Francois and Violette Gilfillan Oral History Interview, ca. 1975

INTERVIEWER: [First part cut off. I asked him where he was born and he answered in Texas.] When did you come to Corvallis, Dr. Gilfillan?

FRANCOIS GILFILLAN: In 1915.

IN: That was as a sophomore at Oregon Agricultural College. Why did you decide to come here?

FG: I had already taught school. I'd had a year in Texas, and when I was up in Castlerock, I came out here to visit an uncle in Castlerock and I liked it so much I didn't want to go back to Texas. But I had to have a job. At that time in Castlerock, it was just a small town where my aunt lived. I didn't want to go down to Portland so I looked around there for a job and finally I landed a job teaching. It was way out in the country.

IN: How old were you?

FG: I was nineteen. And I went out and I was there a week when I found out that the kids had run the other teacher out, but they didn't run me out. So I taught there one year. The next year I went down near Castlerock and taught at another school. It was out in the country there with just ten boys. When I was teaching them I did some athletic coaching so we won the county prize.

IN: What did you coach?

FG: It wasn't any game, it was just running and high jumping and athletic meets. In fact it was three cups they won.

IN: Why did you decide to enter the School of Pharmacy when you came to Oregon State?

FG: Well I wanted to come down here. One of the fellas who had been one of my students - see I was teaching high school, and two brothers were coming down 00:03:00here so I decided to come down with them. One of them was in engineering so he had to come here and the other one, he took business and he could have gone to Oregon. But he came with his brother so we all came here. That's how I entered here.

IN: And you wanted to be in Chemistry but they didn't have it?

FG: Well they had it here but you couldn't get a degree in it, so I decided on Pharmacy, it was the nearest thing to it.

IN: Do you have any recollections of what the school was like then?

FG: Yes, quite a few. One thing they had here was the sophomores, the Knights of 00:04:00something. Their purpose was to keep the freshman under control. So I remember that because when I came in, I hadn't gotten all my work transferred from Texas so they put me down as a freshman. Course I became a sophomore at the end of the semester.

IN: What kinds of things did they do to you to keep you in line?

FG: Well, you had to wear a green cap, and if you were walking on the sidewalk 00:05:00and a sophomore was coming you had to step aside and let them by. Another thing I remember was a fella here who was a sophomore who was quite prominent on the campus, and particularly on this control of freshmen. He came walking down one 00:06:00evenine on 12th St. And there was this house that was vacant and these freshman rented that house and lived there. So they saw this fella coming so as soon as he came the whole gang of them rushed in and got him, took him in the house and threw him into a bath full of water. As soon as he got out he came running down the street and yelling, "Sophomores, this way! Sophomores, this way!" Some sophomores heard him and they rushed down and just smashed up that house practically. They sent a policeman down here, and by that time I was out, so the 00:07:00policeman arrested all the sophomores that had been in this mix. Johnny Wells, was his name. Later he was an officer on campus, but at that time he was a city policeman.

So he took us down to the police station, which was above the fire hall. So we went in and he tried to get ahold of the president, but the president was out of town. So he got ahold of the commandant of Military ROTC who came down. That man 00:08:00was okay, he knew how to handle things. We started singing there while we were waiting for this fella to show up. And pretty soon this food came down from upstairs and along with it was a note. The firemen up there said that they couldn't have any sleep so here was something to keep us calmed down. So we sent them back a thank you note and calmed down! Then the commandant came, and Johnny Wells presented the case against us, and he turned to us and asked us to present 00:09:00our case and we did. Oh yes, on the way they had grabbed the man who had been thrown in the tub, and Johnny Wells had ahold of him, and he said, "That man's all I want, the rest of you go." "No," we says "We all go or none of us go!" So that's why we all had gone up to the police station. So the commandant says if they let him go, would we go, and we said sure, we offered that in the first place. So he turned to Johnny Wells and he said, "If they go peaceably will you 00:10:00let this man go?" Yes, he would, so that was it.

VIOLETTE GILFILLAN: Well now, who else was a member of that group? Wasn't somebody prominent there?

FG: Yes. One of those sophomores was a man, Doug McKay, who later became the governor of Oregon and also a cabinet officer. We'd been in jail with Doug McKay!

VG: I think they had a lot of prank sort of things in those days.

IN: Where did you live when you were at school?

FG: The first place, when those two boys came down, we rented a house down near 00:11:00the Armory, and we lived in that the first year. Then the next year we moved into another house; see there were no dormitories, and the only fraternity was the Kappa Si one, but they didn't have a house. Oh, I guess they did but you had to be in Pharmacy to be in it and I didn't want to leave the two fellas. So then I lived in the Kappa Si house. I helped them organize the Kappa Si house.

VG: But now you never lived in the Phi Gi house...

FG: No, I became a Phi Gi after on was on the staff. See, my brother came here 00:12:00and they took him as a Phi Gi, and later took me, although I was on the faculty.

IN: Was that a social fraternity, the Phi Gis?

FG: Yes.

IN: How did you happen to be a teacher here your senior year?

FG: They needed somebody to teach chemistry. The head of the department, John Fulton, offered me the job. The one in pharmacy who was teaching went into the 00:13:00service and there was no one else, so the Dean of Pharmacy asked me if I would take on the classes and I said I would. And later I took the chemistry job.

IN: Did you teach the class by yourself?

FG: No, this was a laboratory assisstant. Fulton was in there most of the time. 00:14:00And I was when he wasn't.

IN: You were also in the ROTC program here. Is that how you happened to go Yale when you graduated?

FG: When I graduated here, I chose as an elective to go to the Officers Training School in Camp Lewis. They ran on a schedule and they didn't wait for school to be out. So they said you just go ahead and we'll send your degree to you. I 00:15:00wasn't here for the graduation ceremony.

IN: Then you went to Yale and then Florida?

FG: Yes, first I was in the service. Then they sent me from Camp Lewis to the Yale campus where the Army had set up a research program to try to find out exactly what happens to a man when he is gassed with hose was gasses. We used dogs and we studied what happens to the body when you inhale poisonous gasses, 00:16:00in the chemical warfare service.

IN: How did you end up in Florida?

VG: That was years later. He worked in New Jersey for a chemical company for a 00:17:00while before coming to Oregon State. Then he came back to Oregon State to teach.

FG: Then I was here three years. I was really gripped, because here I had a Ph.D., and yet in the School of Pharmacy I was only an assistant professor. I had come in at 2400 dollars which wasn't bad in those days, but they didn't advance me very rapidly. Here was another fella in athletics, they were moving him right up. And he only had a bachelor's degree. But not in Pharmacy, so I 00:18:00went off to Florida.

IN: When did you come back to Oregon State?

FG: Two years later.

VG: Well then they upped his salary and brought him back. Down in Florida he taught Pharmacy, but the man who headed Pharmacy also headed chemistry, so he had two deanships. He tried to get my husband to stay down there, and he would give up that Dean of Pharmacy position and keep the other one, if he would stay and take that. In the meantime they had gotten more money through the State Pharmaceutical Association here in Oregon so they really offered him a good deal.

IN: Did you always want to come back?

FG: Yes.

VG: He liked the northwest. The mountains... you know he's a mountain climber, that kind of thing.

IN: When did you and Mrs. Gilfillan meet?

FG: That was when I came back from Florida. She was rooming with a girl I had known here on the campus before I went down. So that's how I met her.

IN: When were you married, soon after that?

FG: A year later.

IN: How old were you then, Mrs. Giflillan?

VG: Oh, I was twenty-five.

IN: Were you living in Corvallis at the time?

VG: I had graduated from Reed College in Portland and had taught there for two years in a private school, the music education school. Then I came down here and 00:20:00got a job. I met Doc almost when I first came.

FG: Didn't you and Katherine come down to that eating place, Wagner's? And I was there.

VG: We just barely met. One night he came up to ask my roommate for a date but 00:21:00she already had one so he turned to me and asked me if I wanted to go, so I did.

IN: What was that dance like, do you remember that?

VG: I don't know. We went to the movies after that. They had a late movie and the kids threw peanuts and it was disruptive. And we used to go to all the Phi 00:22:00Gi breakfasts. They had kind of a formal thing every Easter and it was beautiful. They'd have a falls in their fireplace and a brook scene with running water.

IN: I read that your mother Jessie had a lot to do with your inspiration when 00:23:00you were younger. What do you remember most about your childhood and how she influenced you?

FG: Mother did a great deal of reading and she read the right kind of books. She remembered what she read and that had a lot to do with my education.

IN: what was the JESSI program that you started later?

FG: We sent out ads to the high schools and we were looking for high school kids who wanted to go to college. We hired faculty men on campus who could understand 00:24:00the high school kids. Then they were here for two or three weeks. They went to all these classes and they were supposed to take notes cause there was an exam. At the end of the time we gave a multiple choice exam, and that was graded.

VG: There were questions that were submitted by each one of the people. They would go to chemistry, biology and physics, and it was supposed to give them an opportunity to see what each of them did.

FG: Then these were graded and the grades were sent to them and to their high school teachers.

IN: Do you think it was successful?

FG: Yes, very successful.

IN: Do they have it anymore?

VG: No, what was left went up to OMSI. The two men came down repeatedly when 00:26:00they transferred that and I'm not sure it's that format exactly -- it may have changed. But that was a summer thing. There was one man who worked on scholarships for the different towns because it cost a certain amount to feed, and, well it never was a money-making thing at all but they did try to come out even. It was a very intense program and very good. I know when Philip, my grandson, came along, Mary and Louise wanted him to come up to the JESSI program. And of course, it is the Junior Engineer Science Summer Institute. It 00:27:00just happened to be his mother's name.

IN: Oh, I thought it was planned.

VG: Well, I think it just gelled when it came out. His mother was a very outstanding woman I think. She would come up with those kind of statements which would have different connotations as you would have more experiences-- that kind of a person. We have one daughter like that -- Philip's mother. And things just keep coming back that she says. She's the kind of person who says something and your mouth falls open, and you don't have an answer right away. His mother was 00:28:00like that.

IN: You also had something to do with the Oregon Institute of Marine Biology. What was your involvement in that?

FG: We had, as you may know historically, a rearrangement of higher education under the state system of higher education in 1932. As a result of that all the upper division science was taken away from the university and moved here and our whole School of Business was taken down to Eugene. And there was some other trading there that we had nothing to say about. The State Board of Higher 00:29:00Education decided what was be done. So I, as Dean of Science, inherited the Institute of Marine Biology which Eugene had started down there under their program. For a number of years I was in charge of it.

VG: This is at Coos Bay, you knew.

FG: They still have a station down there but it was nothing like what I had here.

VG: And of course what happened was, didn't the enrollment drop way down? Wasn't that during the war?

FG: Well, this land down there where the buildings were -- all that was the 00:30:00property of the U.S. government. The understanding was that in case of war or any other emergency where the military wanted to make use of it, we had to get out and let them take it.

VG: But I thought that land in the end belonged to the University of Oregon?

FG: Well, it did belong to the University of Oregon except there was a string on it.

VG: Yes, I see. So that now, after they reactivated the thing, the student enrollment had gone down and everything, but when they reactivated it after this here, that kinda broke down and they took it back. So our oceanography is so 00:31:00much bigger and more important than that. The land was kinda in their name-- it never belonged to Oregon State. It was supposed to be state system. But I don't think they ever changed the deed. It really was University of Oregon property and Doc was in charge of it for a long time.

FG: When the second World War started they bounced us out.

IN: Well then you became the Dean of Science in 1938. How did that happen?

FG: I was picked, asked to take the job. The president called me over.

IN: Were you prepared for that -- did you expect that?

FG: He knew that I'd rather be there than in pharmacy. That was President Peavy. Some of the rest of the history I'm not going to tell. It has to do with the bad feeling on this campus between some of the people who came up from Eugene and the people who were here.

IN: You must have been very busy then. Hew many children did you have?

VG: We had four children.

IN: You were both very young when this was going on. How did you take care of things7

VG: Well, the month he was made dean of the School of Science our fourth child was born.

IN: Did you have time to entertain his colleagues?

VG: I did... I can remember breaking out in blotches all over. Because that first year he was dean and that was all. I guess he did teach. He believed a dean should keep in touch with students and always tried to do a little teaching if he could. He taught History of Science. And then he next year he acted as head of the chemistry department in addition to the deanship.

FG: Yes, Fulton retired from chemistry and the president asked me to take it over.

VG: Yes there was some big hassle about who was going to be the next head of 00:34:00chemistry so in order to let things simmer down he acted for one year. And we entertained the chemistry department and I went to all the baby showers. All these things for the chemistry department.

IN: Did you have some help in those days?

VG: Well, a little. And then at the end of that year....

IN: That must have been about the time he became acting president?

VG: That's exactly it. I think that was when that happened. Because we did the Marine Summer Session and Doc had brought a woman out from the East Coast. We were going to take her on a little trip around so we took her down to the caves 00:35:00and Crater Lake and all that. That was kind of a busy time. Then that October he went into the presidency.

IN: And that was when Frank Ballard got sick?

VG: Yes, about the 4th or 5th of October and school had just barely started when he collapsed. He was just gone -- he wasn't even around Corvallis for a long time.

IN: How did you happen to get the job?

FG: Well, keep in mind that Ballard had run up against a pretty tough position. President Kerr, when he came in 1907 or shortly thereafter, he brought a man with him who he called an executive secretary. He was right in the president's 00:36:00office. Ballard was chosen as president to take office July 1. Well, on about the middle of the last week in June, Jensen, who was the secretary, had a heart attack while he was lying in bed. They called the doctor and he came and he, the doctor, was frightened. So he had to put his hands down, he wasn't allowed to move his arms. Here Ballard wasn't even in office there was no one there. 00:37:00Ballard stayed in office from the 1st of July up until about the 8th of October. At that time he had a nervous breakdown, so he wrote me a note and gave it to his secretary. She called me over and wanted to know if I could come to the president's office. I said "yes," so I went over. She said "just a moment" and opened the door and went into the president's office, and I went in. She usually did just that and then as anyone came in, she closed the door.

Here this time she came in after me and she closed the door. I looked and the president wasn't there. She went over to the desk, picked up an envelope and said "here's a note for you." I joked something about, "well, I guess I'm fired so I'd better sit down." She said, "well, anyhow, you'd better sit down." So I sat down and opened it and here was the letter from Frank that said that due to his illness he was asking me if I would take charge and be chairman of the 00:39:00Administrative Council during his absence, that he had a sudden illness. Well, I asked Mrs. Lingen how long would he be ill? And she said he ought to recover rather rapidly. Mr. Ballard was supposed to attend the land-grant meeting in Washington. That came and Ballard wasn't back yet. He just kept postponing it till in the spring the board told Ballard if he didn't feel equal to the job 00:40:00that he'd have to come back the first of September and if not then he'd have to resign.

IN: So he had to resign finally and you took over. What was your reaction to the job?

FG: Well, during this time, almost a year, I was still dean and managed it by going to the science office in the morning and the president's office in the afternoon. Then if I was called from one or the other then I could go.

IN: I understand that when Dr. Strand took over the presidency in 1942, you taught the first Russian classes? Could you tell me something about that?

FG: Yes, I can. At Yale University when I started my graduate work under Baldwin Johnson who was head of the department, I felt fortunate in that there were other men under him, but he picked me. I think it was because I came from so far and he wasn't sure I could understand English or something. Anyhow, I was 00:42:00offered an opportunity to have him as a major professor. Well, he was interested, this is technical, but he was the world's expert in purines, parimidines, and hydazylines. Now that doesn't mean much to you but it meant an awful lot to him. So he had me, every once in a while, look up something that had to do with his work. Now that wasn't my job, it wasn't decided what I was to do yet for my degree. He wanted to try me out.

He was raised in Connecticut and was very economical. He would tear off a corner 00:43:00of a piece of paper and bring a little note just on the corner and hand it to you. So he came in one day, I remember, with a little corner torn off then and asked me if I would look up this and make a few notes on it. "There's something wrong with it," he said. I looked at it and it was in Italian and it was the Journal of the Italian Chemical Society. He gave me the page and the name of the man who had written the article. I had never studied Italian but I had studied 00:44:00Spanish and had lived among the Italians for a while, so my Italian wasn't too bad. The next day I came back with this all translated and he was delighted. He looked at it, and after he said, "Gilfillan, I wish you would take this and follow exactly what this Italian did and see what results you come up with." He went on to say that this man has gotten much higher results than is 00:45:00theoretically possible. He couldn't have done it, he said. I said I'd do it and it took me about a week or two. I checked it out and made a little statement for him and went back to the office. He says, "well, what do you think of our Italian friend? Don't you think he was pretty optimistic?" I said "on the contrary, your Italian friend was a piker!" He said, "Piker, what do you mean?" 00:46:00I said, "You told me that theoretically you couldn't get higher than 66% yield in this, and the Italian claimed he got 80%." [Here the tape was cut. Dr, Gilfillan said he got a higher percent.]

FG: --will, I told him I knew what the problem was. I told him I assumed he used the same analytical method as I did, the volumetric method, and what should happen there, when you mix these, part of the chemicals precipitate out. But in this particular case they do not precipitate out. They form but they remain in 00:47:00solution and they continue to give you the same color. There is no color change and that fooled the Italian. "Oh," says Johnson, "Now I see. Thank you so much."

Well, about a month later he came with another little paper torn off. He had something else he wanted me to do. He said there was this man from Russia and he wanted me to look up and make up a short resume of all he did from I898 to 1914. 00:48:00In I898 he began his chemical work and in 1914 he was called out of it to go to the first World War. I told Dr. Johnson it was all in Russian and he asked me if I didn't know Russian. I said no, so he told me to go to the professor who was head of Russian at Yale and said to get Russian enough to read this. So I got 00:49:00that all worked out for him and that was my first look at the Russian language.

IN: So did you think Oregon State needed that at that time?

FG: When I came back to Oregon State one of the first things that happened was that the Dean of Engineering, George Gleeson, who still lives over here, got a letter from Senator McNary. He asked George, who was then head of the Oregon Chemical Society, that I was identified with, if he could find out just where 00:50:00the most synthetic rubber is being made. Gleeson wrote back and told him he would. Gleeson took his list of members all over the state gave each one something to look at. They came back and the senator was dismayed to find that the great bulk of synthetic rubber research was being done in Russia. So I 00:51:00thought it was time for us to be teaching some Russian.

I went over to Dean Smith who was head of Liberal Arts and told him we had to have Russian taught here. He said that was all very nice but we don't have any money. Then I showed him the report of Gleeson and I said we'd better be getting some money. I told him I'd make him a proposition. I would teach Russian the first year if he would get someone competent to teach it. He said he'd do his best so I taught Russian for one year. Then we got Mrs. Resenovsky. Her husband 00:52:00was a professor in law before the revolution and she had gone to school and was a teacher.

IN: So she came the next year and went into the classroom. Did you teach any other languages at Oregon State?

FG: Yes, after I retired, Dr. Craft came in September and told me the enrollment 00:53:00had doubled in the last year. They had been expecting an addition in enrollment in Russian so they'd hired an extra Russian teacher but they didn't hire any more German teachers. She said she knew I was retired now so she could hire me on what they call the 600 hour law. Anyone in the state who's retired can be hired by the state for 600 hours. So I went to the German department for one year. Then the next year they still didn't have anybody. So I said I'd take it 00:54:00another year and then went on six years. So at the end of six I told him it was about time for me to take a sabbatical.

VG: Which he never got in all his career. These people never got sabbaticals. They couldn't afford to take them because they got half-pay and it was never enough to take a family anywhere. These days it's very different.

IN: When you taught Russian for that one year, do you think there was a keen interest by the students since it was during WWII?

FG: Well, here's the thing. Out near Peoria there is a Russian settlement. I had 00:55:00a boy that I knew and his sister who could speak Russian but couldn't read or write it. So they came into the class. And then the rest were all faculty.

Mrs. Mr. Childs from the English department, and one of the librarians, and Georgina Knapp who was on the campus and quite a group.

FG: Then I bought a phonograph and got some Russian records.

IN: Did you teach Russian dances?

FG: No, we didn't.

VG: We were married in the Russian church though and all our children were baptized there. Just from interest, not that it's our religion at all.

IN: How was the Russian church different? What was your ceremony like?

VG: It was in a little Russian church up in Seattle and it was all in Russian, except one or two things I Promised which he translated into English. We had two men hold crowns over our heads the whole time. It is a crowning, is what it is.

FG: The Russian Orthodox Church is just a branch of the Greek Orthodox Church. You see the Greek and Latin Orthodox split about 800 or 900 A.D.

IN: That must have been a beautiful ceremony.

VG: Well, it was very simple. But it is very different. And of course the things 00:57:00you promise are very different. I ended up with a ring on my forefinger and he ended up with my ring on his forefinger and you kind of walk around and around. It's a very different type of ceremony. We did see a Russian ceremony in the movies once and ours was very much like that.

IN: Yes, I think in "Fiddler On The Roof" they had something like that.

VG: Well, this was quite a long time ago.

IN: I think I've seen one though, where they walk real slowly around the candles.

VG: Yes, there were candles. And it was a little longer ceremony. The fellows holding the crowns got very weary since they were holding their hands UP SO long. I remember that.

IN: Dr. Gilfillan, over the years you've had so many interests and been so involved. Yet still you have gained a thorough knowledge of art, literature, music and philosophy, according to one article written about your life. One of 00:58:00your loves particularly interests me. When did you start collecting your rare books?

FG: When I graduated Yale, I had a year in New Jersey working as a research chemist for a company whose scholarship I enjoyed during my last year at Yale. I was granted a fellowship that year. I went down to work for them, and that was in New Jersey.

VG: He ran around to concerts and churches and he was always a curious person, 00:59:00and still is. He's always looking something up, like four of five times a day we get out the dictionary or the atlas or something-- always curious.

IN: You have given what has been called the most unique gift of the centennial for OSU. Can you tell me something about them?

FG: Each year I try to give some books. Sometimes - it is always one or two - but on the 100th anniversary of Oregon State in 1963 I gave ten incunabula. Of those incunabula, one was unique--- the only one in America.

IN: And those are now in the Oregon State library.

FG: Those are in the McDonald Room.

IN: And those are all books printed before the 1500's. That's a pretty neat collection for Oregon State.

FG: Well, they had one incunabula before. When I was collecting them I got a French book on medicine, printed in about 1495. And then I saw the chance to buy another one which was not in French but in Latin. So I bought that I had two so when I was giving them I decided to give them the Latin one.

VG: If a friend passes away, like with this Mrs. Buxbaum, instead of us sending 01:01:00flowers he will give a book to the Oregon State library in memorial. He has done this dozens and dozens of times. The library to him is the heart of the campus. Let me tell you this little story which I think expresses his feeling. The Yale University was started in 1703, and the way it started is these ministers came together and the idea was that they were to bring some of their books. So each 01:02:00one came to this first meeting bringing their books. When they got through they had these books and that was the beginning of Yale University. There was no physical campus and no huge buildings, or anything except these books.

FG: Not until Dr. Yale gave them some money.

VG: And of course we visited in Wales, where he was buried near this church, they have two schools named for him. We made a special trip there to see these things.

FG: They're named for him because the Yale alumni gave them money for these schools for this town in Wales.

VG: But Yale got started by books, and today it seems to me education has gotten clear off the tracks. You know you want to start on a new program and you have to have one million dollars before you start a thing. They started an awful lot on this campus with no money whatsoever. Like oceanography, like the honors program -- it didn't take a million dollars to get them started.

IN: The School of Oceanography was started in your office one day when you were 01:04:00with the dean, wasn't it? Can you tell me how that happened?

FG: This man came into my office and said he was looking for a position in oceanography. "Nothing would delight me more," I said, "than to give you a position in oceanography, but we just don't have any money." He said, no, he didn't need money, at least at the present time. He said "the Office of Naval Research would give me the money I need for this research. I have to have a title under which I can publish, professor of oceanography or professor of such 01:05:00and such a place. And also I'll need an office." I told him if he could get one it was going to be small. So that's how it started.

IN: And later on it became its own school?

FG: It was a department. He wasn't doing any teaching then. The people who gave money always gave a little extra for expenditures by the university. I went over and told them he needed a rowboat and motor because that was the need now. They 01:06:00said they'd give that much money out of the money that would normally go to the university.

IN: And those were the first things that started out the School of Oceanography; a boat and a motor?

FG: He went up to the Grand Coulee Dam and he ran analyses to find out about how atomic pollution there was all the way down to Astoria. He'd take samples and label them and when he got here he'd work on them and have something to report.

IN: That's amazing when you look at it now.

VG: Well, Wayne [Burt] is a very, very exceptional person.

IN: You were telling me that for many years it was rated fourth in the nation?

VG: That was several years ago it was rated fourth.

FG: I don't suppose it's first yet but it's still one of the top four.

IN: After 40 years of service to Oregon State, you've seen a lot of changes and a lot of students come and go. What do you think of Oregon State as an institute of higher learning?

FG: I think they've made a lot of progress but I still have the feeling that some things they've done I doubt the value of them.

IN: But all in all, the science department and the oceanography department have made a lot of important contributions over the years which you obviously have 01:09:00had a lot to do with.

VG: The man in chemistry now seems to be very good, but there have been alot of changes since my husband left. I think one sad thing is there has not been a continuity in the deanship of the School of Science since my husband left. Dr. Cheldelin who came in right away was very able and he was Doc's choice but his health didn't hold up. He had that stroke and that first biennial report after 01:10:00Doc left had to be handed in and in the end my husband did it. He just offered and said he'd do it. Seems to me they've always depended on him. Another thing he gives is the Russian exams, even today. And this boy who cane today brought him some Russian to translate for him, this is the botany boy. He went down just a few weeks ago to give someone an exam for his masters.

IN: What else do you do for the school?

VG: Well, not so many anymore. He's always very interested and I think there's lots of things that he thinks maybe he'd like to do something about but there's 01:11:00not very much he can do.

IN: I think a lot of people think that about our world in a lot of ways...

VG: That's true. But my husband always feels he knows exactly what should be done.

IN: Well that's what we need, a little bit of that so it wouldn't be so confusing...

VG: Yes, I feel that way about the schools too, even though I was a teacher in the schools not very long ago. I think there's a lot of things going on that I don't feel ought to be going on.

IN: Well, thank you very much Dr. and Mrs. Gilfillan for you time in answering my questions.