Memories Of Learning; William B. O'Donnell, Part 1

This in your, in what you say, but I worked for your eight presidents. He's the only one that ever threatened to fire me. But I was having an altercation with a non-academic department head, and I just wasn't going to take what this guy was wanting to dish out, you know, and he'd been there quite a whole while I knew Milton got us both together, and I wouldn't sit down in the president's office. I was mad. I was mad that I'd been called in there to even talk with this guy, and anyway, finally we were both screaming at each other and talking pretty harsh at each other, and Milton said, now, we were to simmer down, and he was going to fire a wonder both of us. And I said, Mr., you just take me first, because if I've got to work with this guy, I don't want the damn job. Yeah, I just love you, well, I think you're a great guy.

By the way, after that explosion, I never had any more trouble, you know. Now, I'm in it, I was going to give up a job of that, you know, but he's a great, great man. I even knew Gary Kent, who he was a president long in 1927 to 20, about 25, I guess, on up to about 21 to 36. 21 to 36. Okay, that covers it, but he was a fine man, but not like you, Milton, you, Milton, he was going to take this little little agriculture college and take it someplace, you know. And Kent was the kind that we had nice little college, and let's just treat it that way. And that's fine man, very fine man. What do you think Milton left to go to the North Area?

Well, Milton, you see, and I think it was 40. He was a Colonel in the Army Reserve chemical engine, a chemical warfare unit, you know. And about a fall of 40, somewhere in there, he probably got it down better than I do, but he was called an active duty. And then he stayed in there, it'll 46 when he came back and he'd had all this military experience and all, and here are the, in the Mexico military institute with a wonderful reputation nationally, he was, he did the superintendent, and I think Milton just thought he'd like to head up military school. So he was president of both for a little while, flying back and forth. And then Thomas and I were on a faculty search committee to make recommendations to the Board of Regents to get a successor to Milton, because we wanted the president to be here

all the time. And we made a horrible mistake, we took in a bunch of folders one day in the order of preference as far as the search committee went, and the top one was a guy named Dr. J.R. Nichols. And we said that's our top recommendation. So it happened, it was rainy day in the fall, and it so happened, he arrived on campus that day. And because the search committee recommended him, why is first, why they gave him the job. He was terrible. Oh, man, he was terrible. He was here one year, fortunately, he left. He left to become the superintendent of the U.S. Indian Affairs in Washington. And then we followed, what was the interim before Corbett? For Corbett was Branson, his acting president.

Branson, two men over the years, served as acting president from time to time. The first one was Hugh Gardner, is that name ring about with you? He is a wonderful guy. And actually, he's the one that brought me to New Mexico from Colorado in 1927. At that time, he was the state supervisor of agricultural education in Santa Fe. And he offered me a job teaching vocational agitar at home, and I came down to take that job. And Hugh Gardner from time to time would step in and be acting president. And then Hugh was getting older and it wasn't too well. And John Branson began acting president, he was acting president several didn't time. And the whole time Milton was away. And again, a fine, fine gentleman. If you wanted to know what a Kentucky gentleman was, why was John Branson?

They couldn't have made him any finer gentleman than that one. You are already very young man, are you kidding? We're taping this now. Right now, you mean? Oh, Shucks, I hope I didn't roof any. Why didn't know that? Why did they, devil did you tell you? Because you were talking. Anyway, I'll go ahead. Well, can you give me some example of something Branson did that kind of typifies his gentlemanliness? You always knew where John Branson stood on everything. There wasn't any two sides to it with his being able to switch from one to the other. And Branson, his character was such that he gave you direction, you knew where he stood on things, if you see what I mean.

And he was an extremely conservative president. He was not one that wanted to mill the great deal here. He won the real good school, high academic standards, and quiet steady quality to it. And when he was actually appointed president, I guess it was 50, I think he served as president from 50 to 55, he was 49 to 55, and he went from acting to the acting. No, the acting was a little later, you're right. I think your first statement, Desirey, members about right, belong 53 or something, up that point, you've been acting. And then he became president. He wasn't, I don't think he was feeling too well, and actually I think maybe they wanted to go back to Kentucky, and that's what they did eventually, you know.

But he was fine, man, you see, president's very, he got the kind that they have just a steady, quiet, constant influence, it's the same all the time, you know. And then you got the kind that they really take this thing, and here we're going to move it from here way up here, you know. I think Corvitt was a marvelous example of that, because in 56, when I came back at his request, he told me pretty well what he wanted, he wanted to really develop the academic program. At that point, the university had, well, actually it was an agricultural college, but it had a, what I considered to be a low percent of those with the urn doctorate on the faculty. And in the next few years, we went from about 18 or 19 percent up to 63 percent of urn

doctorate on the faculty. And that was the kind of thing that Corvitt wanted, you know, so much. He also wanted the research program to move the same way, and he caused it to. So yeah, you have actually over the years, there were two kinds of presidents, they were all, they were all excellent men, I never knew one that wasn't an excellent man. But one that would be steady, not a builder, particularly, and then you have the building type like Corvitt, Milton, Milton had many characteristics of a builder too, but in a different way than Corvitt. Milton was more interested in that time, and rightfully so I think, in building enrollment. For example, I had known Hugh for 10, 12 years before I came down here, and he wanted me to come down and be dean of students.

So at that time I was over at the, the Mexico, Eastern to Mexico, Junior College is same kind of a job, as he was offering me. We had 71 sophomores graduate over that Junior College that year, the year I came down here, a whole Kipp and Caboodle project that came along with me. It came down here, and the biggest part of the Junior class was made up of those that came from the Junior College of Portalis. Now that was Milton, Milton wanted to, he really wanted to build enrollment, you know. And as I say, I think rightfully so, you, back in those days you couldn't just sit there. The state wasn't providing, for example, for Kipp, loudly, the state wasn't providing any amount of money. It doesn't like it is now, what yesterday they were voting on, well, what, $4 million for an agriculture and engineering addition, and addition, not an engineering complex in

addition. The state had never put up any capital out of the money, practically none, up to the time Milton began to build enrollment, and then they either have to give up on the enrollment idea or begin to attract some money from somewhere. And of course, pressure finally, it's legislature began to build up where you could get money out of it, you know. I'm probably able to do such a gigantic building program. Well, I'll give you one idea, I don't, I just thought Corvette was just one marvelous man to work with, and I think in many respects he and I made a good team. I don't question at all, but I'd been sent up to Colorado State U to, by the North Central Association, to evaluate that school to see whether or not it's new doctoral program

should be accredited. And while up there, I learned what the President there had done with the legislature, Dr. William Morgan. He'd gone to legislature and he'd gotten them to put up something like, it was just a fraction of a mill, applied to add the law and property taxes for the next 10 years to go to Colorado State for building, and it turned out to be a phenomenal amount of money. So I brought that idea back to Corvette and I said, look, maybe we could do something same. In fact, my first, I was also lobbying the legislature, so I knew a little more about that aspect of it, but I thought originally we could do just what Colorado did. We could have a small fraction of a mill applied for the next 10 years. And after talking it over and all we decided the thing to do was to desk-win with a capital outlay bond issue money for every single one of the seven institutions, and it turned

out to be 42 and a half million dollars. So Bill was put in on that and the Aggies out here as I recall now, I'm not sure, I think that's something like 10 or 11 million out of that. And then we had successive other bond issues, bond issues to help the library bond issues on scientific equipment and so forth. I'm talking too much. Well, the faculty salaries get a real boost when the 50s and what they were in the... Well, in order to move your percentage of earned doctors up from, say, 19 or 18 or 19 percent up to 63, you had to do some phenomenal things about salary. And they were done. I can tell you a funny story if Corvin and I, we worked our full heads off trying to set

up the salary schedule for the next year to really give a real benefit to the faculty. We wanted to hold the good ones we had and we wanted to attract some more good ones. And we held on lots of different things. And my story illustrates what we did, but anyway, we finally got the proposed expenditure budget for the next year was to give the main benefit to faculty salaries and it was pretty good. So we published it to the faculty and I noticed everybody what was what for the next year. I got a phone call from a Dr. PhD in chemistry and he says, Bill, I just thought you might be interested in what being said out on the sidewalks here on the campus about the faculty salaries.

And I said, well, I started to give you his name, I'd rather not call him, he's dead now. Anyway, he said, well, I bill out on the sidewalk they're saying that you and Corbett shouldn't have done that. You shouldn't have given the faculty such nice races that you should have put more money into the department funds. And I said, well, that just illustrates you just can't with them all. You can't, no, no, you have to take to do that, to improve the quality of the university. You've got to take the salaries, you've got to be more than just competitive. They've got to be a deservedly competitive, you know what I mean? And I don't know, I've been out 18 years and 18 and a half, I guess, but I don't know what's happening with faculty salaries now, but we were right in the middle of trying to do it every year. We had one advantage, might going up there in lobby and help, because not only would

I have a strong influence on the campus, but here I could go up there and interpret that the problems to the legislators and, well, fortunately, I think we were able to convince them quite often that we needed more sustenance and we would have had otherwise, you know. That was one reason I ran for the legislature as soon as I retired, I felt that I could do more good inside than I could as a lobbyist. Do you recollect or summarize what kind of the content of some of those arguments you had to present to the legislature when you were the academic vice president here? Part of those days were in kind of unfair competition with one of the other universities of this state.

I won't pick it out. But we, Corbett wanted to follow the Pennsylvania State, or the Pennsylvania plan in which Pennsylvania State University was by law, named to develop branch colleges in Pennsylvania. So he wanted to do somewhat the same here, not very many branches, but enough to really have an influence around the state. So we started out to get some. We got the Carl's bad one first and then I think El Magordo was second and each time we did something like that, whether the president of this university, I mentioned to you, which scream his head off, and oh, they'd give false accusations about what we were doing. They even call Corbett and me a change store, change store educators. And the funny thing was that after they found that what we'd been doing and getting these branches going that they were successful, and they just had to have one too.

They've still got one up in the northwest far of the state. But... Stand up much in the role and you're lobbying with the legislature to get more money from here? You mean it is... I'm not quite sure to... Well, I mean, I was interested to find out about how the branch campuses got started from your point of view too, but what my virtual question was was, what types of arguments did you have to use with the legislature when you were lobbying them to get more money for like faculty salaries and for building or for... Well, of course, I always had available all competitive information, you know, from what was happening to all the major, better universities of the country, and actually what we were doing, we were more successful, I think, in getting this done than any others, including that university I was talking about, and what we were doing, we were helping them. Our efforts were causing an improvement in theirs, but it wasn't all easy because we had

this Board of Educational Finance, which you've heard about, and there were some years in which the director, a paid employee of the state, was really doing everything he could do to make it difficult. I remember one time with John Branson, that I had resigned here one time, gone to Santa Faye for three years. Yes, and then I came back when corporate came, but anyway, the Board of Educational Finance was something we have needed rather badly. The first director of it was Dr. John Dale Russell, who had a national reputation. Dr. Russell was also in demand. He was in demand to survey the university system of the state of New York and go make

recommendations the same in Michigan and so forth. So he had an assistant or two that were working with him, and they would make recommendations to their Board, and those recommendations would go to legislature, and quite often, there were recommendations in the early years, would favor the biggest university in New Mexico, and this land grant university down here would not be in this favorable position. So we had the really object and scrap to show you, and this actually happened, to show you what I mean. The main assistant of Dr. John Dale Russell, one time in preparing for the recommendations for the subsequent legislature for each of these universities. He actually prepared the recommendation for the budget request and all for a university in the East part of New Mexico.

Then when we all get before that Board trying to defend or object to or ask for more money or whatnot, he's in there fighting to get what he had prepared for this Eastern school. His job wasn't that at all. His job was to compare, to evaluate and to equalize in fair treatment for each of the schools. See my point? Well, we get up there and we know what he's done. So the hearing starts on these preparation recommendations for all seven schools. And it looks like this Eastern universities is just going to slip on through. Well, we had agreed tonight before that if that started to happen, I was to open up the objections, which I did, and sure enough, the minute I objected by Dr. Russell who had been in Michigan the whole time surveying the state of Michigan's colleges, not here, leaving it to an assistant.

He said, well, I know, he said that couldn't possibly, and finally I had to turn to him not meeting and say, you really don't know what's been happening. You've been away, and this man that's sitting here did do what I'm saying, and eventually the Board of Educational Finance made an adjustment and so forth. Well, what I'm trying to say was, they weren't easy days. You see, when Corvette became president, there was less money in the state than later. It gradually improved in the next 13 years to where there was more toward the end of his. He ended up what about 1970, didn't he? And it was better by that time, but actually the big, the increased money for the support of higher education, quite a bit of a team after Corvette had retired as president, what I'm trying to say. Now, he and I, and we had K. Haif and as the controller, the business manager, and he was marvelous to help us.

And we had to fight every year for money to develop this place, and when we were trying to raise salaries, it was crucial. We also, we went after national grants, we went after the National Science Foundation had some big money available. We went after that, we finally got a million dollars for the math department, I remember, to develop the excellence in that department. What was that, do you remember about one year? Ralph Crouch was department head. I would think along about 66 probably, 65 or six somewhere in there. That was NSF money? NSF, yeah. And there was a flat million dollars. It might have been 64 or 5 because we, the first thing Ralph Crouch did is head department. He invited a famous German mathematician to come to this country and spend a year, and we brought him over.

We had to pay a real high salary to do it, but that was the way you developed your quality, you know. We had many a young mathematician, PhD, come in here to hear those lectures. Someone wanted to join the staff and to help this, you know. From my notes, I have this, I have written down that after he became vice president in 1959, in January of 1960, the college granted its first PhD to Alan Gray. Do you recommend that, can you recollect that, I mean, can you tell me what that was like in terms of a milestone? Well, there's a great milestone. You see, the Board of Educational Finance, particularly this university I was telling you about, was fighting the Mexico State, starting doctoral programs, you know. Because this again would end up with more competition for money up at Santa Fe.

So, we had to fight that through, and then we had to get North Central accreditation. And that was, that we worked out, in some way we worked out, we had good people, though. And they were top flight. But it was quite a thing, I knew Alan very well, and he was, by the way, a local boy from down toward Macia there. And, I don't know what I've answered your question, but it was a real milestone. So, what was the, what was the, can you tell me more about what the, you'll see, I'm just kind of, I'm not interviewed yet. Have you ever tried to find him? His was mathematics. Our first doctor's degree was math. And math and physics became the two departments that moved well. I don't know if civil, civil was moving along, and some of the engineering pretty fast. But you see what happened, we hadn't, we'd gotten in these PhDs.

And they were a bunch of, kind of, they wanted to go places too, they didn't want to stand still. And as a consequence, these departments were trying to attract high quality graduate assistants, graduate students, and to really move them through the, through the program. And I think I'm missing the boat on your question, but those were, those were my interesting days. I mean, there's, I assume an Alan Gray started here, not just, I remember he started here as a freshman and came on through. But I mean, by the time he got a master's degree, he was the PhD then offered, and he was just the first one to complete the requirements. I expected sort of a story here that, he was like a dynamic here between, he was qualified, he wanted it, and the university wanted to offer it and something like that. I'm not sure to understand your question, but they were bending over backwards to see that the program itself was very high quality.

Now, Alan Gray, by the way, he was, my memory is a top-like student, I even knew his father. He was in the cards that the master doctor would probably be the first one, because TV had a, we had a master department that was stacked with some沒, and sometimes still out there Jack Evers, I don't know whoл, its left there, but is Ed Gohn still out there, or do you know? I'm not sure, I don't know. What do you recollect with being some of the brightest faculty when you were there? Well let me take the master department, Ralph Crouch was a foil of a fine department head, without Ralph Crouch heading that department. You see, before Ralph had been Earl Walden, Earl we pulled out of there and made him graduate dean. He is dean of the graduate school.

Well then we needed the department head and Ralph Crouch was put in, and Ralph was one of these, not tell you, his National Science Foundation came out with an announcement and Ralph Crouch had to get his department into that, you know. And so he was one, and then we brought men like Jack Gever here, another top-like mathematician, skipping over, we had Ralph Dressel over in Physics, which Ralph was a real fine research physicist. But probably one of the greatest ones we ever brought in here was Harold Law. Now there is a row in physics. You see an interesting point, whereby this other university was trying to hold us back, you know, in certain respects. When it doesn't compare in the physics departments, the Mexico State had twenty or twenty-one PhDs in physics. They had seven at the other place, you see. Now the reason being that here was PSL, they were using some of this PhD material. That helped us to increase some. And we were just far academically, we were a far stronger, had a far stronger program in physics than the other university did, the one that was trying to hold us back whenever it could, you know.

Let's see. Well, you, of course, have heard of Dr. George Gardner. He was the one that developed the physics department to begin with. And there never could have been a man brought to the Aggies who contributed any more than George Gardner. Because, let me give you this example. Along in another responsibility I had over the years was go visit high schools and bring in the best high school seniors as possible to go to school here. And every spring I'd go do that. Anyway, one summer right after World War II, I'd gotten back from the Navy and Branson sent for me. And I went in here, George Gardner's there, and here are several men from White Sands. He said he wanted to describe what these men were here for and find out whether I thought we could make good on it.

And what they wanted, they wanted to set up a cooperative program in order to get a degree and go five years. You'd be one semester at White Sands as a co-op student, next semester full time in school and so forth for five years, you'd have a degree. And they wanted only top flight scientific and mathematics potential. So I said, well, and by the way they wanted, I think my memory is 250, next September. This was about let's say June. So I said, well, I think we can do it. I said I can get on the phone and find out here rather quickly by calling one or two high school principals. No, you won't need to do that. If you think we can do it, fine. They made a contract that day. And I started out, what I did, I spent about two days on her three dust on the telephone, calling every large high school in the Mexico for the principal.

And I'd say, now if we come, George Gardner and I come, can you have your very best students regardless of what they say their interest is for us to talk with so we can explain this program. And we had the 250 that fall. And I'd give a little beginning treat us and then George Gardner would take over and tell them about the program and we ended up with 250. And that was the start of that tremendous program they had out there for many, many years. Then George Gardner one time with the president me says, I can get a naval research program that'll place students all around the world tracking satellites. Are you interested? Well, of course we were interested, you know, pretty quick. We've got that with about 17 or 19 locations around the world. And seven or eight students at each location. If you had seven at this, when you had seven study in here to flip flopped the next time, you know.

But George Gardner, a great man. Too bad you can't interview him. He had an awful lot to do with this. His wife was kind of fairly major role too. Yeah, she was Anna Gardner was actually, George was a man that made the federal and scientific context. All the whole inner working of everything George Gardner meant to this university was being handled by Anna. One time I remember I got a hold of George and I said, look, we're losing some of the best students we could get out of these high school because the best I can do is to say to him, I'll give you an application plan. You fold out and send it to Dr Gardner said, George, if you can just tell me that I can just say flat out to this student. You've got a scholarship. If you'll let me know by such and such time with PSL and with the George Gardner program. We can really pick up the best ones. He said, well, let's get Anna. We talked with Anna and she said, well, sure, that's the way to do it.

So that's what we started doing. We were picking up the best or worse. Good example. I went to Towson afternoon. Well, I was there all afternoon, Towson High School and the two top seniors were girls. And they had an attendant, the senior class meeting that I was to talk to. So afternoon, I didn't. I said to the principal fellow named Bright Grindr and old friend of mine, I said, what about these two girls? Well, he said they were interested in what you've got Bill. He said, they're going to the University of New Mexico. I said, Bright, do you suppose you can get those two girls back to school and talk to me for a few minutes with you there? Yeah. Both great. Both great. You wait a second. Darn it here after going through George Gardner's program. And no, he was great. The scholarship proved very important that way. Well, the White Sands program alone here were basically the 250 they wanted to begin with.

It finally ended up. It was way over 250 because you had matching groups there and matching group on campus, you know, interposing or interchanging. And that alone was a good example. The satellite tracking was, well, just a enormous program. We had about, let's say, 17, 17 times 14 is about what the number of students we had involved in that program. One of my wife's nephews went through. He came from Nebraska and got chosen for that program and went through it. His first tracking was in American Samoa and then he tracked in the seashell islands of the Indian Ocean and then he tracked in Portugal. Five years after he started, he gets a degree in civil engineering. Now he's got his own civil engineering consulting program in Anchorage, Alaska.

I get off the beaten track here, but what you wanted everyone's in a while. Now you asked about some of the others. So far, I've stayed kind of with science. When I say a couple more things about the beginning of PSL. I guess I got a picture, a clear picture. He said George had the real... Yeah, he's the one. He was a great collaborator with the scientific personnel at White Sands. And White Sands started right there at the end of World War II and George was right in on the ground floor helping them. And they wanted a nearby university too. And George kept his contacts real live, real good contacts. We couldn't have done a lot of the things we did without George Gardner. That's the real point.

And when he retired, you could see right away that we'd really lost a tremendous force even he was marvelous. I didn't know either man, but just from the replications, I kind of see a parallel between Ralph Goddard and John Gardner. Well, Ralph Goddard, I never worked with him, but I knew him. But he was largely electrical engineering, largely engineering. It was a very small program in those days. He did start originally, he started K-O-B, I guess it was. And then eventually went to Albuquerque. But the program was small. Now Gardner's program was the opposite. And it was in terms of science and engineering, it was a heartblood of this university out here. It really was a thing was making it strong. I don't want to neglect some other things though. We had some great people down in agriculture, no kidding. We had some great things.

And over in business, Guthrie, for example, was just tremendous. Sitting there quietly, unassuming, never pushing Gus Guthrie once at all. I could use the kid him, you know, I'd say, you know Gus, we're going to set up a college of business. You're going to be the first dean. Oh no Bill, I can't recommend that. So you watch, you're going to be the first dean. Later, he became the dean of the first dean of the college of business. Then one day I said to him, I said, Gus, we're going to get you a brand new building for the college of business. Oh no, I can't do that. I can't be bothered. I said, you watch. We got to that before. Anyway, he was a great guy. Down agriculture though we had some wonderful people. A man just died that wasn't given near the credit he should have been given. That's Phil Leindacher. Phil took a program and conducted a very substantial well-organized fine program that was developing forward for agriculture all those years he was in there.

We had a tremendous dean and director of agriculture before Phil named Robert Black. He's 41 years old and drops dead one night. And gee, what a, what a, what that guy, he could have moved mountains all by himself. Oh, how he could go. John Knox, a man of a husband, and another one. And you know, when you do like I'm doing, you overlook some key people. You can't help it, you know. But she I've always felt, in fact, in last night's newspaper. Some lady was writing a letter about this recent region action in which they're going to set up increased standards for entry entrance. Boy, she was hitting that right square on the head. Exactly the way I feel about it, you know, that it's been a land-grant college. All should have a chance to try it.

And I have always deeply felt that. And I'm a graduate of a land-grant college myself, Colorado State. I don't know how I get off of that. That's a good point though. I was going to ask you about that. No, I think I think deeply about it. We had a, we had a felt like it even, even tell you his name yet. There were Tatum many, many years ago. There was a big family named Harris, all kinds of kids. The oldest was Hollis. And he got an engineering degree out here. One of the older boys besides Hollis was Prentice Harris. Prentice came down here from Tatum High School. And in those days we had some kind of an entrance. And it gave us information about the students, you know. It wasn't to see whether they could come here.

One of the regents members that is the one that wrote the letter. That I'm holding. No, no. Regents took the action. And then one of the two that voted against the action as written the letter to the newspaper. And that's what I was mentioning. He's objection, she voted no on the new entrance requirement. Is she on the regents? Yes, she's a member of the regents. She was objecting to what they had done. And boy, I just fundamentally agree with her, basically. Ready? Let me go back to Prentice Harris for just a moment. Hollis had been here. He got a degree in engineering. He was a good student. Long comes Prentice. He takes his entrance test. And he didn't make a score big enough to even recognize. Way, way down here, you know. I suppose with some real conscientious person might have said,

well, look son, you shouldn't go to college. You just haven't got what it takes. But you know four years later, Prentice Harris was picked out of the outstanding graduate in the College of Agriculture. He had a practically straight four old average, at least his last year as he did. He was a destined absolute marvelous student. That's why I just, I have very strong feelings on this particular thing, you know. In his case, what do you think? Motivation. Came from a little school where the teachers probably weren't very good. And I think too, as I remember, the Harris has lived a long way from Tatum. He probably rode a school bus a long way twice a day. And he got down here in a warm climates and good instructors that took an interest in the way he went, you know. I've known lots.

I'm just mentioning one. I've known lots like that. Now I'm off the subject again. Why don't you talk more about some, I would like it if you, if you would, to give me some more specific things about Phil Lindecker. Some things about him. Well, Phil, Phil graduated here with a bachelor's science. And in biology as our member. But anyway, he went to Iowa State and finally gets his PhD. And he's brought back here. And he became the dean director as I recall. And Bob Black died. Corvette figured that Phil could do it. And Phil did. Now, in that particular job, you could let things drift. And agriculture is going to become less important in the Mexico, which basically, once we exhaust our mineral wealth that we had. Agriculture is going to be the one thing we got left.

Unless the federal government puts a lot of military money in down the road, you know. And Phil was the opposite. He had, he had strong things going all the time. He had the animal husband, husbandry people were trying to have a strong influence in New Mexico. A real good example of that would be P.E. Neal, who was the great sheep specialist. And eventually, I guess the whole world didn't have anybody that was more of a world specialist. And Phil Neal was. That's unquestionably. John Knox was recognized authority in beef cattle, particularly herpes. And Phil was given those people. He was leading them and giving them a chance not to really move out here and accomplish. And show it could be done. And he gave great encouragement to him. I had a great respect for him. I just thought he was marvelous. So I had the men in charge of the academic program.

I formed what was called the Dean's Consul. And kind of hard 18 years later to remember. But I think we were meeting for lunch once a week. Each of the deans and I would meet and we'd have lunch and we'd talk over any problems or any plans. We'd evaluate what the other fellow was thinking and so forth. And Phil was in that group and he was a real contributor to it. I'm kind of looking for an anecdote or a specific encounter or something. Sometimes when you two were talking and meeting or some issue that you followed that he pushed and you followed through. Some of the kind of adds some color to your kind of generalization development. I know it's tough though. That's kind of hard. Search for those.

If they come to you how they're doing. You know some wonderful biologists you know said that you reached 65 and you lose 500,000 brain cells a day. And they're never replaced. And I've been way past that you know. G.A. That's what I can say is I wouldn't feel lined up or comes into the picture. I have a warm feeling because he was that kind of a dean and director. He did a lot out in the field in terms of the extension service. In terms of strengthening what county agents would do and what home demonstration agents would do. But to find you a. What kind of. Well. In home demonstration agents work. I think it was in seeing to it that they. They really got their their meetings with housewives and farmwives and all going on a regular basis and all that kind of stuff. But he pursued his county agents were they were expected to produce not just sitting in office.

And I think what I'm saying I think Phil himself tried to hold him to a real good standard of productivity. Now. That is probably what you need but that's it. How about out of agriculture and engineering and the sciences and into the arts and science? Well. Knowing you were coming I couldn't help but think of old PM Baldwin dean PM Baldwin. And there if ever this universe they had a character if you have both he was a basically a Britisher. Talk about a man a character who we. You couldn't you couldn't get him to deviate from principal on anything you know. And he he ran a real fine college of arts and sciences with a good steady hand. By the way he was another one that once in a while became acting president not very often.

Branson was acting president Branson got away Baldwin became acting president. And I remember that because one time I had a real conflict while Branson was away and Baldwin was acting president. And we were we were getting nearly down the blows when I finally said well we'll just take this on over to the acting president. He can say which way we go from here and went over there and of course he ruled in my favor I was sure he went anyway. But he was he was a real real steady highly highly academic minded very highly highly academically. And he built he started the real building of the college of arts and sciences originally the college of arts and sciences was really a. You just want these agriculture students and engineers had to have some English classes and so forth some math classes.

And it was that kind of a thing but he began developing he brought Sigurd Johansson in to run a history department and Sigurd did a beautiful job at developing the history program here. Moving all around. Another thing I see. I guess that I would park and some proper. Well, Johansson was there they had a department and crop wrote the book later. He is a quiet little fellow. He knew he was around but no. Ira Clark was known from way back there as being an excellent type of teacher. And he always had quite an influence with the faculty when Ira Clark would talk with the faculty or serve on the faculty senator anything.

People listen to him but. I can't give you anything there and I don't understand I thought he was an excellent person but you must remember this. My contacts from 60 no from 56 on were largely with with deans directors little later vice presidents and although I knew all the faculty and felt I could contact them any time and they couldn't me and so forth. I wasn't I wasn't too close to them. I was working largely with deans and directors and.

To just take a different hold of impact here and kind of bring up some other stuff. I'd like you to kind of reminisce a little bit about the physical plant the physical nature of the campus. Gus Guthrie will tell you that when he came here there wasn't any physical plants you know. And those days there was a headly hall and brown hall and freshman dormitory. Later they built built can't hall and when I came in 27 the campus had five or six buildings on it. For my second night in the Mexico which would have been July 4 1927 I slept in the old freshman dormitory and I wanted to tell you that it was in the mighty, mighty bad shape. To 1939 I think it was the state had put up one time $370,000 for capital outlay and that was all.

Now let's see that's 39. Milton before the war got going on a student union building which eventually became Milton Hall. And that was built however while he was gone mainly by John Branson and I'm trying to think most of the development and buildings was after World War II. By Milton got back Milton Hall was done it was completed. Milton began the building of Rhodes Hall and the women's dormitories.

And we recognized all along if we were going to really make this place grow we better bring some girls in here to go to school you know. Because it was seven and eight to one for boys we had to bounce this thing out better. Milton started the Rhodes Hall and then what was the name of our blind lady another hall up there named after her. Both that was after World War II and the legislature began to put up some money as we went I told you about the 42 and a half million though. But none of that stuff came because the powers in Santa Fe wanted to do something you know. It was because people like Corbin pushed like the devil and then we set out the educator but it is to our need.

And people had never up to the time I retired they'd never turned down a higher educational bondage they never had. That was on buildings or on libraries or in equipment. Never turned down they always spoke for this county. Los Alamos County and Bernalillo County were the three counties in the state that really would just go out of their way to pass those bond issues. They'd get about three to one majority or better every time you know. You might know why Wilde Hadley Hall was turned down. You have to know where you're inside the next story and they tell you why. I mean it was a real old building but a few of that vintage are still around. Well I think it was I think it was torn down to the new administration building and been built.

It was torn down in order to beautify the campus and get an organized constructive layout of a practical well established layout for the campus. He just about had to get Hadley out of there you know. The argument or thoughts of the heritage representative. Oh might have been a little bit even the alumnus I think were. The alumnus in one way back were in favor of improving. See Corbett had a characteristic of working with those kind of people that was phenomenal. He could go he could work with the alums and and convince them of things. He and I started out if for example I went to the west coast.

They'd let the alums out in the west coast know that I was going to be there and they'd set up some kind of a thing. Maybe a dinner or usually a dinner at night and some big hotel or someplace. And Corbett was doing the same thing. He did that New York City and other places with alums. And I think he was he was drawing in all the support he could get to try to build a high quality campus with real academic quality to it. I think if he I think he figured that academic quality and quality campus had to go together. You couldn't have one without the other you know. How about the place in the lover's lane which you know went way back to the early 20s on the campus? I didn't want anything. Didn't amount to anything.

I don't know how to tell him about it. Well I think I was there when that happened as I recall during that period. There wasn't many excitement or anything. You see up to World War One the students had a different kind of an attitude. World War Two ends and back come these veterans and most of our students the big bulk 80% or so are going to be veterans. I'm not sure if I misunderstood you but you set up the World War One. I'm at World War Two. If you just rephrase it then I have it on tape the way you mean it. Prior to World War Two the things like student activities all that sort of thing was very quite quite important. By the way before World War Two this the little college out here had some of the grandest student activity leaders you ever saw in your life.

Just phenomenal bunch of students. A good example downtown years Henry Gustafs and he was one of them. Anyway after the war back come these veterans and they dust in and day to college like this out here. They've been through a war it's important now that we get through quickly with our degree. Get a good job and move out into our life and pick up the years we've lost and all this earlier stuff pretty well went by the board. You didn't see it didn't see a great deal of it. The students were academically including research-minded. They were much more strongly motivated after the war and before the war. So I think really student attitudes really completely changed in many respects. Before the war we had to have a Friday night dance every week you know.

After the war they had dances all right but there wasn't that pressure there then. Another good example before the war when you played football was the University of New Mexico and in those days we played with the University of Arizona. You had to have a special train if you were playing either Albuquerque or Tucson and over you'd go in a special train to see the game. After the war that's disappeared. No pressure anymore for it to see. What about the year of the event that only lasted about five years didn't it? The same as the whole society had been changed. Not to swing back the other way unless some other great event occurred which would force it back or no. Up to the time I left in 68. There'd never been a move to restore to what we'd had before. How to wear other moves or a militant move you know.

Some of which Corbin and I had the face pretty straight. You're talking about the mid-60s? The student protests and things in the mid-60s? It wasn't with the faculty much. This was students. Let me go back a minute if I may. I came here as dean of students for Hugh Milton in the summer of 39. I had a minute or very long. Hugh calls me in one day and he says Bill we got a problem and he said I want to talk to him over with you. He said the first black students or Negroes as we call them in those days are going to seek admission this fall. What do we do? At that point we had a restaurant or two around it wouldn't let a Negro come in and eat right here in this valley. Well Milton and I talked it over and we were I guess smart enough to see that you this was something we better be right in the middle and do what's right at this point.

So we decided we would just like any other student they'd be processed and no attention paid or anything and that worked beautifully you know. Along however in about 63 to 4 somewhere in there we got in a black student or two from elsewhere and we began to get some trouble. Real good example was one day there was a small let me say a small group to give you a number I couldn't give you a number in the group but a small number of militant black students one or two came out of New York City. They put some real pressure on Dr Corbin so whenever