Mike Dicianna: Okay, today is Friday, July 25th, 2014. We are at the OSU Valley Library in Corvallis, Oregon. Today we are interviewing a member of the class of 1972, Mr. Erin Haynes, who currently lives in Philomath, Oregon, class of 1972, and a long history with this university. And my name is Mike Dicianna, oral historian for the OSU Special Collections and Archive Research Center. So, Erin, let's kind of start out—I like to start out with kind of a biographical sketch of your early days, your childhood, where you grew up, what was your birthday, that kind of thing.

Erin Haynes: Great. Well, I was born January 16th in 1950, and that's a significant year because that's the year that blizzard came through on Friday the 13th. I was born on Monday the 16th, and the blizzard actually hit this area too, and it had ramifications. We actually had some football players that were killed that very weekend. Bill Corvallis and Stan McGuire, one of the great players of all time in Oregon State history, were killed that very weekend I was born. And I was born up in Tacoma, Washington, grew up in Puyallup, a small town outside of Tacoma. My dad worked in a mill and had survived World War II, U.S. Navy and submarine. My mom was Canadian, and they were married right after World War II and settled out west. My dad had a job at a paper mill. And so we appreciated paper use our whole life. And two brothers and one sister, we were four children in five years, and so we had a tight household.

We were choosing—all of us, when we were growing up, it wasn't if you go to college, it was when you go to college. Parents had a lot of impact on what went on. And my two brothers were at two universities, one at Washington and one at Washington State, and I was an athlete, football player. I was a student government leader. I was an okay student of sorts, had to have above a 3-point in our household. But I wound up being recruited to Oregon State to play football. Recruited a couple of other places, but it became clear that Oregon State was a great place to go at that time. The football team was led by a bunch of guys called the Giant Killers. And so they were seniors, and I was going to be—I was coming in as a freshman and they were seniors that year. They had had the Giant Killer being a junior-dominated team.

I remember the day that, in February, when a coach from Oregon State named Bud Riley, Mike's dad, came into the high school, and they called me out of class. It wasn't unusual for me to get out of class because I was involved in student leadership, so when I found out it was I was being offered a scholarship, it floored me. And I was able to take the trip, came down, enjoyed the experience, and eventually chose to go to Oregon State that spring of 1968.

And it was a really interesting, turbulent time, because that April, Martin Luther King was killed, and in June, Robert Kennedy was killed. The Vietnam War was spinning up, and bigger, and as it had been from '67 and '68, and heading off to college and I'm not thinking of going into the military. Didn't, and I never did go into the military. So I wound up coming to Oregon State in that kind of a way, and it turned out to be a great decision. I had good experiences my four years. I was not an outstanding student, but I was involved in student activities. I had served on the student senate at one time, and was the senior class president, and very active in my fraternity.

And I helped the coaches in recruiting students to Oregon State. They would need somebody to take care of incoming freshmen. I knew how to take people around, and I knew places. And there was a student who got me onto a tours committee early in my freshman year, and so as a result, giving tours was really a natural thing. Now, when I graduated, and actually I finished in December of 1972; I had all but one hour of classwork done so I came back and coached the freshmen. And I wound up getting offered a job by Bud Gibbs [0:05:00], who was then the Registrar at Oregon State, and Director of Admissions. They needed somebody to go out and recruit outside of the state.

A small, interesting story on that—right after, at that Civil War game in November of 1972, Oregon State had had a ten-game winning streak against the Ducks. There were people that went through the football program, my classmates in particular, that said, when we gathered, that they'd introduce themselves, and they'd give a record of what they did against the Ducks. And our guys would say, "I never lost to the Ducks." And it was really a great thing. Those guys that were in the Giant Killers, all of those guys were involved in that—Steve Preece. And that's why losing to the Ducks is a very big thing.

But the President at that time was Robert MacVicar, and he happened to be sitting—and it was a home game; they were sitting up there in the president's box at the old Parker Stadium, which is now Reser. They were sitting in the president's box that they had, and the president they had was named Boyd, and he was particularly excited about winning, to the point where he was bragging about how good the University of Oregon was doing, not only on the field, but off the field as we were losing this game. At the end of the game, MacVicar chased Bud Gibbs down. He ran up to him right outside of Gill Coliseum and said, "We're going to need to hire somebody next week."

And of course, Bud Gibbs, if you know Bud Gibbs, very orderly, and I don't think he ever called in public Dr. MacVicar anything but Dr. MacVicar or Mr. President. Some people referred to Mac as Mac, and eventually I would call Dr. MacVicar Mac, but Bud said, "Well, we'll be able to start the process next week." And Mac says to Bud, says, "No, no, you don't understand, Bud. I want somebody hired next week. I want them out on the road as soon as possible." Because what happened was the president had found that the University of Oregon was out recruiting out of state. And just four years prior to that, we were limiting the number of out-of-staters that could be coming in to Oregon and Oregon State.

In fact, the governor, who is a U of O grad, McCall, put in at the time, was talking about, "You're welcome to visit the state," saying this to Californians, "but don't stay." And so this message had then reverberated and reverberated to the point where when they lifted the limitations on the freshmen coming in, or the students coming in from California to Oregon and Oregon State, that that message was still out there, that they really weren't really welcome.

MD: Yeah.

EH: And so my first job at 22 was going out and visiting high schools in Washington and California, and I would visit—one day I visited as many as eleven. I usually didn't do more than five or six a day, and I would be talking eventually to the counselors, and then the counselors would bring in people, and it wound up justifying having me go and visit high schools, where they would actually plan to be there at a particular time, to talk to particular students that have applications in. So the first out-of-state recruiting was done by that decision, and us losing that game and the president of Oregon being rather braggadocio in front of a president who knew how to act quickly, and Mac was one who knew how to act, and how to move quickly and demonstrate some really good leadership.

Fortunately I knew Bud, because I was on the—as I was in school, I was the senior class president. The senior class president sits on the commencement committee, so I was able to link myself in there, and I knew—I had just coached Bud's son, who had been a freshman. Jeff had been a freshman on the freshman team, a Corvallis football player, and eventually went to Oregon State, but only tried freshman football. So, kind of an interesting thing got me there. I wound up having a nice career, about seven or eight years at admissions, and then later I was hired by Jim Dunn, who was the son of one of the former deans, Paul Dunn, in Forestry. But Jim was a 1950 graduate and a real fine man, and hired me to be the annual giving director, and I did that with the Development Office and Foundation for about 22 years. And then I had a time period where I was away from the university, and then came back and finished at the Alumni Association, and retired at 55.

And I've been involved with the university in a lot of different ways. I've given 1500 tours of the campus. I can point at buildings and talk about the people who are behind that, the people who used it, and what's in it, and that always made tours very fun. [0:10:00] I can, because of the—I can stand right above where the Trysting Tree is, and we can sing the song. I know the verses. And I can tell you, when you have alums that are singing about old friends that are dear to me, it's a really cool thing to do, and the history that's here. So I've enjoyed my time period here at Oregon State, and I still am working—the closest I do work, I've been on a couple of boards that have been retired boards kind of things.

But I was with, and I won a pledging fraternity, Phi Delta Theta, and when I finished my involvement with them I stepped away, just because of work. But a fellow by the name of Mike Dully, who was the chapter advisor, asked me, because I had lived down here and he lived in Portland, if I could visit the chapter occasionally, and as a 24-year-old try to keep the guys on the straight-and-narrow. And in 1974, 40 years ago, I started working as an assistant advisor and became the chief advisor in 1976. So I've been doing the chapter advisor thing for quite a long time, 38 years as the head, but 40 years totally. So I've been seeing lots of the students continually, and you just don't see the one group of students, but you see the other. So it's really been fun.

Actually, today I was just—and the reason I'm late, one of the boys I was an advisor for is 48 years old, and his 18-year-old son is going to be a freshman. And I was sitting at the same table as a guy whose dad was in the fraternity in 1979, and his grandfather was in the fraternity, and student body president here at Oregon State in 1945, at the same table we're sitting here talking. So this history thing is just—it's just fabulous.

MD: Yeah. That's what we're all about.

EH: You bet.

MD: Well, let's kind of focus in on a few things, a little bit about campus life during the time you were here, because that's something I want the students of today and the viewers of this oral history to be able to get, some of the stories of the everyday life on campus. Basically, what was your major and why did you choose that?

EH: Mm-hm. I decided to become a Phys. Ed. major. Some of the most inspirational people that I had been involved with were my coaches. And I was fortunate enough that I had a really good fan in a father, and I had uncles. If I was confused about what men were all about, I would have really been dense. And so I had great fortune to have on top of that, these men that were involved as junior high coaches, and they were teachers, and high school coaches who were in many cases physical education teachers. And so I saw it as the highest calling in life. I had one brother who was heading into journalism, the other brother was going into medicine, and I was not the student they were. And so I thought, "Being a teacher, that would be a really high calling."

And so I actually was a—had been a coach at the high school, assistant, before I came down. The NCAA was different in those days, that you could not play as a freshmen. So, typically freshmen right now, they come in August. They come when the camp, football camp, opens. And when I was coming to school, freshmen couldn't, and they didn't have classes, couldn't start practice until classes began. So, I wound up coaching at the high school, choosing health and human performance in those days was kind of a normal thing, so being a P.E. major. It was until actually I got— just at Thanksgiving of that fifth year, when I had just finished the coaching, I was going to be student teaching at Crescent Valley with Bob Payne, who was the principal there, great Oregon Stater, Bob Payne. But he, instead of doing the student teaching that next term, I wound up working, and so I never became a teacher. All of the things I took I didn't use until my son was, you know, into the 1990s, where I was actually coaching some of his teams that he was playing on.

So, it was an interesting time of being a Phys. Ed. major, joined by contact. It was interesting, because that was at the time where there was still some intense separation going on of men and women in their P.E. areas, but they were combining in other areas. So for example, the women actually did their swimming in the women's pool, with suits [0:15:01], and the men did their swimming in the men's building, men's pool, without suits. Yeah, and we were always trying to figure that one out, but that was—we were told all kinds of lies. Red Flood had said, I think, had said the issue was with the nylon for the suits; I guess the filtration system clogged up.

MD: [Laughs]

EH: And of course, the men's pool had the same filtration as the women's pool. It was some kind of a—but we were combining classes, and all of the Kinesiology and Physiology, so things were happening, but we knew, we saw with the—there was always this professionalism going on that they wanted you to think about. Like in Home Ec. College, the women, which we will occasionally slip and I'll say girls—the women actually had to wear dresses. The dean would not, and the faculty would not, allow women that were students to get dressed up in jeans, and that kind of changed over time, within that time period we were in school. And so, these things that pushed forward, and some of the classes that were being offered, things started to change.

And when I started, and I look at the picture right here on the walkout that happened in the winter my freshman year, and you can see the pictures in the yearbook—the awakening by some of these groups, the black students, the African Americans. And when the blacks walked out, white students walked out with them, and some of the things they were arguing about were things that were legitimate and real. But they were also ones that some other people were taking advantage of the things. I had a first chance to see, up close and personal, members of the Black Panthers, because during that time period, a number of Black Panthers visited up from California to the campus, and were able to create some havoc for some people and fear for some people. And not just, I'm not talking white people, but some of the African American kids that were on the campus.

Some of the people, they were fearful for their lives and their safety because of some of the things, and it was just a real challenging time. But there were some people that were just sitting down or standing for things, and the whole panorama behind you was also having the same things happen. And so, campus life was interesting. It was this time period of having things that were throwbacks, and things that were all of a sudden you were seeing things that, and Dylan said it, The Times They are A-Changin'. And it was happening; times were changing.

MD: And that's the crucial part of the time that you were here, is because of the Vietnam War and civil rights, all of these things were national issues, and, I mean, if you go 45 miles down the road to U of O, it was really radical!

EH: Very radical. I'll give you an example. I'll give you an example of that. They burned the ROTC building down at the U of O. And the next year there was a protest that was right there in that—the parking lot is still there in front of where the ROTC building used to be. We used to call it the Armory, and they now call it, of course, the McAlexander Fieldhouse. And I'm not sure if it was Poppy or someone, and they were talking about that radicals burn ROTC buildings, but they don't burn field houses. And by that time, it was only the front offices where the ROTC, and at that time it was only Army. Air Force was over in Gill Coliseum and Navy was in their building.

And there was a huge protest right there in front, and there were lots of Oregon State students there, but there were lots of people who, for lack of a better word, were agitators, or provocateurs, as they would say in France. And these people were trying to jam up the crowd. Two people in particular were there; they were the Blue Key advisors. Blue Key at one time was the men's service organization; it later became co-ed. It was Chuck Wicks from the Chemical Engineering Department and Darwin Reese, who they name an advising award after. He was in the Chemistry Department, a fantastic professor. You could talk all day on both of these people and how great they were. And they were out there standing, and somebody yelled [0:20:00]—and this is what I was told, because I was not there, but I was told this, that this is what happened, that somebody yelled, "They're war mongers! Burn it." There were people yelling, "Burn it, burn it."

And Darwin Reese and Doc Wicks started pointing at these people, and saying, "Oregon State students don't do that. Where are you from?" And started purposely questioning, and of course these men had such great credibility with the students, and everybody knew them. And they were going, "Well, that's Doc, and that's Dr. Reese." And so these guys had to shut up, and so their ability to do something to provoke a crowd was stopped, because we had professors with great credibility and that kind of thing.

And I did note a story that happened later, this was during a time, because I heard this directly from a professor of military science, from 1967 or '68. This was the year before I got there, but there was a student who went in and talked to Clayton Shaw, the professor of military science, and he said, "Colonel Shaw, I've got a real problem." He says, "What's the problem?" He says, "A professor told me that if I wear my uniform to class again he's going to fail me." And Clayton—I don't know him as Colonel Shaw—but Clayton Shaw returned it, he says, "Well," he says, "Don't wear your uniform, then." He says, "But the very next period I have drill, and I'll get failed by the Army."

MD: [Laughs]

EH: He says, "What am I going to do?" And Clayton Shaw said, "Well, it's going to be actually a very simple thing. You don't have to wear your uniform that day." And so it was interesting that some of the things that went on, these secondary stories, that's why I'm glad we're doing this, because there were other stories out there that, when you talk to these people, some of these people come up. Because I look back on it and I remember before the start of games when I was a senior in high school, and I remember it was Tet that was happening, and all of these other things were going on. And we had just got the news back on a couple of boys from the previous year, two previous years classes who had been drafted, had been killed. And you were wondering about the war, whether it was right or—you just think that way when you're eighteen, and whatever.

And so there were these people who were really against it and doing a—I understand it, the trying to protest and whatever. But you know, when you had it there were people who were trying to do the best they could under the requirements they had. And our country told a whole bunch of people that they were in the military, and their obligation was to go there and do this, and they did. And so they needed appreciation and support. Some people didn't support them. Some treated them badly, and from that, when things started happening again where the military was being put into situations where they had to do the service of our country, whether it was Desert Storm, or later again, when they started coming back they were treated differently, and you didn't see what you see today, of encompassing and trying to reach out and help them, because it damaged a generation very badly.

MD: Very much so.

EH: And this university got damaged. I'll use an example of that. There were four African Americans on my recruited freshman class when we came in, which was not all that unusual. We didn't have lots of African Americans. Probably ten percent of the team was African American, for the varsity and for the junior varsity, or the freshmen. But the freshmen, when we finished our four years here at Oregon State, there weren't any, because they had walked out, or regular attrition happens anyway.

MD: Yeah.

EH: But a lot of them, they just were upset and bought into the things that were, you know, that they believed and what they believed in, and so when the things started happening—you know, this is interesting. When they talk about this thing at the Yearbook, what's on page 28 of the Centennial 1969 yearbook, and it shows a picture of Dee Andros, and him up here. And what's interesting is this whole thing, it became us versus them. And you look at it, and every coach is up there, and the baseball coach, and there's Berny Wagner, and that kind of thing, and Paul Valenti. And these are all good people, but all of them are up here and there's not a black face. [0:25:00]

And you look down in the—and this happened in a lecture that they had. All of the black students went down to the front with some white students, and they were able to protest, and said, "If things don't get better, we're going to walk out." And they did. They had a demonstrative march, and the 50 students that we had walked towards the gates of the southern, excuse me, at the eastern part of the campus, through the lower campus, and things were happening, and sides were being taken, and whatever. And if almost we had taken a breath and said, "Really, what are some of the issues?"

MD: Yeah, yeah.

EH: You know what the whole thing—?

MD: It escalated.

EH: You know what the thing that started it, it was the mustache and the beard thing, but some African Americans have issues with their hair follicles, and some white men, or other men have it, where when they shave too close, it becomes irritated and infected.

MD: An ingrown hair.

EH: And so what happens—so this is what was happening with this fellow, and it was like they couldn't say—it's what should have been. And I still have conversations with a really good fellow, and his name—it was his freshman year; it was actually the freshman class president over at the SAE house, the freshman class president for the class, this is class government, up until that time period, for each class. And a lot of intermixing with dorms, and fraternities, and co-ops, and those kinds of things. His name was Luther Hall. And he changed his name during this time period, and his name is now H.K. Kita, and a great guy. We were on Facebook together and we talk a lot, and talk about the times. And he actually walked off, and then he came back and finished at Oregon State, and worked as a student at the MU, and the Alumni Office, and other parts. And you'll probably see pictures, there's pictures to the side, in front of here, and boy, it would be great to talk to Luther Hall, actually now H.K. Kita, and talk about things, because he'll give the picture of the parts of the elephant.

MD: Mm-hm.

EH: You know, you've probably had some people talk about that, you know, with the blind men, the story of the blind men and the elephant.

MD: Yeah.

EH: And one touches the trunk, and one touches the leg, and one touches the ivory tusk, and they all describe different things.

MD: Yes. Yeah, it would be good to put him on my list.

EH: Oh, yeah. Yeah, he's a great one. And you can find him by way of— he still lives down in Long Beach, in California, the Bay Area. And so the Bay Area, went to Long Beach Poly, and was really connected down to, with his classmates, and was very connected up here. Interesting times.

MD: Now, you were talking at one time we visited, and you were saying that you were at the house?

EH: Mm-hm.

MD: And now, what was the feeling as far as the political climate and the war, and things like that, of members of the house, versus the protesters?

EH: You know, we, as just being a college fraternity, we had a number of fellows that were very involved with military. We had in my pledge class alone we had, of the 28, we had probably five that were in ROTC, Navy, Air Force, Army. The house always had a good number of people. So that tended to have a more, and I'm not going to use the word exclusively, but you'll understand it, it was more patriotic. You know, very—they wouldn't make a demonstration of putting the flag upside down, or they wouldn't be doing like some of the protesters were doing, where you have protest signs, or accusing our military of committing war crimes and that kind of thing, even though war crimes, or crimes do get committed in every war, by every army, including the United States Army, or military. But it's not exclusive. It's not the rule, but the exception.

So that's where it came, and there was a lot of pressure to do that, and be a part of that. Most of us were in that situation. Myself, my only political—my father was in the Navy, and he felt that none of us should serve, because he did enough serving in World War II. [0:30:00] And of the five that went down to join up, four didn't survive the war, and my dad was the only one who survived. So he became not so much a pacifist or a anti-war, but he already knew what the price was, and he felt he did enough for his family. Of course, that's very narrow and not a very realistic. My brothers, none of them were medically well enough to serve. One wound up being called in and didn't pass the exam. And my brother Michael did the same thing. He was the one that was eventually a medical doctor.

And by the time I had my draft number come up to be called up, they weren't calling anyone that drafted. Essentially, it petered out by 1971, and '72 there was essentially a—I remember the day. I'll always remember days that we were watching television, one of those days was when we got our numbers, when we got our draft, actually draft numbers on television. And I remember we were all down in the basement. That's where the TV was; the TV room was downstairs in the basement of the fraternity. And one guy got number six.

MD: Oh.

EH: And one guy got somewhere in the 300, and he knew he would never go. And he went up, packed his uniform, and the next day took it back in to, and resigned from, the Air Force ROTC, because he knew he was not going to have to serve, so the motivation for him being in ROTC was to, if he was going to have to serve, he was going to do it as an officer. But we had a number of sometimes protests that would march by. And I remember one in particular, a girl from another sorority that I was very fond if, and we were not dating, but we were friends, and she went by and she asked me to—I remember them coming by with the candles. They were marching down to Central Park and they were coming by, and asked me if I would join them. You know, are you against the war? "Yeah, I—I don't know." And she said, "Well, join me. Come on."

And I go [laughs], because she really was just a real special gal. And I told her I couldn't, because I kept thinking of Ronnie Hopkins. Ronnie Hopkins was a guy who was my brother's age and had been brought in, and he was over there for a month and was killed. I felt, how can I be unfaithful to Ronnie Hopkins when I want this? I want to do it right for this. You almost don't know. Clarity was being lost the further we went into the war, and it was more clear the huge mistake it was to ratchet that up, and especially if the people at the end were going to do what they did.

MD: Yeah.

EH: That whole thing, the political thing of it, but watching that, you're at a time, it causes you to be really interested very, very quickly. I remember the weekend; it was Moms Weekend in my junior year when Kent State happened. And just prior to—we knew that things were happening on campuses. We knew that the national guards were coming there. But when they fired on those students there, I mean, it was nuts time. I mean, people just started—the ones that were against the war were ratcheting it up, and the ones that were trying to be faithful to a different philosophy and supportive of the military, and supportive of the mission, almost didn't matter. It was just this crazy time that was going on. And I remember that was probably the time when it went completely over with Oregon State, that you never saw the supportive military kinds, and you saw bigger anti-war, those kinds of things. So, Kent State was huge.

MD: Yeah. So you started seeing more of the overt demonstrations on campus?

EH: Yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah. And you know, here you look at, I'm looking at this thing right here, the Centennial Parade that we had in October of 1968. That's one of the first things I remember, because I think it was like 16, that's our charter day, right, something like that.

MD: Yeah.

EH: And then so the parade that they had went all the way though lower campus, and they started out over across from Monroe. So they're coming; they had bands and everything, and all kinds of things. And I remember I got recruited for one of the floats, to push [0:35:00], because the float was completely covered but it didn't have a car, or something pulling it.

MD: [Laughs]

EH: So we were a couple of guys; it was kind of like Ben Hur, you know, with the rowing and everything. So I remember as we were going through the lower part of campus on that road that's 15th Street, that goes from 14th to 15th right there, and the grandstand was right up towards where Benton Hall is. And there's probably some pictures you've probably seen in some of the places.

MD: Yeah.

EH: Well, in the pictures you'll see, actually in a top coat, Jim Jensen, the then-president, is in there in a top hat and looking very dapper, and a lot of people dress up with the antiquity in the day. And it was really great, but I do remember taking a chance and slowing down a little bit, and taking smaller steps, and looking up and going, "Wow, that's cool! I can tell them I was at the Centennial." And it's coming up where, when is it going to be the centennial for, I guess—what is it? The sesquicentennial is 150th?

MD: Yup. That's coming up in 2018. That is the main reason why you are sitting here today.

EH: Yeah, yeah.

MD: We're capturing this for the 150th.

EH: Oh, yeah. And so it's really exciting to be able to do that, and get those things going. Just looking at the pictures, and the crowds, but I'm looking here, and there's 2,000 kids singing Christmas carols.

MD: Yeah.

EH: And I'm looking at the—when they have the supporting picture, or at the end for when that Dee Andros was under fire, you look at this picture! There were 5,000 students there. I mean, it's just amazing! We have these things, and these things went on, and they were so well attended. Of course, you remember, there were no cell phones.

MD: Yeah.

EH: There was nobody with iPads. There were no computers. If you studied, you had to get it from a book, or a pamphlet, or a manual, and those kinds of things. You actually went over, and the library was named Kerr, and it was five stories tall. It was the building that we're in now, except about 40 percent smaller.

MD: Yeah.

EH: And it was open almost all night, and people came here and they studied. They would never let anyone bring something to drink or eat in here. I mean, it was just impossible to be able to do that. And forget about if you had a dog. No one had dogs.

MD: Yeah. Couldn't afford to keep them, yeah. [Laughs]

EH: Yeah, yeah. And if anyone did, it was over at some fraternity house or something. They were being kept in a side closet. So it was really interesting in the time periods. I'm looking at—Bob Packwood and Wayne Morse, who were the speakers at the events that they had.

MD: Yeah, that was something that I found interesting, looking through the Barometers and the yearbooks of this period, especially during the presidential election during that time. You had Nixon, you had RFK, you had McGovern.

EH: Romney.

MD: And Romney.

EH: In fact, Starling even visited Romney's wonderful suit, actually, and this was in the spring.

MD: Yes, oh yeah, the one where the girl speaks.

EH: The girl speaks, yeah, got his wonderful suit, and that was taken care of, and.

MD: Did you attend any of those political rallies?

EH: No, the political rallies I went to were in the fall, but you've got to understand, I was still in high school when those were going on in, for the main primaries.

MD: Right.

EH: But for the finals, but later on in '72, the other ones we were able to. But that was the big one, and of course, the one in June, Robert Kennedy was there. He had gone on to California and then was killed in California.

MD: Yeah. That was days later.

EH: But that was before, yeah. So that was, there were other people that were in that, but it was an interesting time period. I hope you will get somebody that will have experienced the Black Bag. Do you know what the Black Bag was?

MD: I've never heard of it, no.

EH: Oh. This got national attention. I think it was either in Life or Time Magazine. But there was, in a class, this one fellow who was kind of as social experiment—and this was in the mid-'60s. I'm trying to think who would be a good one to talk to. You know who would be good to talk to about this is—well no, I'm not sure if Bud was here then. I think he was. Bud Gibbs might be a good one to talk about that. If you've got a chance to interview him, do that. He's in Corvallis [0:40:00], and he's class of 1950, and was the registrar on the faculty. It's interesting; he was probably the only person they trusted with the academic records who was a former coach, football coach.

MD: Yeah.

EH: He went from football coach to keeper of the academic records.

MD: Yeah. [Laughs]

EH: You've got to love that. But this person walked around campus with this black bag on, and no one knew who it was. And the person walked into the class, and I don't know if the teacher knew who it was—had to have, because, to get the grade. And so it was this off the wall kind of a thing, and all of a sudden it got the wind of the national press, the local press then the national press, and it became a big story of the person that was in the black bag.

MD: Okay, that's a story I'm going to have to track down. That is a good one.

EH: Yeah, yeah.

MD: One of the things that I noticed also when I was looking through these is that some of the biggest stars of the era came and did concerts. We've seen the Doors, Simon and Garfunkel, Neil Diamond. I mean, I've got all of these names from the Barometer that were icons for me as a kid, listening to records. To think that you could have actually gone to these concerts at Gill Coliseum!

EH: I finished—it really was, and I want to give great credit to, inside of the Memorial Union, the people who are involved with the Memorial Union, from the advisory side and the student side. And there was a group called ENCORE, E-N-C-O-R-E, and they were the student group that essentially were the ushers, and the people who worked on the concerts, and that kind of thing.

MD: Yeah.

EH: But the ones who did the signing of the contracts, of course, were the George Stevenses of the world, and the Walt Reeders, and those people who eventually negotiated the contract to bring people in. And so again, the concerts—this was before I arrived, but when I was a freshman on the football team, I remember finishing a football game that we played, and I was a second string center playing behind a guy who was a good center, and eventually started his last two years at Oregon State, and he was good, Jack Turnbull. I proved to be a very good practice player [laughs], but I still was able to earn my scholarship. And we had just finished a game, and I think it was we were playing the University of Washington, and they wouldn't let us play on the field, because UCLA was coming through the next day. And so we played on Friday over at Philomath High School, and then we had the UCLA game.

And then the next day, the tickets went on sale on Sunday, Sunday morning, at—typical would be 10 o'clock or something like that, because they usually didn't want to encroach too much into church time. And so I finished one game, went to the Oregon State football game—played in the freshman game, Oregon State football game, and I went home to the fraternity, over to the Phi Delt house, and I got my mattress, and I brought it to the front of Gill Coliseum, and I put it in front of where they sold the tickets. And I was the first guy in line. And by midnight that night, so this was at—the game was over at 44—o'clock game, over at 4, and I'm back at 5:30—5:30, I'm there; I've got my bag of munchies and something to drink, and people start coming in. By midnight, we probably have 300 people in line.

Now this is for Peter, Paul and Mary, and I'm there not just for myself to get my two tickets, but I'm there to get two tickets for another guy, Craig Chambers, or somebody else. And so I'm there all night, and then in the morning there are 3,000 people in line to get tickets. And it was just—that's the way it was! You just got in line for the tickets. And little did I know that we went through, and I went, because I was first, and by the time I got done and had been talking to somebody to get some stuff, I took some of my stuff back and then I went back to get some more stuff, and the line had just gone down, and little did I know I was able to get an additional two tickets for somebody else [0:45:00], and they weren't in very bad—they were in good—

MD: Yeah.

EH: Because you would have 10,000 people to be able to go to a concert and see these things, so.

MD: They were in Gill?

EH: And they were in Gill. And there were no concerts that were outside, none. They didn't use the outside venues until much, much later, but after Woodstock. Woodstock was, again, that summer of '69. So the thing that had been springing up culturally was Newport Festival down in California, down in Monterey, and that kind of thing. And so by the time we were finished with these concerts—and somehow they usually kept a nest egg that would be—this is through the MU and the concert series kind of thing, so it allowed people to have the latitude to make decisions. Later on, that nest egg was not there, so as a result, entrepreneurs would come in and have a concert, and the next thing you know they don't have enough people; they get the wrong concert. And later, this was done—probably in the late '70s that this went on, and maybe the early '80s. By that time it became really a challenge, but I remember as a fundraiser for each one of our classes, our classes would sponsor one of the concerts.

MD: Right.

EH: When I was a senior and the senior class president, we had—John Denver came and played.

MD: Yeah.

EH: And he had a headliner that came in, or before the show started, he would have someone else come in, and it was Helen Reddy. And so here I am; I'm introducing Helen Reddy, you know, as the senior class president, [in announcer voice] "The Senior Class of Oregon State University, Class of 1972, is proud to present from such-and-such, Helen Reddy." And some one goes, "Who?"

MD: [Laughs]

EH: You know. [Laughs] And everyone, no, "Hey, come on! I am Woman! Oh yeah! I am Woman, hey." You know, laughing at the old connection. But I remember we had such a great one—two of my favorites were ones where they would get them coming in on a Mom's Weekend. Dad's Weekend was usually basketball, and Dad's Weekend was always done, when I was there, during basketball season, so it would be winter, which some people thought was really bad, because sometimes it's hard to get up here in the winter, and over the mountains, and that kind of thing, and that's not being safe. So later on they moved it to football season, and picked that up. Mom's Weekend, always had a concert that was going on. Homecoming had a concert. So you had the potential of having anywhere from three to five names that were pretty good. And so you look at it all through the time period, one of my favorites was 5th Dimension.

MD: Right.

EH: I love 5th Dimension. And another one was the Temptations. And this was the Temptations right after a couple of guys had already broken off and they brought in new ones in that time period, but they were still giving that real message. And it was really interesting, because this was right at the time when we were having this cultural racial thing that was going on, and by the way, when I talked about losing out on this, what happened was Oregon State was, in my mind looking back on it, was no different than any of the other schools that were dealing with the issues of racial inclusivity. We're still dealing with it, as far as attempting to get good numbers of underrepresented people on the campus.

We're still dealing with those issues, and we're trying to figure out the kinds of things that need to be done. And some of these things that are in place are because of the first steps that we're taking in recognizing what needs to be done. And at the same time, you're having black students walk out,and then a number of them trickle back in, and it starts growing the program, while you've got the Temptations singing "Ball of Confusion," and I'm not sure if you've ever seen the words to "Ball of Confusion?"

MD: Oh, yeah.

EH: They repeated it on a movie—what is it? The one with the nuns and Whoopie Goldberg. But just one of those things where you've got this juxtaposition going on, and all of a sudden you're seeing that, and you're seeing the music and the songs. By that time, the Temptations were doing some of the psychedelic, and protest, and other kinds of stuff, too [0:50:00], and the real existence some of these African Americans are going through, this troubled thing, and the challenges, and the poverty, and the dismay, and the disappointments, and those things. And you're at a concert with 8,000 people, and everyone's having a good time.

MD: Yup.

EH: Everyone except my dad and my football coach. My mom—I remember, because this was the homecoming. It was homecoming weekend, and my mom was out there dancing to the music, and my high school football coach's wife were out there dancing to the music, and both my dad and my football coach—not that they were racist, but just, that wasn't their style.

MD: It wasn't their music?

EH: That wasn't their music. They were Frank Sinatra.

MD: Uh-huh.

EH: They were Frank Sinatra. And so I remember looking up, because I had seats, got them four seats, and they were up, you know, and I remember looking up seeing my mom and—

MD: [Laughs]

EH: It was kind of an interesting time.

MD: That would be my dad, too.

EH: Oh, yeah.

MD: One of the things that I really want to get in with you was this whole idea of fraternity life during the period you were in. We talked a little bit at length with some of the people from the 1950s, and fraternity life during World War II. How about fraternity life in the late '60s and early '70s? What was it like?

EH: You know, I looked back on it, because I am in continual involvement with it, there are some things about it that were very good. I mean, really, really good. When I look at it, I got to know my national fraternity pretty well, and got to see how we kind of matched up when you compare fraternities in one campus, as compared to across the country, and that kind of thing. I'd give it a high B, as far as social involvement. And when I use social, I mean everyday interaction living up to what they should be living up to. And the group I was with was particularly close, and we still gather, and we're still there when we've had ones that have lost children, have lost spouses, and have gone through the challenges of the ones who have got cancer, and had cancer and beat it, and those kinds of things.

So the things that we did there—but one of the things we did was like a lot of college students of the day, I was just mentioning this, that we got to know each other a lot. We played poker with each other; we learned from each other. One of the—there's a room at my fraternity that honors Terry Baker. He was one of our alumni from the early '60s, and was of course a Heisman Trophy winner, and one of, well, the most celebrated athlete in Oregon State history, and the only athlete in the state of Oregon, Oregon or Oregon State that's won the Heisman Trophy.

MD: In the Pacific Northwest.

EH: In the Pacific Northwest, there you go.

MD: Yeah, he was the only in the Pacific Northwest.

EH: Yeah, and is still a wonderful presence of an individual. But, we drank some beer; we had some fun. And it was different. They were not—none of the parties we had were at the fraternity. What we had when we were in the early '60s, we'd have an occasional something. It was very small, typically, but we'd do things away in other places. And by the time we got to be 21, there were no alcohol places all up and down Monroe. You had to go downtown, or you had to go to the Chat and Chew.

MD: Chat and Chew.

EH: And talking about just some of those things, Price's Tavern downtown occasionally.

MD: How about Peacock?

EH: The Peacock was one that we went to. There was a place that was Don's Den, that was right next door, which is now the Majestic Theater. That was a place that a lot of people liked. You'd just go and you'd drink some beer, and it was not anything—we didn't have a lot of people worrying about abusive drinking.

MD: Mm-hm.

EH: We did have some. But it was not the kind of thing—a lot of people couldn't afford it. I was talking about when during my sophomore [0:55:00], freshman and sophomore year, we had fellows that would go over and pick up alcohol over in Albany, at a particular location, I'm not going to mention it, but it was a distributor. And we would collect money and get the list of what was—and so the guy would go over and he'd take a small percentage, or somebody would buy him some stuff so he was able to have some of the things he wanted to have. But this is how you wound up doing that. So occasionally there would be some people that would sell a fake ID, and that was always big. That's been very big. But it wasn't invented—fake ID was not invented recently, or in the last 50 years.

MD: No. [Laughs]

EH: And I will tell you though, I do know one person that, he's very glad that the statute of limitations on social—I should say draft cards—he used to duplicate draft cards off.

MD: Really?

EH: And they would take these things as ID, and so. Fortunately I never had one, because I always knew that if I had one I would get into real trouble. But just kind of the things that people—going back to it, I remember the people were going over, and a six pack of Heidelberg, a six pack of Heidelberg, which had the keg bottles, 69 cents. So what you were doing was you were trying to find 70 cents. And there was a Boone's Farm Apple Wine.

MD: Yeah.

EH: Bottle, nice bottle, 79 cents. So when you were able to do that, and that's where tuition, out of state tuition was $999 for the year. Room and board was $900.

MD: And that's room and board at—

EH: At the fraternity.

MD: —at the Phi Delt house, right?

EH: Yeah. So, I mean you were talking about, it was the kind of thing where you could really—that's the thing that I look at now. To make room and board and tuition, let's say you lived at the dorms, that's 11,000, tuition, what is that, 7,000, maybe 8,000?

MD: Something like that, yeah.

EH: So let's assume that you're going to pay 18 to 19 thousand dollars if you're in state, to live in a dorm and tuition. Don't forget about books, okay? As a 19 year old, you're not going to, as a 19 or 20 year old, you're not going to make during the summer—

MD: Mm-mm, not even close.

EH: —that nickel. But in those days, $1,800? You could make $1,800 during a summer. And so it was the kind of thing, minimum wage was $1.25 an hour, so a lot of people worked at that but most people worked above it. So it was a really interesting time, how all of that went on. We got to know each other very well, but we did lots of things together. We had lots of exchanges with the sororities, and got to know them. We did the IFC sings. And at that time, it's interesting; the IFC sing kind of was morphing its change. For years it had been these men's groups, singing for their mothers on Mom's Weekend. So they would be singing the nice choir songs. And it moved to this situation where girls and boys were singing together for the first time.

MD: Oh, wow!

EH: And then my sophomore year, we were not only singing together, but we were moving for the first time. Because up until then, the groups had been standing and singing choir songs, and IFC sing was a formal singing kind of thing.

MD: Yeah.

EH: And I remember, because my sophomore year, we were paired up with Alpha Chi Omega, and junior year we were paired up with the Kappa Kappa Gamma. This was a great time to meet people and that kind of thing, but all the way from rush week, things were different. There was great support from the university for the things we were doing in the fraternities and sororities. It wasn't 'til later that they actually keep you at an arm's length, and that's a whole 'nother set of topics that one of these days we'll talk about, but not today. But the things that we did, I mean, you got to know each other. Now I'm 64. I was on a court when I was a junior with a guy from Beta Theta Pi; he's now a minister. A very successful business owner in Cheney, Washington, who is an SAE [0:59:59], and another fellow who is a Sigma Chi who is a very successful accounting fellow, and we were all from these different places, and we served on the court for this particular sorority, it happened to be Tri-Delta.

And we did stuff for them, and brought them cookies during the dead week, and whatever, but the point was we got to know each other really well. I saw Bill Colton, who is the Beta, and he is a minister now, very successful, and a very good man, a very good and decent man out of Lake Oswego. And what's really interesting, you know, here we look back on the things that we did back then, and yeah, we drank beer before we were 21. In fact, that's the thing that's difficult now. You've got people saying, "You can't let freshmen drink." How can you stop them? They've been drinking all the way through high school.

MD: Yeah.

EH: You know, what am I going to do? Am I going to change that? The last time we tried to keep people from drinking was in 1919 when we passed the Olmstead, or, yeah, the Act.

MD: How does that work out?

EH: And how did that work out?

MD: Yeah.

EH: That put Frankie Roosevelt into the White House, and for a whole bunch of people that kind of set the apple cart on its end. Point being is that what happens is, you want the things to go on—they're going to be safe, and that kind of thing. And just like anything else, I mean, who would have thought that? And can we talk about sex?

MD: Sure!

EH: [Laughs] You know, it's interesting to see. I think that kids, young people today, the freshman, sophomore, juniors, seniors, are more sophisticated sexually than we were back in the old days. They've been handing them condoms since they were in junior high school. And you put them on cucumbers; I mean, they are knowing stuff. But they still have these same emotions that they're going through, and other kinds of things. And what happened was people were a lot more discreet, like in the same way that the generation before me was more discreet.

MD: Yes.

EH: And so this whole thing went on, but for the first time they actually had some classes that they were talking about sexual behavior. This was coming out of the Health Department, not out of Home Ec. And right now, Dr. Sex is out of the Home Ec. College, or Health and Human Services, that side of it. Is it Kathy Greaves, is the one who they call her Dr. Sex?

MD: Yeah, yeah.

EH: Man. I remember some of these classes that they had, that they'd have these lectures and they'd break into smaller groups, I forget what—? Human Sexuality—that's what it's called, Human Sexuality. And boy, we'd never heard anything like this before. This was like, this was our sophomore year, and we're going, "Wow," with some of us going, "What?" And some of these guys are going, "I used to date her, we never did that." [Laughs] But it was really a good time because people were finding these things and exploring, and so it was a time that was not—and don't get me wrong; it wasn't idyllic. We probably had our share of date rapes and domestic abuse kind of issues that would have happened, and that kind of thing, but it was a different time because it was not being pushed so much. And housing! Right now I think there's sixteen houses that are housed.

MD: Yeah.

EH: They have a list of maybe 24 fraternities. A number of them that are unhoused, and decided not to be housed, and there's a whole bunch of them that are just too small to ever house in the immediate future. But there were 34.

MD: Oh, really?

EH: Thirty-four fraternities. There were I think sixteen sororities. Right now there's, I think, nine or ten sororities that are housed.

MD: Yeah.

EH: And there are something like sixteen fraternities that are housed. And their pledge classes, I remember, typically were in the high 20s, low 30s, and the numbers at the university continue to drop through the various waves of the baby boom. [1:05:00] You talk about millennials and all of those things that are going on; well this was the baby boomers. This was the baby boomers, the wave of it, and it was starting to dip down in numbers totally, and the numbers that were going to school were not—and some of the people were learning how—the growth of the community colleges taking place, was taking a lot of that. The cost of the four-year schools were continuing to rise, so as a result numbers started to drop. It made an opportunity for me to work. I had a lot of great work recruiting, and we really made a difference. When I started working at the admissions office we had 14,000 students at Oregon State. In '76, after four years working, we were up to 17,500. We had people each fall that were starting off in the fall living in Avery Park in tents—tents.

MD: Really? Because there was no housing?

EH: No housing. There was not the apartments they had, they were not needing, and of course there was several booms that happened after that. So we've gone like this. Right now this is only recent, through 2003 to now, that this has been going on, but the expansion into the apartments has just been very big going on, because money to be made, money to be made.

MD: A lot of international students.

EH: Yeah. Dionne Warwick, I sure liked Dionne Warwick when she came through here. And Bill Cosby, boy he was just great. Remember the riff for Iron Butterfly?

MD: Yeah.

EH: Inna-Gadda-Da-Vida?

MD: Yeah.

EH: Dee-dee-dee-dee, one of the greatest riffs of all time.

MD: And they were in Gill.

EH: Yeah.

MD: And we're talking early, early concerts with very primitive sound, very primitive. I mean, none of these laser light shows.

EH: Kathy Lowry—whoo! I mean, these were just beautiful girls. She was later queen of the Pac-8, at that point. A lot of these people I know—Tammy Overson—and I see some of these people. It was great. Of course, you look at these other ones, Denise Blay, a very well-liked student. I've got these various ones. Paula Spirits, who married one of my teammates, a football player. They live, I think, in Montana. Barb Jensen. Anne Ashford. Just really cool people. Rory Johnson! I remember Rory Johnson, classmate. Yeah, these are just fun. And Mary Ariaga; she's now Mary Danna, and she's a terrific gal. She's from Southern California. Yeah. I used to date Mary.

MD: [Laughs] Now, did the Phi Delts have—I know that the Alumni Association has reunions. Now, do the Phi Delts themselves have them?

EH: Yes. Yeah. We have probably, maybe 1,200 living members. We're up to number 1780, or something like that, of our series of bond numbers, or numbers of signatures. And so of all of that we probably have 1100, maybe 1150. We were going to have at our golf tournament; we have a golf tournament every September. We have 125, so we have well over ten percent of our living alums who will be meeting for a golf tournament. And we will probably be seeing, as we get closer, because our centennial for our fraternity, Phi Delta Theta—we've already had the centennial for our local that became the fraternity back in 2006. We'll have that in 2018. So that will be happening at the beginning of 2018. We'll be having the celebrations going on. And the other fraternities are all having the ones beforehand that went on, that peculiarity thing that happened with us, but, we're looking forward to that. So we have a gathering every year, and it's a great thing to see. And we're seeing some more things with it, because currently, in the current chapter we probably have, easily, in the current chapter, eleven guys, eleven or twelve guys. whose dads were in the house. The dads knew each other.

MD: Yeah.

EH: So they're kind of the legacy kind of—

MD: Legacy kind of thing. I mean, that's one of the things that I've been fascinated with with my own research of the Phi Delts, is that it's a who's who of Oregon State from its inception to date.

EH: Yeah. [1:10:00]

MD: Now, okay, how about this. Compare today's Phi Delt with your era.

EH: I think there's a lot of similarities to them. They certainly—well, the first biggest difference is they don't have the number of intercollegiate athletics, or athletes involved. So that kind of separates, but it's not that big of a deal because a lot of us, we weren't that great. We were good athletes but we weren't great. And so some of these guys have been good athletes in high school and other kinds of things, so there are more fellows who are non-athletes, but they are as good of students as they have been in the past.

They probably have—but there's different types, different kinds of social consciousness. We cared about our country, we cared about doing the right things, some of them to join the military, some of them died in service of the country. I knew guys from my era—I know of two guys, and we've had others that—we've had sixteen of our members die in World War II. And one of our men, who is now a retired brigadier general—he probably wasn't rooming with because they put in isolation, but spent six years as guests of the North Vietnamese in Hanoi, one of our members, Seahorn, Air Force. But the fellows today, they have a same degree of caring that they care about each other, and so as a result, that's what's been very satisfying to work still with this group, because I look back, and we were at each other weddings, and friends, and like I said, we were playing poker together, and some of us have crossed country to go to somebody's wedding, and just be there, be involved when people are having the experiences they have in life.

Some of the guys in my class have been particularly successful. I mean, these guys will be upset at me when I say this, but I know four guys that have wealth in excess of 50 million dollars. Three of those guys have close to 100 million in excess wealth, at my age. And you know, these people have been successful and they've done it through their planning and efforts, and all of the energies that they've been able to have. And some of them have done it because of family connections and family business, or other kinds of things. And there's some of these people out there that, if you base things on having successful long-term marriages, having children who have been successful, having businesses that they have done and been successful, having created jobs have been successful. And the things I see in each one of those people, I know personally.

I know them personally. I know guys over there that are now going through school, and I know what a lot of them on the campus do in the same way, other places and other living groups, other associations, the same way. I mean if they get opportunities, you're going to see them do some of those same things. They're going to have what will be success, the successful families, the successful feeling good that they're going to come up with ideas, or they're going to help other people. And there's one guy over there who got sick with cancer at the house. He was the vice chairman; had to step away totally, and his dad, who was a former member of the fraternity back in the '80s, got the chapter involved in a bone marrow matching program. The boy who got cancer was able to get matched, fortunately, by his brother, and they were able to help that boy. And he was in an acute situation, and he probably would have died within six months, one of those very fast-moving, serious cancers.

MD: Yeah.

EH: And what happened with this one was this dad, who was an Oregon Stater, had been Phi Delt, and his son was sick, the other son matched. But 100 guys in the chapter took a swab to get a match, put it in the computer system for this program called Be the Match, and since that time, we've had eight or nine of those matches take place, of which five people have survived. [1:15:00] Five people are alive today.

MD: Because of the—?

EH: Because this one guy got sick. His dad decided to do something about it, got the fraternity involved, and these boys are walking around, some of them are going—my brother was a medical doctor and he always felt good that he was able to do things and save people, a thousand babies that he delivered, and he always felt good about that. And these guys are never going to deliver babies. They're not going to be medical people, but they have made the difference in somebody's life.

MD: Yeah.

EH: And there's about ten guys over there that have done this, and that are continuing. And the best part was we had some other people who are friends of our fraternity, a guy who is the president of Lambda Chi Alpha matched, and is donating. So this thing is starting to spread out and making a difference.

MD: It really has.

EH: We didn't have that ability, for us to do that in a direct kind of science way, and that kind of thing.

MD: Yeah.

EH: We picked up garbage on the side of the road; that was community service for us. Community service was maybe singing at an old folks home or something. Right now, people, the fellows, the kids in school are developing this sensitivity muscle, and this caring muscle, and it's really good. Other people had it in other generations; this group is having it now. So what I am saying—and by the way, we're not different at our place than other places. You know, I personally think we're the best, blah, blah, blah. But I'll tell you, there's a lot of other places, the sororities and fraternities, that are doing really good things, that are taking these young people and doing the things that are making them good citizens, as good and the potential for better, than we were. So yeah, it's just that simple thing. There should be a whole lot of hope going on of the things that are going on with the college people that are doing the things. I sure want to live to be 69, because that means I'm going to be at the 2018 events. And boy, I'll tell you, just seeing these things right here. Here's a picture of Jim Jensen and the hat, there you are.

MD: Yeah, yeah.

EH: And I knew it was here. But I just, I really get excited for these things that happen, and the involvement. But you look back on, and we had some guys do some crazy things. Good thing the statute of limitations is over on some of them. I'm not going to name names.

MD: [Laughs]

EH: But I know that if there were crazy things to be done, they usually did them. And I'm not sure if you know the story of how one basketball coach lost his job here at Oregon State, head basketball coach. He was in a pool, it happened to be the men's pool, in the mid-1920s, swimming with another person in that pool, female.

MD: Oh, mm-hm.

EH: Nobody was wearing any clothes. And the president happened to walk, giving a tour of his most prideful building, one of them, named William Jasper Kerr, and was in the upper area, and noticed. And the guests noticed that this was somebody who was swimming with another person.

MD: [Laughs]

EH: Yeah, I'm surprised you haven't heard that, Michael. It's a great story.

MD: Oh, I want to look for that one.

EH: Yeah, yeah. It's published; it's been published, so I'm not spreading gossip. But you know, an interesting thing happened, because of that indiscretion by that fellow, they hired a young guy who had been associated with a Phi Delta Theta fraternity, and his name was Slats Gill.

MD: Slats Gill.

EH: They hired Slats Gill.

MD: At that point, yeah.

EH: At that point.

MD: Yeah.

EH: When that one fellow got fired, they hired Slats, and he was like in his 20s.

MD: Yeah, oh, yeah.

EH: About—he was 26, 25.

MD: Something like that. He was young at the time.

EH: Yeah, yeah.

MD: That's one of the things that really I find so interesting about, well, what goes around comes around with this college. Names keep popping up: Wallace Kadderly, Douglas MacKay, Slats Gill, and they all—all these big names that there's building named after today, or that are really important individuals.

EH: Yeah.

MD: It kind of filters back to the Phi Delta house, in some way or another.

EH: Yeah, yeah. I'm going to tell you that we weren't alone in some of the things that have gone on. There have been others that have worked into the situation. One of the key things why that happened, and I'm going to tell you why it happened [1:20:00], George Edmonston wrote a story for The Oregon Stater recently about the top ten incidents or things that happened at Oregon State. And I remember one thing he did—George gets things so right. George is going to hate to hear that, but Kerr, hiring and having of William Jasper Kerr. The Sigma Phi Epsilon fraternity had one of the well-known people involved, and I'm blanking out on it, to be their advisor. When Kerr came, he encouraged faculty and administration to be actively involved in student groups and the programs. So it was not unusual to see a group have an advisor. There was one called Sigma Nu that had Prof. Peterson. Prof. Peterson was the legendary English professor on the campus, and just was absolutely so well loved. Sigma Nu had their own. Lambda Chi had Beck Sell.

MD: Of course.

EH: The Commerce Building, Gilfillan, was FIJI. We had one named Arthur Courtley, and George Peavy—were our advisors. When you have advisors advising good students already during the day, they were taken care of, but when they're taking their residence, and they're working with these people who are from freshmen to seniors, and working with them, and guiding them, and sheltering, and bringing them along, it was just an unbelievable effort that was done! Can you imagine if Ed Ray told the deans and all of the faculty that they need to get involved with a student—a student?

MD: Yeah.

EH: Outside of your regular assignment. Or, get involved with a student group, and give them the benefit of your experiences and wisdom and help them. That's not in the matrix now.

MD: No.

EH: What's in the matrix is, if some of these people are teaching, it's the number of contact teaching hours, or it's amount published, or it's the amount of research they can bring in. And so, it's a different kind of thing. So we were able to get that kind of thing going on. So when you get a guy by the name of Percy Locey, and he's one of the people involved, and these others that are involved, and you look at some of these other places, these are places that things worked out pretty good, because we had those people bringing it on. And so what was the residue? Through the '20s, this great leadership that happened because these decisions that were being done in the teens, from 1910 through to 1920. That time period, Kerr was pushing these deans into working with these people. That got the people from the '20s, the Kadderlys—Wallace Kadderly, the father of public broadcasting.

MD: Yeah.

EH: You ask the people up at Public Broadcasting, Wallace Kadderly. And so you've got these things happened, so these people were able to be taught and go on from there. So, and there were some good things that happened out of the '30s, and then eventually it kept on going. So what we're needing to do, I think, is in that same way, is not lose the lessons from the past. And so the question is: what are they sowing right now? What are they sowing right now at the university, to the students, back to the past? And there are some things that are wonderful, and there are some things that are challenging. I mean, to me this almost never-ending cost of creeping up, and then sometimes not really good—and this is city and town and gown, of this thing of working cooperatively together to try to solve some of the things that are solvable.

MD: Yeah.

EH: I don't think they're going to solve the parking thing. I don't think they're going to solve the parking thing. They're going to come up with a solution that are going to make some people okay [1:25:02], and some people okay, and the other ones are going to—those people that live up—those people that are regular citizens who live up where they have built a hundred spaces, a hundred parking spaces, and there are going to be two people in the department each with a car. Those hundred cars are going to be on the street, and they're going to be forcing people off. So that's going to be a thing that's unsolvable, and that kind of thing. And I'm sure they had problems back in the old days, but just—yeah, you just [laughs]—I think about one of my fraternity brothers, a guy who was actually my big brother in the fraternity, on the football team, and he was born in Sicily. His name was Sal Cirincione. He was a Sal Cirincione from Chicago, and Bud Riley had recruited him out of the Catholic high school that had 5,000 kids. They had twelve kids that went on and played Division 1 schools. And having him be the big brother, he had a car. He had a car, and it was parked right in front of the house. And he gave me a set of keys for it so I could drive it if I wanted. I had no insurance. It was one of those cars that had a push-button, changing the gears was not on the things—so you know it.

MD: Yep.

EH: And so the battery gave out on it through the winter term, and of course all of the leaves buried it, so [laughs] it looked like an abandoned car there, you know? They would never allow that now, and he wouldn't, you would never let somebody drive a car that's—

MD: Not even close, yeah.

EH: Yeah, some of these great little stories of people and things, and just the time. You're learning so much during this time, and you're exposed to so much, and you have those same kinds of fears of not wanting to fail. And you're wanting to do the very best you could, but you wanted to have fun. I still remember, I didn't watch much television in my freshman year because rule was if you didn't make your grades, you couldn't have access to the television.

MD: So you were studying.

EH: I was studying, and at 10 o'clock I had to be—a fifteen minute break, and at 10:15 I had to be in my bed, at my desk studying, and that was it, or on your way to bed.

MD: Yeah.

EH: I mean, that was just the rule. And I'm going, "We would no more do that to freshmen today than fly them to the moon," but that's the way things were. I had a house mother who was 75 years old, and related to two governors of the state back in the old days, and just a refined lady who always wore pink, Mom Dyer. And we had a cook who, Millie, God rest her soul, she wore a white uniform, and was there at 6:30 every morning in a white uniform, cooking. We're in line, had to have our house job done and in line getting our breakfast. And we remember one guy, I don't know what's happened to him; he wound up dropping out. He was a football player that wound up not playing any after his freshman year. But a guy named Bob Happola; he'd eat six eggs. He ordered six eggs every morning, and that was the way it was. She'd open them up, fry them up, and he had a pile of eggs. I wonder what his heart was like by the time he was 55.

MD: [Laughs]

EH: You just do these things, and it's just a great thing of opportunity, after opportunity, after opportunity of meeting people, and friendships, and knowing people. I am fortunate because of my Alumni work and my work in the Foundation; I got to still stay in contact with lots of people. So I was able to connect out with other people, and was able to focus in on it, because my life was not as restricted as some, because I didn't start any family until I got married at 37. So I was single all the way up to that time, so when we had things going on—where are they going on? In San Diego? I'd be in San Diego. If I had a friend getting married in Washington, D.C., I'm in Washington D.C.

MD: So let's fill in those years, your family life and working for the Alumni Association. Actually I didn't get enough about that. [1:30:00]

EH: Yeah, I wound up only working for the Alumni Association in my last two years, but for the 22 years after I worked—let's go back. Graduated, about eight years working in Admissions, and then the next 22 years I worked in the Foundation Developments. So it was interesting. We raised money for the Alumni Association, so we were very close to the work Don Werth did, Grant Graham, those people, Kevin McCann, these were all—Tim Tolan, and as they came up to—after Don retiring, after they finished the Alumni Center, the CH2M Hill Alumni Center, which are named after four Greeks. C was Holly Cornell, who is a Phi Delt. Hayes and, the two H's, Hayes and Howland, one was an SAA, one was a Sig Ep, and then Merryfield, the professor, and he was a member of another fraternity, and I can't remember that one at this point. But the founders of CH2M Hill were all Greeks involved with that, and they were so happy to survive World War II, that when they were getting together at the end I said, "Let's try to do some things." And they did.

MD: Yeah.

EH: And they did great things. And some of the people who are getting jobs in that area, I hope they still tell that story about that great company that started as a result of people just happy they survived World War II. And, but talk about those things, so I worked very closely, because I knew that the more alums I knew, it would be easier to ask them to help the cause. And also I'm not afraid to ask people for five dollars, ten dollars, or 100 dollars, because somebody else was going to ask later on. And I remember—

MD: Yeah.

EH: I remember a donor that I worked with at one time, and she was doing 100 dollars, and I had a volunteer working with me. And she was very active; she was a very smart executive secretary kind of woman, and she wound up—essentially, the one man who became a widower, he became interested and they wound up getting married. And so he, who was a very big, big donor at Stanford—she became the wife of a huge donor that eventually became a huge donor here to this building. So I remember the one volunteer guy named Bob Laurie, L-A-U-R-I-E, had daughters named Laurie Laurie and Lorette Laurie, and all Oregon Staters. Bob Laurie worked for—oh, he went down to the Bay area, lived down in Marin County, but—Bechtel. But Bob said, "You need to have somebody talk to her, because she's got the ability to do bigger things."

She was doing 100 dollars, and what happens, so I brought it back to a—and we had a nice talk with a dean at the College of Business, and he started talking to her, and she eventually wound up giving thousands of dollars, and then actually gave a million dollar gift, and then later on gave a two-and-a-half to three million dollar gift for this building. So that situation, which was—and by the way she was a member of Pi Beta Phi, a sorority that's now closed, but a great sorority, and a great history that will have a 100 year anniversary that I hope people are smart enough at this university to try to sponsor some of those groups.

MD: They are on that, yeah.

EH: That are closed now, but that have an important history, important history to the university, because people want to do things. People want to do things. They get up every morning and they make the bed. Listening to the speaker at the University of Texas this year for graduation, a SEAL who is a rear admiral, he talked about these things everybody should do, the things he learned as a SEAL, but everything you should learn to do. He talked about making your bed every day. And these people do these other things, and one of the things about making the bed is it's a good thing.

It's such a good thing to do these things, and there are these people that know they want to do good things, so they not only make their bed but they do the other things that are going to happen. They're going to go out and sell a good product; they're going to hire a good person. [1:35:00] They're going to life something up. They're going to push something back. You know, they're going to do these good things all the way down the line. And so what happened was you want to get those people and bring them close, those people that, you're out there. So I always loved going to these gatherings. There's a group in the old days after World War II—it's probably before World War II. As a historian at the Alumni Association should know this, but the 30-Staters Group.

MD: Yes.

EH: And it was typically men, but they later included women as well, and they were in different areas. But they would have, every year, have the football coach go. And the football coach, or the basketball coach, and sometimes the Alumni Office, because it was their area, they'd be able to get the coach down. I'm going to try to put it in a way to make sure the history's going to be accurate, but it's not going to be looked up on in a bad way, but incidents happened in the late '60s that caused the Athletic Department to make sure that their coaches, when they went to events, that they didn't consume and drive, to feel responsible. That's good, yeah. So the coaches jumped into it with both feet. So we helped out if we had an event.

So one of the things happened was the Alumni Association, even though they had good staff people, sometimes the staff were involved in wanting, or needing to do something with their family, or something else; they couldn't drive the coach down. So occasionally I would be asked as the guy that works in that, and was single and so on. So I would drive the coaches to different places sometimes and meet, oh, go and meet people. I would drive the president somewhere or something. One time I drove Ralph Miller down to Eugene. I mean, it was the best commute I've ever had to Eugene, and a lot of people got a chance to know Ralph Miller really well. He was really a very quality caliber guy, and he liked his scotch, and he liked his cigarettes, or the equivalent of what the cigarettes were, the cigarillos, or whatever it was then.

MD: Yeah.

EH: But he was a constant smoker, but he was just a wonderful man. When you'd talk to him, he would be very open and share things. And so I'd ask him some questions, and he would spend ten, fifteen minutes answering one question. I mean, it was just, this thing would branch off, and then it would come right back to the thing.

MD: [Laughs]

EH: And, oh, it was just terrific, the kinds of experiences! I'm going to tell you one story. There was a great basketball game we had against Arizona State, and it was the year before that we were the number one team. Okay? Because at the end of that year we lost a game to, I think it was Arizona State, and then we lost to Kansas State, and our best team, that we were ranked number one all the way along, and then we wound up, you know, getting knocked out. But it was the year before and we were playing Arizona State at the end of the season, and we were down by—they were killing us. They had good talent; Arizona State had good talent. And they were beating us by ten or eleven points with maybe just barely under two minutes left in the game. And Ralph called a timeout, got them over, and next thing you know, we win the game. We win the game! And everyone is—if you've ever been to one of those where it's already been—it's sort of been decided?

MD: You can't believe it, yeah.

EH: Yeah. And so I was curious, because when you're riding down there and you're with somebody who's real special, because he knows his stuff. I mean, Kerr was so great in—but I mean, people like Miller, they were big-time. He came to us. We don't get coaches as great as he was to come to us for the reasons he came. He came from Iowa. He was at Wichita State before then, and Iowa, and he came to us. And people said, "What are you doing going to Oregon State?" And even though Oregon State was higher at that point as far as number of wins and reputation, but you know, still, it's Corvallis, and it was not the expected movement to have happen. And to beat [1:40:00], or to play against the national champion every year, UCLA.

MD: Yeah.

EH: Twice. And having the chance to beat them was the reason. I mean, he was so competitive, and he wanted to find out where number one was, and beat them. So we were driving down and I asked him the question about, "What did you say to those people?" And of course we're driving in his car, and he's got some beverage he's sipping on. Usually you either take a drag and then you take a breath, and then he'd start and he'd talk. And he said, "Well," he said, "it's really interesting." And then he started talking about Wichita State. He says, "The same thing I talked about at Wichita State. And we had a minute 48 left in the game and we were down by eleven, and they had the ball. And he said when he called the time out and they came over, he said, "The first thing I did was I looked around at them and I said, 'We've got these sons of bitches right where we want them.'"

MD: [Laughs]

EH: Essentially, he's told these guys that these guys have already decided that they have won the game, "And that's exactly what we want them to think, and we want you to do everything you can." Well, he told the same thing, "We've got these sons of bitches right where we want them." And this is one of those great speeches. That should be one of those that you could put on Remember the Titans, or The Blindside, or those kinds of things, where this was real, this was what he did and the kind of thing he did. So he had all of these great stories, and so I would just—I mean, going down and back, I had him for two hours and ten minutes of straight time, of being able to ask him anything I wanted, and he answered everything. I mean, you didn't ask him inappropriate things.

MD: No.

EH: You always got, I mean, good stuff. And so that's where I've had the best job; I really have. I've had these things where I've been able to meet people. I met Linus Pauling.

MD: Yeah.

EH: When Linus Pauling was walking across the campus, and you've got pictures probably of that, I'm back behind, walking with Mrs. Pauling.

MD: Oh!

EH: And we're talking, and I was dumb enough to ask, "I hope you're writing a book, too." And she says, "Oh, yes, we're writing a book about things." Because she was such a big part of all the good things that he was able to do outside of the science.

MD: Oh, yeah.

EH: Not so much inside the science, but outside the science, and the commitment to the people and the society. And it was great. She was very supportive of the—when she was alive, the curating of the papers and everything here.

MD: Well, one of the things that I always like to do for these interviews is to give the alumni the chance to impart some Beaver wisdom for the next 150 years, to be able to kind of give back to the college.

EH: Yeah, here we are. You look back 100 years ago, 100 years ago right now the whole of Europe was falling apart, and we were on the verge of killing millions of people—millions of people! And it was because of the leadership, and the people, and what was going on and that kind of thing. And I was thinking about what 100 years are going to be like, because like I said, you know, we pointed at some of these books, the one book—they're all dead.

MD: Mm-hm.

EH: Everybody who was in World War I, they're dead. And so what is it going to be like in 2114? And you know, looking down the road, I hope that people will continue as far as, with Oregon State in particular, know the pathways that some of the people have been on. And they are not too different from the pathway that they're on now. They may be travelling at different speeds, and learning different kinds of things, but they will still have that same human emotion, that same thing that will bring them a tear and give them joy. And it will be the connection to people, and know what made these other ones able to connect and make it happen.

How do you get somebody like a Ken Austin [1:45:00], when he was a—he was a pretty wild student. By the way, he lived across the street from the Phi Delt house in the Delta Phi Delta house. And Ken Austin was a spirited young guy, and he wound up making so much opportunity for people when he did the building, and it hasn't ended. Because when they were doing the dental work, they made a huge pile of money, and all of those people that work for them are being—one of the best companies you can work for is A-dec.

MD: Yeah, that's what I heard.

EH: I hope A-dec is still there. It will not surprise me if they are still there, because there are some good people that are working with it now that have taken over the leadership. But the things he learned, as a person before and during, and then after, and still the connection, he's always been a giver and a doer. And so the feelings that he has, and what he has done, and what the other ones have done, are ones that people should remember, and kind of take that depth, go in and look at these people. Read some of these stories that you could read about of some of these people. I have a coffee each day with, or they're there every day, or maybe three days a week, we talk about Jim Jensen, what a great man Jim Jensen was.

He was the president. When I was a freshman he was the president, and how he elevated this university so greatly! He was the president who took over right after Strand, when we became from Oregon State College to Oregon State University. He knew what the land grant university needed to be, and what he did. And so for some people to go along the line and to miss out on who he was, and think about some other person that may not have had the impact, and forget about this. You have to look at this picture of Kerr and Jensen, and Mac, and Byrne, and Ray. These are people that are continuing to do these things. So everybody needs to continue these things along the line, and know that it's a big tent that you've got to have. In fact, it's getting bigger all the time.

The people who are the immigrants of today that are coming to Oregon State, the ones whose native language is Spanish, where they are coming through, that whole thing will change. A number of international students that we have, it's so big of a change that we're—that 100 years ago we had a Cosmopolitan Club and they were the oddities, and it was not the norm of things. So we're going to continue to grow and evolve, but don't forget some of these things that were back there. Don't paint people with a particular brush of what it's like. See, I think the first—I have pictures of a young man who may have been the first African American student at Oregon State. Now, there have been some—there may have been some from mixed race earlier that may have been lighter in skin tone, so they would not have been noticed; they would have passed.

MD: Passed, yeah.

EH: Any kind of notice. But this was when the military was bringing students. They were having classes here at Oregon State, and in one of the yearbooks you can see it. Clearly you look at this face, and this fellow is an African American who is there, and he's in his military uniform, and he's part of the SAC that is here during its training of classes.

MD: In 1918.

EH: In 1918, so the SAC that's there—so these people will talk about the first African American; that might be the one. But there have been other ones that had come through, and their stories are really important. And even the ones who have been here when the flashpoint happened. I mean, there's a lot of people who met Luther Hall to begin with that don't know the H.K. Kita of today.

MD: Yeah.

EH: And so this thing, it kind of goes, and you know, don't hesitate to look back in the past. That's the time—in fact, it will be great because you'll be able to get access to this through your media kinds of things, your handheld thing. Right now I have the most sophisticated boring telephone, I mean, it's a handheld. And it's a cell phone, that's all. There are going to be generations of the technology, and having people say things, and all of the sudden Erin Haynes is going to be up speaking at this kind of thing that's going on. [1:50:00] And this is going to be putting—really great onto some peoples' hands, because, be curious. If you're curious, you're going to learn about this stuff. It's not going to be the first time all of a sudden, you're going to all of a sudden look around and go, "Wow, this is the first time this has happened!" No it's not.

MD: No it's not.

EH: No it's not. And it didn't happen for the first time when I was there. Things happen. And what's really great is there were people that did things, and people who did good things, and some people who didn't do good things, but on the most part, it's the human nature to try to do good, and move on, and leave it better. Here's an interesting story. Dar Reese—I mentioned him earlier, about him being there. And I had ambitions at one time that I might become a dentist. So I decided to take, instead of taking the 104, 105, 106 Chemistry, which was the lowest level, I didn't want to take the 204, 5, or 6, which was the real serious Chemistry. I decided to take the Chemistry 201, 202, 203, which was a step above. If you had taken high school chemistry, that's what they wanted you to take. So I took it. And, phew, I was way over my head.

So I get in a situation where I'd had some injuries from football, freshman football, so I had problems studying. And so I wound up going to my counselor, the counselor says—it was Dow Pulling. He said, "Well," he says, "Why don't you go talk to your professor in Chemistry and get his advice?" And he said, "Well, you can go down to 104 level, and Dar Reese teaches that." He said, "Go ahead and talk to him to see if there's space." I wind up talking to him. I walk into Dar Reese's office, knock, knock, knock, in Gilbert Hall. I go in, and he always wore a bow tie and a short sleeve. He wore a bowtie and short sleeves because he was a chemist and always had splattering going on.

MD: Yeah.

EH: And it ruins all of his shirts and all of his ties, so he wore a bowtie and short sleeves. And I walk in, and he was one of these joyful men, [enthusiastically] "Hey, how are you?" And I go, "What? Fine." And I say I've got some injury, da-da-da, I'm having some problems. I want to change to Chemistry, do you have room? "Sure, we'll make room for you!" And he said, "In fact," and I said, "It's an injury; I'm on the football team." "Football team! Great!" He says, "Come on in. We'll set up a time where we can talk. I've got a study time where you'll be able to come in and you'll be able to make up some of the things that you've lost out on before you go." And I walked out like a typical 18-year-old idiot. I walk out and I go, "Man, they really take care of athletes here, you know? Here I am a football player, and he knows I'm a football player, and he's going to help me. I'm good."

And so I come back at 7 o'clock that night, or the night I was supposed to come; I'm not sure it was that night. I come in and I look in, and there are ten people there, and him. They're all sitting around his desk. He's got one of those old wooden roll top, not very wide, and all of those people are crawling all over it. All of them are girls. Not one of them is an athlete. And they are all people who have transferred in or are having trouble with the class. And I walked in and I sat down, and right away when the light bulb—the light bulb goes on, and I said, "This guy treats everybody like this, not just athletes but everybody." And that was this thing of what I saw out of a Dar Reese. And so right now there are people getting the outstanding advisor award each year, called the Dar Reese Award.

MD: Yeah, mm-hm.

EH: They have no idea what kind of guy he was; they have no idea. Now they do, if they read this thing, if this pops up. And the technology will be there, Mike, in time, where you'll be able to say, "Examples of people who knew Dar Reese." Just say that, and all of a sudden, [beeps] here it comes, boom, and here it is.

MD: Yeah.

EH: And so, hey.

MD: That's why this project for the college and for the university is so important. I mean it's just, I believe in it so deeply.

EH: Oh, Mike, you're doing a great job, because you're capturing things that—you know, the story about Ralph in that car? It'll die when I die, but not now. [1:55:02]

MD: Not now. Not now.

EH: That story about Luther Hall, H. K. Kita, doesn't die now. And you just go through these things for people and names, and that kind of thing, and things that you might have perspective on. It's just these are really fun things that you are able to do and look at, and these reminders of these plays, and all of these times and pictures. I think I am going to show you one picture that I think is in here. Yup. When you look at all of these guys, boy, by the time—when I started, hair was all short.

MD: Mm-hm.

EH: When I finished, there was a lot of bad haircuts.

MD: Your senior year, there's a little bit of hair over the ears, which is a big deal.

EH: Oh, yeah. And the girls? I mean, I don't know if that hairstyle will ever come back, all of the bouffant, and all of the things. And it's probably right there is where it is, yeah. This is in the living room; that's me.

MD: Oh, okay!

EH: And this is part of my crew, and this group—all of them are the guys of my particular class. So there are two of those guys I was talking about that are worth 100 million or more.

MD: Mm.

EH: There in this picture.

MD: And there they're standing with beers and pool cues.

EH: And this is at Don's Den, which Don's Den was right next door—

MD: To the Peacock.

EH: Peacock.

MD: Yeah.

EH: We actually had 19 nights in a row that we went to Don's Den, had at least four of the guys there. Because it was one of those things we just wanted to—and this was the fall term of our senior year, so this picture kind of shows all of the guys that were there on just that one particular night the photographer came by. And the reason they did it every night is because just going there, it's kind of like Cheers.

MD: Yeah.

EH: It was like Cheers. And so, these guys that all were there and that kind of thing. And the one night that they really wanted to be there was when the pitchers were 25 cents apiece. [Laughs] 25 cents apiece!

MD: A pitcher.

EH: A pitcher. So you were able to have a few beers, and not spend much money. Great.

MD: Well, Erin, you are a treasure to this university, and we thank you so very, very much.

EH: Thank you. [1:57:44]