there wasn’t a whole lot of recruiting being done as far as until I came in. And I had been used to that at Ohio State. But, I thought, if I’m here more than two years I want my head examined.

JR: Is that right?

BW: Yup.

SK: So, it was Division Three? Or what was it?

BW: The NAIA [National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics].

SK: NAIA.

BW: The National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics. And that was sort of the “poor man’s” association. And we had the conference winner always played one of the private schools for the right to go to Kansas City. So, in ‘66-’67 we won and Lakeland

College was the big team at that time. We always played against them. We had to play two out of three. But we beat them and we went to Kansas City the first year and we got beat the first night (laughs). Pretty bad. What was that college that your old coach went to?

SW: Westminster College.

BW: Westminster College in Pennsylvania. Private liberal arts school and their coach was from her high school and all the girls had big crush on him, you know. And he hummed us pretty good. So we come home. Next year we go back…. in ‘67-’68. We get the number one seeded team and I thought “oh, no.” And

we beat them (laughs).

JR: Yeah!

BW: 82-80. Get that book, Shirley. The Billy Schwartz…

SW: Which one?

BW: The Billy Schwartz booklet about the tournament. Underneath the coffee stand. Anyway, they were a great group of guys. Two local kids and my center was 6’7” and about 170 pounds. We played Guilford College and they had a big center who was 6’9” and about 245. And we beat them 82-80. And then we beat the next night… won that game. Then the third night we won again by 57-55. I used an emergency score play, we call it… it

was all planned.

SW: I don’t know which book you’re talking about.

BW: Oh, that black book underneath the coffee stand.

SW: Oh!

BW: So, then we got beat on Friday night. We played Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. Two times at 10:30 at night (laughs).

JR: Wow.

BW: And we got beat in the last second shot.

SW: Bob, is it this one?

BW: No, underneath the apothecary… or the coffee table (laughs).

SW: Oh (laughs). Duh!

BW: Anyway (laughs). We lose and so we have to play third place the next night. It was unorganized, I told the guys we had to get dressed in the hotel and walk underground to the arena. I told the guys [unclear]…. I had to tape ankles because we didn’t

have a trainer.

JR: Right.

BW: I was it. So, anyway, we played Westminster College again and we beat them 102 to 68.

JR: Wow, gave them their thumping back.

BW: That Billie Schwartz was my center. He was in Manitowoc.

SW: Yeah, he just called yesterday to…

BW: He calls about every month.

SW: Well, he called to wish me a happy…

SK: So, is it safe to say you made an impact on the team within a couple of years? Was the team any good before you got there?

BW: Yeah, they weren’t bad. They weren’t bad. They had been to Kansas City once and lost. I was either good or bad, one of the two (laughs).

JR: So, when you got there and looked at the program and the team, what did

you feel needed to be changed?

BW: Well, it just needed to get some better players. You know? I did a little more recruiting than they had done before.

JR: And how does that work? You didn’t have scholarships available to you?

BW: No.

JR: So what was… how did you approach recruiting? What was your sales pitch?

BW: Everybody was in the same boat, you know? So, that was good. And you had to sell them on your program at your school. Kind of what education you were going to get. And that sort of thing. That was basically it.

SW: Isn’t this cute?

BW: Billie Schwartz’s mother kept all of that and he cut them out and made that for me and gave it to us a couple of years ago when we were back to a reunion.

SW: Isn’t that nice?

JR: Yeah, that’s nice.

SK:

Were you recruiting black athletes at that time?

BW: Yeah, not the first year or two but I tried to get a kid who played at Steven’s Point. He played in the pros, I can’t think of his name. He played in Milwaukee schools. Black kid. He was really good. I went down to talk to him and his coach said “he can’t go to a state school, he has to go to a junior college. His grades aren’t good enough.” So, I didn’t even bother talking to him and he ends up at Steven’s Point (laughs). Beats us three years and gets drafted by the pros.

SK: Really? (Laughs)

BW: Yeah. (Laughs)

SK: Yeah. What are some of the names of the African American basketball players who you recruited in those years in the sixties?

BW: Well, Lionel Perkins is one. Lionel was… we played… I started playing…

SW: What about Gene Graham?

BW: Gene Graham.

Gene could jump right out of the gym. He calls us Mom and Dad. He called her yesterday to wish her a happy birthday. He calls us pretty regularly. And, of course, Dorian. A number of guys I can’t remember. If I saw their face I would.

SW: We used to have the team, about every other home game, we had them for their pre-game meal at our house. So, you know we really knew these guys (laughs).

JR: Right.

BW: One night I came home a little bit late and the guys were all there at the house.

SW: (laughs) Oh yeah!

BW: And they were sitting in the room. I think every one of them had a doll or stuffed animal of some kid. I thought, “Oh god, what’s happening here to my basketball team?” (Laughs). And our daughter was like five years old and she had given every one of them…

JR: Aw, sweet!

SW: (laughs)

BW: (laughs) And

Ron Hayek, he was something else. He could really… he was a tough guy.

SK: He looks like a tough guy.

BW: Yeah. He had a scholarship to Arizona and he came back. And John Lallensack had a scholarship to Madison and we recruited him when he came home. He didn’t realize he was supposed to go to class every day and he had a 34 on the ACT test. But he… he and his wife stop every summer.

SW: Every summer he comes to see us.

BW: We usually play golf. His wife, talk about a golfer. Whew, she can play.

JR: So, it sounds like it was pretty typical for players who had scholarships to play for bigger teams? Division One? Would they just not get enough play time and so they were more interested in playing than playing for a big school?

BW:

Lallensack didn’t go to class and he flunked out.

JR: Okay.

BW: So, he was home. And so we ended up getting him in and he was a great player. And Hayek was the same way. He just didn’t like being away from Milwaukee. He also played a year of football at Oshkosh.

SW: When we went to Kansas City in the year we stayed and almost won, Bob and I did laundry every night. We didn’t have very many supplies at UW Oshkosh in uniforms (laughs).

JR: No, that’s a great story that gets told a lot. How you were running out to the laundromat.

BW: (laughs)

SW: (laughs) Yeah.

BW: Yeah, I mean you play a game at 10:30 and you’re done after midnight. Finding a place…

SW: Another crazy story about that is I had this dress that today I would consider ugly… I

see the smirk on his face. And so I wore it that first night when we won. Well, I was not about to not wear that dress.

JR: Oh sure, it was the lucky charm.

SW: (laughs) I wore that dress the whole week! I don’t think I ever wore it again.

SK: Can I ask you about stories? I’ve heard a story and I don’t know the details. I think it’s a story I heard about ten years ago when I was doing interviews for the Black Thursday incident. Was there ever a moment when you brought a team with black athletes on it to another university and there were some ugly epithets coming from the stands?

BW: No, I don’t remember that.

SK: Okay, I don’t remember where this story comes from. So you never encountered going to Stevens Point and hearing…

BW: No, never did.

SW: It didn’t matter what color a kid

was to us.

JR: Right.

SK: Right, but this was at a game not in Oshkosh. But somewhere else.

BW: I started playing… I tried to play a Division One school or two every year. And we played about, I don’t know, thirty-five or so Division Two. I did that so the kids could live in a good motel (laughs). And they could eat on more than five dollars a day. So, we played Nebraska and Kansas one year. That was dumb (laughs).

SW: (laughs) they whooped you?

BW: Especially Kansas. Lionel Perkins, he was a black kid from Kenosha. And he was a good little player. Nice kid. He

scored twenty-three against, I think it was Kansas. He scored twenty-three points. We come back and play Carthage College. He scores two.

JR: (laughs)

BW: (laughs) I said to him, “Lionel, what’s the deal here? You score twenty-three against a Division One school and…” He said, “I like those big crowds.” (Laughs)

SW: (laughs)

BW: Thirteen thousand people, you know?

JR: Sure.

BW: They fired him up (laughs). Ralph Sims was one of my very best black players. He averaged twenty-four points a game in the four years he was there. And he was a struck of luck that I got him because the assistant coaches at Madison had gone to recruit his teammate, a big kid, and Ralph was there. But Ralph didn’t have the grades to get in. So he came to us.

And I didn’t start him to start with and then we played UW Milwaukee in the playoffs… we went down to play them and we beat them. That was a disaster for them. And some state representative from Milwaukee called our financial aid office and they had to go through every kid on our team and see what kind of financial aid they had. Because they can’t beat a team that’s got scholarships!

JR: Right.

SK: What years did Ralph Sims play on the team?

BW: He was ‘78.

JR: That was when you went back to the NAIA in ‘78, right?

BW: No, ‘68. ‘67 and ‘68.

JR: Right, but then didn’t you go again in ‘78?

BW: No ‘78 we won the championship.

JR: Oh, that’s right! I have that. Took the conference.

BW: We got beat by Parkside [University of Wisconsin-Parkside].

JR: Okay.

BW:

It was… they had, like, a division two and they had scholarships.

JR: Right. Yeah, I had that. I’m sorry. So, you’ve said this a couple of times. You didn’t have the resources to have extra uniforms and all that. Did you feel like Oshkosh was unique in the conferences being sort of under-resourced? Or was that just pretty typical?

BW: I think it was probably pretty typical. Yeah, I think Steven’s Point had a little edge on everything. They had some kind of program they could get kids in. Lacrosse, early on, had the “phy-ed” people. They had a lot of kids. But, I played Missouri one year. Played Don Hattisburg,

I think it’s a school. Flew into New Orleans to play University of Idaho, Bradley, Kent State… that was one trip. But, we played a lot of those schools. Green Bay always wanted to play us. They called…they got a new coach and they’re going division one. They called and said, “Bob, we’d like a game and we’ll give you a thousand dollars for you to come up.” I said, “Yeah, we’ll come up.” And we beat them. That didn’t go over real good.

JR: Yeah (laughs)

SK: (laughs)

BW: We beat them at our place, that’s a funny story. Ted Van Dellin was a player and we played Green Bay and their coach was a… he was really tough to deal with. And that’s being polite. But I had a kid visiting their campus…six,

nine kids….something like that. And he didn’t know about them. I was standing and talking to the assistant coach and this kid and he comes up and says, “Bob, I understand you’re leaving here this year.” Right in front of this kid.

JR: Oh man.

SK: That’s not fair.

BW: So anyway, we beat him. But we were ahead of them with maybe ten seconds to go and I called a time-out. Ted Van Dellin said, “Whoa, why are you calling a time-out?” I said, “I just want that guy over there to suffer for another minute” (laughs).

JR: (laughs) I love it! Oh, that’s great.

BW: And Ted says, “That’s good. I think maybe I’ll use that sometime.”

SK: So, can you tell me a little bit about the athletic program at Oshkosh in the sixties? Who was the athletic director?

BW: Bob Kolf.

SK: Bob… oh, the Kolf!

SW: Yeah, yeah.

SK: And what was he like?

BW: Oh, he was a nice old fella. But he

was old. He just…

SW: Some people get old, I don’t like the way you say that because I thought when I was young that I was old (laughs).

BW: (laughs) like, we played Creighton that’s the first team that played division one. And he said, “How big is that school?” I said, “I think they have five thousand students.” Which we were around six. He said, “Oh, that shouldn’t be a problem then.”

JR: Creighton?

BW: Yeah, he had no concept of…

JR: Well he hardly ever left Wisconsin.

BW: Our uniforms were so bad that when kids were doing time-outs they’d stand there like this, pulling their shirts out because they were just worn and…

JR: Itchy?

SW: When we would go away, we would do their uniforms. I mean…

BW: We could get… we didn’t even have bags. Travel bags to put their stuff in. And so I finally got bags out of them and then the baseball team started using them and they were full of dirt and stuff from their shoes. It

wasn’t real good. We ate on five dollars a day, that’s all they gave us to eat on. We were going down to play SMU and Baylor and I had to meet in front of the athletic committee to explain the deal. And they were upset with me because I was going to spend ten dollars a day. [I said] “Well, they’re paying us six or seven thousand dollars so I’m going to spend it.”

JR: Mhmm.

BW: But its things like that that we had backwards. You know?

SK: A lot of people would have said, “I’m out of here.”

BW: Yeah.

SK: This sounds very frustrating, but you remained. Why did you stick around under those tough circumstances?

BW: I don’t know, I never… Well, I had an opportunity to go to Florida. A school in Florida.

JR:

Florida International.

BW: Yeah.

SW: We didn’t search for anything though.

BW: No, we didn’t.

SW: Our daughter was in school and you know.

BW: Bowling Green [Bowling Green State University] offered me a job there. After we got settled and fell into their behaviors…

SK: And you began to like Oshkosh?

SW: Oh yes!

SK: When did that happen?

BW: (laughs)

SW: (laughs) I had a hard time leaving Columbus, obviously. But then I liked it [Oshkosh] because I liked the smaller town. I knew all of those kids and their families. We used to have the parents after games lots of times at our house… you know… so, we kept the parents all involved. I don’t know, we just flipped into it.

JR: And you started teaching at Oshkosh right away?

SW: Right away.

JR: Yeah.

BW: She didn’t have a job to start with.

SW: No.

BW: But then

once she got there they gave her a job.

JR: What was the condition of the physical education department when you arrived?

BW: We had a big staff.

SW: I think we had a good program.

BW: It was a pretty good program, I think. Physical education was good and…

SK: The education college in general was highly regarded, right?

SW: Right, mhmm.

BW: Mhmm.

JR: And that was part of that college at that time? It wasn’t part of “L and S” [Letters and Sciences]?

BW: No.

JR: But athletics, intramurals, and “phy-ed” were all in Albee Hall. Right? Was that frustrating? Was that adequate to the needs…?

BW: Yeah, well. We looked at the new one with a lot of hope and that was good. But it was… and then, of course, they started girls’ sports,

you know? So then they had to share. I lost… the football coach and I were both fifty percent athletics and they cut us down to thirty-three so they would have some money for the women’s. Then we had the golf… the men’s golf program. For four years and then they started the women and dropped the men.

JR: Mhmm.

SK: Mhmm.

BW: I had to raise money for the men’s program. They didn’t give us very much. So, I belonged to Oshkosh Country Club and the Country Club guys got a little upset with me because I was always asking for money (laughs).

SK: I’m playing there on Sunday, by the way.

SW: At Oshkosh Country Club?

SK: Yeah.

SW: That’s a nice place.

SK: Yeah.

JR: So, Kolf was

sort of being discussed. The new athletic center. Did both of you have any role in the planning of that facility?

BW: Oh, yeah. I was on the committee. And, matter of fact, she made the little yellow booklet that they passed out. She did all of that. I remember going to Madison to work and…. I remember going down where the ROTC is. Is it still there?

JR: Mhmm.

BW: That was supposed to be a swimming pool, wrestling room, and all that stuff. Unbeknown to us, other than the administrators, it became part of the ROTC. So, we lost a swimming pool out of that.

JR: Because the pool at Albee wasn’t sufficient size for…

BW: No. It was terrible.

JR: Yeah.

SW: That’s still the only pool, isn’t it?

BW: Well, they got the new pool.

JR: They got a new pool, but the same place.

BW: The old pool is Racquetball.

JR: Yeah! And that

was 1990 or so?

BW: Yeah.

SK: I’m looking through here and…

SW: Isn’t that nice?

SK: It’s really great. And, you know, Oshkosh just won the national championship for division three.

SW: Oh, yes!

SK: I don’t think there were a thousand people welcoming the Titans home. I don’t think that in the crowd there was a sign reading, “Coach White for President.”

BW: (laughs)

SW: (laughs)

SK: It seems like this was a very big deal when the team was at good as it was.

SW: It was, yeah.

BW: It was.

SK: It was also a time in the university’s history where it was… it had the ambitions of becoming a large university. Right? What are your memories of being part of Oshkosh when you got there in ‘64? What was the enrollment? Four thousand? Five thousand?

BW: It was five thousand.

SK: By 1968 it was at ten thousand, right?

BW: Yeah.

SK:

What are your memories of how Oshkosh was changing in the 1960’s and growing as it was?

BW: Well, you could see improvement in the administration area.

SK: In what way? What do you mean by that?

BW: Well, I think they probably had bigger ideas. You know?

SK: Mhmm.

BW: To make it into a good university. When we went there, you know, we had a lot of the old teachers that had been going to two years and then the teachers came back. Because I had them in summer school that first summer. Then we started to get better programs in the Business College. That was a real strong thing. I can’t…

Dr. Diles was a good guy. Really a good person. But he was pretty typical of all administrators at that time.

JR: He was part of a class that came up after the war and…

BW: Yeah.

SK: And he also was involved in one of the more famous incidents in the campus history…

BW: Yeah, I lost a good basketball player.

SK: What’s that?

BW: I lost a basketball player in that deal.

SK: What happened? What do you mean by that?

BW: Well, he got kicked out of school.

SK: Who was that?

BW: He was-- I recruited him from junior college in Iowa. Black kid from McKeesport, Pennsylvania. Dicky Leggett. He stayed with us for a while. A few days. He would babysit for us. And when this

thing happened, all these black kids were going to Dempsey Hall and he didn’t know what was happening. They said, “Come on, come with us.” And so he did and he got bounced out of school. He was going to be a pretty good athlete I think. And Gene Graham, that was one of the first black kids I saw after that. He said, “I wasn’t in on it, I wasn’t in on it.”

SW: Gene Graham is something else. He calls. Yesterday was my birthday. First of all, he calls at 8 o’clock in the morning and we didn’t even hear the phone. So, I didn’t even know he called. Then he calls about 9:15 or something and I didn’t even know he called previously until I looked at the phone. He wanted to call first thing in the morning. Isn’t that nice?

JR: That is very nice.

SK: So, Gene Graham was a black athlete but he wasn’t involved? So he wasn’t expelled?

BW: No. He wasn’t. He

said, “I wasn’t in on it, I wasn’t in on it.”

SK: What was your reaction to that event? What do you remember about Black Thursday? Both of you.

BW: I thought, “This can’t be happening.” You know?

SW: I didn’t understand. It didn’t matter if you were purple skin or orange skin to me, and so it was hard to relate to why it was happening.

JR: Did you know that there was so much unhappiness amongst black students?

SW: No, I guess I didn’t.

BW: Not really, but I had a recruit. A black kid that came in. He had just gotten out of the army and somebody he met in the army was from Oshkosh and talked him into coming. Jack Washington. He was from Schenectady, New York. Big guy. But,

he stayed at our house two or three days when he came out to visit and he said, “You’re going to have a black problem here.” He knew it. Sure enough. He ended up at Green Bay.

SK: So, you weren’t able to get him to come to Oshkosh?

BW: Yeah. He played… he was a good player. He was a smart player. He was sort of like a coach on the floor. He was a big guy and his son played at St. Norbert. Jack died early.

SK: You don’t remember why he said you’re going to have a problem?

BW: He spent a lot of time talking with the kids and I never questioned him about this. You know? He seemed to have a pretty good grasp of what was happening.

JR: Did you, or other members of the athletic program, try to… because you were losing a player. Did you try to talk to the administration about their decision to expel all of the students?

BW: No, they never…

JR: Never asked your opinion?

BW: No. And Dicky was the only one of mine.

JR: Well, there was some wrestlers in there. I just wondered if athletics tried to convince the university to…

BW: I don’t think they talked to anybody.

SK: There was one guy who we interviewed. His name is Jeff McCrery. He was a football player. Fought in Vietnam and he came to the campus and played football for, was it Coach Russ Young?

BW: Yup.

JR: Mhmm.

SK: And he had a very difficult time with Russ Young and the football coaches and he said there was some racial tension.

BW: Yeah.

SK: Was Russ Young a little different towards black athletes?

BW: (laughs) he was a piece of work. He really was. One of Ralph Sims, I remember him telling me, “Don’t you and Coach Young like each other?” Because we kidded each other a lot. And he was different than I…. I doubt very much if he was very familiar with black kids [unclear]. But he was a very successful coach. He had somebody in Ohio sending athletes out, black athletes out…. That kid that Dorian was close to that worked for UPS…

SW: What?

BW: He started at Culver’s. I can’t think of his name,

but he was from Dayton and he was a football player. And he has good things to say. Dorian, how I got him was strictly a stroke of luck. Dorian was all-star in Chicago. He was that good. But, his coach didn’t do anything to try to get him a job or get him a school scholarship. He was at an all-star city banquet that they had and this coach at Northern Illinois, who I had played against, he was the speaker. And Dorian’s coach went up to him after this talk was over and said, “Dorian doesn’t have any scholarship offers. Do you have any scholarships left?” And he said, “No, I don’t have any. But, why don’t you call Bob White

up at Oshkosh? They don’t have scholarships but I’m sure he’ll qualify.” So, I got his number and school and so forth. So I quickly jumped in the car and drove to Chicago and went to his school and met him. He was seventeen years old. Big afro. But, I knew when I talked to him… this guy, he is special. You could tell. He was top of the line. So, he came up instead and, of course, he always says he wouldn’t have come up here if it wasn’t for me. Which is probably true (laughs). But, the very first night the guys

all got together on their own to practice. He blew his knee out. ACL [anterior cruciate ligament]. I was home and Dick Schumacher was our [unclear] guy and he said, “Bob, one of your players blew his knee out. “Yeah, who is it?” “Dorian Boyland.” I thought oh, Christ. I was sick.

JR: Yeah.

BW: Because he was going to be a player. You could just tell. So, he was operated on down at Mercy Hospital…

SW: Then his mom came up.

BW: His mom came up and stayed the week with us. And that set the neighborhood on edge.

SW: Every day Bob would take her… Oh, she was a fabulous mom. He would take her to the hospital in the morning and then pick her up at night and she stayed with us the rest. You know?

BW: The neighbors wondered what was going on.

SK: What do you mean that

her presence in your home set the neighborhood on edge? What do you mean by that?

BW: Well, they just wondered what was going on. There was a black women, you know, coming out of Bob White’s house every morning. You know, when we went to Oshkosh they were still called “niggers” and black people, well not black people. Worse. But it was kind of a tough deal.

SW: And to us, they were never anything but a wonderful person.

BW: We were used to being around those kids and Dorian went home then, with his mom, and he wasn’t going to come back to school until I got on the phone with him and told him he needed to get back here. So he did. And then the doctor told him for his exercises just run a straight line, don’t do any “jiggling and jaggling”; you’ll ruin your knee. And, so, I was up in the field house one night

and the baseball team was working out and he was pitching. I told the coach, “Get him out of here. The doctor said no [unclear].” He said, “Oh, he’s got a future in baseball.” And I said, “If he hurts his knee again his future is over.” So he sat out the year and then he played with me. I had another black player named Charlie White. People thought he was…

JR: Your son? (Laughs)

BW: (laughs) my son. Charlie was a good guy. Dorian has kept that group of guys together like nothing you wouldn’t believe. There is so much love in that group that it’s just unbelievable.

SK: Was he kind of the leader of that group?

BW: Oh, if it wasn’t for him it wouldn’t have happened.

SW: Oh, definitely.

BW: The guys say he’s the glue of this program.

SW: Two years ago… well, he built a new

place in Maui. Dorian did. And he was having this whole group go. And we, of course, were going to go too. He invited us to go. And then Bob had a lot of illness and he couldn’t. And in the meantime, Bob made… was it Santa Clauses, honey?

BW: What?

SW: Was it Santa Claus you…?

BW: Yeah.

SW: He made a Santa Claus… he does woodwork stuff. And he made a Santa Claus for all fifty of these guys. Fifty Santa Clauses.

JR: Oh, those are sweet.

SK: Oh, thank you!

SW: And so, he had them packaged and we took them several places which was the best way to ship these, to make a long story short, they assured us that they would arrive… The time for this whole gang to be there was December 2nd

to 13th, or something like that… And so they never got them.

JR: Oh, shame.

SW: And you know, we’re talking a lot of work.

BW: I made fifty of them. I was making Santa Clauses until they were coming out of my ears (laughs).

SW: But, after they had all gone back. I don’t know, a week later? We hear that they arrived. And so now they’re waiting for them to go the next time and they’ll all get their Santa Clauses instead of shipping them back (laughs).

JR: How did the relationship with Dorian then, I mean, you had a lot of special relationships with players. He seems to be extra special. Why is that, would you say?

SW: He was extra special from the beginning.

BW: (Laughs) I don’t know, he’s just such a likable guy. He is an unusual person.

The things he does for people. Our daughter lives up the street and he calls her his sister and he tells her a lot of things he didn’t tell us (laughs).

SW: Well, he calls us mom and dad all of the time.

BW: He calls her “sis” and, but anyway, he said, “I’ve had help along the way and now I can afford to help people.” [unclear]. Every time we would go to Florida he would give us a car to use and always picked us up at the airport and all that kind of stuff.

JR: Did he stay with you as well? How did he get to know your daughter so well? He must have… it wasn’t just on the basketball court, right?

BW: Our daughter was (laughs)… I don’t know…

SW: Well, another

thing is when I had to have breast cancer surgery. And, so…. We had told Dorian, you know? That I was going to have this. But anyway, we were here. It was a Sunday and I was going to Mayo [The Mayo Clinic]. And the doorbell rang here and, Lo and Behold, I opened the door and there’s Dorian.

BW: He goes with us and stays a couple of days. Then he flies back home. That’s the kind of person he is.

SW: He is special. So, when he was going to go get that degree we were ecstatic.

BW: I told him, “I don’t know if I’ll be able to make it or not. I’m not feeling really well.” And he said, “Oh, I’ll have a jet pick you up.”

SW: And he did.

BW: I thought,

little jet. You know? Carrying six people or something. And this big Gulfstream pulls in (laughs).

SW: And I was scared to death. I mean… to do this, you know. I just visualized this whole plane. I thought, Carol and John going with us and, you know, my bad imagination of something happened on that plane our grandkids wouldn’t have anyone.

JR: Oh, sure.

BW: Thirty-eight minutes to Oshkosh (laughs).

JR: (laughs)

SW: But, anyway, when we arrived at the St. Paul Airport as compared to the Minneapolis Airport, and there were these smaller planes there. I thought, “Oh boy.” I was scared. Then all of a sudden this big plane that holds about fourteen or fifteen, wasn’t it?

BW: Sixteen.

SW: -- Arrives and there’s just the two pilots and the attendant and John and Carol and Bob and I. We felt like big shots (laughs).

JR: Yeah.

SW: Then I wasn’t so scared!

SK: Yeah, right.

BW: The pilot told Carol

all this… how he got to know Dorian somehow. He was a Navy pilot and he also played some baseball like Dorian did with the Cubbies [Chicago Cubs] and he got to know Dorian really well. He said, one day he said, “I’d really like to have a charter plane, you know? But I don’t have money to do it right now.” And he said, “How much do you need?” “Well, at least, probably a quarter million?” And Dorian reaches in his pocket and grabs his checkbook and writes him a check.

JR: Oh my gosh.

SK: Wow.

BW: He said, “Pay me when you start making money.”

SK: So, you didn’t like the fact that he was going to play baseball when his knee was damaged. But, eventually, they did manage to get him to play baseball. Right?

BW: Yeah, he came back the next year.

SK: So he played both baseball and basketball?

BW: Yeah.

SK: And he was better in baseball, as it turns out?

BW: Yeah, he never could… his knee never quite recovered

to 100%. I’d say he was about an 80% guy.

SK: Right.

BW: He was a very graceful, very smooth, kind of a guy. But baseball he was a pitcher and the Pirates wanted to make a first baseman out of him. And Willie Stargell never quit.

SK: Right, that’s a problem.

BW: So, he decided to quit. Well, he was going to be traded to San Francisco [San Francisco Giants] I think and he decided it’s time to get a real job.

SK: So he was at Oshkosh between, like, ‘73 and ‘77?

BW: Yeah, ‘74.

SK: And how much longer did you coach after….?

BW: ‘84.

SK: ‘84 is when you quit coaching?

BW: Yeah, yeah.

SK: Why did you quit coaching?

BW: Because they asked me to (laughs).

SK: Why did they ask you to quit coaching?

BW: Well, I was either good

or bad. One of the two. And Penson didn’t care a whole lot for me and they got rid of the football coach at the same time. And they really… I had an assistant coach during the basketball season-- I couldn’t even get them to get them to have a video camera. I had to buy my own to tape any games. [Unclear] it was just not good. And, of course, when I was let go they brought a new guy and new assistant coach and all that stuff. Which you figured happens. So… I played… Scheduled…

two or three division one or division two schools every year. Northern Michigan, Izzo was the assistant coach.

JR: Oh, is that right? I didn’t know that.

BW: They came down to play us and we beat them. He got upset with me and started yelling…

SK: On the sidelines?

BW: Yeah.

SK: What did you do to prompt Tom Izzo…?

BW: I didn’t think I did anything. Except he got mad and he got kicked out of the game.

JR: Oh!

SK: Really?

SW: And then he peeked in the window.

BW: The little window down at the end. I can still picture him peeking into it (laughs).

JR: (laughs) Wow, that’s hysterical. Yeah.

SW: (laughs) isn’t that a hysterical story? I never root for him, believe me. (Laughs)

SK: I’m not going to root for him anymore after hearing that story (laughs).

SW: (laughs)

SK: What was it about the nature of the game and the lead that changed from the time that you were beginning coaching in the mid-sixties to the time that you finished twenty years later? Of course, by that time we had transitioned to division

three. Right? That’s a big change.

BW: That was a big change, yeah.

SK: More competition then? Or?

BW: Well, the tournaments…I don’t know. Like I said, I played a lot of division two and a lot of division one schools and… of course, that’s about thirty-five or forty losses. The only division one I beat was when Green Bay and UW-M were division one at those times. It got better… you know, there was more recruiting taking place. And the caliber… the NAIA was really a “poor man’s” membership thing and when you went to Kansas City you paid your own expenses and they put

us in a hotel with so many cockroaches you thought they were going to carry you away (laughs). And we had to go down… the first year we went down by train. We had a good following that one year.

JR: I was curious about that. The participation of students and even staff in sporting events changed a bit during your career there. The crowds. And the following in the community as well.

BW: Yeah, we had a lot of townspeople that were there.

SW: Oh, yeah. We had a lot.

JR: Oh, sure.

BW: And I’m sort of responsible, I guess, for afternoon games. They had never played an afternoon game until I decided we’d play Eau Claire in the afternoon in Kolf.

And we had four thousand people there.

SK: On a Saturday?

BW: Yeah. And I guess I’m responsible for the black uniforms.

JR: Yes! I heard that.

BW: (laughs) Yeah. Here’s what brought that about. We played Eau Claire and we had the white uniforms and they had the yellow. And on the black and white film you couldn’t… you could hardly tell the difference. So I said, “We’ve got to make a change.” So I talked them into some new uniforms and we got black and gold. And we wore them the first game in Kansas City [unclear], but now everything is black. Black Legacy, I think they call it.

JR: And that was all you. It had been yellow and white since the Normal school days. And now black is a real

dominant color in our scheme.

BW: The colors make a pretty good combination.

JR: What was it like… you must have had a lot of Sunday morning coaches contacting you in the community or in the newspaper? What was it like to deal with the fans and their critiques, let’s say?

BW: We had pretty good fans. We had a pretty good group of adults that would come to the games.

SW: And I always had the cheerleaders.

JR: Okay. Were you recognized in town?

BW: Oh, yeah. Yeah. I was a member of the country club and I think I was the only educator at the country club.

SW: Yeah, probably.

BW: You know, they didn’t speak to me until

we won third in the nation.

JR: Once you started winning.

BW: Of course, the country club’s sort of folded up now.

JR: Yeah.

SK: It’s okay. The new owner just built a new steakhouse there, so the steakhouse is going to be open to the general public.

SW: Oh, you mean at the country club?

SK: Yeah. So, they put a lot of money into re-furbishing the restaurant. The course is still the same.

BW: Yeah. You play there once in a while?

SK: I’m playing there on Sunday. I play there with a couple of guys from the university.

BW: It’s a nice course. I really enjoyed playing there and I had good friends who played there.

SK: I’m trying to get Joshua to join me but he has not yet been convinced.

JR: I would just slow them all down.

BW: (laughs)

JR: So this came up a little bit earlier, Bob,

when you were talking about women’s athletics. During the time you were there, obviously, that was a big change in women’s athletics across the country and at UW Oshkosh specifically. I was wondering if you could both tell us about your roles in that expansion at Oshkosh.

BW: Well, we’d go to games and take part in that sort of thing. After I was done with basketball, the coach, Bennett [Kathi Bennett], she wanted me to be her assistant coach. I didn’t think… She’s pretty hyper and her dad recommended that I become her assistant. He even said, “He knows his offense.” (Laughs) Dick [Dick Bennett] was a pretty strong defensive player. I remember telling her when they first coached,

I said, “If I were you, I would learn to press because girls aren’t going to be able to handle the ball real well and to play tough zone defense because they’re not shooting that well yet either.” They had pretty good success. Then the golf team… the gal who was the golf coach… she was a really good player. Good kid. She’s over at Stout [UW-Stout] now. She developed a good program in golf.

JR: What was the financial impact of the men’s basketball team then with women’s sports on… not very much?

BW: No, our budget wasn’t very good.

Shirley drove the van once in a while to take the team. We got lost in Chicago (laughs).

SW: Oh god! (laughs) We hung in there and then we found him along the side of the road waiting for us [unclear]. You know, there were no cell phones.

SK: Whenever I see a big game… basketball game… at the college level. They always have a camera pointed at the wife of the coach.

BW: (laughs)

SK: Because the wife of the coach is as nervous and as into the game as the coach.

SW: (laughs)

SK: Are you a fan like that?

SW: Oh I was!

JR: She was famous for…

BW: Why don’t you go grab that picture?

SW: I’ll go grab the picture. It’s hysterical.

BW: Penson, his first game… came to the game. And Shirley would sit up about middle of the court and so he decided,

“I need to sit with the coach’s wife.” He lasted a half (laughs). He moved.

JR: She’s very animated (laughs).

BW: And one of my players, I remember, once said… Dick Richard, he said, “Coach, your wife’s going to have a heart attack some night.”

*Shirley comes back with photo*

SK: Oh, that is great! (Laughs) That is so great.

BW: Our daughter…

SW: She put that together.

BW: She got that framed and hung up there.

SK: Josh, have you seen this?

JR: Yes, yeah. This is famous.

BW: I think at that reunion that we had they had that on the… See, that happened… I remember that very distinctly because we had a game up at St. Norbert I think it was. And we walked into the lobby and the guys were all sitting and they said, “Look at this picture!”

And we didn’t know it was happening. It was a student with the local school paper and he was taking all these pictures and we didn’t know it. And that weekend we went to Eau Claire, I think. We were coming home and we stopped at the crossroads on 21 [Highway 21] and had breakfast. We saw this lady. She had a Milwaukee paper and she was looking at the paper and….

JR: (laughs)

BW: (Laughs) so she comes over and says, “Is this you guys?”

SW: And we thought, “oh my gosh” (laughs)

BW: I got a lot of letters from a lot of coaches. Bobby Knight was one of them.

SK: What did he say about this?

BW: (laughs) yeah, he thought it was great. And then the National Association of Basketball

Coaches has a little magazine that comes out. I think three or four times a year. And it was in that.

JR: Great.

BW: So that’s when Dr. Obatorfer [sp.?]… who was a big shot at the university of physical education in the country.

SW: He was the number one man in the country.

BW: He sent us a nice letter. I have to tell you, he loved Shirley. And he called me in the office one day and said, “Bob, I heard you were thinking about going to Southern Illinois.” I said, “No, I got a call from the athletic director but no.” He said, “You can go to Southern Illinois, but don’t you dare take dear little Shirley to that place.” (Laughs).

SK: (laughs)

JR: (laughs)

SW: See, I had him as a professor when I was getting my master’s degree.

SK: How would you describe your husband as a coach?

SW: Oh, I thought he was wonderful!

BW: (laughs)

SK: You look a lot more animated

than he is. He doesn’t… I don’t see him yelling at the referees…

BW: Well, the last one where she’s cheering…. we still had four seconds to go. So, I wasn’t quite as finalizing as much as she was.

SK: Mhmm.

BW: She never sat there. She was always in the middle up higher. I don’t know why she was there.

SK: Were you a pretty even tempered guy?

BW: Yeah, I was.

SW: Oh yeah.

SK: You weren’t like Izzo?

BW: (laughs) Oh no.

SW: Oh no, no.

SK: Why is that? Is it just your temperament or is it your outlook on the game…?

SW: I think it’s both. He’s not a mad kind-of, crazy kind-of person.

SK: Right. And how did you motivate your players? What was your… what was the secret to motivating your players? I mean, it’s a very complex thing, I think, to be a coach. To get the most out of your players.

BW: I sort of copied Fred Taylor on that. He never really had a real high plan, you know. He said, “I think you motivate your guys by how you prepare during the week, you know? And how you react during practices and…”

SW: I think our players, and their parents, thought we cared about their kids.

SK: Mhmm.

SW: We used to have the parents at Oshkosh… you know, after the game. Not every game, but you know?

BW: Well, Greg Homan was a center. 6”7’ kid. Iowa State he scored twenty-three points and twenty-one rebounds and fouled out with two minutes to go. We got beat 110 to 106 (laughs). His parents came and

they stayed quite a while after dinner… after the get together. And after I met his parents I knew why Greg was such a nice guy. He was a police officer in Milwaukee for all of his career and now he lives in Texas. He was at the party down there and he talked a lot. He never talked very much, he was very quiet.

SK: Did you miss coaching after you stopped coaching?

BW: Yeah, I missed it. Yeah.

SK: And what did you do after that? After…?

BW: Well, that’s when I took over the golf team.

SK: Okay, so you were on there…

BW: Four years.

SK: Four years, okay. And then after that? After the golf team?

BW: Yeah, I went to all the games.

SW: Oh, we went to all the games.

SK: And you were still teaching at this point?

SW: Yes, I didn’t quit teaching until… well, actually we moved up here a month before I quit. I had quit but we built this house and then Bob was up here for a month and I commuted. I went back on Monday and came home on Friday for a month.

BW: We’re both ninety-two years old now. We’re doing a little thinking about moving in to a… they’re building a big retirement center right over here.

SW: We love our neighbors.

BW: We have the greatest neighbors.

SW: I mean, this is a fabulous neighborhood.

BW: The gal across the street planted all these hosta plants for me. Split them. 91 of them. She is unbelievable. She has a daughter that’s an All-American gymnast at Denver. Denver University.

SK: Was part of the difficulty of moving from Oshkosh moving from the city itself or

was it…?

SW: Oh, it was difficult. Believe me it was difficult.

SK: Where did you live in Oshkosh?

BW: Out on the lake. Well, at first we lived on….

SW: Pickwick.

BW: Pick…. No, that was Columbus.

SW: No, where did we live… what’s the name of the street we lived in Oshkosh? First house.

BW: Well, the first house we…

SW: Up near that…

BW: Fifth Street… I don’t know. We lived twenty-five years out on the lake. Down Oakwood Road, down there.

SK: Okay and you liked living on Lake Winnebago?

SW: Oh, yeah!

BW: Butte des Morts

SK: Except for the lake flies? (laughs)

JR: Butte des Morts.

SK: Butte des Morts, okay.

SW: We were the last house on the lane.

BW: Oakwood Lane, down Oakwood Road.

SW: The reason we got that place, wait ‘til you hear this story. When I was teaching at Ohio State I was really pretty young, you know? And we had a big office and we all had a desk.

And all of those women just took me under their wing and they’d say, “if you would like to take my class”, they were teaching bowling or, you know, whatever it was. And then “you could teach that class.” You know, whatever. And so, they just… I mean, I couldn’t have asked for a better situation when I got that job. And so when I was…. When we were going to move to Oshkosh I was sad… but I was happy for what we were going to be doing. And there was a lady who taught there that was best friends of a woman in Oshkosh. And the woman in Oshkosh was very wealthy and they had no children

and they lived on Oakwood Lane. And they had this big house on the water and then they had this big extra lot with a little cabin-like on it initially. So, as soon as my loyal friend in Oshkosh found out… I mean in Columbus… found out we were moving to Oshkosh, she immediately called her friend and set it all up and they got in contact with us. And they just treated us as their kids. They had no kids and they would take us on boat rides and everything. Then he said to us one time, this extra lot he said, “Sometime we’ll sell you this extra lot if you’d like to have it.” So we put it off because I had this thing. We only had one children, but I liked the idea

that your child could walk to school and not be out somewhere and we dind’t want her to have a car. And so we said, “Well, we’ll wait until she graduates from high school.” And then she went to UW Oshkosh for one year, but in the meantime when she graduated from high school, then we built a house on the lot out on the lake. All along the basis that our daughter could walk to high school. They sold us… I mean, we paid for the lot, but believe me we didn’t pay as much as the lot was worth.

SK: Nice!

BW: They built Evergreen Manor [Evergreen Retirement Community].

JR: Oh, wow. That’s getting quite big now.

SW: Yeah.

SK: So, you started on faculty in 1960…

JR: ‘5.

SK: 1965.

BW: ‘4.

SK: Both of you in ‘64?

SW:

We both started the same year.

SK: And then… So, a lot of changes occurred, and we’ve been taking about this on the campus, but tell us a little about how difficult it was to be a female faculty member at UW Oshkosh. At first, there had long been women on faculty at this university. But, then the women’s movement happened and you had more attention being placed to issues of equality in the workplace and so on. Was it ever really evident to you that there were problems or challenges for a female faculty member? Or did you find it a good experience generally?

SW: Well, I loved it. I loved college kids and loved teaching, so you put that all together. And, you know, there were some areas maybe that were

a little… I always put, not to sound “goody-goody”, but I always put Bob first. I never wanted to do anything that would make it difficult for your husband who is a coach or a faculty member. You know what I mean?

SK: You didn’t rock the boat?

SW: No, I didn’t.

SK: But there were other women who did?

SW: Oh yes, yes.

SK: Did you know any of them?

SW: Probably, I can’t think of people now but…

SK: Well, people like Barb Sniffin. Did you ever know Barb Sniffen?

SW: Yeah, I did.

BW: I knew Barb.

SW: And I was on a lot of committees and I just… I’m not the “rock the boat” kind of… call attention to myself… sort of person.

BW: Kids loved her.

SW: And, you know, I did the cheerleaders as long as he was coaching. But when he quit coaching then I quite the cheerleaders because I didn’t want to run around

on the weekends. You know, it just didn’t make sense.

JR: Sure.

SW: And I was on lots of committees in the College of L&S and College of Ed. And then in the state I was very active in the state health and physical education and I was President of that. And that’s the public school and the university all-in-one bit. I was very active in that. But, I never did anything…. At least I tried not to…. That would be in any way hampering what he was doing. Let’s put it that way. I didn’t try to rise to the top by myself. I wasn’t interested… Like I said, I was state President and all of that and I did all of those professional things which I felt was important. And I took my kids,

that’s what I always called them, but I took kids to the state conventions and some of my kids became President. That was rewarding.

JR: Oh, yeah.

SW: And then I took them to, you know, the National Conventions and so I had my students that were particularly physical education majors or kids I had in class… then I taught a lot of health class that other people took besides physical education…

BW: Did you tell them you were President of the physical education…

SW: Yeah, yeah.

BW: She always got a standing ovation.

JR: Yeah?

BW: No one else did, but she did.

SW: But I didn’t try to be “head honcho” over my husband by no means.

JR: So you were also involved in the University Dames group for years, right?

SW: I did that, yes. That kind of dwindled though,

I don’t remember too much about it. But, I went to faculty women’s things and…

BW: We really miss Oshkosh, you know. The games and theater productions and concerts and…

JR: Did you socialize mostly with other faculty?

BW: Well, we did…

SW: But we also had a lot of other friends.

BW: We had a couple bridge clubs that we belonged to that were non-faculty people.

SW: Yeah. The people had all kinds of jobs. Couple attorneys and their wives and, you know, just a lot. So we had a lot of friends besides the university friends.

SK: Mhmm.

SW: And then… you know, we were very, very involved with our daughter and she played sprots and played on the West [Oshkosh West High School] basketball team and stuff. So we did all the “parent

stuff.” And then I had the [unclear] a very organized club of students who were majoring in physical education. They came out to our house a lot and then I fed his team frequently and his parents… So we didn’t goof around and do nothing (laughs)

JR: Very busy!

SW: I had a lot of energy (laughs)

BW: It was good. It turned out to be a pretty good thirty years. I was 29 years of teaching and she was 41 there. I had it pretty well made in the summer because she spent a lot of summers teaching so I could go play golf you know (laughs). And the guys said, “Oh, you’re lucky your wife--” As

long as I was home in time to get dinner ready. I’ll tell you one last story. I was having dinner and said, “What time are you going to be home?” “Six O’clock.” “Okay, I’ll have dinner ready.” So, I had ham, little brown potatoes, and peas. So 6:00 came and no Shirley. 6:15 came, no Shirley. Then the peas were starting to get all… 6:30 came, no Shirley. Finally at quarter until 7 she came down the hallway from the garage to the kitchen and I said, “Well, at least you could have called.” (laughs).

SW: (laughs) I can’t remember what came up. Maybe it was a student or something.

BW: That was pretty typical but, of course, I was late a few times too.

SW: (laughs) well yes. One time we had the team for pre-game meals frequently

and he didn’t show up. He wasn’t there, so I just fed the guys like I usually do. So on and so forth. And he had forgotten they were coming that night.

SK: Whoops.

BW: Hey if you’re going to make it about five o’clock…

SK: I don’t want to cut it short for that reason. Have we gotten through all of your questions?

JR: Yes. I guess if I could ask one more, sort-of closing question. And this is the sort-of thing I often ask. What is your favorite memory of UW Oshkosh?

SW: What’s my what?

JR: Favorite memory of UW Oshkosh.

SW: Oof.

BW: Oh, boy. I had a lot of favorite ones. Well, the nice party they had for you when you retired.

SW: Oh yes and that wasn’t typical of our department so that was… they did it all on their own.

BW: They had shirts they made…

t-shirts. It said we love… we heart Mrs. White.

SW: And then they wore them at the national health and physical education convention which was nice.

BW: They really liked her, they just loved her. We had kids come here…

SW: We had a good physical education club. Really good, yeah. I mean, I loved the kids. I had a lot of his players because I suppose they thought they would get an A. I mean, this is just a one credit thing, not one of my three credit classes or whatever. But I had a lot of them because I taught nutrition and a lot of kids took that. But, anyway.

BW: The one sad thing is that the assistant football coach was killed and

one of your Presidents of club that was killed in an automobile accident.

SW: Oh, yeah. I can’t think of his name.

BW: He was an assistant football coach. Really a neat guy and he had just gotten accepted to go to law school.

SW: Oh, oh. And he taught at UW Oshkosh.

BW: That’s what I mean. He was the President of the club and he was…

SW: Aw, he was just a peach.

BW: That was kind of sad. He got hit by a young guy who was drinking. He was coming to Oshkosh to go… he and the football coach were going to go…

SW: And he taught at UW Oshkosh. Well, he mostly did counseling. I can’t think of his name right now. I kept in touch with his mother for years and then I…

BW: It was a good place to live.

SK: Do you ever come back? Do you ever visit Oshkosh?

BW: We used to go back for homecoming, but since I had this cancer thing…

SW: And well, of course, we hadn’t been back for four years until we went to Dorian’s celebration and that we were worried sick we weren’t going to be able to do it.

BW: I developed neuropathy in my legs, knees, down. Just awful. And then I had a heart… aortic valve replaced. That wasn’t a lot of fun. The cancer radiation left me with dry mouth so my voice is kind of going and I have a little trouble swallowing.

SW: But, we loved our years there.

We loved it.

BW: And where did you go to school?

JR: I actually started at Oshkosh.

BW: Did ‘ya?

JR: Yup, and I finished at Madison.

SW: When was that?

JR: 1989 to ‘91.

SW: Did I ever have you as a student?

JR: No, I took bike touring and that was with Janet Moldenhauer.

BW: (laughs) she’s a piece of work.

SW: She’s a character.

JR: Yeah (laughs), so I got both of my credits in one class.

BW: (laughs) she was a piece of work. She came the same year we did.

JR: Oh, is that right?

BW: She came from Ohio University.

SW: How many years did I teach there?

BW: 41 and a half.

SW: That’s a good while.

SK: That’s a very good career.

BW: 56 and a half all together.

JR: Very elite sorority of teachers that taught that long. Well, this has been wonderful. Thank you so much for your time and your memories!

BW: We could probably tell tales for another couple of hours!

JR: I bet we could.

SK: This was very nice, thank you much.

JR: Thank you both.