Sylvia Moore Oral History Interview, February 12, 2013

DS: All right

NT: Okay, so just a few things before we get started.

SM: Okay

NT: Here let's make sure these are--

SM: That's a pretty fancy microphone.

DS: I know

DS: I know. We got these checked out, I had to spend some time trying to figure out just how to work it.

NT: I know. I downloaded the 94-page manual that was online.

DS: I know. I know.

NT: Okay, so once again, this shouldn't take any more than 2 hours. We value your time, so we don't, you know, we know you probably have some amazing stories and we want to get all the information we can about your life. But yet, we do want to respect your time. If there's any questions- we don't mean to--you know, we don't want to embarrass you or make you feel uncomfortable so you can just pass on any question or topic that we talk about and you can stop the interview 00:01:00at any time if you like. And once again, this information will be going to the University Library in the archives to be in a special collection. Do you have any questions before we get started?

SM: No. It sounds pretty straightforward to me.

NT: So the first thing that we're going to do, I just want you to introduce yourself. So say your name, the time-- about nine, date, and the location.

SM: Okay. My name is Sylvia Moore and we're doing this interview at my home on Tuesday, February 12, 2013.

NT: Wonderful. Okay, so we're going to just get started by talking a little about your childhood and growing up. Can you just talk a little bit about that. Where you were born? What your family was like, kind of your interests, the time.

SM: I grew up in the Federal Way- Auburn area, although I was born in Nebraska. 00:02:00And we moved around quite a bit prior to moving to Auburn, which is near Seattle. My mother took a teaching job in Federal Way, my dad was a salesman, I have a younger sister who is five years younger than I, but now lives in Florida so we don't see each other too much. I was a tomboy. I loved to play with the boys and I was good at beating them and I thought that was pretty cool. I could run faster, throw further, jump higher, do all of those kinds of things and so I spent a lot of time outdoors. My mother tried her very best to make me into a lady. She frequently changed my clothes three or four times a day to keep me clean and keep me going. Went to Federal Way High School and graduated from there in 1959. Went to the University of Washington, graduated from there 1963. 00:03:00Played in the marching band. Was a physical education major, now what they call exercise and sport science here at Oregon State. Taught for a couple years in the Renton, Washington district and then took a leave to go down to the University of Oregon to go to grad school. Finished my Masters in the spring. As I was working on my thesis, I got a call from a woman at Oregon State who contacted Washington and they had recommended that she talk to me about a job. I had been in Eugene for nine months and had no idea where Corvallis was. Having grown up in Washington, I didn't envision that the two state universities would only be 40 miles apart. So I politely told her that Oregon had already offered me a position. I really-- I had my job waiting for me back in Renton. I really wasn't looking for another job and I really didn't have the time to drive all 00:04:00the way to Corvallis. And Erma was very quiet for a couple minutes and she said, "You know, it's only 40 miles." And I said "What?" I didn't know that! "Alright, I'll come up and spend a day."

So I came up to campus a little before my interview and walked around and was really impressed with the campus, with the friendliness of the people that made eye contact as I walked across the quad. If I asked a question they gave me really good answers, went out of their way to help me find where I was going. I thought, you know, this is kind of a cool place. I think I'll go there for about three years and then I can decide what I want to do with the rest of my life. And after three years I thought, well, another three years they'll give you a sabbatical, you can go get your PhD. And then I had to come back and pay back the sabbatical. And then I got involved with women's athletics. And enjoyed the administration. I had started the gymnastics program when I first got to Oregon 00:05:00State [0:05:00].

My first teaching job at Renton, they said, "You're going to coach our junior high's gymnastics team." And I said "I'd much rather coach basketball or volleyball or softball or some of the team sports. Those are sports I know about and know how to play." And they said, "Well, did you want to work here?" And I said, "Oh, I get that message." My younger sister was a gymnast, and a very skilled one. She was an elite level and trained at the Seattle Y. So I started going with them to the Y and I'd work with the little kids and then I watched the elites because there was a really outstanding gymnastics coach there at that time. A man named George Lewis. And there were probably half a dozen national team members there. So it was really a great experience and an opportunity to learn about the sport. And so when I got to Oregon State, there was a gymnastics interest group out of Women's Recreation Association and I got started working 00:06:00with them and ended up the next year taking them to some competitions and that was the start of the gymnastics program here at Oregon State. And I coached gymnastics until 1975 when I went on Sabbatical and turned the job over to a man named Ron Ludwig who came from West Virginia and was an excellent coach. He did a really great job with the program and developing it, turning it into a national kind of program. We were going through the transition of developing women's intercollegiate athletic programs. With the passage of Title IX in 1972, President Robert MacVicar decided he was going to implement a program and he appointed the director of Women's Recreation Association, who also worked with our sports clubs because a lot of our programs were under recreational sports at 00:07:00that time. And so Pat Ingram took over as the first WRA director, and we became part of a charter member of a national organization called Association of Intercollegiate Athletics for Women. And it was very different back then. There were no scholarships for women. There was no recruiting. You were allowed to hold what they called an Invitational Sports Day where you'd invite different high schools to bring their students and you could have a chance to evaluate. But basically, unless they enrolled at Oregon State, you didn't have a program.

So, I would cull my gymnastics classes for people that had some ability and that's how we got our initial athletes. After Ron left, in the--probably 82-83 somewhere in there--we hired a man named Jim--no it was earlier, yeah it was earlier than that--a man named Jim Turpin. And Jim ran the program through the 00:08:00mid-90s and again did a really fine job in maintaining the excellence. After Jim retired, we hired a woman named Tanya Chaplin, and Tanya has continued to coach and just got her 300th win at the Arizona State meet last week. So she and Jim are the only coaches that have achieved that landmark in women's gymnastics. As I was-- when I returned from sabbatical, the week before classes were to start in the fall, the women's athletic director, Sandy Neeley at that time, resigned. And the director of--it was then--we weren't part of a college, we were our own division, and so the director or dean as we would term him now, offered me the 00:09:00acting position and I did that for a year and had a great time and was an applicant. But at the end of that year, when they ran the search, Jim Long came to me and said, "You know I'm going to appoint you as the women's athletic director on a full time basis but you have to resign your tenure." And I said, "No, thank you." I don't like this THAT much to give up tenure in order to do this. So, I went back to teaching and taught for a year and then was named an administrative intern in President MacVicar's office and spent a year there. And then, as had been the pattern, after two years, the women's athletic director resigned [0:10:00]. It was not an easy time. The men's athletic program was 00:10:00extremely concerned that the women's growth in their programs would erode their opportunities to have programs for men. They felt that it would be a real financial burden and that their programs would have to give money away. So, it was--there was a lot of discrimination. And a lot of tough times. And so anyway, at that point, I applied again. And this time I didn't have to resign my tenure and I got the position. Resolved that I would become the first women's athletics director to last more than 2 years. But at the end of the 2 years, they merged men's and women's athletics, and so I became the deputy director of intercollegiate athletics. Did that for a couple more years and then Dee Andros retired, and for about 10 months I was appointed the acting director of-- of the 00:11:00total intercollegiate athletics department. Not just overseeing the women's programs. And I had a really good time.

Again, I was an applicant for the full-time position, but it was a little early for people to consider appointing women. I think at that point, there'd been less than a handful of women that had either been acting and only one that had been named as a full-time athletic director without the acting or interim title preceding it. And she had had a nervous breakdown. So, I was not appointed. The new athletic director didn't really give me a lot of responsibility. In fact, really tried to push me out. And after a few months, I went back to the President of the University, John Byrne at that time, and said, "I'm no good at sitting at a desk all day. This is not what I came to do. And so, I'd like to 00:12:00work elsewhere in the University. I can go back to teaching. I really like administration." And so John appointed me as one of his two administrative assistants in the office. And I spent a year as the University's Ombudsman. And that wasn't a fun job, 'cause all you have to do is listen to people's problems and then try to solve them. So the end of that year I went back to the President and said, "What else is available around this university? I don't want to leave." And became the Director of Conferences and Special Events at the LaSells Stewart Center. So basically, I had 3 different careers at OSU. Teaching faculty and coaching, athletic administration, and then the last 10 years or so, I was at the LaSells Stewart Center and oversaw the Portland Center. Did university marketing for a couple of years before they really got into big marketing programs, did special events for the university, organized the conferences and 00:13:00those kinds of things until I retired in 1999. So that in a capsule, is what I did growing up.

I got to OSU, I did leave out one little bit. When Robert MacVicar appointed me as the women's athletic director, I still hadn't finished my dissertation and made my presentation. And he said, "I'm going to appoint you, but I'm not going to pay you until you finish the PhD." Six weeks later I was done. It's amazing what that motivation can do. I would get up every morning and write starting at about 4 o'clock. At about 6 o'clock, I would head to Eugene where I was doing my doctorate because you got staff rates, and at that time, it cost you 3 dollars a credit hour. So it was a relatively inexpensive way to get your graduate degree. 00:14:00And then I'd come back and at evening, I'd work through the rest of the day in Gill Colliseum and then I would take the notes that my advisor at Oregon had made on my submissions from the previous day, get those revised. Get up the next morning, write again. When it came time to take my orals, I'd used some fairly complicated statistical analyses that I really didn't totally understand. I just had people helping me get all these kinds of things done. And this was prior to what computers can do today. A lot of offices didn't even have any kind of computer, let alone the kind that we have that does just about everything for us today. And so everything was pretty much done by hand, your typing was done by a skilled typist who knew how to do all [0:15:00] the pagination and footnotes and 00:15:00all those kinds of things. Computers wouldn't do that for you anymore. And, anyway, as I said, after 6 weeks, I took my orals. Stayed up all night studying all of my statistical analyses, making sure that I could explain them fully. They didn't ask me 1 question about the statistics. I don't think they understood them either. We talked mostly about what I was going to do at Oregon State when I got back. My orals were a pretty simple thing. And the fear was not realized; I guess is what I would say.

NT: What was your dissertation on?

SM: It was a social-psychological study on what they call locus of control and I analyzed team sport participants and individual sport participants to see what kinds of personality and influences would cause them to choose specific kinds of 00:16:00sports. And I was surprised there weren't as many differences as I anticipated. It was more a matter of what they were exposed to as-- when they were growing up.

NT: Interesting.

DS: Interesting.

NT: So you spoke about your motivation to finish your dissertation and all that, what were some of your main motivations or inspirations maybe as a child when you were growing up in terms of getting involved with sports? And you said it was nice because you were better than all of the boys and that was, you know, fun. But was there anything else? Was there anyone you looked up to?

SM: Opportunities were pretty limited for girls in the 50s. If you didn't play with the boys, you didn't have much chance. When you got to junior high and high school, you had physical education teachers and I guess they were probably my biggest influence. The girls got half of the gym one night a week to do what 00:17:00they called Girls Athletic Association, in which you got to do some competitive things. Basketball at that time for women was half-court. You weren't allowed to cross the centerline, so we had 3 guards and 3 forwards. It was a 6-player game. And the guards guarded and the forwards shot and played offense. There was, in the spring, we did a little softball. In the fall, we did some volleyball. Those sports were, again, very, very different than they are today. Not nearly the levels of coaching and opportunities that young women have today. When I got to the University of Washington, I was a journalism and a music double major. And there wasn't much opportunity to compete, so I was looking for an elective at the end of my sophomore year. Actually, it was after winter term of my sophomore 00:18:00year, and I saw Field Sports Class listed, but it said for physical education majors only. So, I went over to the department to try to talk them into letting a non-major get into that class. And, they were really nice. And they suggested that I might want to think about becoming a physical education major because that was the only way I was going to get into that class. I thought about it, went back the next day to talk to them some more about it, and Kay Fox, who became my advisor, had laid out a schedule for me for the next 3 years. And I said, "I'm not going to go 5 years." You didn't do that in those days. Four years was what it took to graduate. So, I did change majors. I did revise my schedule. And said, "I will go to summer school, I just--"

Again, it was $100 a quarter to go to school. Room and board was like $300 a 00:19:00year. Much, much cheaper. At any rate, it was winter term of my junior year and my grades were sent home and my mother opened the envelope and she said, "Where are all your music and journalism classes? And what are all these P.E. classes?" Cause I was taking 20-21-22 hours a term in order to get through. In 2 years I had to make up all the freshman and sophomore courses while I was also taking my junior and senior courses. I can't remember ever being that sore in my entire life. There were a lot of activity classes. And so the people at the University of Washington were also a big influence. I played on their field hockey team. I played a little tennis. And after college, I continued to play field hockey [0:20:00], which is like ice hockey on grass with sticks and a round ball, and-- 00:20:00But that was really the only outside competitive opportunity. And I really felt that women ought to have those kinds of opportunities. And that, I guess, is what really motivated me. The teachers that I had in junior and senior high school, as well as at the University of Washington, and the people that I met through playing field hockey--many of whom were teachers at the various colleges around, many of whom shared the same beliefs that I did--that we should have, as women, the opportunity to compete and to develop our skills. And that really, in a nutshell, is what motivated me and what influenced me.

NT: Did you see yourself, in-- I mean even like, while you were in college, did 00:21:00you see yourself kind of where you were at OSU being a coach and doing those things or--?

SM: No. My mother was a public school teacher. I thought I'd be a public school teacher and I'd teach physical education; work with junior and senior high school students. It wasn't until after I said 2 years of doing that and going back to get my Masters that I began to realize there were other opportunities available. And as I said earlier, I thought I'd be at Oregon State 3 years, and I ended up 33 years.

NT: Ok. Do you want to-

DS: Yeah. So we're just going to switch here. So we want to focus a little bit more now on specifically at your time at Oregon State. You had mentioned that you had gone there right after Oregon. What was your first job or your first kind of major experience that really, I guess, sold you on Oregon State? You had mentioned it a little bit, but if you could expand on that.

SM: Yeah, it was the friendliness of the campus, the concern that was apparent for students. Women's physical education was a separate department at that time. In fact, I think I was on campus for 3 years before I ever went over to Langton. And it was another 3 years before they merged men's PE and women's PE. But the people were great. There were only maybe 16 faculty in Women's Physical Education. We were a very tight-knit group. We did a lot of social kinds of things together. We all cared very much about preparing students for careers in physical education, either in teaching or therapy, or the various other kinds of things that were involved. There was a strong recreational program. One of the things I remember is the lobby of the Women's Building--which is a beautiful space, it's really a cool building--just crammed with tables of people looking 00:23:00for young women that wanted to work at their camps during the summer. And, there were a lot of recreational girl scouts, campfire, private camps, park and rec camps, all of those kinds of things that were available. Again, more on a recreational basis, not on a competitive basis. But, the lobby would just be jammed with people looking for summer applicants that would work in the summer and it was another way for our young women to get experience and get things done. As I got out of the Women's Building more, and began to meet more people on campus and around the conference, we didn't have--PAC 8 at that time was 00:24:00exclusively a men's bailiwick. The women competed in what they called the Northwest College Women's Sports Administration. We were very leery of using the word 'athletics', because there still was a bias that recruiting and scholarships created a lot of woes, a lot of problems for the men's programs. And so, our rules specifically prohibited scholarships and recruiting. Even under the Association of Intercollegiate Athletics for Women, that remained until the late 70s--when Title IX was beginning to be fully implemented because as it was passed in 72, it wasn't published in the congressional record until 1975, and it wasn't until 1978 [0:25:00] that it really became law and was to be 00:25:00implemented. I know that's before you all were born, but to me, it was a long period of time that it took to develop that. And, the bill was--the Title IX bill originally was co-sponsored by a Senator named Birch Bayh and an Oregon Senator named Edith Green. And, it didn't really address athletics. It addressed equal opportunity for women at all levels of education, as well as outside of education. But the NCAA, they fought it and they fought it and they fought it. And they kept saying, "You've got to exempt football. You can't count football as scholarship"--as a, not as a scholarship, but as a comparator because you were supposed to provide as many opportunities for women as men.

Well, that time, there were 120 people on a football squad, and women's squads were basketball, we had 12/15 people, gymnastics--you had 12/15 people, same with volleyball, softball you probably had twenty-some, crew you had twenty-some. And men's and women's crew had had competitive opportunities that were similar for much longer than any other of the sports. The coach, Karl Drlica and Astrid Hancock, who was the women's coach, really worked well together and they'd given them--Well, the women's boats weren't quite as good, but it was a non-scholarship sport. In fact, it maintained that until just fairly recently, that crew athletes were allowed to get scholarships. Well, going back to where I was earlier, in the mid-70s, two young women in Florida 00:27:00said, "I can beat my brother in tennis. He's on scholarship and I can't get a scholarship." And they took the AIAW to court, and it was ruled that we were discriminating against women as members of AIAW by not offering scholarships. So, our first scholarship actually went to a gymnast. A young woman from Albany, named Donna Southwick. And, our second scholarship went to Carol Menken. Now Carol Menkin-Schaudt, who still is here in town. Her husband was the trainer on the men's basketball team. And, Carol was 6'8", or no, 6'6". I'm sorry. She just seemed 6'8" to me because I'm 5'4. [Laughter] Carol had only played one year of basketball at Linn-Benton Community College. The coach there had recruited her saying, you know, "You're tall--you've got to be able to do this!" And I had 00:28:00just recently hired a coach named Aki Hill. And Aki was a Japanese lady, and she wasn't here yet because she was still living in California. And Aki is a 5-foot tall Japanese woman who grew up coaching in Japan, coached boys basketball over there. When a couple people, named Stu Inman, who was the player personnel director for the Portland Trailblazers, and Pete Newell, who was the men's basketball coach at Cal came over to do a series of clinics. And Aki followed them all over the country. Aki then said to them at the end of their playing time, "I want to go to the United States and study under a basketball coach." So they wrote her a letter to Boyd at the University of Southern California. Aki got off the plane in Los Angeles. She had spent a year studying English because 00:29:00they said "You've got to get your English better before it will do you much good to come to this country." And she decided that Boyd was a great basketball coach, but the best coach in the United States was Pete Newell--not Pete Newell, was John Wooden. So she took her letter, written to Boyd, walked into the UCLA basketball office and the woman who was the receptionist there was a second-generation Japanese. And she took Aki into John's office, she showed him the letter, she told him about her experiences. And she's the only woman who ever spent a year on John Wooden's bench and was at all of his practices, did all those kinds of things. And, at the end of the year, she got married to an American man and they moved up to Northern California [0:30:00].

And then when our job came open, she applied. Hadn't, as I said, moved up here yet. So, Carol Menken walks into my office, and I'm looking up and I'm going, "Whoa! We don't have much height, that might be very good!" Aki developed Carol into Consensus All-American, into a member of the United States women's Olympic gold medal winning team, and to this day she and Carol remain very good friends. And, we see, see them together at the basketball games. Aki's reference letters were written by Stu Inman, Pete Newell, and John Wooden. So, it wasn't a real hard decision who ought to be our next basketball coach. My only concern was, her English is still a little rocky--can the kids understand her when she talks? 00:31:00And the answer was... yes. You may not be able to understand her at first, but you get used to the rhythm of the speech. And when she talks basketball, she knows what she's talking about. That was that story, and a little more in a nutshell.

DS: That's great. So what were some of the, I guess, the biggest differences and changes pre-Title IX on the campus and then post-Title IX once the law was actually implemented and more structured?

SM: Well as I said, we began to go to scholarships, we began to go to recruiting, we moved from the Women's Building to Gill Coliseum. We had one small office on the far side of Gill, on the what's now, Reser Stadium was then Parker Stadium side. We had desks kind of spread around and everybody kind of 00:32:00shared that space. And then Air Force ROTC moved out of upstairs, and down to McAlexander Fieldhouse, and they said we could have that space. Well it had all these boxy little partitions, and we were used to being able to talk across the room to people. So we made the downstairs our administrative office and moved upstairs, and we went out and solicited paint and carpet donations so we could rejuvenate the place. And over the weekend, all of us went in there, students as well as coaches, and--wasn't all the students obviously, but a lot of them-- and we painted the room, took down the partitions, we laid the carpet, we did all those things ourselves. And then, on Monday I had a meeting with Cliff Smith, who's the Vice President for Administration and my immediate Supervisor, and 00:33:00said, "Cliff, do you mind if we paint and fix up that room upstairs?" And he said, "Yes, as long as you don't take down walls." So I said, "Well, I guess it's time to ask forgiveness later because I already did that." [Laughter] And he just laughed. And so we got a little more space. Now if you go over there, all the coaches, all of the administrators have nice rooms. Downstairs in Gill we had one locker room for all the teams. So in the fall, fall sports people got the locker rooms. In the winter, the winter sports did.

In the spring, the spring sports got the locker rooms. Then we got a second locker room, but it was the locker room that they used for visiting teams for men's football. And so, on Thursday nights we'd have to move everything out of 00:34:00there and leave it for the football program that was coming into play that weekend. Fortunately, that was only 5-6 times a year, so it wasn't too onerous. Probably the thing that made the biggest influence, in my mind, to beginning to create a sense of equality was the athletic training room. Where the men and women would go in to be taped, be rehabbed, whatever. It wasn't nearly as big a program as it is today. But they saw that each other was going through the same kinds of things: injury problems, training problems, all of that. We still didn't have a training table for women. That came later. So that was another huge change when the women began to get that. We began to see some romances 00:35:00[0:35:00] develop between the men and the women's--that was kind of fun. We began to get better facilities. Instead of having to play softball on the women's building field. We got a field out behind Reser. Over where the big practice facility is now for men's football and they said I could put up a temporary fence, so I put up a chain link. Again it was a question of asking forgiveness later because I got the chain link fence donated and the Beaver Club was just beginning to think a little bit about the women's program it's now the BASF it's not called Beaver Club any more but it was in those days and the fence never came down they left it so it was OK but the field wasn't a great field. you know we got the infield skinned and those kinds of things but it was--the 00:36:00grass was lumpy the balls took strange bounces, kinda of makes me think back to when we used to play basketball in the women's building gym and we had a really huge home court advantage for volleyball and basketball, in particular, because in that women's building gym which is a small gym to begin with. There's a balcony that overhangs and serving underneath that balcony in volleyball was a challenge and it really freaked out some of our visiting teams and we didn't travel as much. We were part of, as I mentioned earlier, the Northwest College Women's Sports Association, and that included Alaska, Washington, Montana, Idaho and Oregon. We took cars, vans, state vans to the events. Coach drove one. If 00:37:00you needed more than one, a student drove it and you had probably six dollars' worth of meal money, a dollar for breakfast, two dollars for lunch, and three dollars for dinner. And so, frequently, they were reaching into their own pockets to pay for food. That's another huge difference today, they travel in charter buses and planes, they have full per diems, it's a very different world. They have training tables; they have trainers assigned. Initially we had one trainer, a woman named Janet Twidwell, that worked with all the women's sports programs and that was a little taxing.

Along the way we lost a few programs, our field hockey program, was dropped, our tennis program was dropped. That also happened for the men--they lost their JV 00:38:00teams. It wasn't just because of the women's programs, it was because money was tight and there were financial concerns similar to what we have today, not quite as big a recession as we've just been going through. But in the 70s there was a cutback. Long lines at gasoline stations because there wasn't enough gas, buying gas alternate days. If you had an odd number license plate you bought it one day and even number you could buy it the next but you had to wait in line for an hour to even get to the pump and sometimes they ran out of gas before you pumped it. I rode my bike to work quite a bit . . . [laughing] . . . to try to save money in those days. I don't know if I've covered all the things but you know the differences today and then are huge; the scholarships are fully funded for 00:39:00women and men. Each of us lost programs--that's a sad thing because you'd like to see as many competitive opportunities for everybody as you possibly can. The NCAA took over women's athletic programs we stayed AIAW one extra year--you were give a transition year because we had a young woman named Linda Parker, a gymnast, who had was a single mom with two kids. AIAW allowed much larger Pell grants, the NCAA restricted Pell grants to a certain amount, and we didn't have as much scholarship money, so by staying one extra year and letting Linda graduate she was able to complete her education and again that kinda reflects the concern that OSU has shown for its students and the kinds of things that we did [0:40:00] to try to help students as we were going through.

DS: So you would think that today's sports programs on campus are are more equal between the men and the women or do you still think that there are differences?

SM: I have, you know, it's been thirteen years since I retired. I still go to events. I still know a lot of the coaches, but I don't know the intimate workings day to day. From the outside it certainly appears every dressing rooms have been modeled. They are fully--instead of using volunteers to help run events--they have a lot of paid staff in marketing and game management and those kinds of things that that work with them; everybody's got their own trainer, plus they have student trainers that assist both men's and women's programs. I'm 00:41:00sure there's still some subtle problems. There's still a lot of what is lovingly called "the good old boys network" that are involved with boosters that, but I see many of the boosters that were so anti-women's programs at the women's events these days. It's kinda fun to watch and see that kind of thing develop and again I think it comes down to getting to know the people, getting to see how hard they work, having administrative staff that care about the academic side as well as the athletic side, that care about community service which is a huge part of what Oregon State's athletic program does, both the men and women. So we've come a long long way, I'm not sure we've come all the way. You'd have 00:42:00to talk to current people to get some of the subtle things that may still be happening

DS: Yeah, that's great. So we saw that the women's center gave you an award in 1999.

SM: uh hum

DS: and so we were just wondering, kinda what that meant to you and kinda what did that symbolize and kinda the background on that?

SM: I've received two awards from OSU. The women's Women of Achievement Award and the Beaver Award that was presented at University Day in the probably late 80s early 90s. The Women of Achievement Award is easier to remember because it happened the year I retired. It meant a lot to me. The recognition that some of the animosity, to give you an example of that I was invited to apply for 00:43:00membership in Triads which is a university wide faculty club, and I was black balled and didn't gain admission to that quote "sacrosanct" group that held monthly meetings-- lunches-- in the MU and had interesting programs but there were a lot of faculty members that felt I was a threat, that developing women's programs was really not appropriate, that women still ought a get their degree and their Mrs. and go on from there, and that competitive athletics wasn't really what women ought a be doing despite the kinds of benefits I felt they 00:44:00derived from it. So it was nice to get some recognition, I will say that I was later invited to join Triads. The Beaver Award is a beautiful little molded beaver cast bronze that is presented annually to people that have made contributions to OSU and that meant a lot. Some of my outstanding teaching awards meant a lot to me, so you know I'm a professor emeritus in both exercise and sports science and through my conference services, special events things and that means a lot to me. Oregon State means a lot to me and that was a great place to work I certainly wouldn't have stayed thirty three years if it wasn't, it wasn't all easy [0:45:00] but it was important that it get done and I have to 00:45:00admit that I was pretty good at antagonizing people. I was pretty insistent and I had the ear of the president who knew that we had to kind of do those things and if things got real tough, sometimes I had the president intercede and things worked out, but it's an experience I wouldn't ever think about not having had because hopefully I was part of helping make a difference.

DS: what what kinds of things do you like what; rephrase this, having been at Oregon State for thirty three years I guess what were some of the biggest changes just on campus that you witnessed or that you saw maybe outside of athletics, just in general?

SM: We're seeing some of the biggest changes right now with the combination of 00:46:00colleges and so on. Liberal arts, physical education weren't fully fledged programs. In the thirties, the Oregon State University system, which covers all of the colleges and universities in the state, had to make a decision during the depression to divide up things. They didn't feel that their two, and it was then Oregon State College and the University of Oregon, and they but OSC was the land grant and so that was an important part so they put an emphasis at OSC, then to become OSC, and then OSU, on the sciences, the engineering; physical education 00:47:00and liberal arts were sent to the University of Oregon and so they had full-fledged colleges of those programs as they developed. So I've seen growth in general programs, I hope we don't ever have to go back to saying "oh, one school gets this one school gets that" but there's still is some of that where the emphasis has been placed on the liberal arts at Oregon and probably always will continue to be but our college of liberal arts, and I think it has a new name now, which I can't keep up with--the name changes that they have been doing recently, just got a huge donation to develop their programs and that's that's another kind of change that we're seeing--this major billion dollar fund raising 00:48:00program university-wide that is benefiting all of the various colleges and departments at Oregon State. We've had to turn to the private sector for a lot more of the money, it used to be that the state legislature funded close to full the tuition and money that comes in so that they paid faculty salaries and so on. Now we have endowed professorships that we didn't used to have that are done through private donations. We have scholarships sponsored by private individuals, that's a- that's another big difference university-wide not just in athletics but in academics. Presidential scholarship scholar programs made a huge difference in continuing to attract some of the top Oregon high school students to the university, there's a lot more emphasis on international and out 00:49:00of state recruiting then there used to be, so you're getting more diversity among the people that come to Oregon State, that work at Oregon State. Parking's become a much bigger headache, although I can remember the time I'd been here a couple of years and parking they felt was too limited so instructors and staff couldn't get a campus parking permit.

And I was up for promotion to assistant professor and I said boy I gotta get this you know I've got a lot of uniforms and things that I have to carry and I can't do that on my bicycle I've got to be able to drive up to the back door of the women's building and unload. There's a lot more buildings on campus--it's absolutely incredible the amount of remodeling and new structure [0:50:00] 00:50:00that's gone on. A lot of the open space has had to disappear. It used to be pretty easy to make it from building to building in ten minutes now you got to hustle, sometimes to get from class to class. Students, the current controversy with the community about student parking in the surrounding community, you know, we didn't used to have that problem but as we got bigger, I think OSU's probably about fifteen thousand students when I came and it dropped down to maybe twelve to thirteen thousand and then in we had to limit enrollment and that made an impact and I think partially caused the decrease because we weren't recruiting students as much and now we're recruiting students and inviting them to come to OSU.

DS: So building off of that what changes in Corvallis have you seen in, you 00:51:00know, the past thirty years since you've been here?

SM: When I first came to Corvallis, 9th street was maybe a third as long as it is now and beyond that was country. There was nothing past Garfield; it was that was country. There was no Albertson's which isn't there anymore, certainly no Timberhill, none of the houses. In the 70s they began building on the north end of town. I bought this place in the mid-70s and its now, I have just under six acres here, and it's now the largest undeveloped piece of property within the city limits. Someday I'll sell it but not right now. I like it, I have my agility field out back, I have my rentals up the road, so that-- I have really 00:52:00good graduate students in my rentals. I love renting to graduate students they take good care of the place, they are serious, they don't party a lot.

DS: All the good things about us no . . . [laughing] . . . well that's great. And then I guess to kinda wrap up this section what is your most memorable moment at OSU if you could think of one or maybe two things?

SM: I don't know if I can narrow it down to a moment, the people were the most memorable. The people with whom I worked, the students I taught, those that have stayed in contact with me-- that's a really cool thing. Maybe the most memorable was when the athletic department started a scholarship in my name. That was a cool thing.

DS: When was that?

SM: About six years ago. It was part of one of thee of the initial Title IX 00:53:00celebrations that Marianne Vydra helped organize. She's the what they call the Senior Women's Athletic Administrator, Associate AD. That's another big change that women don't just oversee the women, there's there's men overseeing women's programs, there's some women overseeing men's programs, that's that's a cool thing to see because you need that kind of experience.

NT: Ok and I just have one more question when we we're doing, in terms of your time at OSU, when we're doing some back background research we came across some video files I guess of you presenting about a hotel on campus and we're just curious, I'm assuming that was with your role in the

SM: The Stewart center

NT: At LaSells, yeah so what how was that, what did that entail, what-- just can 00:54:00you talk about that a little bit?

SM: Motel space used to be much more limited, it's still limited in terms of big events on campus, but probably the biggest problem in attracting academic conferences to OSU was the lack of an on campus hotel. And, so I did develop requests for proposals and got those out to various motel chains, I worked closely with the athletics department. While I was doing that a fellow name Mike Corwin, sort of headed up theirs their end of it because they needed motel space for visiting teams, officials and those kinds of things. One of the things I didn't mention is that I spent six years as the chair of the NCAA women's gymnastics committee and [0:55:00] used my role, I probably shouldn't say this 00:55:00but I did I did use my influence and my role, to bring the first NCAA gymnastics championships to campus in 1990. And we had teams staying in Albany, Eugene you know we needed a nice motel next to campus. It didn't happen until a couple, three years after I retired it was probably a six seven year process all together but it did happen and we now have the Hilton Garden Inn on the space where the old track used to be, now we have a brand new track that I'm looking forward to seeing used a lot more as we manage to bring back the women's and men's programs more completely. They're just partial programs now. I think it gives more people the opportunity to come to Oregon State for their education 00:56:00and I really believe that OSU's a great place to get an education.

NT: Great, so at the time when you were going through these meetings to propose the hotel was that were there any other hotels in Corvallis?

SM: We had Nendel's, which is now torn down, and where stores are they've developed a little mini shopping center there. We had Townhouse downtown; we had a couple of other smaller hotels. Just before the first nationals we got the Best Western and a smaller, same company, but less expensive option across the street from what was then Nendel's. Now we've got the Holiday Inn and we've got some more downtown motels, were capable of hosting more kinds of things. We're 00:57:00still a little limited we still have, I'll never forget when we were getting ready to host an NCAA women's basketball game and our opponent was UCLA. The men were hosting the NIT at that time, and they had a rule that even though they didn't have a game the day we were going to have our game, nothing else could be held in Gill Coliseum when you were hosting an NIT game. So we had to take our game to Salem and play at Willamette University. Judy Holland, who was the women's athletic director at UCLA said, "oh good! We'll have a decent hotel to stay in" . . . [laughing] . . . and I was fit to be tied because I didn't think it was right that we had to go play at another university when we had earned the 00:58:00right to have a home game and host it. We won however and that that was good. I loved beating UCLA.

NT: And back tracking just one more a little bit more, I read that prior to Title IX you were a referee for many of the women's sport competitions

SM: I traveled, let's see I had national ratings in volleyball, field hockey, basketball, softball, gymnastics, track and field, so I did all of the home meets here. I traveled with several of the teams. In those days you took your own official, the school that you were visiting didn't supply the they had their official, you had your official. The athletes were encouraged to call their own fouls; you know it was a different kind of thing, now it's can you get away with 00:59:00this if I hold a little bit here. We just played CAL in women's basketball and I couldn't believe the holding that they were being allowed to get away with, and Scott had said CAL's noted for that kind of physical play, we've got to get out there and be ready for it and well they weren't, that's that'll come.

NT: That's great, ok so now we're going to transition to since you retired, so that was thirteen years ago you retired

SM: 1999

NT: So what've you been doing since then?

SM: Ahhh a lot of my friends say my life has gone to the dogs. I'm president of our local all-breed kennel club. I've just finished a seven year stint as being on the board of directors of the Heartland Humane Society. For fun and recreation, I train and run dogs in agility, which is kinda like gymnastics for dogs. They have [1:00:00] what would be comparable to a beam and what's called a 01:00:00dog walk, we have them scramble over an A-frame, which is peaked, pitched tee pee looking thing. They do jumps, they do weave poles. I have, I started out with my two standard poodles, they did it because they knew I wanted to do it but not because they loved it. I took care of my mom, who had Alzheimer's for about six years before I had to move her to a care facility. So that consumed the early part of my retirement. I got into miniature poodles because my mom raised dogs from the time I was a teenager. First she had toy poodles, then she got into Cavalier King Charles Spaniels and she gave me a standard poodle for, when I bought this house in the mid-70s, for a guard dog. Well, Snow might've licked somebody to death but she wasn't ever going to be a guard dog, she was a 01:01:00very gentle giant. My mom, when she moved in with me had cavaliers, and so she had six of them and I had three, so we had nine dogs here. And I finally convinced her that you know, I'd get rid of one, she'd get rid of two. So we found we re-homed some of the dogs and she probably forgot about that the next day and wanted to know where her dogs were but that's part of the problem with Alzheimer's. I finally had to move her to an Alzheimer's care facility in Albany because I couldn't handle all of the things going on. And first she took one of her cavaliers, then I had to bring him home and then I'd take him over when I went to visit her every day and finally Bobby passed away.

So I thought well I'll take Belle over, Belle was a really gentle therapy dog she'll-- my mother was terrified. The next week I was at an agility match with my two standards and saw a little mini puppy twelve weeks old, went over and talked to the lady, said your dog is walking around in all this chaos, head's up, tail's up, not being phased by anything. I need a small dog, where did you get this one? Next day I drove to Kelso, Washington and I came home with Parker, my six year old, and I took him in and the grin on my mom's face when I walked in with this little puppy made the long day very worthwhile. And I and now I had a dog that liked agility, that didn't just run because he wanted too or because I wanted him too and then couple years later the breeder had another litter and 01:03:00I socialized all the puppies for her because she worked full time and I said, hey I can take those puppies all over the place. They'll have a great time and they'll really be ready to go out and into the public world and I fell in love with one of them so I had to buy it . . . [laughing] . . . And that's River and he's three, and he's--I thought Parker liked agility, this guy is incredible. He tore off a nail last week unbeknownst to me and actually then went in and ran before I realized he was hurt, didn't limp, didn't cry, the adrenaline was such he just wanted to run and that's fun because it gives me a chance to exercise and it gives me dogs that like what I'm doing and its a great social network as well.

NT: I bet, so did you get involved with agility, just after you retired or did 01:04:00you start doing that--?

SM: I retired, I went to a friend's agility match, liked it, saw a booth that had equipment for sale, bought a complete set of agility equipment, which then sat for three years as I moved mom down here and got organized and then I said you know. Friends volunteered to come in and sit with her while I did some others things, they said this isn't good for you, you're not doing well. So I took their advice and got started getting involved a little bit with agility while they gave me a break and then when I moved her to Lydia's House I was able to do it more and now I've as I've said, my dog was the number one miniature poodle in the country last year. Number one poodle--he beat all the toys and standards as well

NT: That's incredible

SM: So yeah, and then I'm involved with a couple of other service organizations one is [1:05:00] Zonta, works on issues affecting the status of women. It's an 01:05:00international organization with local chapters and so I've been president of that club and done a variety of things with them. Drove for meals on wheels, so in a lot of respects I have remained active in the community. When I was at OSU I was on the Chamber board, and well what's now called the Corvallis visitors association, is now the convention, was then the convention and visitor's board. So I've always been relatively active in the community, that was an important part of what I did both in athletics and doing conferences and special events.

NT: Sounds like you've been keeping busy . . .[laughing] . . .

SM: I've if you don't get busy, you don't keep going

NT: Are you still involved with any of the OSU athletic teams? Do you still go to matches?

SM: Um hmmm. In fact I'm going to be the guest coach at women's gymnastics in a 01:06:00couple of weeks. I have season tickets for the women's sports. I finally decided I was spending too much time in Gill, so I did drop my men's basketball tickets and just go on occasion, same with football, go to some baseball games, but again not as a season ticket holder. There's just not enough time in the day to do all those things, that's the fun part about being retired, you choose what you do instead of always having to think of the bigger picture and what needs to be done and I still do what I think needs to be done but it's what I think needs to be done...[laughing]...

NT: So, David and I are young, kind of aspiring professionals. Do you have any advice for us? For someone starting a career?

SM: If I had to do it over, I probably would have worked at being a little more tactful sometimes. I can be very blunt, and that offended a lot of people. So I 01:07:00guess I would work on that aspect of-- you know getting what you want but being a little more subtle about it. I would work at getting to know as many people as I possibly can because networking is huge. I would work at having fun, and sometimes you do have to work at that because jobs aren't always fun. I would do something that I want to do, that I like to do. I think that's crucial in making career choices. I'm really glad I gave up the journalism and the music because I think I found my passion and what I wanted to do.

NT: Great, and lastly is there anything else that you want to share with us from your experience at OSU or before that, anything that you want to tell us?

SM: Just be true, you know. Be honest, be true. Think of others those, those I 01:08:00think are critical kinds of things. Enjoy what you're doing and do it to the very best of your ability, that's another way of getting things done. Don't be afraid of hard work but don't be afraid to play too.

NT: Alright, David is there anything else?

DS: No, I think you did you, gave us lots of information thank you so much.

NT: Thank you

DS: Yes, this was great.

SM: It was my pleasure.

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