Kent Daniels Oral History Interview, February 4, 2011

JV: This is a life history interview with Kent Daniels, date is February the fourth, starting at about 10:10, and we are in the Sunnyside Up Coffee Shop on northwest third street in Corvallis Oregon. We based our interview questions on background research that we did so, we are going to ask you to go back, and then bring you up to the current to what you are doing in Corvallis today.

JV: Can you identify any pivotal moments in your life that helped shape you into the person you are today?

KD: I had an English teacher when I was a freshman in high school who was just a superb guy and he really put emphasis on creativity and thinking more so than just root learning and so I think his influence was that I became interested in a lot of things when I was, what, fourteen years old, and started to think about things other than sports or other things that a kid normally does, whether it's history, or sociology, or reading. He put a lot of emphasis on reading different 00:02:00kinds of books.

JV: Any of the title's come to mind?

KD: Oh, you know, not right off-hand but, if you took a list of great American writers or great European writers and we would choose from them. It was mostly Western stuff; it wasn't Third World or anything. And then, the other two I would mention, I don't know if this counts as youth but, Kennedy, President Kennedy was assassinated when I was twenty years old and I was in school and, it was really devastating to me and a lot of people who were supporters of his. I ended up quitting school and going on a road trip to California, but I also had this more serious thing that I was thinking about doing which was going into the 00:03:00Peace Corps. So I went on this road trip, and then, had applied to the Peace Corps at the same time and got accepted in the spring, almost got drafted, this was right at the beginning of the Viet Nam War. And then, I went into Peace Corps training in the summer of 1964, in Syracuse New York until September. I had had a couple of summer jobs working with the B and O railroad where I learned some surveyor aid skills, and because of that I was oriented into this project in East Africa that was road construction and culvert installation, so that's what we got trained in, other than, you know, language and all the other things.

JV: And where was this?

KD: Tanzania, and then we left in September of '64, and spent a month, about a 00:04:00month in Dara Salam in in-country training. There were eighty of us in our group 'Tanganyika Five', it was Tanganyika by the way, originally, it got changed to Tanzania because it merged with Zanzibar so, instead of having the United Republic of Tanganyika and Zanzibar, we'll just call it Tanzania. We thought it sounded like a Japanese car. So anyway, then we dispersed throughout the country to do different things. So, not all of us were doing the kind of engineering aid stuff that I was doing, there were nurses in the group, some teachers, some health people.

JV: And those were the first years of the Peace Corps?

KD: Yes, it started in '61 I think, actually one of the first groups went to Tanzania so, that's why I was 'Five', the first was 'Tanganyika One'. So I knew 00:05:00people in every one of those groups because there were overlaps and things. And then, I started working in this up-country town called A Mbeya, usually they pair you with people so you have a roommate, and we were going out and doing surveying on roads we were going to install culverts on. This was in the highlands of East Africa, the southern highlands, and so the town I was in was at almost six-thousand feet above sea level, and a lot of the work that I did was in areas that were between six and ten-thousand feet, so it wasn't tropical at all, it was very similar to the West Coast, as far as the climate went.

JV: Is that where you grew up, the West Coast?

KD: No, I grew up in Ohio, and went to Ohio State.

JV: So how were you about being at that elevation, living at that elevation?

KD: Oh, it was great. And so, I think if you talk about formative experiences, 00:06:00the teacher, Kennedy's assassination, because it was the thing that really pushed me to apply to the Peace Corps, and then the Peace Corps was just totally formative experience because my whole life changed; what I was interested in, how I looked at things after that experience. I met my wife there, and we got married there.

JV: And she was also a Peace Corps volunteer?

KD: Yes, she was a teacher; she came about three months after I did. We started dating, it's kind of an odd term when you're in the middle of East Africa but, about a year after she got there. We got married in March of '66. We had a very funny wedding because we got married in a Moravian church, with an Anglican 00:07:00service, by a Baptist minister. Everybody were people that we knew, they were all either Peace Corps volunteers or people working in National Aid or Africans. You know, there wasn't a whole lot you could buy, and besides, we had to go home so we didn't want to cart a whole bunch of stuff so people basically either gave us money or alcohol. So, that experience really shaped a lot of my life, as far as how I think about things, and it still does.

JV: Gave you that international outlook?

KD: Yes, and the whole volunteer thing and doing service.

JV: So, did you guys actually dig the culverts or did you just survey?

KD: Well, the first year I was there we put in the culverts, I mean we hired labor locally, they were put in, dug by hand mostly because labor was so cheap there that it was easier to do cost-wise by hand than to use machines. The second year I was there, another volunteer and I built a seventeen mile road from about six-thousand feet to up over ten-thousand feet on this plateau for this United Nations agriculture scheme that was being implemented; a wheat and sheep growing scheme. So that was actually construction of a new road, and we had engineers helping us, and we were supervising it, so it was kind of interesting. We had a hundred people working for us, big equipment, design, and I was twenty-one. Well, I guess I was twenty-two by the time I left but, it was 00:09:00really interesting. I also did a lot of, I'm pretty much a conservationist now but, I did a lot of hunting while I was there and so I became really familiar with a lot of wildlife issues and game, and so I was also out in the bush a lot with people. Not that I shot that much but, just the whole experience of going out into the bush with an African guide and trying to track elephants or buffalo or whatever; it was fascinating. So, I got out into places that most people, including Peace Corps volunteers, just never went. It was just too isolated and too dangerous. I never felt that it was dangerous when I was doing it but...

JV: One more question about the Peace Corps; what was the setup when you returned to the States, did they have something in place to get you channeled into government jobs?

KD: They may do more now than they used to but, basically they gave you what they called a readjustment allowance and it was, I don't know, at that time maybe a couple thousand dollars because, for one thing, if you spent two years over there all of your clothes were shot. I mean, being washed by hand, and everything else. If you had cameras they were usually finished by the time you got back, from the dust and dirt. But, when we came back my wife was pregnant 00:11:00so, my son was born in the fall of '66, and I had gone back t Ohio State because, remember I told you I quit school. So when I finished with the Peace Corps I went back to Ohio State to finish my undergraduate degree, which I did, and graduated in '68, and then we moved from Columbus to Washington D.C. I had interviewed for this job with the Census Bureau.

JV: What did you get your degree in?

KD: International Studies, of course. I was a history major before I went into the Peace Corps, and I switched it, so I stayed with a lot of history related stuff, but I took a lot of anthropology too.

JV: So what was your route to Corvallis, did you come here directly from the 00:12:00census job in Washington D.C.?

KD: Kind of, the census bureau, I needed and job and I had a family, but it's not the greatest place to work, I mean as far as being challenging, and it's kind of an old-line bureaucracy, but I was there for twelve years. Anyway, in 1970, I had taken an assignment, in running a census office during the decennial census in Cincinnati. So, the last job, the last two jobs I had with the census bureau, one of them was, there was a section that did international work, and I 00:13:00worked there and I spent more time overseas on short-term assignments.

JV: So they actually sent you out?

KD: Yes, I went to Morocco and Tunisia, Rwanda and Kenya, and where else, Jordan. But, when I finished that, I applied for this job running a census office in 1980, in Berkeley and Oakland, and with the full intent of not coming back. I didn't tell anybody that, but it was a way to get to the West Coast, because they paid my moving expenses.

JV: Did you enjoy living in D.C.?

KD: Oh yea, we really did. We lived south of the city, we were twenty miles from the Washington Monument, and we were in Maryland. Indianhead road, it was down a 00:14:00little road ten miles south of the Beltway, and I used to run down to the Potomac River, and right across the river was Mount Vernon. So anyway, I applied for and got this job running the census office in Berkeley, and that was from January through October of '80, and one of the things that I left out is that my brother took a job in the English department in 1970, here at Oregon State. So, I had actually been in Corvallis three or four times visiting him between '70 and '80, so we had already kind of decided; why don't we move to Corvallis? It's 00:15:00really nice. So anyway, I took this job and we did the work. We lived in Marin county and I commuted across the bridge to Berkeley where my office was, met a lot of really great people, it's a fantastic place to do something like that because there are a lot of people who are extremely skilled and educated and not really doing much, at least that was true in 1980, you know, just kind of hanging out. So we had people we hired on temporary clerical jobs that had PhD's; it was weird. But, that finished in October of '80, and then we loaded up our stuff in a U-haul and moved up here.

JV: Did you have more kids then?

KD: Yes, we had two. Our second, our daughter was born in 1968 in Washington. So, I got here in '80, neither of us had a job, and that was kind of 00:16:00interesting. We rented a house out on Soap Creek Road. I don't know if you know where that is, if you go across McDonald forest into the next valley over, that's Soap Creek Road runs through the middle of that valley. And, we started looking for work. My wife got a couple of jobs here, and then she got a job with, it was kind of a secretary or administrative assistant to the guy who was at that time the administrative vice-president at OSU. His name was Clifford Smith. What I was doing, I did several part time or temporary jobs here or there, I was really getting pretty desperate because, it's not easy to find a job in Corvallis. I was actually thinking about, maybe we're going to have to go to Portland. But anyway, so she's working for this guy, and he's a fairly 00:17:00friendly guy, and he says so what is your husband doing? She said, well, he's kind of looking for work, and he said, oh really? Well tell him to come in and talk with me. So, I went in and talked to him and he sent out this... you know, this is really kind of a serendipitous story, but he sent out these letters to about eight or nine people around campus who he thought, given what I had done, might be interested or at least give me a lead. I mean, there was no job there at all but, one of the people he sent me to see was a fellow was named Lou Eisgruber who had been the department head of agricultural economics and, he was actually born in Germany and he moved here when he was about fourteen. Anyway, as it turned out, he was just in the process of setting up and starting an international agriculture office in the college of agriculture.

So I went and talked to him and he said well, how would you like to work for me for three months on a temporary assignment and help me set up this office? So I 00:18:00did that, I mean literally, you know where the Credit Union is, there's a little, what is now a church right across the street from it, well we rented that building for about five years and that was the office of international agriculture. Anyway, we bought furniture and moves stuff in there, and then after three months, it was a temporary research assistant assignment, he decided he wanted to make it a full time job. I had to apply for it but, I got the job, and so I ran all of the support services for the projects that we had. There were already a lot of existing projects in the college but this kind of brought them together with an umbrella over them. And then, over time I just moved into 00:19:00different things, and really because of my international background, and the Peace Corps job was actually associated with a USAID project, so I knew what the process was for running these projects. So, I eventually became the assistant director of the office, and that wasn't under him because he had moved on to work for USAID in Egypt for several years. We hired a new director who was a guy my age who had been a Peace Corps volunteer in Borneo. So, the two of us ran that office until 1990. I was actually in that office, got hired first by Eisgruber in 1980, '81 actually, and then worked there until 1990.

JV: Did you travel abroad with that?

KD: Sometimes, it was all short-term because mostly what I did was work either by myself or groups of people on doing project set-up or project evaluations. I don't think I was ever overseas in that capacity for more than, well, less than a month. Usually it was three to four weeks. But I went to Tunisia several times; we had several projects there, Yemen a couple of times, Malawi, Cameroon.

JV: So a lot of Africa?

KD: Yes, and Africa was where all my experience was, and that was where the emphasis of my degree was in Africa. But, we had projects in Asia, I just was 00:21:00never, it just didn't work out to be projects that I worked on. It was a huge program, and we were extremely successful. At one time we had a portfolio of projects that was worth about 60 or 70 million dollars, and annual income was about six or seven million dollars a year. We had an office with about 30 or 40 people in it, we had faculty all over the world working on these projects, and bringing lots of students back to OSU. You do these projects and they usually have in-country things, but you are also training students, because the idea is for them to go back and work, and actually the training of the student's part, in the long run I think is the most valuable thing that we did. But, after I 00:22:00left, it had nothing to do with me, USAID changed the way they were operating and decided they didn't want to use universities as much as they had been and started pushing all of their work into private sector and consulting firms. Well, it was a terrible decision because a lot of the consulting firms were run by people who used to work for USAID and saw that; wow, I could make a lot of money. But the idea with the Universities, it was a great idea. There was this program set up to take advantage of Title Twelve universities, land grant universities. The idea was to build international programs and support them in universities so that you would have a long-term ability to use them and use the expertise that was available in agriculture or forestry or whatever, and we actually did a lot of that work. Both Eisgruber and the other fellows name was 00:23:00Ed Price, spent huge amounts of time and effort building relationships with departments all over campus and building funding relationships so if some faculty member went on an assignment, the department benefitted from that because we would return part of the overhead to them. It was a fantastic program. But, it's all gone now, it's all gone.

What I did in 1980 is; this is great, I was on the city council in the late'80s, that's kind of how I started getting involved in local politics or local volunteer stuff. And then in 1990, I ran for county commissioner, which is a 00:24:00full-time job; a paid position, and got elected. That was when I left OSU, and I did this with the support of my boss as OSU, and I actually went and talked with the president because I was moving into an elected position. So, I did that, but then in 1997, the guy that ran the International Education Program, which is still in existence and has been at OSU for a long time, his name was Jack VandeWater , and I knew him pretty well because we had worked in different departments but they were on the same floor in Snell Hall. Anyway, he called me up and said hey, how would you like to come back to work? So, the idea was, to try to save the program, to do what we could to try to find out, how can we get USAID to invest more money than they are; and it didn't work. And so I tried for 00:25:00four years and I ended up basically kind of shutting down the program. There were still some remnants of it left. There is an agriculture program, which is still in existence I believe, that continued, and then there were several other programs that were kind of related to the international application side.

JV: So without that direct flow of support from the government you just weren't able to survive?

KD: No, there were a lot of people, I mean OSU had a long history of getting international aid projects, but they were always, you know, some faculty member or department decided; well that's interesting, lets apply for that, or let's put a proposal in, and what we did was make it a structural thing and took all the difficulty of administering the projects and the contracts away so that 00:26:00people could concentrate on just doing the work. Whether you were an anthropologist, or an agricultural economist, the department didn't have to worry about the contracts or any of the administrative support work. And we developed a staff that had expertise in shipping and education and training and all those things.

JV: Sounds like the perfect program for a lot of interdisciplinary projects.

KD: Yes well, a lot of these projects were like that. They had a technical side, but a lot of times they had a social side as well. I think back in the '80s we 00:27:00had like twenty-five graduate students from Tunisia alone here at OSU. You will find this funny. They instituted a Friday beer-drinking thing down at the old youth center. So, Tunisians, aren't they Islamic? We'd ask, aren't you guys Muslim? But you're drinking. And they would say, well, we have a more liberal version. Tunisia was a huge supplier of wine, because it was a French colony, and there are still a lot of wine grapes grown there. But, there were a lot of other countries too, because we had three projects in Tunisia at one time, and each of them was generating graduate students. One was a rangeland project, 00:28:00another was an irrigation project, and the third one was building an agricultural school in Tunisia.

JV: Wow.

KD: They went on for a long time. These projects were already in existence, not all of them, but one of them when I started back in 80 and they were still going when I left in the 1990s so there was a long period there when a lot of people from Tunisia came to school here.

JV: So you mentioned that you were in city council in 1980.

KD: Uh, 1987.

JV: And that is what brought you to ...Corvallis So the community work that you've been involved with in Corvallis has to do with the arts and natural 00:29:00parks. Can you talk about that?

KD: I was on the city council for 4 years, 2 terms. Then I was county commissioner for 7 years. Those two jobs are dissimilar but also similar because what you do in both positions is you learn a lot about how local government functions. And with the city it is primarily parks and rec, the police, library, fire, public works. With the county it is public works also and parks, but with the county it is public services that funnel in through the state. And they do a lot of other things that are related through the state. So you spend 10 years, which is what I did, 10 years you really do become familiar with how these things operate. A lot of those things, those programs either are set up to or require advisory commissions or citizens boards to be involved. No matter what 00:30:00it is. There is a mental health board that has like 12 people on it and they are required to have at least 3 of those people be what they call consumers, which means that they are mentally ill. They are all like that. So I knew about all of these boards, so after I retired I got involved with a lot of different volunteer things. But the city or the mayor appoints people and she was a good friend of mine. So I felt really comfortable about saying, "I'd like to be on the parks board," and she'd say, "well there aren't any vacancies on it," and I'd say, "well I know that but think about me." And similar thing with forestry stuff. I also did a lot of other things that related to the county and city. 00:31:00This is all after I retired in 2001.

JV: what inspired you to get involved service? Civil service?

KD: The government or volunteer? I was at Ohio State in the 60s we had a child and I needed a job. I interviewed with a lot of people. I interviewed with IBM for example. And it is really funny. At that time, this was blue suit IBM, everyone was really spiffy in that organization, but they hired bright people. So what they did was required me take a couple of test before I even got interviewed. So I took the test, I had this interview, the guy said "You know you're a bright guy, but I just don't think that IBM is the place for you." 00:32:00(Laughs) He was almost certainly right. I mean I would have probably enjoyed it, and certainly made a lot of money, but most of the other things I interviewed for were government related. One of them was the US civil service commission. They used to have this program called the Management Intern Program. They'd go around the country and interview groups of people and select them and bring them into this program every year. What you'd do was, you'd go to Washington, DC. First you'd get in the program then they'd tell you ok here are places where you can look for a job. So I was able to get a job at the Census Bureau, my first job at the Census Bureau. But for 2 years you're in this program so you also move to other agencies and try other things. So I did that, I worked at several 00:33:00places. But I went back to the Census Bureau because, I don't know, at the time at least it was pretty interesting work. The other thing was that the Census Bureau for whatever reason at that time had hired this huge number of people who were in the Management Intern Program, so there were about 25 of us working at that one agency who were in this Federal Program. So, we all got to know each other and a lot of us stayed at the Census Bureau.

JV: What I meant to ask was what inspired you to get involved with the city council.

KD: I'd always been interested in politics. When I worked in Federal government 00:34:00there was this Hatch Act. You can't even work as a volunteer on any kind of partisan campaign legally. My wife was the county, ran the county we were in in 1972 I could do nothing, I could get fired. So that was one of the reasons I left Federal Government, I'd always wanted to try elected office. Little did I know what I was getting into. (laughs) So I did those things and I became aware of all the volunteer opportunities there were out there. That is how I got involved in most of what I do now. The theater is a little different. The 00:35:00Majestic Theater building is owned by the city. We actually bought that building when I was on the city council. But the theater is run by a non-profit organization, the city contracts them to run it. So I knew about that. In fact I was involved with setting up how the theater was going to run as part of my city council work. Because that's when we bought it and that's when we did the first contract. But, my daughter a theater person. She's in her 40s now, but she is a Director in Seattle. She directs plays for a lot of the really big theaters in Seattle. She goes elsewhere, she's been in New York and Minnesota. She'd always, she started in theater in Middle School here in Corvallis. First time she was in 00:36:00I Remember Mamma when she was in 8th grade. I Remember Mama, does that mean anything to you? It was an old television series from the 50s. But anyway that was the first play she was ever in. So we had a lot of theater involvement because of her. Before she left here she worked over at a theater in Albany a lot. When she moved to Seattle, she did a lot of theater where she wasn't getting paid for it, she had a day job. Very few people can live on income from theater. That is what she is doing. She is a very talented person. Where she got 00:37:00it from? [laughs]

JV: So you mentioned that your wife ran a county campaign in 1972.

KD: She ran it for governor. This was national campaign for president. She ran an office in the county we were living in Prince George's County (MD). That was part of a governor campaign.

JV: Were you both very interested in politics? Activists?

KD: Yeah, she ran my campaign for both city and county commissioner. City council isn't that big of a deal. County commissioner is a big deal as far as the need to be organized, and do things and raise money. She's quit doing that 00:38:00stuff, it's very stressful. She just left.

JV: Your wife was just a representative in Ward 2?

KD: Yeah she just left actually. That was my ward too. We live on 8th Street, at the time we lived on Kings over near Monroe. She was on the planning commission for 13 years, then on city council for 6 years. She spent 20 years of her life doing significant city/local government work. She's now an official recluse. (Laughs) She says, I'm not doing anything. Someone gave her a little magnet that says remind me never to volunteer for anything ever again. (laughs) I'm sure she'll get over that.

JV: How long do you think that will last?

KD: One of the things she is doing now, she's always wanted to write a life history of her parents. So she's working on that, from the time they were in their teens. Her dad was an officer in the army in WWII, they traveled a lot, obviously they moved every 2 or 3 years. She lived all over the place including two tours in Berlin. So you know I was always interested in traveling and she was used to traveling and we continued doing that. Although we've lived here a 00:40:00long time we still traveled a lot.

JV: With all of the traveling you've done, do you have a favorite destination?

KD: Italy actually. I mean of all the places we've gone we really have spent a lot of time in Rome. We know it as well as we know any city in the world.

JV: What is the draw to Rome?

KD: It's an old city and we can a lot of times, ruins get built on top of each other. You find things like there's a church near the coliseum, it's an active church. But as you go down to the basement, as you go down layers, it gets older and older, and as you down at the very basement there's actually a pre-Christian 00:41:00temple. There's stuff like that all over. Of course now there's lots of great places to eat. But I would, as far as internationally work, I would still would not mind going back to Africa. I'd go back to east Africa. She has never been back anywhere other than Europe. She's never been back to Africa. I have any number of times.

JV: Has your son been to Africa?

KD: No he went to the U of O, and he spent a couple quarters in the South of 00:42:00France with one of the international exchange programs. He got his degree in French. He's fluent in French. He's got a language. He's actually back here. He lost his job in the recession. Afraid to say, he's back here to do prep work to get his PhD in geology. What he is doing, he doesn't have a lot of money, but you can't become a resident here as a full time student. So what he is doing is taking the maximum number of hours he can take at LB, and what he is taking is mostly math stuff or other things. But, he's already been admitted to OSU, to 00:43:00get start working on his BS in the fall because he has a BA so he can't get into the geology program until he gets a BS. He's already talked with...we know a lot of geologists, Bob Duncan. A lot of these people are in oceanography, but they have geology degrees. Its funny, so he is doing that, I helped him rent a house in our neighborhood, he's got two roommates, both graduate students. That's interesting.

JV: It must be nice to have him here.

KD: Oh yes. He's a big soccer player and half the people, it turns out that a 00:44:00lot of these older guys, not that much older than him, geologists play soccer. And so he's playing in all these local leagues, he plays at this complex in South town. He says, I've got a soccer game tonight, but it is at 10:45pm. 10:45! So it's really funny. So we put him in touch with all these people we knew who are in one way or another... Gordan Grant, I think he's a geologist but he's a river specialist. We got to know him because he was on the ACLU board which my wife was on. So we sent him to talk to these people and then he plays soccer and he plays with half of them.

JV: So getting back to the Office of International Research. What were some of 00:45:00the most rewarding aspects of participating on those projects?

KD: Well all the people. Both at OSU...because people interested in taking international assignments tend to be more expansive about how they think about the world. But then you also have all these people you meet; the graduate students who come here from Tunisia or east Africa or wherever and most of the people you work with in third world countries when you do these things are people who have gone to school. Some or all of them have already come to school in the United States. Like when we were in Tunisia, I got to know some Tunisians really well. They told me that what happened was, it was a French colony so 00:46:00after independence, they would all want to go to France to go to school. And slowly USAID scholarships would become available. They gave scholarships to go to France as well. But then after a few people went to the States it started to become the preferred place to go, instead of Europe. It's a kind of a funny thing because you know a lot of Arab countries are not fond particularly of the United States on the one hand, but they really like the social milieu of the United States. They really like being here. Did I answer your question? A lot of the work I did was pretty mundane. Writing proposals is just...and you know how 00:47:00to ship stuff internationally, it's challenging but there's nothing particularly intellectual about it.

JV: Successful projects as the Assistant Director?

KD: Well we had a lot of successful projects. Well we developed a whole set of projects in Malawi which were extremely successful. We got those in 84, 85 the first ones. And it is very similar to Tanzania, just south of Tanzania. It is a 00:48:00very poor country, it's one of poorer countries in Africa. But its right on Lake Malawi, used to be Lake... We were really successful in developing programs that worked with Malawians. At that time the projects were more geared themselves toward more involvement of the host country nationals in making decision and running projects. So, one of the reasons we got the project is because we oriented our whole approach to working with Malawians versus working on our own or with USAID staff.

JV: So that is in the 80s that that shift was happening? Did you then see an overall change in USAID and how they approached things?

KD: Sometimes. [Laughter]

JV: But before that was it just that the Americans would come in and institute some kind of project?

KD: Well yeah. I think where it started after World War II and through the 50s and 60s. Foreign aid really started to change as far as the orientation of it cause a lot of it before that were these big projects where you would go in and build something or develop something and then you would leave and it would fall apart.

JV: So it was a learning curve.

KD: Yeah.

JV: This isn't working let's try integrating the...

KD: But the first project director we had was an Ag Economist here at OSU who was Irish actually and he had already worked in Indonesia, Sri Lanka, so he had a lot of international experience. His wife was Korean and actually one of his sons is now in the Ag Econ Department here getting a PhD. But they're great 00:50:00friends of ours. We go see them every once and a while. We went to their son's wedding in Canada in June. But that was a great project and it really worked. We brought a lot of people over here and trained them and a lot of the things were done are still functioning.

JV: How do you have checks on those projects?

KD: Well if it's a USAID project there are whole evaluation process built into it. It required that every year or so they put together an evaluation team that has people from OSU, people from USAID, and maybe some outside people who know something about it and you go over and review it and say "Are you meeting your goals and objectives?" and then you write a report on it. That's one way that people get in trouble. [They ask] "What are you doing here?"

JV: Right.

KD: Unsuccessful? We had in that area, a project in Senegal which this same 00:51:00Irish guy worked on and it was a very successful project actually mostly it went on while I was working for the county, but when I came back to OSU in 1997 it was still going on, but it was in its last two-three years of its existence. Even though the project had been very successful we had a nightmare experience with USAID. I mean they were just impossible. They were micromanaging things. One of the things that happened when Tom, the Irish guy, closed the project out in Sri Lanka [Senegal], you know this was a multi-million dollar project along with many years, you have to pull all the loose ends together both financially 00:52:00and all the stuff you bought you have to turn it over to USAID or the local government.

JV: Is this Sri Lanka or Senegal?

KD: Senegal. And so he did all this stuff and he had a really competent staff and he is great and he paid off a whole bunch of bills that were due and the USAID office said "We're not going to reimburse you for any of that stuff." Of course the way it work is that we pay for it out of OSU's pocket and then we get reimbursed by USAID so $700,000.

JV: Man.

KD: $700,000.

JV: And they never recovered that?

KD: Well, it's one of these agencies, where I asked a guy who worked there once, what you do when people write letters complaining about you and the problems they had with you. What happens to all of those? [He replied] "We just throw them all away." We got an audit. We requested it and they begrudgingly agreed to 00:53:00give us an audit and so the auditor came in and he didn't go to Senegal because we had it all closed up. We had all the records and books back at OSU. He was a good guy. I mean that's what he did, he audited. He didn't have an axe to grind one way or the other. So of course we wined him and dined him and treated him extremely well and gave him a separate office to work in and he had a great time. He did a great job in his work and in his exit interview he said, "Well, as far as I'm concerned, you've done everything correctly, but you have to understand that I don't make any decisions at all. I just take my report and give it to people at USAID and what happens to it after that I have no control over or knowledge. They don't tell me."

JV: So even if you have a good report...

KD: There is still no guarantee that you will get the money. So he sends the report in and we start gently prodding and nothing. Nothing. So I don't know 00:54:00it's like four years later, suddenly, out of the blue after OSU has written this money off a check for $700,000 appears in the mail.

JV: Magic. [Laughter]

KD: It was really negative for us [Office of International Research and Development] because, first the University and Administration was really pissed as they had come up with $700,000 out of their pocket that they did not get reimbursed for. So they had actually already written it off, so by the time the money came, ooo, this is a gift.

JV: Wow. That's really something.

KD: That was the last really big project we had, the Senegal project.

KO: Do you mind if I ask a question?

JV: Of course.

KD: Sure.

KO: I'm really interested in the fact that you and your wife decided to move to Corvallis without jobs. It seems that you really wanted to be here. Can you explain a little bit more of why you moved here?

KD: Yeah.

KO: You mentioned your brother was here.

KD: Right. Actually I had been interested in going to Oregon State, I don't remember why, when I was looking at going to college, but I think it was because I had an interested in Ag conservation when I was in high school. It was a pipe dream and I couldn't afford it. So I went to Ohio State because you didn't have to be admitted if you had a high school degree in Ohio at the time you automatically got in. I my tuition was $90 a quarter when I started. So you could have a summer job and almost make enough money to pay for your costs. I don't know about you guys but the kind of money I see student borrowing to pay 00:56:00for tuition to cover their costs is astounding, but where was I? What did you ask me? Oh, how I got here. Well, my brother who was in the English program in Ohio State while I was there got his PhD and went out looking for a job and got a job offer from the English Department here. He moved in in 1970 and actually, my wife, and I and our kids were visiting her parents in San Francisco when brother moved here and we rented a car and drove up here to help him move in. Then it turned out that my best friend from high school had also just moved here and I didn't even know this. He sent me a post card, and said, "You've probably never heard of this place"... And I had just been there.

JV: You were like "I've just been there."

KD: So during the 70s about every other year we would fly out to the west coast 00:57:00to visit Tricia's family and we would always come up here and thought this is really nice. And we had these two kids and my brother has two kids. Tricia's sister at the time was living here and she has a son and they were all about the same age.

JV: Keeping the cousins together.

KD: Yeah.

JV: That's great.

KD: So there were a lot of reasons-nothing to do with the university. In fact when I moved here I had no particular intent necessarily to work for OSU because I just have an undergraduate degree and yeah it was a place I could look for a job, but it wasn't necessarily going to be the kind of thing I end up doing here. I could have ended up in the Business Office or I could have worked for a local company doing something completely different. I would have taken any job I could get. I did interview for a couple of jobs with the County then too. We 00:58:00really liked Corvallis. Well, the other thing we really liked was we didn't come up to Corvallis when we did these trips. We'd go through Crater Lake, then we'd go through Bend, and go through xxx and we'd go to the coast. And we'd say, "There are mountains here that have snow on them." "This is neat." I think the first time we drove up here on I-5 the part of I-5 that goes through the Siskiyous was still under construction so part of the drive was down on the old 99. But the fact that there's mountains and you're from the east. I mean there are mountains in the east but you know rolling hills mostly. [Laughter]

JV: They're old mountains. Worn down.

KD: Right. So the familiar thing with our kids and my brother being here and 00:59:00everything and we then we really, really liked the west. I've told many people, I feel like home. This has always felt like home to me even though I didn't grow up here. I wasn't in Oregon until the 1970-what was the first time we came out here? Yeah, it was 1970. What about you? Do you feel that way?

KO: Yeah. It's a unique place where you can come from almost anywhere and feel that sense of home. I've never heard of anyone leaving Corvallis they like it so much. [Laughter.]

KD: I know people who leave Corvallis. A lot of kids leave here. My kids referred to it as Bore-vallis.

KO: Ah. Interesting.

JV: Wow.

KD: They don't feel that way now. [Laughter]

JV: The town is kind of isolated in that when you're here and you have to drive 01:00:00kind of far to get somewhere else.

KD: Yeah.

JV: I feel like I've got everything I need right here and don't need to go anywhere else.

KD: Well, let's see I work out at Dixon a fair amount. So I'm sitting there doing something and there are kids talking all around me and it is clear to me that a lot of kids go to Eugene or Portland on the weekends.

KO: Really?

KD: Yeah.

KO: Do you like Dixon? You said you go there a fair amount.

KD: I usually try to go there 3-4 times a week.

JV: Do they hook you up with a permanent membership?

KD: Well if you're retired faculty you don't get it free but it's really cheap compared to you'd be paying elsewhere. But my wife and I both use Dixon. I use the weight room, sometimes. The testosterone levels get overwhelming at times. [Laughter]

JV: We talk about the gym a lot in this actual class. Using it as a fish bowl for data.

KD: It's very very interesting

JV: Like, gender identities.

KD: Yeah. My knees are shot so I do this water jogging thing. You put on a belt and kind of move around the pool. Most of the people you see in the deep pool are doing that or just swimming laps. Then the diving board users come and the testosterone level goes like this [raises hand up in the air]. [Laughter]

KO: It's an interesting dynamic in the diving well.

KD: Yeah.

KO: Do you do the classes then?

KD: No. I had a young woman who was in the graduate program with someone there give me an exercise regime and she gave me instructions on how to do this correctly. It's because my knees are shot and I have a bad back.

JV: Water is good for that.

KD: I can walk fine but I can't run or do anything like that. So the water is great exercise and a zen experience.

JV: Yeah, it's like slowed down but yet you're still a good work out.

KD: Yeah.

JV: I just want to hit on these last two questions. I feel like they are a really good wrap up. The second to last question: most memorable date in your life. Do you have one? Do you have ten?

KD: First time I held my wife's hand. Or when I got married which was 6 months later.

KO: Do you mind expanding a little on that. The romantic in me says that's a 01:03:00great story if you remember the first time you held your wife's hand.

JV: That's really sweet.

KO: Where were you?

KD: She was teaching in this school, an upper primary school of sixth through ninth grade and I was working on this road construction project up in this plateau and my roommate on that project was dating her roommate and so we used to go and visit them over time and we were doing that just as friends. None of us were actually dating each other. So we were down there once and we had been talking a lot, Tricia and me, and we went for a walk around the school grounds and while we were walking I just reached down and grabbed her hand. She was shocked, but she didn't object.

JV: The final question is, "If you could share one thing with a future person who is listening to this recording, this interview, digging through the archives 50 years from now what would you like to tell them?"

KD: I don't know. I'd urge them to lead a wide ranging life. To have lots of interests. Don't confine yourself a narrow path and you'll find life more interesting.

JV: Seems like you've done that.

KD: I've tried. It's not like I had some grand plan. Neither one of us, my wife or I, we just went through life picking up things, letting things happen as they 01:05:00happen. Some of them were directed, but like moving up here I had no idea what I was going to do. I was 43 years old.

JV: Awesome. Thank you so much for your time.