Interview with Roy Hoglund

UW Oshkosh Campus Stories
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[Beginning of Interview]

JR: Could you tell me who you are?

RH: Ok. I am Roy Hoglund.

JR: Well thanks Roy and just for my notes, your real name is Charles, is that right?

RH: Uh, actually Charles is the middle name.

JR: Oh ok, but you used to go by Charles, huh?

RH: Well, what happened, it's a long story which I'll make very short. I was named after my uncle who died at the age of eighteen. And so, when I was very, very young, toddler age, and my parents would refer to me as Roy that upset my grandmother so much because of her son who had passed away.

JR: Oh.

RH: And so, they started calling me by my middle name and instead of Charles it was Charlie. And then when I got into high school, I said Charlie is not a man's name. It should be Chuck. And so, then when I got to university, one of the art 00:01:00professors had said, in fact it's Sam Yates. He was looking at his roster of students enrolled in a painting studio, and he said -- he had heard other students referring to me as Chuck and he says -- he asks -- he said, "are you Roy?" And I said yeah, and he said, "oh you're Roy Chuck." Being from the South it sounded very funny, and a lot of the students sort of tied into it. So thus, the confusion.

JR: Got it. Well, I want to -- I apologize for the earlier confusion. I think that's an evergreen comment these days when it comes to trying to meet people virtually, but I appreciate you giving it a try and we're going to be talking on 00:02:00the phone now and it seems like this is going to work just fine. I will start off by saying this is an oral history interview as part of the Campus Stories Oral History Project with Roy Hoglund. I'm Joshua Ranger. It is December 3rd, 2020. So right, you started off a little bit with interesting story from your childhood, but I'd like to hear more. Could you kind of tell me about your boyhood where you grew up?

RH: Actually, I grew up in Oshkosh. And spent a goodly chunk of my life there. I was not a very good student in school. And so, because of that, I remember my mother recounting a story to me at one point. My father, realizing that academically, he might have referred to me as being as dumb as a box of rocks, 00:03:00but he then at one point told my mother we have to teach this boy a trade because he'll never amount to anything in any other capacity. And it's just as sort of a qualifier. That's sort of where I was. I had gone to a rural grade school, and I did academically not well at all. I really didn't have much interest in learning and so in second grade in that particular grade school, it only had three rooms in it and so. First through third was in one room and so the teacher said, "well, he didn't do really well" and my mother said, "well, then we'll hold him back, he will learn." And the teacher said, "I would advise 00:04:00against that because his colleagues are going to move up to the next level and he's not and he's going to be in the same room." Anyway, so my mother said -- because we were Catholic -- my mother said, "that's it. We're sending all the kids to a Catholic grade school." And so, in the Catholic grade school, I repeated second grade. But as the poor nun who had me as a student explained to my mother, I think he did worse the second time during second grade than he did the first time, and so she said, "we just need to pass him on. He's not ready yet." Uh, nonetheless that's sort of hung with me for a long time. I always felt I was the stupidest kid in the room and so I might as well act like it. My salvation came when -- plus my older brother was an academic genius and he could do no wrong. He was perfect if he had a fault, it was that he studied too much. 00:05:00And so, when he got out of eighth grade, he went to the Catholic High School, which in those days when you're from a working-class family, it's hard to take out two hundred dollars a year to send a kid to high school, but they were able to swing that amount for him but thought that it was a waste of money with me. And so, I was sent to a public junior high school and to my amazement they had art classes.

JR: Ok.

RH: That sort of turned me around. Anyways, and the fact that my mother was always there, basically telling everyone, including the high school advisors this boy is going to go to college. And so, she said, "you're taking college prep courses and taking all the stuff and etc." And because of her insistence on that, I did. I did then go to the university, which was, I mean, in hindsight, 00:06:00now that looks very, very good move on her part.

JR: Yeah, so she disagreed with your father on the path you should take.

RH: Yes and probably not unique to my parents there. My father being -- both of my parents being depression-era children. They saw the value in a job, but my father saw a greater value of job than he did in any education beyond high school. And so that that's where his values were. My mother, on the other hand, said, you'll have a hard time amounting to anything unless you get something beyond high school. And she herself -- I mean, my parents were divorced when I was in eighth grade. And my mother began -- it started out as correspondence 00:07:00courses, eventually got her baccalaureate degree, then eventually got two master's degrees.

JR: Wow.

RH: To teach English. So, it was her values that encouraged me to go on so -- and she recounted at one point of conversation she had with my father, where they had this other couple - when my mother was giving birth to one of my siblings in the hospital, she developed a friendship with another woman who was also giving her at the same time. And so, the two couples would get together for a little cookout or this or that sort of thing. And my father would -- not in front of the guy but would berates the guy: "he's a dummy. He doesn't know anything. [etc.]" And part of it was that this guy had gotten a degree, it might have just been associates degree, beyond high school, after the guy got out of 00:08:00the service, he used the GI Bill, and he got a degree and was now in management. My father was always taking him to task. And my mother at one point shut my father up by saying "I wish you were made as much money as that stupid guy made."

JR: (laughs) Oh man.

RH: So anyway.

JR: What did your father do for a living?

RH: He was a carpenter in the latter years of his life. He worked construction, but he had learned from his father who they referred to it as a finish carpenter with somebody who made cabinetry and more of that. I remember as a kid growing up, my father did all the cabinetry work in our kitchen. And he built furniture for us. He was an incredibly talented individual in that regard. Very, very 00:09:00skilled. And if I inherited anything from him, it would have been mechanical skills that he had.

JR: Right.

RH: So, which I can sort of laughingly say my older brother didn't care any of that so it's a good thing he was academically strong. But I mean, it was the nature of these things. But yeah. That was what my father did, and I've already explained my mother and my mother's degrees all came from Oshkosh.

JR: Ok.

RH: Yeah.

JR: So, did she start that path for her career after the divorce or was she already sort of pursuing that while she was still married then?

RH: She was actually starting it while she was still married. She was doing correspondence classes I think from Madison or somewhere within the system. And 00:10:00my father at one point was sort of feeling annoyed, feeling left out about it, and said, "well, maybe I'll start taking something. Maybe I'll take some math classes or something." And my mother basically said, "do it. Just do it." But he always sorts of dismissed it. Again, being left over from -- growing up as a kid and part of it was, he grew up on a farm. His father was a, as I mentioned, was a finish Carpenter, he learned to be a Carpenter from his father, not very unusual and but he had also been in the Navy and had been a wheel man on an iron boat on the Great Lakes. And he loved going from port to port, and so that was my father's father. Well, the depression hit. And my grandmother's family owned 00:11:00-- had a homesteaded this property north of Green Bay that there was a farm on it. And so, they eventually agreed that my grandmother and my grandfather and they had two children at the time, could move onto that property and do the farm because that way at least you had food on the table if you had a farm. And so, my father grew up on the farm and sort of loved the farm. His father hated the farm always just wanted to be a carpenter or to be a man about town whatever. And so that's where my father learned his trade that he fell back on. So, you know everybody grows up in a collection-

JR: Yeah.

RH: of influences.

JR: So, when you moved -- so you must have moved when you were -- you were at a 00:12:00rural school in the Oshkosh area, then for the first couple grades?

RH: Correct, we like a lot of people in the 1950s, my father bought a little plot of land from a farmer. And on that street, there that road that country road a lot of people did exactly the same thing.

JR: Ok.

RH: It was mid 1950s everybody brought a plot of land. My father had a guy come out and excavate the ground and he, my father put in the basement, the foundation basement and then capped it off and so for the first year living there we lived in the basement, and while my father then built the rest of the house above ground. And so, in that rural area right up at the end of the road 00:13:00was a country school.

JR: Ok.

RH: Yeah. And then from there moved - we didn't physically move we still lived outside in the rural area. But the Catholic grade school was in Oshkosh.

JR: And what was that? What name was that?

RH: That was Sacred Heart.

JR: Ok, alright. Got it. So, you never moved from that place out of town.

RH: It wasn't till -- yeah, I -- when I started as an undergraduate, I eventually moved into various apartments-

JR: Ok.

RH: with people. My mother maintained the house until 1986 she teaching in the Appleton School District and so when I -- previous to moving back to Midwest, I 00:14:00was on the faculty of the University of New Mexico and Albuquerque and so Paula and I, my wife and I decided that we should -- I asked at one point I said, "where do you wanna live?" And the kids were about to start grade school and she said "I want to move back to a place that has a wonderful public school system. I want to move back to where all of families are." My father has had a series of strokes by that point while I was in, before I left for graduate school while I was in graduate school etc. And so he was, putting it bluntly, he had one foot in the grave and the other in a banana peel for years.

JR: Uh huh.

RH: And so, there was motivation to move back to that central Wisconsin area. And I was informed by Don Burdick who was a close companion of my mother that 00:15:00they had a position opening up. And my mother had explained to Don that that she knew I was out looking for another position and wanted to move back to Wisconsin. And so, he told me about the position and everything sort of went from there. And then we moved. And because all the rest of our family, at about the same time we moved back is when my mother moved from Oshkosh to Appleton, so she didn't have to commute anymore to teach. And then so that's how we sort of moved to the Appleton area, and I began teaching at Oshkosh.

JR: Ok, got it. But at some point, when you were out there as a child, you met Mark Gruenwald, right?

RH: Well, actually I met Mark Gruenwald when I was in junior high school.

JR: Oh, ok.

RH: We were both in, I guess it was eleventh grade Perry Tipler Junior High 00:16:00School - our junior high school right - and it was a brand new junior high school at the time. And Mark and I shared -- had the same homeroom.

JR: Ok.

RH: And he would sit across from me, and he was always either reading comics or drawing his own sort of comic strip thing. And we would talk, and he would show me what he you know, like the comic books and stuff. And I just thought yeah, and that just gives me a headache trying to read it and I don't even begin to understand it was all superhero stuff. But we got along we had a similar sense of humor and that sort of thing. And then through high school I mean he - I don't know he spoke at our graduation. He was probably in the top ten of the 00:17:00class, easily academically. He was editor of the high school newspaper. I mean here is all of these things, but we still stayed in touch. We'd see one another in the halls, we knew one another and all that, but our relationship as friends really didn't cement until we were both undergraduates.

JR: Oh ok, alright. That's interesting, that's different than how Mark Madison thought your relationship with him had gone down. So, I'm glad to hear that. Did you know him well? Mark Madison?

RH: I knew Mark Madison. I didn't know him really well. As you probably know, Mark was involved in an enormous number of projects. And Mark Madison got dragged into some of them.

JR: Right.

RH: We all got dragged into them and [unclear].

JR: One of those projects was a rock opera.

00:18:00

RH: Yes, as a matter of fact there were two of them that Mark had created -- at least two of them

JR: Ok.

RH: And so, Mark Madison may have been involved in Icarus.

JR: Yeah, that's right. That was the one.

RH: Ok, so Mark had come up with this idea and he wanted to create it -- at least this is my memory of it, and he - Mark was incredibly good at pulling people together, finding the right people for the right positions. I mean he had his overarching goal in this case to create this Icarus thing. But he had the ability to get people. And so, part of the reason he grabbed on to me, in that 00:19:00little exercise, was because he knew that I played guitar and I knew some other musicians and so on and so forth. And so, he said, "Oh well it can't be a rock opera unless you've got some rock music in there." And so, and so when he latched on to me, or some guy that I played in a band, a very bad band, I should say, but nonetheless. I had access to some musicians. He - Mark knew some people from high school who were going to UW Oshkosh at the time and somehow this was I remember it early in the process, so it must have been either at the end of his senior year in high school, going into the freshman year at Oshkosh, or for some reason I think it's in that ballpark-

JR: Ok.

00:19:54

RH: kind of time lately. And then in the end, the end product of it was that he 00:20:00had a recording of I don't know half a dozen, maybe eight - nine songs. Some of them were reprisals he brought back again, and then Mark Gruenwald did all the illustrations and shot them as slides so he would take it to like a junior high school and the English teacher may have been teaching them about Greek mythology etc. And so, he would play the tape and advance the slides, and then afterwards would answer questions about things. And it was an interesting I think, from the teacher's perspective, it was an interesting way because there might not have been anything out there commercially available like that. But I still remember (chuckles) Mark -- he was a member of the church, his family was a member of the 00:21:00church, and his father was a fairly significant individual, I think a Deacon or an elder in the church. But they got to go in and use the organ, and so there he got one of the music guys from UW Oshkosh who was learning to play the organ and he got him to come in and play the melody line or some organ pieces for various songs. And recorded that in there so. It was, it was all sort of a very sort of crazy process, but again, that was Mark with the inspiration. He was the one who had the goal. He was the one that pulled everyone in and said, "let's do this."

JR: So, it was never performed live.

RH: No.

JR: Ok.

RH: Not that one. This second one, I think it was called The Sisterhood.

JR: Ok.

RH: The second one he created, and he had all through university, he had lived 00:22:00at home with his parents. And part of it was he had a bedroom and he had an office space where he could have his sort of easel and his whole comic book collection. And all this sort of stuff. So, it was a great for him. It was a great workshop, and he was willing to like put up with his parents, because parents are always parents, because he got those advantages and so The Sisterhood, I remember him doing drawings for it, like if we were really going to produce it. This is maybe what the costumes would look like. This is with the characters would look like. And then and we wrote music and I use the term wrote in so much as we wrote down lyrics and maybe guitar chords and things of that sort. But he did, one summer, he got his a lot of his musician friends and 00:23:00friends of friends, and we had it was kind of like a jazz combo: the brass section, woodwinds, percussion, and then I was on rhythm guitar and colleague of mine was a lead guitar. And so on. And so, we had all these musicians out there and then people singing various parts and they must have been, maybe we composed half a dozen pieces of music for it, but that was sort of the closest to a public performance of that exercise that we had done. So.

JR: Ok.

RH: Yeah, yeah really kind of -- here's a guy who really like, never studied music or anything but an idea and he just needs to get the right people in the 00:24:00right positions. And it could happen.

JR: Wow. And when he was recording Icarus what -- I mean was he recording this on multitrack recorders and mixing, or do you remember how that went down?

RH: Yeah, I think if I remember correctly, he had a reel-to-reel tape deck that was like a four track.

JR: Ok.

RH: And it was kind of, I think for all of us it was learn as you go.

JR: Sure.

RH: And so, he could record on various tracks, but obviously with four track you only have so much leeway and. And he became pretty proficient at it, at least enough to get to get done with what he needed to get done.

JR: Cool. It's interesting that you mentioned his parents. That was something 00:25:00that's a line of inquiry I haven't really explored with the others. I probably only had a chance to do it with Mark Madison and I failed there, but could you tell me? Did you know his parents very well? Could you tell anything about them?

RH: Well, his father was in education and his father, I believe, taught at a junior high school. And -- but I couldn't tell you what he taught.

JR: Ok.

RH: He, I think at one point he got into administration whether he was the vice principle or principle. I really couldn't tell you. His mother, I want to say his mother had worked in a beauty shop for a while by the time I was strong enough friends with Mark where I was over at his house on regular basis, his mother was at that point more of a stay-at-home mom, but she was still doing 00:26:00some of beauty shop things, sort of at the kitchen table.

JR: Sure.

RH: Yeah, and I had an interesting conversation with his mother at one point and we were talking about things. His mother was enormously friendly. She was very chummy with the boys. And so, she always liked it when Mark invited his friends over. She liked to be involved in whatever sort of parlor games were going on, and so on. And at one point I was talking to her, and I asked her about her childhood, and she grew up in a family, I want to say there were like eleven brothers, and she was the only girl. And it was a farm family, and in her family, women were sort of servants, that was their role and that the boys all 00:27:00did farm work and so boys never had to do any laundry, cleaning the house, doing the dishes, helping prep for cooking, anything like that. So that all fell to her, and it tended to color. So, there was a point at which she couldn't wait to get out. And Mark's dad was the ticket.

JR: Ok.

RH: And so yeah. I mean that was the -- but the family was a very sort of quintessential family at the time. Mark was the oldest. Gayle was his younger sister. His father wore a shirt and tie and taught at a school and his mother was sort of a homemaker and did all those homemaker -- I mean, it was very sort 00:28:00of very much, at least from the outside, a model of that sort of existence.

JR: Yeah, Mark Madison mentioned that they had moved into his neighborhood over in Westhaven at some point. And my understanding, I didn't grow up here, but that was the new neighborhood. That's where you were moving on up if you were moving over to Westhaven.

RH: Yeah, yeah, and that's a really good point. Before Westhaven was built a friend of mine from the Catholic grade school, his father owned a farm that had property that stretched for about a mile it went from Oakwood Road all the way down to Highway 41 and his father, although always looking like a farmer was a 00:29:00very, very shrewd businessman and he sold the farm which became Westhaven and became Westhaven Golf Course.

JR: Ok.

RH: So, but he kept the farm property. If you drive down, what is it? Ninth Street today and you look off to the side you'll see there is a barn there and there's an old farmhouse and maybe one other building. That's all that's left.

JR: Sure.

RH: I think used to be there. So, yeah, you're right there with a new development and all new houses. And yeah, it was a pretty posh place and I had forgotten you're right -- Mark Madison right down in the corner, just a couple houses down from where Mark lived.

JR: Right, right. So, you were involved in Icarus and that was something that that Mark Gruenwald brought you into. But what else were you involved with 00:30:00during high school? Were you starting -- I mean, it sounds like art turned you on, were you doing a lot of art classes?

RH: Yeah, yeah, art was really my salvation. I sort of lived in the art room. The art room -- Oshkosh High School at the time had only two high schools in town. One of them was Lourdes High School, the Catholic high school.

JR: And that's where your brother went?

RH: Correct.

JR: Yeah.

RH: Yeah. And a lot of my colleagues from grade school also went to the Catholic high school.

JR: Sure.

RH: But at the time Oshkosh High School -- when Mark and I were going there was huge -- they really needed to build a new high school. Because I was in a rural area, I had the morning shift so I mean I think I would start school. I'd catch 00:31:00the school bus at like 5:30 in the morning and first classes were like six or seven o'clock in the morning. And then I would go to school till about one o'clock.

JR: Wow.

RH: And there was overlap there because the city kids would then have the afternoon shift. Which may go to about six o'clock at night. Man, it was really -- we were sharing lockers. I remember I had a locker, but I had two locker mates, so there were three of us at one locker. It was kind of crazy.

JR: And this is what Oshkosh West is now, right?

RH: Correct.

JR: Yeah, ok. Wow.

RH: So, in those early days. Mark was, I don't remember ever seeing him in any of the art classes-

JR: Ok.

RH: I took. I think I would remember that, but he was -- he would be in theater productions and I -- sometimes the art teacher would say "Ok this afternoon for 00:32:00art class we're going down and we're gonna paint scenery." (laughs) And so we go into the Kimball Auditorium, and we'd paint scenery for whatever show was going on. Yeah, so that was, as they say in high school. But you know, the interesting thing was that when we got to university Mark and I, because we were taking a lot of art classes together, we'd seem to connect up even more.

JR: Ok.

RH: So yeah, because he was considered a townie, and even though I grew up in a rural area, I was considered a townie as well and compared to some of the other people that you talk to like Bill Bukowski, Rick Gilbertson, or some of the 00:33:00others they lived in the residence halls.

JR: Right.

RH: And so those guys sort of developed their own bond just in the process of living in the residence homes. And the rest of us were kind of the locals had to sort of do it on our own and we felt a little, maybe like a man without an island sort of thing where or without a country. In one respect, if you were a townie, you were sort of looked down upon as being sort of a local. But yet the Oshkosh community in those days and this was in very early 70s, they -- it's like the university students were just a necessary evil. They brought money into the local economy, but they were a pain in the tail. Nobody wanted to ever deal with them. It seemed like they're always getting into trouble they were doing 00:34:00things because they were away from home and I mean, there was just -- it wasn't a real good relationship between the University and the local community.

JR: Was that an attitude that you felt growing up even in the Oshkosh area? Like you had heard this, was this like a part of the lore?

RH: I think it was. I did hear a bit about it yeah, because even when I was in high school in the late 60s you had antiwar protests going on. You have civil rights protests going on. You had things of that sort and although as a high school student I was intrigued because it was kind of exciting these older kids are doing these things which seem really kind of chic and exotic.

00:35:00

JR: Mhmm.

RH: But parents and older people and some of the locals were saying it's all just those rich kids going to university just coming in messing up our town. I mean it was really -- and it wasn't until I started as an undergraduate that I began to see the whole sort of Saint Patrick's Day thing spiral out of control. But yeah, that was that was kind of the thing. So, I mean, we'd meet these guys and in classes and they would be talking about whatever event they were going to an event in the residence halls or event on campus for the students who met campus. It's not that we were excluded, it's just we weren't in the loop at all.

JR: Right.

RH: But it was, I think as time went on, we were all sort of, because of our 00:36:00interactions, we entered--into the fabric of the campus, but it wasn't there automatically.

JR: Was there much debate about where you were going to go to college?

RH: Not for me. I think part of it was, as I mentioned before, even though my grades and grade point average in all much better when I was in high school, it had a long way to go from grade school.

JR: Ok.

RH: And so, when I looked at UW Oshkosh, which at the time wasn't UW Oshkosh-

JR: Right.

RH: It was kind of like well you could afford to go to school there. And only 00:37:00those who come from certain backgrounds or have certain money or can garner certain scholarships can think about going to school someplace else.

JR: Ok.

RH: So, there weren't a lot of options for me, which was fine. I was sort of happy taking the baby steps into an academic world, I knew I wasn't terribly good at. So yeah.

JR: So, you lived it at home when you first started college?

RH: Correct.

JR: Oh, you didn't -- ok, but eventually you moved to apartments while you were still in school?

RH: Correct.

JR: Ok.

RH: Yeah, yeah.

JR: So, do you remember first meeting Rick Gilbertson and Bill Bukowski?

RH: I couldn't tell you the very first time. I really don't remember. But I do 00:38:00-- I can't even remember who I met first.

JR: Ok.

RH: But some of it, in all likelihood, a lot of it was through Mark. Both Bill and Rick were in the art department. And again, you know Mark got a position with the Advance Titan and was working on -- and I guess if memory serves correctly with Bill that actually had started the Augmento comic strip.

JR: Right. Yeah, Bill had a work study job with the AT [Advance-Titan] doing illustrations for them.

RH: And then and then eventually Mark came on board. I remember like every 00:39:00student, you see this sort of comic strips and reading and paper. And I remember once Mark got involved artistically and from a creative standpoint, it moved the comic strip into a different direction. It's almost as if it was given jet fuel. (laughs)

JR: Mhmm.

RH: And part of it was because Mark was so familiar with and pulled into comic books for most of his life, and he practiced drawing in the comic book style. He liked the clever way it was written, and he knew the process of how to promote a story using this sort of visual format because he's been exposed to it so many 00:40:00times. And it's not that Bill wasn't 'cause actually out of the two of them, Bill was the far superior artist, but Mark was the guy who certainly knew the nuances of that sort of whether it's a visual novel or comic book, he knew how to kind of work that. And then he just needed an avenue to do it and that was one of the avenues he was able to tie into. And I don't know how long the two of them worked on the comic strip together. And I also don't know much about their relationship because Bill was always kind of a quiet guy and was never throwing 00:41:00his weight around at all, and then Mark was like always out there. He was going to tell you what he thought, even if he didn't want to hear it. (laughs) He had specific ideas. He was going to make them happen.

JR: So, would you say was he difficult to work with in that respect because it was his way or the highway or?

RH: One might think that at certain points. But with my association with him, I found that he may have the overarching idea, the particulars, or the specifics about how you get to that point is where you could sometimes manipulate or have an input into things and Mark was the sort of person that if you told him "You 00:42:00know, wouldn't it be interesting if we did such and such." He would be like "oh? Yes, yeah it would." And so it wasn't that he was a dictator about this. But he was the driving force. And he felt passionately about getting to the end. What is our goal? What are we going to achieve here? Is it a rock opera with slides? Is it a comic strip? What is it that we need to do here? But he was always looking to push it to get it further. And he was always willing to, I think sort of stick his neck out and he was never going to play safe. So yeah, and so that's why -- I mean, it's rather fascinating. That's why when you look at the 00:43:00comic strip, at least everybody, I was talking to my wife and she said, "yeah, we'd all look at the comic strip, and we'd say: 'do I recognize anyone in the comic strip that is in my -- or maybe I'm in there? I don't know.'" And he was at least doing that. Mark would simply be at the Union and he had, you know, some books open and we always had whether it was a notebook or sketchpad, he was scribbling things and come up here and idea he'd scribble it down, but he'd see somebody across the room an attractive woman or just sort of a real character of a guy and he'd quickly sort of do a real quick sketch just to remind him of what the visual elements were. And then, lo and behold, you'd find that creeping in the comic strips, the character of someone. But I think you always have to be -- 00:44:00knowing that about Mark you'd always have to be a little careful because you know you were going to end up in-

JR: (laughs)

RH: [unclear] And I remember I don't know where we were, possibly some nightspot and Mark liked to go out and dance, because never. He was never the sort of person who liked to consume any amount of alcohol. It's not that he was a teetotaler, but he would consume alcohol only to be social. It really wasn't part of his makeup. And so, at one of these points, we were there, and I was saying, 'cause we were in the yard and Mark was a very -- oh, a strong supporter of what now we think of the LGBT group, and he was like -- he would always sort 00:45:00of bring that up in one capacity or another, and so I said, "well Mark, you need to create a character. And the character in Augmento should have a sword. And so, their power is that they're incredibly good at sword fighting. And have them either rescue Augmento or something, and here's one for you. Let's make them homosexual and call them the gay blade." And so, he said, "Oh yeah, yeah--" I mean, you could see the wheels turning. And then I thought all right. So, I've always sort of proud of myself if I came up with an idea that he liked.

JR: Sure.

RH: And then the next thing you realize, so we got this character and I said, "Mark! That character's me! You've drawn me in there. But I'm not gay. Now 00:46:00everybody is going to think I'm gay." And he said, "Well, it's just the character." And I mean it was kind of comical at the time, but that was the sort of thing where he would see something here, something he'd say "I'm supporting a number of things and so yes, we need to have this character in this. This is part of the university campus. This is part of the makeup of society, and we need to have these people reflected in there. This group needs to be reflected in there." And when you're in the arts, you're exposed to a broad spectrum with individuals and so. That was part of one of the many causes that Mark was championing.

JR: I'm really glad you brought that up, Roy, because that whole year there were 00:47:00a number of groups or what we would call identities today, sort of represented in that run. You have Calorie Teal, The Gay Blade, like you mentioned. I'm really glad to get that origin story that you were the behind that you have an African American villain. You have an Asian Kung Fu guy but not expressed very stereotypically, I don't think, I wouldn't say. There's a Catholic nun. Well then I thought you were going to say that you were the Dance Master character 'cause -- but so you just have these different groups sort of represented and I didn't understand if that was sort of common in comic books at that time where 00:48:00every group needed a hero or a villain, or if this was something he was trying to challenge readers to understand there's more than just white characters in the world.

RH: I do not know. I mean obviously if Mark were alive, he'd be able to answer your question about special counsel. Whenever I would go over to his house and we'd sit in his office area, he would quote something and then he'd reach up, he had all his comic book collection and he would yank out one of the boxes, and he'd find a comic book, flip it open, and get exactly to the right page. I mean, he had in mind like a steel trap, and then he show me, he'd say, this says [gibberish]. And I know there were various characters, in answer to your question at least marginally so, there were various characters that were filling 00:49:00in those gaps in the professional comic book world, how prevalent it was, how popular it was, I couldn't tell you. But as I say, even so much of the Augmento stuff was a bit tongue in cheek, but he also -- there was a message there. He didn't want to -- he wanted to have it, or at least within the next episode get to the point of what you wanted to do, but he also knew, much like comic books. He you couldn't hit your reader over the head with it. No preaching to them because you're going to lose then.

JR: Yeah.

RH: It was all his doing. And I mean it, it's amazing when I look back at it and I recognize students from various classes that he's drawn in, whether their 00:50:00characters or just background, as well as faculty and a number of them from the art department.

JR: Ok.

RH: Chancellor Birnbaum was in there a couple of times.

JR: Yeah, yeah.

RH: So, he would put these, he would, let's make real people in, let's make a connection with -- but yet be careful not to make a comment, a derogatory comment about the person by putting them in here and that sort of thing. So, he was very careful about that.

JR: Yeah, I mean you could see it in today's lens a little bit of you know, sort of cheap jokes, gay jokes in there, but I would say my reading of the Gay Blade is that he's brave. He is strong and skilled, and the gay part just is so 00:51:00tangential to the character. I'm not sure it could get printed today, but I do think (chuckles) he did an interesting job on that.

RH: (laughs) One of the things you mentioned, the Dance Master, and I don't, I know by name the character. I don't know the character that well.

JR: Yeah, I was just looking at his name was Leotard, and he would dance, and he would hypnotize everybody, and he had these stars painted on his eyes.

RH: Well, when we were both freshmen, we had to for Gen Ed we had to do some sort of phy-ed classes and he had taken sort of one of these life classes where you had to run and keep track of your diet and [gibberish] which he found tedious and boring and hated to get up in the morning when it was cold outside 00:52:00run and I had taken an intermediate swimming class. So, we were -- I didn't have a problem with the swimming class, but he was whining a lot (laughs) about his class. That so finally I said, "hey, Mark. There's this class called modern dance. And I would bet there's going to be a whole bunch of women in there. It'd be a great way to meet girls on campus if we sign up, we might be the only two guys in that modern dance class." And sure enough, he said "I need three more credits if I add that, that'll do it." And so, the first day of class we show up and sure enough, we're the only two guys in there. About two dozen women in there. And the teacher was Cecilia Brown. And then she was so delighted to have males.

00:53:00

JR: Oh, is that right?

RH: Yeah, she was just falling over herself, making sure we didn't drop the class and we were like I don't know, and the class looks pretty well populated. I don't know why I'd want to drop this class. (laughs) And so, we started out. And Mark just gravitated not because there were women, but it was another creative process. And he loved sort of choreographing things. And so, we got into the class and then there was this club called Terpsichore.

JR: Right.

RH: And the club would meet every Wednesday night or something, I can't remember now, but. We came in to be members and Cecilia Brown was encouraging us as soon as she would come into class and so we did. And it was almost as if it was 00:54:00another outlet for him and so -- and I was sort of like a sidekick and we choreographed all these dance numbers. And anytime now that I guess that had been to the dance studio was taken over by wrestling. Cecilia Brown retired and eventually passed away and White, the other dance instructor who taught social and square dancing, and so on. She had retired number of years back. And so, the whole dance section below that, I think just sort of went out of locks and disappeared and the studio was taken over. But in those days, almost anytime you went by the dance studio, if Mark and I had a spare moment, we were in there 00:55:00concocting something. And so, with Terpsichore I would say, man about half of the -- again we were there was sort of like a little touring dance company-

JR: Yeah, right.

RH: So, about half the dances they did were dances we created. And then it was a wonderful outlet and God bless Cecilia Brown. She put up with it. She put up with the wisecracks and listen to that. Yeah, and it be in. She was very sort of impressed. I remember her touring us to a couple of the branch campuses to show them what our dance club was doing. It was kind of fun. And then at one point, a 00:56:00local theater group was doing Hello, Dolly! And I had been approached by the guy who was directing it, asking if I wanted to be the choreographer. And so, I quickly arm-twisted Mark I said, "you gotta get in this with me or I'm not gonna do it." And so, we did it. It wasn't very good by any stretch of the imagination. We did our best and it was meh. It was ok.

JR: Yeah.

RH: It was-

JR: So, you hadn't had any dance background before you took this class?

RH: No.

JR: Wow.

RH: No. And yeah, and it was, I guess because it was a another sort of outlet. I mean, so Mark was already, you know, dabbling in music with his rock opera 00:57:00stuff. And he was in the visual arts already. And using movement as yet just another way for him to sort of exercise his abilities and we must have been in Terpsichore at least for two years, I would think. And we got to know. I mean, we were pretty close friends with a lot of the people in there. So, and that's one of the things that when I -- we eventually got Rick Gilbertson in there.

JR: Right.

RH: And then, another guy Monty Warden, I think he was in it for a short time. And then the three of us. Myself -- not Mark -- but myself, Rick Gilbertson, Monty Warden auditioned for the Theatre Department's production of Anything Goes, which ended up being Don Burdick's first musical that he was directing. 00:58:00And it was surprising. I mean there we became sort of the tap dancing sailors. And so. Rick and I continued to do tap dancing. Rick eventually got a job while still an undergraduate as an instructor at Arthur Murray.

JR: Right, right. He told me about that.

RH: Sure. It really is sort of -- it's interesting the direction that those things going. But I should tell you, there's a -- I don't know, have you heard about Mark's triptych at all?

JR: No.

RH: So, in the painting studio, we were always painting things and you're looking for inspiration and so on and so forth. Well, Mark's because of Mark's family connection with their church. Mark's father got the church to commission 00:59:00Mark to do a triptych that they would bring out, I don't know Easter or whenever it was. And so, Mark said ok, so here is -- he had worked out on paper what that triptych was going to look like they were basically three panels. But I believe it was all like on one large canvas. So, there was sort of like biblical stories. Or it could be like stations of the cross sort of things except it's Catholic more than anything else. But these smaller pictures on the right and left side and then the center was a crucifix.

JR: Ok.

RH: And Mark wanted to work from a model. And so, he said, "I'm going to set 01:00:00something up and I got my dad working with me on this. And I want you to come and take some pictures so that I can use those pictures for this project." And I said, "ok." I was always being lassoed into something. So, I went there, and, in the garage, they had this cross made out of two by four. They had an old cable spindle from the power company.

JR: Ok.

RH: as a base. And Mark because of his mother, his mother, who was always sewing costumes, and so on. 'cause that was part of Mark's life, sewed him sort of a loincloth. That he could put on like swimming trunks.

JR: Ok.

RH: And so, we piled everything in the back of this parents' station wagon and Westhaven was one of the first major sort of housing developments out there. Now 01:01:00on the other side of Ninth Street was just sort of farmer's field. But in the process of doing these developments and one of the things they typically do is wherever the house is built, scoop off that topsoil. And they were depositing all the topsoil, making literally a little mountain-

JR: (laughs)

RH: out of the topsoil. And so, Mark said "that's where we're gonna go." So, we drove the station wagon out into this farmer's field. Never asked for permission, mind you. Drove it up onto the field. And quickly set up this cross and then Mark got up there with this little loin cloth on and had these rope loops that he could put his hands through to be the crucifix and got into the crucifix. And I'm running around with this camera-

JR: (laughs)

RH: taking pictures. And the camera, it was one of the cameras at the time that 01:02:00you know it would print out the picture right away.

JR: Sure Polaroid, yeah.

RH: So, we knew we got some good shots and so I was getting some close-ups and different angles and of the field. And then finally, as I'm getting some of what I think are the last shots and stop and turn I look out towards the road. And there are like a dozen-

JR: (laughs)

RH: cars stopped at the road. And I see two squad cars. One of them is Oshkosh City Police and the other's the Sheriff's Department. And they come in the farmers -- that little road coming into the farmers field, pull all the way up right behind Mark's station wagon. I said, "Mark! Mark, get down," and he's looking and goes, "Oh! We have an audience." He said, "take some pictures that." I said, "Mark it down, we're going to jail. Get down off the cross." And so finally he begrudgingly gets down off the cross. And the two police officers 01:03:00walk up and they're nice guys. They're saying, "Ok, fellas, what are you doing?" (laughs)

JR: (laughs)

RH: And so, Mark explains the whole project to them, and then they look at the pictures and then one of them says "So you were wearing something right?" "Oh yeah, yeah, that's right." And so, Mark keeps telling me "Get pictures of this! Get pictures of this!" So, I got at least one shot of him standing with the police. But they were really nice about it, and they said, "Ok, you guys done here? I said yeah, "we're done. We're done." They said "Ok just clean up your stuff, take it away and then go home. Just leave." And we said "Ok, sure." I mean, so part of me was, "I don't need a criminal record. I don't need to sit in jail Mark please." But Mark was very sort of like "no we can stretch this a little further."

JR: I love it. That's very-

01:04:00

RH: He ultimately used those photographs to do that triptych.

JR: Do you know what church that was?

RH: I honestly don't remember the name of it. I know geographically if I look at a map, I'd be able to find it and probably figure out. I could probably get the name of it to you because I had talked to somebody after I moved back here in '86. I talked to somebody who was a member of the church and they said "yeah, every for various religious holidays they pull out that triptych."

JR: Wow, so it might still be there, huh?

RH: In all likelihood is still there.

JR: Oh, that's cool. That's really cool.

RH: Yeah.

JR: Well, I'm glad you told me that story. I knew there was something about a crucifixion, but I didn't know it was tied to that, so that's fantastic. Thank you.

01:05:00

RH: Yeah.

JR: You had mentioned Cecilia Brown. I just curious about her and her time here. She was obviously one of the only African American faculty members here at the time. Do you remember her dealing with that, either negatively or positively, of her unique status on campus?

RH: I think I remember with her kind of dealing with it because a lot of the students who would have questioned -- so we'd be -- Cecilia Brown would get one of the university vehicles using their station wagon. And we'd be taking members of the dance club off to one of the performances we were going to do. And the drive may take a couple of hours. And so many times there were discussions with 01:06:00Cecilia about that, and she was very careful in the way she responded back. She knew even at least, this was my perception, she knew even if she felt very upset over whatever. She knew, as you had pointed out you're all alone here from a racial standpoint other than the hundred odd students that were students of color on campus. She was kind of it for a while and that people either looked to her to be the representation of that group or weigh out on her every word is she going to say something that's a misstep or be perceived as a misstep? And so, I think she had developed a very careful process of responding to things.

01:07:00

JR: Ok.

RH: As I say we got along with her, and she was happy that she had males. It gave a certain amount of respectability, I think, within a male dominated society, particularly in physical education. Uh, it gave again a bit of respectability to dance, because now males were in there and, and so her appreciation, 'cause maybe caused or encouraged her to put up with some of our shenanigans. And afforded her a greater sense of patience. Because we would come in like gangbusters and we would not think about Oh, well we want to do the 01:08:00warmup, we want to lead the warmup exercises for the Terpsichore group. And we want the Terpsichore group to do this, and we want the Terpsichore group to do that. And this was her group.

JR: Yeah.

RH: And so, in terms of territory, she could have really felt infringed upon by these youngsters coming in thinking they know everything, and they want to do everything. So, she was very careful and patient letting us know that there are certain things you might want to think twice about that [gibberish]. Not telling us definitely no. But letting us know that there could be consequences for this. And she knew better than anyone. She just she knew.

01:09:00

JR: Consequences just in terms of the dance and what happens next, right?

RH: Yeah, like for instance, if you're going to do a dance routine that is about some questionable behavior or something, you as young person can come in and can do this. They're entitled to do this, but the ramifications may be that administration frowns on it. You leave the dance group. The administration closes down the dance group. It's no skin off your nose, you came, and you did the deed and left and now they're trying to do damage control and so on.

JR: Got it.

RH: And so, I think that was -- and for a young person it never crosses your mind. You mean there's any life to any organization after I leave it?

01:10:00

JR: (laughs) Right. Totally, totally. So, were there themes that you and Mark were trying to explore that actually gave her some pause?

RH: I think that -- some of it may have been, and again I can't remember any of the specifics. I do remember there were instances when we would be choreographing something and maybe it has a sexual theme or maybe it has something to do with women's positions and I'm just pulling this out of the air-

JR: Sure.

RH: But there were various things that we would be exploring. And then she would say, "it's ok within the group if you want to explore this. But once you decide 01:11:00you're going to put it out for public performance, it moves it to a whole different level, and we just have to be careful about how you approach that." When we would make a choreographic number, it would be a nice package that had music, so it had a beginning and end and such things. And when Cecilia would choreograph something, it usually was very sort of organic, it was almost too much as far as we were concerned because we weren't really professional dancers. We had to have steps and things and moments ingrained in us they could be -- we had to rehearse them so that they would -- they were all connected. So anyways, 01:12:00it was-

JR: Yeah.

RH: It was an interesting thing and I and we developed some pretty strong relationships with a lot of the people there. There was an instance where one of the people from the dance group with just outside of Manitowoc. And Mark had 'cause -- as he was one to do, wanted me to accompany him to Chicago for a comic book convention. And I wasn't doing anything I wasn't interested in comic books, but what the hell? It's Chicago sure, why not? And so, we went down there and booked a room at the Y (YMCA) and went over to the hotel only to find out that the comic book convention had been canceled. And so, we went back over and said we were no longer in interested in a room at the Y. And so, I said, "so what are we going to do?" 'cause we had taken a bus to Chicago, and so he said, "let's 01:13:00go- "there's this member of the group called Bev Rick and he said, "let's go see Bev Rick and Milwaukee." I said "ok, what the heck?" And so, we got the bus. We took the bus into Milwaukee from Chicago into Milwaukee and walked across Milwaukee 'cause Mark's looking at a map and he said "here's where she lives. Here's where we are. We just take the most efficient route there." And we got there. And at one point we're walking, and I kept looking around and I said, "Mark just so that you know you haven't been looking, but you know we're the only white people here. I think we walked into a neighborhood where people are looking at us because we're sort of sticking out like a sore thumb." And so, when we got to Bev's house she said, "well- "she was home and she said she was delighted to see us and she said "well, how did you get here?" And he said, "well we went from the bus station." and she said, "you went through that neighborhood?!"

01:14:00

JR: (laughs)

RH: Yeah, and so we only stayed there for a couple of hours. And then he said, "let's go see Faye." This other student called -- member of the Terpsichore group called Faye Knox. He was pretty sure she was in [MR1]Osman, Wisconsin somewhere convenient. So outside of Manitowoc. And so, we caught yet another bus and the bus take us out and stops in the middle of the country road and says "here ya are." And I said "we're in the middle of nowhere. There's nothing but cornfields!" And so, Mark asked the driver, "where is Osmond?" He points up this little side road. He said, "It's down there someplace." (laughs) So we took up walking. And we eventually got -- 'cause he had Faye's address.

JR: Yeah.

RH: So, we got to Faye's house and the sun was starting to go down, it was the end of the day. And so, he said, "well, nobody's home. Let's wait on the front 01:15:00porch." So, we watch the traffic from the porch swings and so we're kind of sat down and started to sleep. Then we hear all these motorcycles. And about dozen motorcycles come rumbling in and I look at Mark and said, "holy shit, what are we going to do now?" And Mark said, "let's pretend we were on the road, and we just got here." So, we began walking back down the long driveway. And came walking in. And, well, so it turns out there's this motorcycle group and Faye's brother was sort of the head of the group, and he was delighted to see us and all of that. Eventually, Faye showed up. We had a good time. We spent the weekend there.

JR: Oh, crazy.

RH: It was that sort of spur of the moment. Let's do this. There has to be an adventure someplace. There has to be some excitement, there has to be something going on.

JR: And that was his style, huh?

01:16:00

RH: Yeah, and it actually had served him well. For a long time. It just did and it was -- when he got -- he eventually was hired by Marvel Comics. He came in as an editor. I guess as all beginning people were and eventually became a writer. And then became a head writer and then became the head of a group that was responsible for a certain number of books, certain numbers of comic book characters and issues they would put out. And he really -- one of his strengths, and I've seen him a number of times in New York while he was with Marvel, including the last summer we had seen him because his birthday was June 18th, 01:17:00and my birthday was June 19th. So, we really sort of celebrated our birthdays together.

JR: Awe.

RH: And so, his group, they were responsible for all these books. Nobody was superior to anyone else. They were all on a similar level and creative ideas could come from anywhere. No matter if you were the newest person, the lowest of the lowly if you would a great idea and it fit into what they were doing, he was going to go with it. And so, he cherished that group a lot. The last time I had seen him, we were in -- he and Catherine had a country house, and we were at the country house celebrating our birthdays and I said "so, how is it going?" And he 01:18:00said -- in terms of Marvel he said, "we are being bought out by Disney. And they have number crunchers who have come in." And they went to Mark and maybe let's say he only had ten people on his staff. They said, "you got to get rid of three. We don't care who the three are. We'll give you the choice." And he said, "they're all important. They're all crucial to the execution of the product that we're producing." And so, he hated it. He hated where it was going. And he had been like the number two man in Marvel. Next to Stan Lee he was like if Stan Lee left it was almost like Mark was going to be the head. And I asked him, I said, "you're you are living your dream. This was what you dreamed about all your life 01:19:00to me. Now this is happening." He said -- I said, "what are you gonna do if you leave Marvel?" And he said, "I'm going to just be a sci-fi writer. I suppose I'll sit in the country house, and I will produce books, write things freelance." He said, "I have got enough money saved up. And I got this, and I got that. I don't need this grief in my life." It was shortly after that that he died. Talking to Catherine we were of the belief it was stress related. That he just had this massive heart attack and was gone.

JR: Wow. But there was some sort of heart defect, though, too, correct?

RH: Yeah. But you see, he was the sort of person -- he would do Tai Chi and he 01:20:00would be very athletic and when we looked at him, he looked very athletic. And he made this adult jungle gym, so like a play place-

JR: Wow.

RH: on their country home they had, and I remember at the birthday had a lot of his colleagues from the comic book world came to visit. And then they were all over this thing playing on it.

JR: Wow.

RH: But both of Mark's parents: Mark's mother, died of cancer. And his father I think, had Parkinson's or something like that, it was slowly whittling him away over time. But there was a heart issue, but because Mark always felt good, he never got checkups, he never went to see the doctor and so there was no one was 01:21:00diagnosing anything, and he probably had incredibly high blood pressure. Just a bad, bad combination.

JR: Yeah. Wow.

RH: Yeah, but I mean he certainly had left his mark on campus there, I think, in everything he was involved in.

JR: You know, Roy talking to you and the others I just am bowled over by this group of students who seem so creative and different endeavors, music, film, art, dance. And you and Mark and Bill and Rick and others and it just must have been really amazing and special. And you obviously have a lot more contact with 01:22:00creative students than I do. But do you think it was unique that unique group of people at that time? Or were there other groups of students at the same time that we're doing other things that you sort of, maybe you didn't socialize with and? I guess I'm also kind of curious, as an instructor, did you ever see a group of students so multidimensional since?

RH: Boy that's a lot of questions.

JR: Yeah, sorry.

RH: Let me go back to the early one. Much like many things, I remember talking to my students and they decided to -- a couple of them were -- we gave them a project and the project was to do this classical play but put it in a contemporary setting. And they said, "well we'll put it during Vietnam." And so, 01:23:00they had all these sort of stereotype things. And I said, "you really need to research, we need to submerse yourself in it." So, and then they said, "did you know at the time? Did you know how significant that time period was going to be?" And I said, "you know the amazing thing, it's like being in the eye of a hurricane. You're involved in things. But you just don't know. You're doing things. You're responding to things. You have no idea what the larger picture looks like, especially when you're young." And I think that was kind of the case when we were doing things with Mark. Mark was, I say he was a sort of person who could pull everybody together. And it almost became a running joke after a 01:24:00while: "Well, that's another one of Mark's harebrained ideas." He wants to do something or other he wants to do this. He wants to do that. But at the same time, it was -- you knew it was going to develop into something you're not quite sure what and that something might not even be any good, but the ride there, the journey, getting there is what's going to be -- it's going to be difficult. It's going to require a hold onto your time, and you might not want to commit to it. And so on. But he had -- and I think this is part of one of the significant things. I think in the thirty-three years that I was on campus teaching at Oshkosh, you get these waves of students, some of them very talented and excited. Some of them just sort of average students. And so, there was always though, I sense, a pool of talented individuals waiting to be tapped. Whether 01:25:00they could be tapped through class or they could be tapped through a project, and they wouldn't even know if this was a good idea or not a good idea, but they would get involved in it. But the one thing in hindsight, looking back at large, the one thing he was able to do was to engage everybody. He was the one who could tap and pull together. So, I don't think within those thirty-three years we had less interested or less creative students. I think what was missing was sort of a Mark there. And getting everybody sort of on board. Even if you were going to joke about it and say this is the stupidest thing in my life that I've 01:26:00ever done, it was kind of like yeah, but you know there's something going on here and not quite sure what it is and I don't even know if I want to be party to it, but-- And that was, I think, his sort of gift, if you will, and in in many of these collaborative projects, 'cause in art, you can do a painting in your studio and never have to see anybody. You can still produce credible work.

JR: Right.

RH: You can write a musical composition. Even if it's a symphony, you can still write it. And even if nobody performs that you can work independently. The one thing you can't do independently, the artform you can't do independently really is theater. In the sense that it got to be a collaborative effort. And so, I think part of the reason I gravitated to theater was because it was that through 01:27:00all these collaborations. Even if at the time he may say so and so is a pain in the tail, I don't know why they keep demanding whatever. But when you get past that in hindsight, especially if the exercise you were working on, project you were looking at ends up being a success, you look back on it fondly and say, yeah, those are the good old days, weren't they?

JR: Yeah.

RH: Weren't they great? But you can never see it when you're in the middle of it. There are various times -- let's say in the radio TV film program. Somebody will make a movie; I mean a movie is one of those things you cannot -- you can kind of do it. You and a camera you could go out, set up the camera and shoot yourself, doing very, I don't know. But usually, it's a collaborative experience. And so, you have to have the ability to engage other people and get 01:28:00them to invest in some way: their time, their energy, their selves into a project. And it's kind of a requirement of it in order for it to work. So, I think one of the things was, in terms of students and do they have it today? I think they've always had it. I think there's they still have it. It's who's engaging them. And one of the things I've found with any students is it's not only just that person who engages them, but what gets them to connect passionately with something? And that can be a driving force. I think it's 01:29:00important because one of the things we often would sit around -- Mark would always have parties at his house.

JR: Ok.

RH: And I they remembered they would have; his mother would say each year at Christmas time she would have a cookie decorating party. She'd make all these sort of standard cookie cut outs, sugar cookies or whatever they were. And so, Mark and his colleagues all these art students would come, literally, decorate the cookies. We couldn't eat them. She had other things for us to eat.

JR: Yeah.

RH: But part of her pride was being able to go to people and say, "let me give you some cookies that art students decorated from UW Oshkosh." But there would always -- so once we spend all this time decorating cookies and then Mark would say "let's do parlor games." He always had to be active. He always had to be 01:30:00engaged in something. He always needed that in his life. And many of us just wanted to sit around and talk. I haven't talked to so-and-so I saw them in class when I had them in class, but now that we're not in the same class, I never see them anymore, but they're here now and I'd like to just sit and chew the fat with them, find out what's going on. You couldn't do that. It was kind of like no. We need to be doing something physically active. And so, we would kind of joke about that, "Mark's come up with another game. He's got another game they have to do."

JR: Yeah, Rick actually had said that it was over one of those games that he pretty much had a relationship-ending argument with Mark.

RH: Yeah, that was it because I think it was another one of our colleagues from 01:31:00the art department who was there. And Rick had said to me at one point he said they were going to Mark's party. Let's plan on meeting up at -- it was probably one of the night spots. A disco sort of. Let's plan on meeting up at this place after the party. And I said, "good, that's a good idea." And so, we started playing. They did one game or something, but Mark always had like a half a dozen just waiting to be done. And this other colleague of ours went over to Rick and sort of in full voice said "so, where are we meeting after the party here?" Well, Mark certainly wasn't invited. So, it sort of went downhill from there and 01:32:00Rick finally sort of left Mark know what his feelings were about this and controlling the environment and so on and so forth.

JR: Right.

RH: And yeah. I don't know if they had a lot of conversation after that. Possibly none I remember the incident when it happened and I remember Rick kind of feeling guilty about it, particularly when Mark had passed away and we had sort of a service at Oshkosh. And he had recounted some of that to me. I mean, it was again for those people who knew Mark it's like you don't get one without the other. It's the package deal. And it's just the way it is. So. Yeah anyways. 01:33:00But at the same time, you know his -- what he did and how he did it and all of his passions got him to where he ended up before he died. He was driven. And as he got older, he developed a very nice perspective when managing his people. How to get this creative people together and so on. So, yeah.

JR: Oh well and let me express very belated condolences of the loss of your friend. The more I learn about him, the more I wish I had a chance to meet him 01:34:00and talk to him about this interesting time. So, Roy, we've gone an hour and a half. I had actually prepared tell you when we started that I was hoping to do this in two parts.

RH: Yeah.

JR: So, we're going to put a pause on this now. I thank you very much for your time and for the confusion at the beginning and I've really enjoyed hearing about you and your friend, and all the things that you did. As I said, I'm sort of steeped in this right now, and I think it had been a really amazing group of people to be around. So, thank you so much.

RH: Yeah, well, if you have any questions by all means let me know.

JR: Will do. Thanks so much.

[End of Interview]

01:35:00