Part one of an interview with Matilda Koeller. Topics include: Why her parents left Germany and came to the U.S. Her father's work as a barber. How her parents met and were married. Her parents had 13 children, only ten survived to adulthood. Her ear troubles as a result from having scarlet fever as a child. When her parents got a house with a bathroom for the first time. Her work making coffee for teachers at school. ; 1 MATILDA KOELLER: Parents made children go to work and help support the family. My mother, uh, after she was born, her dad – DONALD KOELLER: Before you come back to your mother, let's. why did, why did, uh, your father. that was the [Sigwart] family. MATILDA KOELLER: Uh, no. My father was the Sigwart family. DONALD KOELLER: Why did they leave Germany? Why did they come to America and to Fitchburg? Do you know? MATILDA KOELLER: Well, I never found, really found out why my father's, uh, parents moved to Germany, except I suppose to make a better living. DONALD KOELLER: And in Fitchburg he then was a shoemaker? MATILDA KOELLER: Uh, yes. He had his own, uh, establishment or [unintelligible - 00:00:48]. We don't know much about Dad except that, uh, he had to help, uh, with the shoemaking business. DONALD KOELLER: Is that a shoemaking or shoe repair? MATILDA KOELLER: No, the shoemaking. DONALD KOELLER: And did. that would be your grandfather, did he die in Fitchburg or did he move.? MATILDA KOELLER: No. Grandpa Sigwart was buried and, um, um. I can't remember any Catholic cemetery in Chicago. But his mother was buried in Concordia, uh, Cemetery in River Park, a suburb of Chicago. DONALD KOELLER: What was her maiden name? MATILDA KOELLER: Her name. well, really her name is on the recording in paper that I sent each of the boys. DONALD KOELLER: You can't remember it now? MATILDA KOELLER: I can't remember her name, no. DONALD KOELLER: What was. your dad's name was Jacob. MATILDA KOELLER: Jacob. Yeah. DONALD KOELLER: His father's name was? 2 MATILDA KOELLER: Um. now, that's another thing I can't remember. But there. his, his mother. there was some. uh, or somebody was made a-a widow or a widower and his, um, mother remarried or it must have been his father because they all carried the name of Sigwart because Louis and [Pink] were his stepsister and brother. DONALD KOELLER: Did this whole family live in Fitchburg and then moved west? MATILDA KOELLER: Well, they were. the whole family moved to Chicago. DONALD KOELLER: Do you know. when was that? Do you know? MATILDA KOELLER: Well, it must have been when Dad was 20 years old because that's when he met my mother and [unintelligible - 00:03:16]. DONALD KOELLER: And they courted here in Chicago? MATILDA KOELLER: And they courted here in Chicago and were married. DONALD KOELLER: Tell me about. you said your grandfather. I mean, your father, Jacob Sigwart, he did not have much of an education. MATILDA KOELLER: He had no education. In fact, when his oldest daughter was going to school, which was Lily Anne, they wanted him to study along with his oldest daughter but he was ashamed to know that he couldn't read or write. DONALD KOELLER: What did he do for a living? MATILDA KOELLER: He became a barber. DONALD KOELLER: Did he have any – I mean, was he a barber all his life? MATILDA KOELLER: Yeah, he was a barber. When he came to Chicago, he evidently went to barber school and learned the trade of being barber because that way he didn't have to have any kind of an education. And I know that I asked my mother, "Mother, how come that you married Dad when he couldn't read or write? You know, after all, you had a great education." And she said he used to take the newspaper and he would look and like probably pretend he could read but must have looked at just a picture and got an idea what was going on through the 3 conversations of the customers that came in to have their hair cut. And at those days, the barbers had a bathtub so that the men come in and took a bath because those days they didn't have no bathtubs. DONALD KOELLER: At home? MATILDA KOELLER: At home. And they would come in for a shave and a haircut and a bath. DONALD KOELLER: Did he speak German? MATILDA KOELLER: Yeah. Mother and Dad didn't. they always knew how to talk German but they never talked German at home because my mother worked for a wealthy family when she came to Chicago when she was 14 years old. And he came to work for some wealthy family which I. if I remember correctly was the [unintelligible - 00:05:51] family. And they would not let her talk German. They said, "You come to America. Now, talk English." DONALD KOELLER: You say your mother came to Chicago when she was 14? MATILDA KOELLER: Fourteen, after she graduated and was confirmed because there was no work for a farmer's daughter in a small town. DONALD KOELLER: [Unintelligible - 00:06:15]. MATILDA KOELLER: No, they had moved them. By that time, they had moved to Loganville, Wisconsin, and they got this farm, 160 acres, from the government if they would work it. So the farm was theirs after a certain amount of years. DONALD KOELLER: How many brothers and sisters did you have? MATILDA KOELLER: Anna. there were 12 in the family, and mother. Anna was the second from the oldest. DONALD KOELLER: So the homestead then was Loganville. MATILDA KOELLER: Was Loganville. DONALD KOELLER: [Unintelligible - 00:06:57]. 4 MATILDA KOELLER: Yeah. It's still [unintelligible - 00:06:59] when they. when he gave up farming. When he was I think 72 years old, they sold the farm. DONALD KOELLER: But the family is still in the Loganville area? MATILDA KOELLER: But the family. yeah, the family all dispersed, you know, close by except the oldest son who went to Fargo, North Dakota. DONALD KOELLER: Anna came to Chicago. MATILDA KOELLER: To Chicago. And then when. DONALD KOELLER: She went to the [Fitchburg] home as a live-in maid. MATILDA KOELLER: Yeah, as a live-in – I'm almost sure as a live-in maid. That I cannot say for sure. DONALD KOELLER: Is that where she learned to be a seamstress? MATILDA KOELLER: Well, she must have learned it at home, because being the oldest daughter in the family and so many children that followed, they choose to make their underwear like bloomers and they wore what they called garter belt. It was just a form over their top and then the garters were fastened to hold up their stockings. In those days, they wore nothing but black stockings. So she used to send made clothes and send home money. And then when Bertha, who was the second oldest daughter, when she graduated and was confirmed, she came to Chicago also. And now, I don't know just what Anne's purpose is, but they were both good teachers. DONALD KOELLER: Let's see. When she was 14, I would have been about a year. MATILDA KOELLER: Well, the dates are all on there. DONALD KOELLER: You have that on there. MATILDA KOELLER: Yeah. Well, I've got their dates of birth and the date of their deaths, but when they moved to Chicago, you would have to figure that out, 14 years. Because they went to a one-room 5 schoolhouse, which was connected with the church, the minister was the teacher and their minister. DONALD KOELLER: This is in Loganville? MATILDA KOELLER: This is in Loganville. DONALD KOELLER: Tell me a little bit about the Sigwart and [Forrest] family relationship with the church? MATILDA KOELLER: Well, Dad Sigwart was originally a Catholic but when he married my mother, Anna, Dad said, "You're with the children all the time. You bring them up Lutheran." And that's how we all became Lutherans. And then when Dad was about 50 years old, he got blood poisoning in a finger and I guess in order to save his arm, they amputated his finger. And I remember him walking, pacing the floor and crying, just thinking he could not earn a living anymore because he's losing his main finger that he would use with the scissors. But eventually, he practiced so much that he went back into the barber business and opened his own shop because he was past 45 and they wouldn't hire anymore old men. And that's how Dad opened his own business. And when he made it good at the barber shop, then always somebody else would come along and make a barber shop which may be a block or block and a half away and, of course, then the people would go there and there was not enough trade for two barbers, so he would move to find another good spot. And that happened to him twice that I remember. DONALD KOELLER: Did the family move then also? MATILDA KOELLER: No, the family. he had a business a half a block away from where we lived. So he could come home for dinner. And then I remember one place that he had opened that was just maybe around the corner, a block, you know, maybe a block and a half. 6 DONALD KOELLER: Let's go back then. let's talk about when Jacob Sigwart and Anna [Forrest] met. How did they meet and how did their courtship go? MATILDA KOELLER: Well, I don't know where they met but I suppose, you know. I don't know how they met but I often asked. you know, I said to Dad one time, "Why did you marry mother?" And he said, "Because she was so beautiful." She was a beautiful person and had lovely hair and rosy cheeks. DONALD KOELLER: Did they court long or. do you know anything about their courtship? MATILDA KOELLER: I really don't know how long they courted. DONALD KOELLER: And they were married in a Lutheran church in Chicago. MATILDA KOELLER: Yeah. They were married. at that time, all the Germans flocked in this one neighborhood. DONALD KOELLER: Where was that? MATILDA KOELLER: And that was what they called. Goose Island is where Mother and Dad must have met. Of course now, Goose Island is all factories, all of it. DONALD KOELLER: Except for along the eastern part of the river. [Unintelligible - 00:13:30] MATILDA KOELLER: Yeah. Yeah. And then they were. the church was First Bethlehem which was located on Paulina and Hoyne, which was not too far from Goose Island. And all the German people flocked in that neighborhood and went to church there and were married. DONALD KOELLER: The First Bethlehem couldn't have been Paulina and Hoyne. MATILDA KOELLER: Paulina and. well, it's on Paulina. DONALD KOELLER: Farther north, somewhere there. MATILDA KOELLER: Let's see now. Paulina is one way. LeMoyne maybe – DONALD KOELLER: Lemoyne. That must've been the one. MATILDA KOELLER: Yeah, LeMoyne. 7 DONALD KOELLER: LeMoyne and Paulina run parallel. MATILDA KOELLER: Yeah. There is where the Koellers were married. The Koellers, the Walters, you know. My husband. well, let's see what I think. Grandpa, Frederick Koeller, and Clara were married in the same church because they came over. DONALD KOELLER: We'll get that side of the family a little later. Do you remember your mother and father ever talking about the wedding in the church or the reception or what kind of wedding they had? MATILDA KOELLER: No, they. my mother was married in brown. I don't know whether she made her own dress which I imagine she did. She had a white veil and you have a picture of that, too. I sent that to you. DONALD KOELLER: Well, that's going to be fun, to put pictures and your records thing together with this. MATILDA KOELLER: Yeah. Oh, they were married. Now, whether they had any kind. I don't imagine they had any kind of a reception because those days they probably just went to church because most everybody's gotten married in church in those days. DONALD KOELLER: But at the time, was Anna living. where was Anna living prior to when she was married to your father? MATILDA KOELLER: You know, I never. you know, that part I never asked Mother, only that she worked with these wealthy people and every Friday was silver day. They spent all day Friday cleaning silverware so you know they were wealthy people. But I suppose they didn't get much pay either. DONALD KOELLER: Do you know where they lived or what their circumstances once they got married? MATILDA KOELLER: Well, once they got married, I really don't know where they lived but I knew that when I was 4 or 5 years old, we lived close to First Bethlehem and the street names are all changed. 8 But Aunt Lil knows the address of the house and it's still standing, 800 or something. DONALD KOELLER: So they got married. How long was it before they started a family? MATILDA KOELLER: Within a year. DONALD KOELLER: And that was Lily Anne. MATILDA KOELLER: That was Lily Anne. Lily Anne was the oldest, yeah. DONALD KOELLER: And then altogether there were 10? MATILDA KOELLER: Ten living children, three died before they were married. So mother had 13 children altogether. DONALD KOELLER: And you were number.? MATILDA KOELLER: I think I was number six or seven. I was in the middle. DONALD KOELLER: Tell me now what you can remember about a couple of things about your childhood? MATILDA KOELLER: Well, when I was two and a half, Grandma Forrest came to Chicago because there was an outbreak of hysteria or scarlet fever and oranges were very, very scarce. And mother always talked about Ruth being delirious and crawling under the bed looking for an orange because that seems to be one of the remedies. or not remedy but was something new. Oranges were something new at that time. And I was two and a half years old and I had it so bad that they carried me around in a pillow and I didn't eat for a whole month. And from the medicine, I got scars on my lips and Grandma Forrest prayed that I would die because I was so sick that there was nothing to me. I lost all my hair but some of my. DONALD KOELLER: The doctors couldn't do anything? MATILDA KOELLER: Well. DONALD KOELLER: What kind of doctoring was there? That would have been 1923, 1924? 9 MATILDA KOELLER: Well, there wasn't enough doctoring. They quarantined you. They couldn't even get a nurse and people wouldn't go near. DONALD KOELLER: Your Dad couldn't come home? [Unintelligible - 00:19:32] MATILDA KOELLER: No. And I think that Dad probably stayed home and took care or helped take care of us because there were five of us, I think. There was little Henry, and Ruth was very bad, and I was bad as well, and Margaret. So evidently, dad must have stayed home, had to stay home to take care because we were quarantined. You couldn't get anybody to come near us. DONALD KOELLER: Grandma Forrest came down to Loganville to help out. MATILDA KOELLER: Yeah. She came down to help us. DONALD KOELLER: That must have been very difficult. MATILDA KOELLER: Yeah. It was. and there were a lot of people that died because they didn't have no antibiotics then. DONALD KOELLER: Do you ever remember going to the doctor's office? [Unintelligible - 00:20:33] MATILDA KOELLER: Oh, yes, plenty, [laughs] plenty for my ear. From the scarlet fever, I got trouble with my ear. DONALD KOELLER: Do you want some coffee? MATILDA KOELLER: Yeah, we might just as well have the rest of the coffee. DONALD KOELLER: Go ahead. MATILDA KOELLER: Well, I had a running ear from the scarlet fever and of course the parents being poor, Dad only making $7 a week. well, I got coffee in there… yeah, just the water. The doctors would…so I went to a clinic, to an eye, ear, nose, and throat clinic. On Wednesday, Dad didn't work. That was his day off, and he would take me to this clinic. The clinic didn't seem – I don't remember too much about it, except squirting a lot of water in my ear to clear out the decaying bone that was forming. But when I was 23 years old, I got hold of an ear specialist and he said, "Absolutely no water," and he used this 10 x-ray in my ear for less than a minute to see, I think only two times. And with the medicine that he had, cleared up this running ear, which in my whole 20… in my years, I had syringed it and I was doing more harm to it than good. And, of course, time came in with medicine and dried out the decayed bone that was pretty well gone. DONALD KOELLER: The doctor just kept draining and. MATILDA KOELLER: Draining and. DONALD KOELLER: In all your teenage years. MATILDA KOELLER: And it had a terrible odor that before I had a date with a fellow, that was the very last thing I would do, was syringe it to clear it out, but before the evening [was], it was drippy, draining on me. It was terrible. DONALD KOELLER: [Unintelligible - 00:23:46]. MATILDA KOELLER: Yeah. It was really something, you know. DONALD KOELLER: Where did you go to school? MATILDA KOELLER: I went to. first, I went to [Perse] School near the church, near Paulina and I went. I was in first grade. I was only five years old. And one week or day, some boy rolled a snowball, rolled it in water, in melted snow and threw it and it landed right on my ear and I fainted. So they carried me in my sister's room and her girlfriend carried me into the room and there I had my head on the desk, I guess, half of the day. But I was plagued with earaches and headaches up until I was about. Well, every week, I had either a headache or an earache. DONALD KOELLER: Let's go back and talk more about the home and marriage of Jacob and Anna. MATILDA KOELLER: Well, when we lived around [Perse] School, nobody had bathrooms. You had your toilet in the hallway. And I still. DONALD KOELLER: This was a multifamily house. 11 MATILDA KOELLER: Yeah. Yeah. There were either two or four in the – I think in this place, it was four. DONALD KOELLER: Front and back and one upper story? MATILDA KOELLER: Yeah. Yeah. And we had a [unintelligible - 00:25:45], the toilets were, and there was no bath. But when. Dad, being a barber and seeing all these men coming home, you know, coming into the barber shop and needed a bath, so when he moved from around Paulina, he insisted about having a bathroom because then they were building the bathrooms in the house. DONALD KOELLER: This would be, say, 1910 or so? MATILDA KOELLER: This is. no, when I was 6 years old, in 1907. And we did. It must have been a bedroom because it was a big bathroom and a big tub. And from then on, we always had a bathroom, a bathtub and a toilet. Not a washstand, but just a bathtub and a toilet. That's one thing my father insisted upon, whenever we moved, was the bathroom. DONALD KOELLER: At that point in that house, there was electric light? MATILDA KOELLER: No. There was kerosene lamps then. We had kerosene lamps then. DONALD KOELLER: On the wall of the room? MATILDA KOELLER: Well, all I can remember is carrying the kerosene lamp, especially going to the bedroom. When we moved from there, we moved about two blocks away, above a grocery store, and then we had kerosene lamps. DONALD KOELLER: Do you remember getting electricity when you were still there? MATILDA KOELLER: Well, I think the first electricity was on Salem because I don't remember cleaning lamps there. DONALD KOELLER: How old were you when you moved to Salem? MATILDA KOELLER: I was about 13, 12 or 13 years old, when I moved to Salem because I went out of the district, the school. In those days, 12 you had to go to a school in your neighborhood. That was the law. But because my sister, Margaret, made coffee for the teachers and she had graduated in February, they asked me to take over the job of making coffee, and so I got a special permit to go out of the district to [drive] to school, you know, for the last year and a half of my schooling. And I made 10 cents a day. I think about a dollar a week they gave me for the. I used to get out of school at lunchtime, a half hour early, and made coffee for the school teachers. I carried my lunch because I was out of the district. I couldn't go home to eat. It's a little bit too far to walk. That was a. you had to go in your district. For instance, my brother, Ed, who was the next youngest, next to me, he only had a half a year of schooling to graduate and they wouldn't let him finish there. He had to go to the school in his district where Mother and Dad moved. But then he would have to start the whole eighth grade over and then he thought he wouldn't go to school anymore. So he. DONALD KOELLER: He never finished the eighth grade? MATILDA KOELLER: He never finished, never graduated because he wasn't going to take that half a year over again. DONALD KOELLER: But of the 10 children, brothers and sisters, almost all of your brothers and sisters finished? MATILDA KOELLER: No. Henry didn't, the second from the oldest. He did not finish. And then Ed did not finish./AT/mb/ee
The Marriott,Slaterville City Oral History Collection was created by the residents of the town to document their history. Each participant was provided with a list of questions asking for; stories about their childhood, schools they attended, stories about their parents and grand,parents, activities they enjoyed, fashions they remember, difficulties or traumas they may have dealt with, and memories of community and church leaders. This endeavor has left behind rich histories, stories and important information regarding the history of the Marriott,Slaterville area. ; 17p.; 29cm.; 2 bound transcripts; 4 file folders. 1 sound disc: digital; 4 3/4 in.; 1 videodisc: digital; 4 3/4 in. ; Abstract: This is an oral history of Orvil Holley. It was conducted March 1, 2007 and concerns his recollections of the history of the Marriott-Slaterville area. OH: Hello. My name is Orvil Holley. I was born in Slaterville, Utah on the 15th of November 1925. I was born in the old Echins home. That home still stands this day. In the spring of 1926 my family moved to the Rhoan Wheeler property, which is still there, and at that time it was across the road from the Slaterville Creamery, which was a cooperative association of dairy farmers in the area. It was active for some twenty years. My father was a dairyman and a farmer raising all kinds of crops such as peas, corn, alfalfa, wheat, barley, oats, beets, and some other crops. My father had married my mother who was a widow and he was a widower. He had a family, and when he married my mother she had three boys and a girl. I am the only child of my father and my mother. My mother was Amelia Echins Alan Holley and my father was Henry Ezra Holley. My father was in his forties when I was born and mother was a few years younger. I remember the early roads. When I was a youngster I particularly remember the grater pulled by what looked like a caterpillar tractor. It came along and grated the roads. Also there were a number of artesian sulfur wells that were drilled in Marriott and Slaterville. These wells were drilled for the purpose of filling up a tanker that was pulled by an old tractor or a team of horses that used to go along and water the roads to keep the dust down a little bit. I don't know if any of those old wells are still in existence or not. I also remember the kids walking to school. At that time the Slaterville School was located on the property where the Slaterville park is now, right where the backstop is in fact. It was really an interesting thing to me because it was the only building that I knew of that had inside plumbing. All of the farm boys enjoyed that particular part of the schoolhouse. There were many great things that happened in that school house. I'll have to tell you one. I think I was in about the fourth grade—maybe it was the third grade. The teacher was a man from North Ogden by the name of Charles Chandler. We only had Charles for one period. That was the last period of the day. Normally, our class was down in the basement, but for this class, the class that Mr. Chandler taught, we would go upstairs. It just so happened that on this particular day three of the boys decided that they would sluff. They were older boys. Their names were Clyde Hunter, Raymond Bowans and Delore Echins. For some reason, they decided that they would get in the closet upstairs and hide in that closet as the classes changed and then they would sneak out of the closets and open a window and go out onto the roof of the restrooms and slide down on the ground and away they would go. Well…it just so happened that Mr. Chandler saw them going into the closet. He called our class to go into that room where the closet was. In those days the children's seats were all on runners. They would put a row of seats and maybe six or seven, maybe eight seats to one runner. So when you move the seats you had to move the runners too. He had us move those seats right over next to the closet. The closet had two doors that opened to the outside towards us. Then Mr. Chandler got his chair and put the back of it up against the door and his feet on these seats that we were sitting in. There was no way that those boys could get out of that room. Well about two-thirds of the way through the class we could hear some rustling going on inside that room. It was a very small room, they were in cramped conditions. Then all of a sudden we could hear what sounded like water—a trickle of water running into a can. But what the person didn't know in the closet was that this was a flower can that had holes in the bottom and pretty soon a little yellow stream came out from underneath the door and into our classroom. You can imagine what the class was like in that particular incident. I thought you might be interested in that. It might be interesting to say a little bit about those old country schools. They weren't very large. The Slaterville School for example had four rooms, two downstairs and two upstairs. But only one of the rooms downstairs was used for teaching. The other room was never fixed up for teaching. It was still dirt, dirt floor—the only things that I can remember that connected that with any of the other rooms were the heating pipes that went through the room. That was a wonderful place for the kids to play in the wintertime. But it was a little dusty and I can remember seeing dust so thick that you couldn't see from one end of the room to the other. Now generally speaking, school went through the eighth grade, but when I started school, school went through the ninth grade. The way it worked is, we had three classes in each room. So in the basement we had the first, second, and third grade all in the same room. Then the two rooms upstairs had third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, and on up into eighth or maybe ninth. I don't remember which. Anyway, it was kind of an interesting thing as one teacher handled all three grades. My first grade class—the most it ever had in it was about eight and sometimes it only had five, most of the time it was about six kids in the first grade. And some of those kids are still alive today and still live in Slaterville. In as much as my mother was born in a house that was almost on the borderline between Slaterville and Marriott. She attended the Marriott School for some years. We know that some of the Marriott kids attended the Slaterville School some years. In fact, I remember when I was in school that Marriott—when we were in the sixth grade, Marriott had no sixth graders and we did have Marriott fifth graders over in our school. So it is kind of an interesting setup in these schools. Well let's go back to the very earliest days, before there was a Slaterville, before there was a Marriott. About 1850, there was some movement of people out into this area of the county. At that time there was no Marriott, there was no Slaterville. In fact, one of the things that we are trying to find out at this time is "when did Marriott become Marriott and when did Slaterville become Slaterville?" So far, we can't nail that down. But the first settlers in Slaterville were the Steven Slater family—the Steven Perry family. They settled on the North side of what became known as Mill Creek. Right across from Mill Creek was Marriott. Just when Marriott was settled was, I understand, about the same time. We still have some of the descendants of Steven Perry living in Slaterville today. The man for whom Slaterville is named, Richard Slater, came into Slaterville in 1853. As you can tell he wasn't one of the original settlers so it wasn't named Slaterville because he was an original settler. Tradition has it that was named Slaterville after Richard Slater because he was a member of the Mormon Battalion. I think that was why Slaterville became as it was. The earliest documentation of the name Slaterville comes from the Deseret News and it is at about 1860. It mentions Slaterville as one of the little communities West of Ogden City. Naturally it had to be named Slaterville before that appeared in the Deseret News but just when, we don't know. Irrigation was very important to the people in all of Weber County. If you think of Slaterville, it was a very good place for those early settlers to make their homes because of the water sources. On the South end was the Ogden-Weber River. In the middle was Mill Creek. And on the north end was Four-Mile Creek. They had three water sources going through the community. Now they had to have a way for getting the water from those ditches—those creeks and streams—out to the farms. This is an amazing thing to me. Those old pioneers had some system of knowing where to put those canals and those ditches so they flowed easily with nothing but gravity to pull them along and yet they are still in existence and still being used today. It is magnificent. Now because the water was so important, it was important for those canals and ditches to be clean. That was quite a thing. The presidents of the companies would call to their members and say we are going to clean on such and such a day and we would like you to show up. There would be a huge turnout of men with horses and with cultivators and scrapers and men with shovels and hoes and rakes. They would start—sometimes they would start on each end of the canals and work towards each other. In those days, they cleaned those canals—they were really neat and clean. The ditches were the same way. They were very cooperative one with another even though they may have had some difficulties religiously; they still were together in those community projects. Now I mentioned something about even though citizens in the city or in the town of Slaterville particularly, may not have been together religiously but worked cooperatively on community programs such as cleaning ditches and so forth. I might say, in about 1860 there was a man that came into Slaterville by the name of Joseph Morris. He was very successful in teaching his religious views to particularly the western half of the Slaterville community. So successful was he, that he was invited to leave by the ecclesiastical authorities here in the community. So he left and he took with him almost all the western half of the community, over fifty people were involved. They went to South Weber. I might tell you one little story that comes out of that settlement. When Joseph Morris left Slaterville he went to South Weber. It has always been our belief—in fact, it was so written in a Master's thesis that I did, that this happened to William Jones of Slaterville. But within the last six months we learned that it is not William Jones of Slaterville but William Jones of Marriott that this happened to. We are just learning that the people of Marriott were also involved, more than one, in having people who have succumbed to Mr. Morris's work. They all moved over to South Weber. At the height of the community there is believed to be about seven hundred people in the South Weber area who were connected with the Morrisites. The story goes that Mr. Jones was disappointed with some of the things that Morris was teaching. For example, he was teaching that the advent of the Savior was imminent. He even set the day. When the savior didn't come, Mr. Morris found that he had made a mistake in his calculations and so set another day. He still didn't show up so some of the Morrisites started to get a little bit nervous. Brother Jones from Marriott decided that he would leave and take his wife and away they went. One of the problems that they have is they had to give everything that they owned into the Morrisite Prophet Morris. If anybody wanted to leave they were allowed to leave but they couldn't take anything with them that they had brought such as grain and flour or food stuffs of any sort. That had to stay and that kind of bothered Mr. Jones. One day after he and his wife left he saw a wagon load of wheat coming out of Kingston Fort which was the name of the area where Mr. Morris and his people lived. This wagon load of grain was headed for the grist mill. Mr. Jones knew that he had contributed much more than one load of grain to the Morrisite cause and he didn't have anything to live on so he decided to commandeer this load of grain, which he did. But when the news got back to Mr. Morris, he sent some of his people to regain the grain. He also took into custody Mr. and Mrs. Jones. This caused a lot of trouble. The Jones' relatives went to the legal authorities to try and get them to go and see if they could get the release of Mr. and Mrs. Jones, which they tried to do but were unsuccessful. Finally, it got so bad that they asked the Governor of the state to send the militia to South Weber. The Governor was not in Utah at the time but the person who took his place was in charge and he did call out the militia. They came into South Weber and we can't go into detail on that but just to say that the militia at a certain time open fired and I have held in my hands the cannonball that came down the side of the mountain, bounced along, went through the fence where Mr. and Mrs. Jones had been kept in custody, landed in the lap of Mrs. Jones. That cannonball is still in existence and the descendents of the Jones family still have it. Just a little story to let you know how things went sometimes in those days. Going back a little bit to my early days—needless to say, my mother and father never owned a home of their own until they were both at sixty years. They always rented. They worked hard. Their families that were with them worked hard. We always had good living conditions. I was born in a brick home. When we went to the Wheeler place it was a brick home. When we moved back to the Echins place it was still a brick home. We had a good home. We also came up through the '30's, which was the depression. You could go to town—when I was a boy, about seven or eight years old, once a week we would go to town on a Saturday. I always went with my cousin. Either we rode with his folks or he rode with ours. One of the great things that we lived for all week was to go to Ross & Jacks and eat. You could get burger, spuds for fifteen cents, which was enough to feed a man. Then for ten cents more you could get a pie. So for twenty-five cents you could get a meal. Then we would go to the movies, it was a double-feature for a dime. We were well taken care of as far as that type of thing was concerned. A lot of the boys rode horses in those days. A lot of the boys had some really fine horses. They liked to swim in the river. It was dangerous. My older brother almost drowned in the river but Alvin Cobabe who now owns Powder Mountain and Arthur Slater saved his life. They remember it and he remembers it even better than they do. We used to have what was called ward reunions once every year. Everybody was invited back to that particular ward on a particular date and they had the most fun and the greatest time that you can imagine. Slaterville's reunion was always on the last Thursday of January. Marriott's reunion was in February, I don't remember the date but they still hold their reunion. Marriott still holds their ward reunion. All the other towns around—Farr West, Harrisville, Plain City, Hooper, Taylor, Riverdale—they all have their reunions. It wasn't unusual for our people from the Slaterville area to go to Marriott and Marriott would come to Slaterville, then they would go to Plain City. It was something they looked forward to that they could have a really wonderful time once each month and sometimes more than that because some of the other communities held their reunion the same month. You can't imagine, unless you see it, what the dancing was like. The dances were learned dances—quadrilles—and everybody did the same steps, the same moves on the floor. They had Virginia reels, which sometimes people still have today but those kind of dances, where everyone knows what the dance is and they all dance it. It was just beautiful to see. They would dance their shoes off and just have the greatest time. It was just wonderful folks. Not being familiar with how all the wards handled their reunions, I will just tell you how Slaterville did theirs. Normally it was on the last Thursday of January. The first program started at about eleven o'clock in the morning. It continued for about an hour and a half and then it was time for the dinner. Even though the areas they had to prepare those dinners, you wouldn't expect that they could do the jobs that they did. They had everything. You can't believe it. And what a spread they would put on. And all the wards were the same. They all just went all out. When people were so full that they could hardly walk back up the stairs, they would go back up and there may be another program for thirty minutes while the dinner settled and then they would go to dancing. This is in the afternoon. They would dance until time to go back down for the evening meal. They would go back down and have the evening meal, then they would come back up and they would have another program. These programs folks were great. Those people were talented. They could do anything. They were great actors. They would do—it was just amazing. When that program was over, usually about eight-thirty at night, we pushed the benches back and pile them up on top of each other to make room on the dance floor and then the dance began. It never finished until one or two o'clock in the morning. It was just great. I have been asked to say a little bit about my college years. I have to confess that it took me three years to get through two years of work at Weber College. I only would go two quarters a year and then in the Spring I would have to go home and start to plant and get ready for the next year—the harvest for that year. Then in the Fall I could go back to College and I would go for two quarters, Fall and Winter. While I was at Weber College I became involved with a group of young men who were musicians. I was not a musicians, I had never had a music lesson in my life. The three other fellows were studying music and were fine musicians. Somehow they invited me to join them in a quartet. This quartet lasted for quite a number of years. We sang professionally all over the state of Utah, Idaho, we sang at Sun Valley for the Union Pacific Railroad who owned Sun Valley. In fact, we were invited to go back to Sun Valley and sing for a big convention which hosted President Truman. I wanted to go so bad my teeth hurt but the other fellows said, "No, we have got finals coming up and we are not going to do it." So we didn't get to do that. Following that year, my final year at Weber College, these three wanted to go to the University of Utah to school so we went down there and had a great time. We lived together in an old army barracks. The war was now over, World War II was now over. We practiced our singing every day. We were on the first television station that broadcasts out of Utah, old KDYL. We had a program every week which gave us a little money to spend and we also were hired to sing at big conventions all over the city in Salt Lake that year. The next year our quartet kind of broke up a little bit because I was called on a mission and was gone for two years. When I came back we got together again and even had an agent. I often laugh at the agent's name, his name was Bill Risky. We always used to laugh that it was "Risky business" that we were in. They had graduated college by the time I got home. I went back to the University of Utah but an unusual thing happened. The President of Weber College had been Henry Aldous Dixon. He had been called and given the chance to become President of Utah State. I got a call from President Dixon one afternoon and he said, "I'd like you to come up and take care of the program bureau here at Utah State." I explained to President Dixon that I only needed thirteen hours to graduate from the "U" and I knew that it was required that you have fifteen hours from the institution from which you were to graduate. He said, "I think we can work that out." So I went up to Utah State and headed the program bureau up there and formed a quartet up at Utah State. We traveled all over the country for Utah State, advertising Utah State to the high schools in Idaho and Wyoming, Utah, we even went to California on one big trip. We had a great time, a wonderful experience. So I graduated from Utah State with a Bachelor of Science degree in speech and dramatics. I taught two years in public school and then was hired by the LDS church to teach seminary. It was required that we go down to BYU for a symposium which lasted six, seven, eight weeks every other summer. We decided instead of just going down there let's work on a degree. So many of us worked on a degree down there and I graduated with a Master's degree from BYU in 1966. It has been suggested that I give a little ecclesiastical history of the area. I think that has been well written up as far as the early days of Ogden City and Weber County is concerned. I know that Lorin Farr had a great deal to do with both the ecclesiastical and political history here in the Ogden area. There were some others who were very influential. Before there was any ecclesiastical authority in Slaterville, we were no doubt part of the Northern Stake of Zion at that time—two stakes of Zion, one in the Northern part of Weber County and the other in the Southern part. The first ecclesiastical person to hold an office in Slaterville was a man by the name of Thomas Richardson. He was something like a Branch President. He served faithfully for quite a number of years. One of his counselors was Edwin Smoot. After several years had gone by, Thomas Richardson began not feeling too well and also he was going to receive the call of Patriarch, so it was decided that Slaterville would probably become a ward. During the time that Thomas Richardson was not active as the Branch President, Brother Smoot being next in line did most of the ecclesiastical work in the Slaterville area. We are very grateful to Mr. Smoot for keeping a journal. In it he records the things that he did ecclesiastically—setting people apart, baptizing them, helping people do this and do that. He was very active. But a sad thing occurred when they held a meeting to announce the new Bishop. Brother Smoot thought that it would be him and it turned out to be John A. Allred. Brother Smoot withdrew from the church and took a good number with him. In reading his journal, you read up right to the day when they chose Allred as the Bishop. He recounts his great work in the church. Following the Bishops choosing and ordaining, Brother Smoot never says one more thing about the church except, "I asked them to take my name off the rolls." Kind of a sad day. We have been quite fortunate in this Slaterville area. Towns all around us have seen a great deal of growth. The old farmers have tried to hang on to most of the property that they have had and have tried to farm it. But we have finally seen a change in the last several years. Now within about the last year we have two fairly large developments in the Slaterville-Marriott area. It is sometimes a little difficult for us old timers to realize that other people need homes to live in too. We think we have a beautiful area here. The people have been united in the things that have been going on as far as organizing the present city of Marriott-Slaterville, which is now approximately sixteen years old. It has been amazing how the people have worked together. Before, Marriott and Slaterville didn't always get along the best. I could tell you stories about that. Maybe I will. Today, Marriott and Slaterville have a church where we meet together. We have three wards in that building and we are getting along fine. I am sure it is different than what some of the older folks thought we would be able to do. When Slaterville first decided that they needed a new building—they had no Bishop's office, they had to meet in the coal room, the furnace room of the building, to hold their Bishop meetings. Things were just not good for that particular time. Things were changing in the church. More meetings were being held. Finally, the bishopric of the Slaterville ward decided that they would see what they could do to make the old building suitable for the situation of the day. They got an architect to draw up some plans. When he finished the plans they looked good to the ward leaders and so the ward leaders asked the architect how much this would cost. He said nineteen thousand dollars should do it. So the bishopric scratched their heads and tried to figure out who on earth they could borrow nineteen thousand dollars from to build the building and pay the man back so much a month—if we could find somebody. Finally, one man came up as the one who could loan us nineteen thousand dollars. He was a bachelor, he had never married. He wasn't a member of the church. In fact, he was descendents of people who had joined the Morrisites. His name was Joe Stevens. We made an appointment and met with Joe and visited with him a few minutes. Then the bishop told him why we were there, that we had come to ask him if he would loan us nineteen thousand dollars to remodel the old church. Joe came up out of his chair and he said, "My goodness, I haven't got that kind of money." So we chatted a little bit and the amazing thing was before we left the house he wanted to know if he could be baptized. Shortly after, he was baptized. He died within just very few weeks after we had visited with Joe in his home. But he died a member of the church. Now how did Marriott and Slaterville get together? Well nobody thought they could. Half of Slaterville didn't think they could get along with Marriott and half of Marriott didn't think they could get along with Slaterville. But the two bishoprics got together and they had determined that they would look for a place to build. They picked a place on the old Marriott farm over in Marriott where California Pack had purchased one acre of property from the Marriott family to build a pea viner. The two wards purchased that piece of property from California Pack. Then the two wards were trying to decide how they were going to go about raising money and whatnot to try and move the project along. In the meantime, the committee in Marriott had written a letter to the first presidency, President David O. McKay, explaining that they would prefer to build their own building. Well not long after that letter was received by President McKay, the two bishoprics received word from our Stake President, President Wimmer, that two of the General Authorities, Bishop Vandenburg, the presiding Bishop of the church, and Elder Thomas Monson, a new member of the Quorum of the Twelve, were assigned to come up and meet with us. So the day was set and we met with Brother Vandenburg and Elder Monson in the basement of the old Slaterville church. After the pleasantries were over, Elder Monson looked at Bishop Buck, Bishop of the Marriott Ward, Clarence Buck, and he said, "President McKay has received your letter and read your letter and he has told us that we are not to come here and try to push a building down your throat. If you want to build a building, you are welcome to do so. However, be cautioned, you won't be able to afford the kind of building that you need, and it is our desire that you two wards get together if you possibly can." Then there was some discussion between Bishop Buck and the General Authorities concerning the problem, and with how many people were opposed to it in Marriott. There was sufficient number that it would cause some concern. Bishop Vandenburg, all of a sudden, he lighted up like a light and said, "Well I am from Ogden and I know Marriott. There are some Dutch people in Marriott aren't there? And Bishop Buck said, "Yes, there are." "Well they'll support you won't they?" "Well they are the worst ones in the whole ward." Bishop Vandenburg dropped his head and Elder Monson looked over at me and smiled and then he said, "How do you change a Dutchman's mind, Bishop?" Bishop Vandenburg sat there for a second, looked up and said, "You can't." Anyway, we got together and rode with the General Authorities around to look at different places where we might build and they picked out the spot where the church now stands. We dedicated that building in 1968. So it is almost forty years old. I think we have gotten along as good or better than most of the wards have who just had the wards divided among themselves. It has been really quite a wonderful thing. Now since those two wards went together some sixteen years ago, Marriott and Slaterville, the residents of those two communities, by a huge majority of vote, voted to go together to form a city. The city's name is Marriott-Slaterville. There was some opposition to that. Some people said, "That was too long a name, make it simpler." They pointed out other communities that had done that. But we knew the makeup of Marriott and Slaterville. Slaterville didn't want to lose its identity and Marriott didn't want to lose theirs. So why not Marriott-Slaterville? The wards today are Marriot-Slaterville 1, Marriott-Slaterville 2, and Marriott-Slaterville 3.
Transcript of an oral history interview with W. Russell Todd conducted by Joseph Cates at the Sullivan Museum and History Center on May 16 and May 19, 2016, as part of the Norwich Voices oral history project. W. Russell Todd graduated from Norwich University in 1950 and was president of the university from 1982 to 1992. In his interview, he discusses his thirty-two years of active duty in the U.S. Army as well as his experiences at Norwich University. ; 1 W. Russell Todd, NU '50, Oral History Interview Interviewed on May 16, 2016 and May 19, 2016 At Sullivan Museum and History Center Interviewed by Joseph Cates JOSEPH CATES: This is Joseph Cates. Today is May 16th, 2016. I'm interviewing General Russell Todd. This interview is taking place at the Sullivan Museum and History Center. This interview is sponsored by the Sullivan Museum and History Center and is part of the Norwich Voices Oral History Project. OK, first tell me your full name. RUSSELL TODD: William Russell Todd. JC: When were you born? RT: I was born on the first day of May, 1928, in Seattle, Washington. JC: What Norwich class are you? RT: Class of 1950. My father was 26. My son was -- I'll think about that. JC: Well, we'll get back to that. Tell me about where you grew up and your childhood. RT: For the first year of my life we lived in Seattle, Washington. Dad had a job with a lumber company out there, getting experience to come back to work for his father, who ran a lumber company just outside Milton, Massachusetts. So I grew up for the first nine or ten years in Milton, Massachusetts, a very nice place, right on the edge of where Mattapan and Milton come together. There was a lot of traffic. Well, just for an example, during that period of time I came up with my dad to his fifteenth reunion, and the difference in traffic between where we lived and what we found up here was considerable. When I got back to school on Monday the teacher said, "Russell had a day off. He's now going to tell us what he saw." Well, nothing came to mind, and I stood and told them that I had seen something they had never seen, miles and miles and miles of dirt roads. Now I live on one. (laughs) JC: Was that the first time you were ever at Norwich? RT: Yeah. JC: What was your impression of it when you first saw it? RT: It was a very interesting period of time. It was just before World War II affected the United States, and many, many people were sending their sons to Norwich -- rather than perhaps better prepared schools -- because they could get a commission. They assumed that everyone was going to go to war, and the opportunity of getting an education and a commission together at the same time really appealed to a lot of people. Our football team got everybody we wanted of great quality. We won all the games in that time 2 frame. And we had some very, very fine people who came back in 1946, the year I entered the university, and they made a big impression on my life. JC: I'm sure. I assume the buildings were the same. There weren't any new buildings between the time that you went and -- RT: As a matter of fact it was 1941 I believe, and two buildings on the main parade ground were being dedicated. One wasn't quite finished, and the other was, and two new dormitories shows you an example of what I was saying, how it was a golden period in Norwich's history. But saying that, the opposite is true when the war ends. You remember that we had, what, 15 cadets come up here after the Civil War. They all got off the train, (laughs) yeah, we don't think much about that. It's happened each time there's been a war. The incentive, or the idea, or the concept of perhaps having to serve didn't appeal to a lot of people at the end of wars. JC: Right. You kind of have a boom before the war and a bust after the war. RT: Yeah. JC: What made you decide to come to Norwich? RT: I think probably that trip did, that and the fact my dad was always talking about it. He would make us on Saturday nights -- eating beans and franks -- to sing Norwich songs around the table. (laughs) JC: Do you remember any of those Norwich songs? RT: There's a good one. What is it? "Oh, My First Sergeant" "Oh, my first sergeant, he is the worst of them all. He gets us up in the morning before first call. It's fours right, fours left, and left foot into line. And then the dirty son of a buck, he gives us double time. Oh, it's home, boys, home. It's home we ought to be. Home, boys, home, in the land of liberty. And we'll all be back to Norwich when the sergeant calls the roll." JC: That's wonderful. (laughter) I've heard in some of the oral histories "On the Steps of Old Jackman," but I haven't heard that one before. (Todd laughs) So when you came here with your father, was that during homecoming? RT: Well, homecoming and graduation were the same period of time. It was fascinating to me. It was a cavalry school. They had all kinds of drills that we went to and watched, and prizes were awarded. People loading up the water-cooled submachine guns on horseback and racing around, then taking them down, and putting in ammunition blanks, and firing -- you know, first, second, and third prizes kind of thing. Oh, yeah, that impressed me. Then, of course, the parades were fun to see. But it took about three days to get through graduation and homecoming as a single entity. JC: When you came to Norwich what did you major in? 3 RT: That's an interesting story. As I said, Norwich was having trouble at that time recruiting people, and I got recruited by the president of the university. We met in Boston, and he asked me all the things I was interested in, and to him it looked like I should be an engineer, and he wanted me to take an exam that would carry that forward. Well, I took the exam, and I became an engineer, and about the first part of the second semester I discovered you really had to do the homework. I really didn't like that much, and I wasn't doing very well, so I changed my major to history and economics. I really found that fascinating. JC: Well, tell me about what it was like being a rook here. RT: Yeah, another interesting thing. I was sold on the rook system, and my dad had always talked about it. When he brought me up here, people would drop off their suitcases, and go right out onto the parade ground, and start being ordered around by the corporal. I thought that was great. I never seemed super. But I didn't have many followers on that. I was very anxious that my father leave, and get out of there, and go home, and I convinced him to do that. But after, oh, maybe a month the class, who had elected class officers by that time, called a class meeting, and we all got together -- I've forgotten where now. "We got to stop this. We got to tell these guys we're not going to put up with this nonsense. We've got to show our power." I stood up and said, "Gentlemen, this isn't what we want to do. We want to put up. We want to show him we can do it," and I got booed right off the stage. However, they eventually made me class secretary, so I didn't lose all my friends that day. (laughs) JC: Now let's talk about post-war Norwich, because you did say there's kind of a bust. There isn't as many people. RT: Yeah, I think we had 200 in our class, and there was no really classes of Bubbas. Norwich toward the end of the war, when they were really desperate to get money to pay salaries to the faculty, had a high-school level. I think it was two years, the high-school level, and many people went into that and came up here, and that toward the end made some income for the university. But what it did for us, as an incoming class of freshmen, we had our officers, lieutenants, who were younger than we were, but they'd been here two years. You know, that didn't sit over very well either. That was difficult. JC: And the cavalry was still here at that time. RT: It was, yeah, for the first two years of my term and tenure at Norwich, at that point. JC: What do you remember about the horse cavalry? RT: Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Well, let's just put it this way. The first person I visited in Northfield when I came back as president was my old sergeant [Kenoyer?], who we hated. He was tough. But on the other hand, we really liked him, and I felt very, very sorry for him, and I really wanted to see him. His son had won entry into West Point, and 4 about two nights before he was to report in he and a bunch of his buddies were in an automobile accident. I think they were hit by a train and killed. Sergeant [Kenoyer?] was never the same after that. He continued to ride horses in the parades in Northfield and that kind of thing. But he was a character. His education was perhaps at the level he was working, taking care of the horses, and taking care of the riding. He was a good man, but, for example, I had a roommate named George Pappas who was scared to death of the horses, and some of the horses knew it. They knew when you were afraid. And old George would step into the stable area, ready to put on the harness, and that old horse would just back him into the wall and lean on him -- oh, you win. Then, of course, [Kenoyer?] would come by and say, "Kick him in the neb with your knee!" Well, no one was going to do that, trapped in there. So George, he decided that he would skip equitation classes, and instead he took 10 demerits for every single class that he was supposed to be at, and he spent his first semester walking around the parade ground on Saturdays carrying a rifle, doing tours. Many things can be said about George. That's a whole other story of absolute wonder. But it was difficult. We only went down once a week actually to use them, but there really wasn't a hell of lot you can learn in one-hour time once a week. But toward the end of the freshman year we were out trotting around in the neighborhoods, etc. I remember one time one of the captains in the Army ROTC program there, officers, Army officers, lead us on a parade, and we went out across the railroad tracks and up into the hills. And on the way back the horses got the idea they themselves would like to jog back to the stables, and we came charging down that hill totally out of control. Some of the horses and men went all the way to downtown before they came under it. I went through the football practice. (laughs) It wasn't everything it was cracked up to be. Now there were some people here, including a classmate by the name of Bob [Bacharat?] [00:13:18] who really was a polo player. He came from Switzerland. I think that's the reason he came to Norwich was to be able to play polo, and we played polo in that time frame with people like Miami who flew their horses up here. Now, I never saw the plane, but we were told all this and a few years earlier, before the war, that Norwich was playing the big colleges and winning. Toward the end of the first year we played something called broom polo, which they'd throw out a basketball on the floor, and then you'd have to hit it with a broom to get it to go to the goal. Those kinds of things were fun to watch. I remember one time George, my roommate, in skipping class went up into the stands, which are on the south end of the hall, but up above in a balcony, and he opened the window and got a snowball, several of them, and put them up there. When somebody would go by, the stove down on the floor -- there were four stoves in that place -- they'd get red hot, but they really didn't make a hell of a lot of difference when the temperature was 30 below or whatever it might have been outside. And the horses, when you'd take them from the stable to the riding hall, would fight you all the way; they didn't want to go out in that cold. But George, on one occasion, dropped snowballs on those red-hot stoves, and you can imagine, they hissed. As the horse went by, this great hiss came out, and the horse would throw the guy, or run for the far -- I went hell bent for election to the far wall. And when he stopped, I went right up onto his neck and was hanging on. Sergeant [Kenoyer?] came over and gave me hell, you know, "You didn't take control of that horse." (inaudible) [00:15:36] There are people lying down all 5 around, and the horses are running around. Well, there's a certain romance in having the horses, so long as you're sitting in the stands watching a polo game. (laughs) JC: Had you ever ridden a horse before? RT: No, never. JC: So you didn't have any experience with horses. RT: Neither did anybody else. Yeah, yeah. They were wonderful animals though, for the most part. JC: Now you said a lot of the people that were there before the war came back after the war to finish up. RT: Mm-hmm. A lot may be too much of an adjective to use, but Alumni Hall was essentially filled with non-married veterans, or veterans who hadn't brought their wives back. Civilian clothes and having nothing to do with the military. The rest of the dormitories were filled with 200 and whatever it was cadets, and the very few upperclassmen like the one I mentioned who came up through the high school route. We didn't have a lot to do with them, and they were very serious about their studies in the classrooms, very serious about their studies. The fraternization took place after the first of the year when we could go into a fraternity house, and I remember the older veterans -- older, 22 maybe -- who were in Theta Chi, where I was, were a remarkable bunch of people and very, very much appreciated. They didn't always come to dinner with us, but they were in the house and participated with it. They ranged all the way from a parachutist in Europe to a lieutenant colonel in the air force. So that's a big gap. But they were great guys who made fraternity life reasonable. JC: Well, tell me about Theta Chi. Why did you choose that one? RT: Oh, yeah, the same old story, the same reason I came here. My dad was a Theta Chi. Why, of course that's what I'd do. This is my father's fraternity, you know. JC: So what were the fraternities like? RT: They weren't too bad. When General Harmon eliminated them, I thought it was the right thing to do, because there weren't fraternities at other military colleges. And when they were started I really believe they were very useful. They were much more an eating club, and since there wasn't a mess in the university in the 1850s. If you look into some of the old records you'll see at graduation time they invited the alumni back to have dinner, and they had dances. They had inter-fraternity baseball and football, etc. We were trying at my time, in my fraternity, to replicate that. It wasn't perhaps as successful as it might have been. It was great fun to beat SigEp in baseball or something. But it was a different part of the university. I remember one time when I was a corporal, and one of the men in the rank under me, in the barracks, was in the fraternity. We get down to the fraternity, 6 and he would give me a hard time for giving him a hard time. It wasn't what I thought it should be, but it was a good time. I mean, don't misunderstand me. Well, it was a fraternity. (laughs) The girls came in by train, if they were away. Carol came up several times on a train to spring break, or a winter carnival, and that kind of thing. That was good sport to have a place where we could party. There was no drinking - baloney, there wasn't. (Coates laughs) I remember one time we were having lunch, and one of the seniors, one of the veterans that had come back, was the president of the house, and he said, "Our Theta Chi member on the faculty, old Professor Woodbury, is going to be our chaperone for the party. Does anybody know Professor Woodbury?" "I know Professor Woodbury. My father told me about him. I've met him once." He said, "Good. You and your date will sit in the living room with the Woodburys while we're down in the basement drinking." (laughter) It wasn't much fun that night. We had the bars hidden behind sliding doors, or doors that pulled down, and all this kind of stuff, so if we got word that there was someone from the faculty coming we could close it up and all sit down, smile, and look like there was no alcohol in the place. JC: Can you tell me a little bit about winter carnival and some of the dances that you all had? RT: They were good sport. Much of the fun though centered around the fraternity at that time. Yes, of course we went to the dance, etc., but before going to the dance we probably went to the fraternity, and certainly after the dance we went to the fraternity, and that was really good sport. In my senior year my roommate, Rollin S. Reiter, from Ohio decided that in his fraternity they were going to have a special Christmas party. Now, it didn't make an awful lot of sense, because it was right at exam time. We took exams right in that time frame, so he really had to work to get these guys. They were going to do it in tuxedoes, not in our uniforms, so that slowed it down a little, too. But one of the guys, Chubby Jordan, who has since passed away, he was a brigadier general in the Massachusetts National Guard later on, an ex-marine. He didn't want to go do it, so they convinced him that he had to do it, and they would get him a date. When he went to the fraternity house, he was introduced to the worst looking girl in the place, and he immediately started drinking beer and avoiding her and all this. It wasn't even the girl they were going to match him up with, and they just were teasing him something awful. When he got very sleepy they put him on the pool table, laid out flat like in a mortuary and put two lit candles, one at either end of him on the pool table. It was a sight for sore eyes. (laughs) JC: I bet it was. Now you were on the rook committee while you were there? RT: Yeah. In my sophomore year I was the head of the rook committee, elected by the class. During the summer period of time I had to get together with the printers and the university and go through this business. There were big posters that said "Beware, Rook, Beware," and then they listed all the things down. We'd get them printed up here by John Mazuzan down in the Northfield Press, and then we'd sell them to the rooks at $1 apiece. I don't know what we did with the money, in the class coffers I guess. Yeah. I remember that President Dodge, who had no military experience previous, but was a very, very well known scientist and had been the dean of one of the big Midwestern schools in that area, 7 he was brought in by some hefty people on the board of trustees. He didn't fit. He didn't understand us. He was a great academic and did some very fine things for the university. But he called me in one day, as head of the rook committee, and said, "When will this period end?" This was right after supper. I said to him, "Sir, it's very clear. It's right on the chart." He said, "I want it to end at Thanksgiving." I said, "Sir, I don't think you're talking to the right guy. You should really be talking to the commandant of cadets, your left-hand man." He said, "Well, I don't know if I can convince him," and I thought, oh, my God, what have we got here, you know. (laughter) He was a fine gentleman, but the minute it was possible for the alumni to discover that General Harmon might be available, in May of my senior year, Dodge was gone. The alumni just -- it wasn't working the way they wanted to see it work. JC: So Harmon was not president any of the time that you were here? RT: His inauguration was held at the same time as my graduation. It was one thing. He had been here for maybe a month, and I remember that we had a football banquet, and they invited General Harmon to come. And he stood up and told us all that he had been here as a cadet, and he had come back in 1935 as the commandant of cadets, and he loved and understood this university, and he was going to make it famous, you know, kind of, "Yeah!" Just the kind of story we needed. Then he told us a story that just curdled me. It was a dirty story. I'd never heard some guy stand up in a dinner and tell a dirty story. It sort of surprised me. He had that reputation. As a matter of fact, one time later in my career, when I was in the army, I was asked by my boss if I would go back to Hamilton, Massachusetts, where I had lived at one time and see Mrs. George Patton, and tell her that her son-in-law -- as a brigadier general -- was about to be sent to Fort Knox, Kentucky. He was married to one of Patton's daughters, and he is now a bachelor. I was to go with three sets of quarters' plans and say, "Which of these, General, would you choose, because we at Fort Knox can now get the house painted up and ready for you, and all this kind of stuff ahead of time?" Well, Mrs. Patton agreed. When the time actually came general orders was late in his itinerary and couldn't be there, so she said, "Why don't you and Carol just come to dinner, and we'll talk about this? I will pass your message to Johnny when he comes through next week, and your leave is over." So that was just fine. But we had a quiet period in that Mrs. Patton was at one end of a long table, and I was at the other end, and Carol was in the middle, and there was a little old maid with a bonnet on her head, and an apron moving around quietly around the room. Everything went silent, and I said, "I can handle this." I said to Mrs. Patton, "Mrs. Patton, do you happen to know General Harmon?" And she said, "Indeed, I do, Russell, and he's a very disgusting man." (laughter) Now as it turns out, she gave an award right after that, she gave an award at Norwich of a similar pistol of General Patton's famous (inaudible) [00:29:38] to the leading cadet. But she was clear. (laughter) JC: Yeah, I've heard stories about General Harmon. RT: He did a great job. He stayed too long, but he did a great job. 8 JC: Well, what clubs were you in when you were here at Norwich? RT: Yeah, I went out for football. I'd come from a little school in Wenham, Massachusetts, where we played six-man football, and if one guy was sick, it didn't look like we were going to play, you know, kind of thing. I went out for football in Beverly High School, and that was danger. I mean, I wasn't up to that. When we got to Norwich I said, "I'm going back out for football. This looks like --" They were mostly freshmen. There were some veterans that came back, and there were some very good veteran players who came back but weren't interested in playing football. They wanted to study and have a family life. So Norwich had a terrible football team during that period of time. About the second day of practice Joe Garrity, who'd been a friend of my dad's who I had known, put his arm on my shoulder as we walked back to the locker room and said, "I've got a job for you." And I thought to myself, I'm going to be quarterback for the freshman team. And he said, "You're my manager, how about that?" and I said, "Oh, OK." Later in life, when I became president, the alumni director here, Dave Whaley, took me out to visit various alumni clubs. In Chicago a fellow named Hale Lait, who played football and was co-captain in his senior year, started to walk up to us, and Dave says, "Mr. Lait, do you know General Todd?" Hale Lait says, "Shit, he used to wash my jock." (laughter) And it was true! We had a big laundry over there. JC: Were you in any other clubs while you were here? RT: Yeah, I'd have to think upon it. We had an international relations club that I became president of at some point of time under -- oh, come on, his name is skipping me. I'll come back to it. But we brought I people to speak on the issues, and then Norwich formed an alliance with the other colleges where we were all working together, and that was sort of fun working that out. Oh, incidentally, when I was manager for the freshman team I had to write all the letters to the other schools and make all the arrangements, all that kind of thing. It sort of surprised me that the university wasn't doing that; the athletic department wasn't doing that. JC: Did you have a favorite professor when you were here? RT: Yeah, and I just told you I couldn't remember his name. (laughter) Sidney Morse. JC: Oh, OK. RT: Old Sidney Morse was a terrible lecturer, but he was a genius, you know. He understood American history, and that was his forte, and he also was a wonderful human being and understood us. He really got me to dig in and start getting decent grades. He would lecture, but he would have side comments on this thing, and there we are taking notes left and right. I never wanted to miss a class under any circumstances. He invited some of us -- one of them being me -- over to dinner, and he was just a great sport. He was not a big man in stature, but a big man in intellect. JC: Was there a professor you particularly didn't like? 9 RT: Oh, there were some who I'd rather not name who I didn't appreciate or think that they were at the level they should be. JC: What was the favorite class you ever took here? RT: I guess it was history. That's what I worked at. Let me go back to what I didn't like. We lost -- somehow, I don't know how -- one of the economics professors, and President Dodge brought in somebody in mid-semester, and this guy had written many books and was well appreciated around the world, but he was terrible. He couldn't remember any names, he refused to take any attendance, so people didn't come. You could answer him back and forth. I was told, I can't vouch for this, I was told by the people that say they did it. They invited him out the night before his final exam to join them for dinner in Montpelier, and when the time came, they picked up the tip, and went down to the railroad station, and put him on a train going to Montreal. (laughter) I believe it was true. But he just wasn't accustomed to teaching at our level in that circumstance. He was someone that should have continued writing his books. He was essentially a sociologist, but that was a while. I got called in by the dean for skipping class, and the dean was a great guy at that time. I was a little embarrassed by it, but the class was mostly veterans in this particular -- in economics. You know, they had their way. They weren't required to come to class. If they didn't come to class it chalked up one of a series you could have freer, but cadets didn't have that, so I just played like I was a veteran to old Mumbles [McLeod?]. That's what they called him, Mumbles. When the dean called me in, I got right back on it. JC: Decided you'd rather go back to class. RT: Yeah. JC: Did you ever get in much trouble when you were here? RT: Not really. I came close a number of times. Well, let me go back and talk about Carol. Carol and I met one time when we were in about the ninth grade. She was in Beverly, Massachusetts, and we were living in Hamilton, Massachusetts, at the time, and the Congregation youth groups met at a third place, Essex, Massachusetts. There were lots of people of our ages. You know, these groups didn't know each other. And I spotted her. She was -- wow! Wow, yeah. But I never got to speak to her before we broke up and went back. A couple of years later in Beverly High School -- we'd moved to Wenham, and Wenham didn't have a high school, so I went to Beverly High School. Todd with a T and Wyeth with W happened to have lockers opposite each other on the wall, and I said, "My God, there's that girl." I went over and spoke to her, and she invited me to her birthday party, and that'll show it all started with us. But it came to a point in our sophomore year when I had changed from engineering into history and economics. I had to make up some subject material that I didn't get in the first part, and I went to the University of New Hampshire trying to make it up. I went down on the weekend to her house in Beverly, and I stayed with her aunt 10 who lived next door. She was on my team. But Carol when we were -- she said, "Let's stop this tennis game for a minute. I want to talk to you." We walked up to the net, and she said, "You know, I'm through with this relationship. You're never going to be serious about anything you do in your life; you're going to be a perennial sophomore. I want to do more with my life than you are going to do, and this isn't going to work out." OK, I'll show you. I came back and studied like hell for the last two years I was here and sort of caught up. But it was interesting, when I was invited back at graduation time to be the officer who commissions everybody, and at that time the university ordered a master's or a PhD, you know, honorary to the speaker. Loring Hart didn't tell me whether I was supposed to say anything or not, so I had in my pocket a little thing I would say. It went something like this. It is indeed an honor to be here. I represent my classmates in this ceremony, and I'm very proud of the way Norwich is moving. But I would like you to know that 25 years ago, this very day, I received a letter from the committee on academic degrees and standings that read to this effect: "Dear Cadet Todd, The committee has met and has agreed to allow you to graduate (laughs) based on the circumstances that were not your fault." (laughter) So, you know, that's the way life went for me. I dug in and did relatively well. But another interesting thing about that. I don't know about anybody else, but I had a picture in my mind of VMI, and the Citadel, and all these places as being superior to Norwich in their military training, etc. But when I got in the army I discovered that 50% of them were duds, and it just changed my life around and my feelings about my institution. Yeah, it was strange. JC: When you graduated from Norwich what was the first -- you went into the army. RT: Yeah. JC: Did you go straightaway into the army, or was there a period? RT: Well, some of us -- I think it was 12, maybe as many as 15 -- received an opportunity to go into the regular army, not into the reserve army. I was one of those. About half of my classmates who were given that ability to do that chose not to do it, so there were a number of us that went. Upon graduation we received our commission in the United States Army Reserve, and then two weeks later I was brought into the regular army with another commissioning thing, which happened to be by my father's Norwich roommate, Colonel [Rice?] in Boston. He was running something in Boston for the army at the time. That was sort of fun. Then I went immediately off. We graduated about 15 or 17 May or something, June rather. On the second day of July, I reported in to the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment Light at Fort Meade, Maryland, as one of these people you had a regular army commission. So there wasn't any time -- there was time enough in between that the family all went down to Cape Cod for a two-week vacation, but I graduated and went into the army. JC: Now did you get married before you were in the army? 11 RT: No, no. No, no. I was still trying to get back in Carol's good graces. Before I left -- well, I went, as I said, to the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment. Now the army was doing something really stupid at that time. They had been told to reduce the army's personnel requirements, and rather than reducing in any reasonable way, they chose to take one-third of every squad, one-third of every company, one-third of every battalion, one-third of every regiment. It was a paper army. It couldn't really operate well at all. But when the war broke out in Korea they took from those drawn-down forces and sent them over as individual replacements, supposedly to go into units that also had the same kind of vacancy that was created now. So we had almost no reasonable training while I was in the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment before going to Korea, and these people went into units for which they were not trained. The army was really messed up, really messed up. General Abrams one time in discussing this with a group of officers, after he'd become chief of staff of the army, had tears running down his face. "No army should ever do that to its people. There is no excuse for it, and as long as I'm chief of staff I guarantee you that our units will be ready to fight, if we have to fight." You know, oh. It was a terrible mess over there. So before leaving that unit in which I had a miserable career for that short period of time. For example, it wasn't two weeks later that the post's military police battalion left Fort Meade and went to Korea. Company A of my organization, of which I was a lieutenant, became the post's military policemen. Now, we know nothing about being the post's military policemen, not a thing. There wasn't anything in ROTC, there wasn't anything that lead us to believe. What I knew about policing was I'd seen in movies, and I hid behind the "Welcome to Fort Meade" sign in my sedan, and chased down someone that was speeding, and discovered it was the chief of staff of the post. At midnight I went over and had a bed check in the post's prison, to see that there weren't any knives in there. But I got called in and said, "Hey, come on, get off it. You can go to jail for what you're doing," you know. (laughs) It was crazy. I was trying to do my job as I knew it, but no one was there to supervise me in any way. JC: And how long were you doing that? RT: I left there in September. I went in in July, left in September, and got to Korea in late November, first having leave and then going to the West Coast, going through the checks and balances of travel over there. Just about that time MacArthur announced that the war would be over by Christmas, and as a result the army slowed down the number of replacements they were sending over. This was just about the time that the marines invaded Inchon, and it was followed up with the 7th Division behind them, and trapped the North Vietnamese soldiers below us. It was really a magnificent maneuver. So we were just sitting around in California waiting to get orders. Every weekend we'd go into town, and we'd go into some bar and then talk out loud about how we've got to go, and waiting to go to war, this kind of thing. Somebody would pick up the bar tab. (laughs) Then we crossed the Pacific during a hurricane, and that was something most unusual, as you might imagine. The piano broke loose in the lounge. It had been a troop transport in World War II, and they converted it to be a troop ship but for families to go to Japan or other places. At that time these ships were the property of the army, it wasn't the navy. 12 I remember distinctly there was a captain on board, mostly lieutenants, but this captain on board was a ranger, and he'd a big, puffed-up chest, and walked among us, and told us to stand up straight, and "Take your hands out of your pockets." When he'd get tired of doing that he decided we should have bayonet drill, and issued the bayonets, put them on our rifles, and went up on the deck. Oh, God. I said, "I'm not playing this game." There was a ladder still going up the funnel, in wartime where they had a station to look for submarines, OK. I went up there while everybody else was screaming and hollering down below and got away with it. It's a wonder I ever went anywhere in the army. (laughs) JC: So what was Korea like? RT: Well, let me describe it. We arrived the day before Thanksgiving in Inchon, got off the boat. There was a long, long tidal process; the ship couldn't get close to the docks or anything else. So they threw the nets over the side, and we were to go over the side of the ship and climb down into a small boat to go in. But we had all our personal gear with us. We were carrying great bags of stuff. I had two bottles of whiskey in my bag, and some damn fool says, "Drop your bag into the boat." I did. (laughs) But as a matter of fact, they took our uniforms away from us at that time and said, "We will hold them here, because if everybody goes home at Christmas it won't affect you for a while, and you'll be in a regular army uniform." But we got on the boats and went on the shore. They fed us what was left over from the Thanksgiving dinner, and a lot of canned fruits, put us on a train, and sent us up to North Korea. Each of us, each lieutenant, was on an open freight car, you know, enclosed but with doors on both sides, and each one of them had a little stove in it. It was cold, and we headed north, and every time the hospital train came south on that one track we would pull over maybe an hour before it came by, and then stick around and get back onto the thing. In my one car I had 27 people. Those cars were small. They were Japanese-style freight cars, and they were small. We had nothing but straw on the floor and a sleeping bag, but it was a summer sleeping bag, not a winter sleeping bag, and the stove didn't really heat the thing at all. There were slots in the side of the thing. Anyway. We didn't have any ammunition, and we would get shot at on the train. Now, nobody I know of got hit, but it made quite an impression. But still they didn't issue us any ammunition. There was a major in charge, and he was in the last car, which was a caboose kind of car, tight, a good stove, etc., etc. So whenever the train stopped we as lieutenants would run back and sit in his car with him and then take off again. Many of the soldiers would get off and run in to find somebody in the little town we stopped in and buy rot-gut whiskey. Boy, they were in trouble. One of the people in the car behind me, I was told, went blind on the spot. Maybe he was cured later, but it made an impression. We finally got to the capital of Pyongyang, and they put us on trucks and took us to what used to be a hospital. We went on about the fourth floor and were on cots, or on the floor, kind of thing, and at midnight that night some captain in the army came in and said, "OK, everybody out. Get down on the truck below. Let's go. Get your gear together." Well, we all didn't get there first, and the last of us were turned around and sent back. That batch was never heard from again. The next morning we were loaded on trucks and sent up. But before going they fed us a good breakfast. We went down into 13 the basement of this place -- it was steaming and dark down there -- and we had breakfast on some slate or granite tables. Steam is pouring out of the coffee pots, etc., and I filled my cup with coffee and took a big drink to discover that it was maple syrup. I went forward that day sick as a dog, sitting at the end, at the tail of that truck yurking all the way. I'm sure all those men I was traveling with, "Look hey there, look at that lieutenant. He's so scared he's puking," you know. We went on and eventually we came to a stop, and the captain who was leading this convoy came back and told us to get off the trucks and go into these schoolhouses that were available, right immediately, I mean, just saw them and said, "Take them." We went into the schoolhouse, and he turned around and went back to get "another load," quote, unquote. We never saw him again; he never came back. Here we are with no ammunition, carrying guns, living in a schoolhouse, and the Chinese are moving in on us. They were moving down the mountains on both sides of this thing, and then there was a tremendous, tremendous loss of life up the mountain further, coming toward us. The 38th Regiment that I joined after we got out -- I get the men out, and then I jumped on a mess truck headed south, all trying to find where the headquarters for the 38th Regiment was. The 38th Regiment was part of the 2nd Division, and it lost in about two days, coming through a real tight trap -- there was a river, there was a road that wasn't wide enough for two tanks to pass, and then there was a mountain again on the other side, and the Chinese are up on both sides just raking the convoy. One truck stops, you know, they've got to push it off the edge to get the convoy going again. Now I wasn't a part of that, but I joined the company that did, and when I finally caught up with my unit, it was because I had stopped in from the schoolhouse when I saw the 1st Cavalry Division people pull on in close to us, so I went over and inquired. I walked into the TOC, the tactical operation center, and there was a major sitting in front of a map, on a stool, making little marks on it. I waited a while, and he didn't notice me, and finally I said, "Sir, could you tell me where the 38th Regiment is?" and he turned around and said, "No, but where's the division? Where is the 2nd Division?" I said, "Sir, I have no idea. We're trying to find it. We were left off down here." He said, "I don't know where they are. If you --" It was that confusing. They lost something like 4,000 men coming out of that gap. Now, I wasn't affected, not at all, in any way. I was scared to death at times, but then after that I joined the 38th Regiment. When I went in to meet Colonel Pappal -- yeah, something like that -- he shook hands with one, and passed me a bottle of whiskey with the other one, and said, "Son, you're going to need this." I reported in to the battalion commander, and he at the time was meeting with his staff in a little hutch where the Vietnamese -- the Vietnamese -- the Koreans built their houses of mud and mud brick, and they would cook in an open room attached to the house, and the smoke would go under the floors and heat the house. We were sitting on one of those floors, warm and toasty, and they were passing the bottle of whiskey around this circle as we talked about (inaudible) [00:59:47]. By that time the bottle of whiskey got pretty hot. (laughs) It was a very strange circumstance. When he finally got to it, the battalion commander said to me, he said, "Todd, you're going down to A Company." I said, "Sir, and who commands A Company?" He said, "You do." I had about as much opportunity to learn infantry tactics and lead a rifle 14 company as nobody at all. My buddy who I was traveling with who had some experience in World War II in combat in Europe, came back and went to the University of Illinois, and then came into the army the same as I did, through the (inaudible) [01:00:34], he was sent down to a company that already had an experienced commander. You know. Nobody was thinking. I sent the first sergeant back to division headquarters, he got commissioned, and he came back, and essentially he told me what we ought to be doing. Then we did it. Until MacArthur issued an order, that probably came to him to do it, that said all armored officers that had been assigned to infantry units are to be returned to armored units. So I went down to the regimental tank company of the regiment where my company commander, before coming over there, was an infantry officer who was aide to camp to the commanding general who gave him the tank company in the 38th regiment who didn't know a damn thing about tanks. It was really screwed up everywhere. At a point when I was running the rifle company, I was told that a replacement was on the way, flying in, and he would replace me as company commander. Oh, great, that's good news. The guy showed up, and during World War II he had been in the air force as a bombardier. He had absolutely no infantry experience. He had joined the nearest reserve unit to his home when he was discharged. It really wasn't working out. Where we got replacements, the adjutant would go down and say, "Has anybody been through armored training?" Nobody. Nobody. So there wasn't anybody to send to the armored company except the people that came in (inaudible) [01:02:41]. So we were training these guys, but we weren't -- there were some old sergeants that really knew what they were doing, and that's we made. We eventually had a pretty good tank company. I remember my sergeant was a gruff, old son of a bitch. I walked up to a formation he was holding one day, and his back was to me, and I was walking toward the platoon. And I heard him say "The kid says we got to --" I said uh-oh. "Sergeant [Beach?], come with me," and we went in to see the company commander. I told the company commander that I couldn't resolve this one. He said, oh, very well, I'll assign someone else." Sergeant [Beach?] remained behind. Wow, I've done it. Sergeant Beach comes out. I said, "What happening Sergeant?" and he said, "I'm going to be the lieutenant in charge of the other platoon." Ahhh, God, you know. (laughs) It just wasn't the army I knew later on. Yeah. It was a very sad arrangement. It really wasn't until General Walker was killed in a jeep accident, and he was the 8th Army commander, and they sent General Van Fleet over to run it, and we by that time had moved 125 miles to the rear. We were running as an army. Word got out very quickly that General Van Fleet's orders were "I don't want to see your plans of defense, I want to see your plans of attack." And everyone says, "Sure, sure, General. You look at them, and you'll be all alone up there." Well, by God, he took that army and straightened it out and moved it forward and stopped the Chinese, without much additional support. It was amazing to see that happen. I'll never forget that, that one man deciding that he's going to turn the army around and you'd better fall in line. I did have one experience before that happened when I was with the tank company, and I was in a jeep riding down a road, and the division commander had decided that since we had all these losses, and we're all screwed up, that he had a way to make us all feel proud of ourselves and identify. The methodology he used was that one regiment would have a mustache, another regiment would have sideburns, and another 15 would have goatees. Crazy, just crazy. But I'm driving down the road, and an assistant division commander, a one star, is coming this way, and he went right by, and I saluted, and then he stopped and hollered back at me. I jumped out and ran down to his jeep. He said, "You're not obeying the division commander's orders." I said, "Sir, what do you mean?" He said, "You shaved." I said, "No, sir, I've never shaved." (laughter) God. Yeah. But General Van Fleet really pulled that into order, and he relieved a lot of people. He relieved my brigade commander, gave us a lieutenant to be the colonel's slot in the brigade, who turned out to wind up with four stars in the end. They made the mechanism work. JC: Amazing. Now, you were awarded the Medal for Valor in Korea, weren't you? RT: Yeah. I got a Bronze Star for Valor and a Silver Star for Valor, neither of which I really want to talk about much. I think somebody else would have done better to have them than me. I mean, I was pleased, happy to receive it, proud to wear it on my uniform kind of thing, but there was a lot of that going on to bolster up morale of everybody. JC: Is there anything else you want to say about Korea? RT: I don't know. At the end it was a pretty good experience. When we had gone into a stalemate, we started a rotation system back to the United States, and it was a point system. If you came within a certain period of time, then you could go back at a date specific, so we all knew when we'd be going back. There were points for the kind of job you had and all this kind of thing. It was interesting, I went back to Japan, spent a few days in Japan. When we got on the boat I was assigned -- as I had on the way over -- to a large stateroom, and I think there were 12 of us in it, and up and down cots. It was the same gang I went over with. You know, the timeline of where you engaged in combat were the same for all of us, in different units, and that was really pretty special. Two of them, only two of them, didn't come back, and they were both infantry officers. To the best of my knowledge, from the 38th Regiment that I was familiar with, the lieutenants didn't go back whole. The majority of them were killed. Those that were wounded were wounded seriously enough that they didn't come back to the unit. So it was us armored guys that, essentially, came back together, went over together and came back together. Stopped in Hawaii on the way back, pulled into the port, and there's all these hula girls down on the thing, people with big signs, "Welcome Home, Veteran." I said, "Hell, I'm not a veteran. That's a guy that sits outside the post office trying to sell pencils." (laughs) That came as a bit of a shock to us. But, yeah. JC: Well, once you got back to the United States where were you stationed? RT: Before I got back to the United States, on R&R in Japan, I knew of my rotation date. I called Carol, who by that time had finished her year after Smith at Radcliffe, taking the first year of the Harvard Business School program at Radcliffe -- business school faculty, business school-devised location, Radcliffe. I called her and said, "How about meeting me in New York City on such and such a date at the Biltmore Hotel? We'll meet under the clock." Now, meeting under the clock, there'd been a movie about that whole 16 business. So she did, and we went to my family's house. They'd moved to Scarsdale, New York, at that point. I asked her to marry me. She said, "Give me a couple of weeks." So I went back to visit my family. They're not my immediate family, my grandparents in Quincy, Massachusetts, and my other grandparents in Dorchester, Massachusetts. I went to -- my uncle, my mother's brother, ran a hardware store that had originally been his father's, and he said, "What are you going to do about a car?" I said, "I got to get one." I sold my car before I went over. He said, "Well, I've got a good friend who's honest, and I think we can get a good car." So I went over that afternoon and bought a car and called Carol, and I said, "I bought a car today." She said, "A convertible?" and I said, "Yes," and turned it in the next day and got a convertible. (laughter) I'd do anything to make sure she's sweet. She said yes, we were married on the nineteenth of June of that year, and she obviously had to quit her job to become an army wife. JC: So where did you all go after that? RT: The first station when we returned, and I'm talking now about the same group of army officers that went over and came back together, also went to Fort Knox, and we lived in newly-built quarters that were built by a civilian contractor on the edge of there, which were great for a newly-married couple, but they certainly weren't anything special. George and Joanne Patton lived next door to us, a small world, yeah. I've lost my train of thought here now. (break in audio) JC: And we'll get back started. All right, so we were talking about Fort Knox. RT: Fort Knox being a first assignment together in the army was really great. So different. I mean, Fort Knox was organized. Everything was working well. People were happy. Not that we weren't working hard, because we really were. My first assignment was to a training division. It took the number of the division, the third, and replicated it and then trained, basic training. I was in the 2nd Brigade headquarters working on the planning and that kind of thing. I really was disappointed that I wasn't one of the company commanders, but it turns out that that was a tough job. In the tank company, the guy that headed the tank company had more tanks than a tank division, and it was a mess to keep them all straightened out and going around. So one day I went back home for lunch, and Mrs. George Patton, Sr., was sitting in the living room of our house talking to Carol. She had come down to Fort Knox because George and Joanne had just been married, and Joanne got some kind of disease when they were on the honeymoon in the Caribbean. And I reintroduced myself to Mrs. Patton, and we sat down and talked. She asked me what my job was, and I told her. I said, "But I've got to go. I've got an appointment this afternoon to see the commanding general. They're looking for an aide to camp to the commanding general, and I really don't want that job. I really would prefer to get an opportunity to command a company in the division here." She said, "Russell, General Collier is a very, very fine man. He has a 17 fine family life. He is a very, very successful soldier who commanded the 2nd Armored Division at the end of the war in Berlin. You could learn an awful lot working for him." So I went over, and I got the job, and for the next two years I was the junior aide to the commanding general. I did such things as travel with him when he went to different places for different purposes. My buddies all got a hold of me when they found out I was going to do this job, and all had things they wanted changed at Fort Knox, and I was to be their agent in telling the commanding general how he could change the place. Very early on we went out of the headquarters, down the steps, into the car, went past the post theater. I thought, well, here goes. I said, "Sir, do you realize that on this post now an officer must be in his full dress uniform in order to go to the movies?" He said, "Yes, I know that, and it will remain that way." I didn't have many new ideas for him after that. (laughs) He'd go over to the armor school, and the people that are teaching in the combat kinds of business would say, "This is what we're doing now, General, and what do you think? We'd like your approval of it," and I'd sit in the back of the room and listen to what was going on, and understand it. I would hear the people that had served in combat talk about what you ought to do, and I got a great education. Also, every year there was something called the Armor Warfighting Conference. Twice I was there for that. They bring in all the people that belong to the Armor Association, or were serving in an armored position, all the senior people, and they'd talk about what the army ought to be doing in armor. One of my jobs was to go into the airport in the general's big sedan and his chauffer and pick these guys up and drive them back to the post, and I'd chat with these guys, and it was really fun. I got to know an awful lot of people, army commanders, army staff members, and all this. I really felt pretty special that I'd had this kind of an opportunity. Then we also had at Fort Knox in that time frame an armor board. This armor board, when General I. D. White was the commander at Fort Knox -- before General Collier -- that the chief of staff of the army was not pleased with the way the chief of ordnance was managing the tank program and gave the responsibility to the commanding general at Fort Knox. All the bigwigs gathered at Fort Knox to make decisions about what the next tank would look like, what the next armored personnel carrier would look like, etc., etc. Again, I sat in the back of the room, and young captains and majors, most of them West Point graduates who'd gone off to graduate school and were coming back and using their talents. It was a great, great opportunity for me. We were always invited to the house when the Colliers were having a party, and people would say, "Oh, you're going over there and pass the cigarette butts around with them, aren't you?" "No, we don't do that. We're part of that group." Mike Popowski here in town, his dad was one of those colonels on the post at that time. I really got to know all those people. Not that it was doing me any good, but I learned from them, you know. I learned how to act, I learned when to shut up. It was very useful, and it was a great time. The Colliers were magnificent to us. We had a child while we were living there -- it was Tom, and Tom got burnt badly in an accident at our house. He was crawling across the floor, and there was a coffee pot that started percolating, and he looked up and pulled on the cord, and it came over and broke open on his back. The Colliers came over and relieved us of our 24-hour duty, and they took it over; they sat with that baby. We were their family. It was amazing; it was wonderful. 18 Yeah. I began to really understand what the army was about, that it could be a good army. JC: Well, after Fort Knox where did you go? RT: Let's see. Oh, yeah. When General Collier left, he was to be promoted and going to go to Korea, and he offered me the opportunity to go with him, and I told him that I would much prefer to have a tank company in Europe. While I loved the guy and his family, I wanted a tank company in Europe. He said, "We'll take care of that," and he called up the commanding general of the 2nd Armored Division in Europe, the one that they call Chubby Doan, and told him the situation and that I would be on orders to go over to the 2nd Armored Division and a tank company. He said, "I'll give him a tank company." So, wow! You know, we made it, and off we go to Europe. We pull into Bremerhaven, which is the northern port in Germany, and they send forth a little craft to meet the boat. A sergeant first class climbs up the rope ladder and comes over and starts telling people what their orders are going to be, and I was ordered to something called the 13th Military Intelligence Group. I thought, oh, my God, something's wrong here. The colonel who was in charge of us all on the boat, for the boat trip, he got his orders, and he opened it up, and it's the 13th MIG. He said, "What's an MIG?" I said, "The best I know it's a Russian airplane." (laughs) It turned out that he thought he was going to the 1st Infantry Division for a regiment. Well, we got off the boat, and both of us went down to this intelligence group, went through two different fences, guards posted in towers and all the rest of it, and slept in an open bay area over the officers' club. There were a number of other offices there, and they said, "What are you going to do?" I said, "I don't know. I'm here by mistake. I'm headed to the 2nd Armored Division." They said, "No, no, you aren't. We're all in the same business, fellow. Tell us where you're going." And I said, "No, no. I'm an officer, and I'm going to --" They said, "We understood an armored officer was coming, and he was going to go underground and behind the Iron Curtain, and report on the Russian movements." Holy Crow! That's not for me. So the next morning I went down and asked authority to see the commanding officer of the 513th [sic] MIG. He spoke with me, and he said, "No, you're going down. You're not going to do that; that's rumor. You're going down to the headquarters in Heidelberg, and you're going to be an intelligence officer in that headquarters." I said, "I'm not an intelligence officer." He said, "That's your orders." OK. So I went down to Heidelberg. General Jim Phillips was the G2 at the time, and I asked to see him, and I went right up to his office and told him my sad story, that I was going to go to the 2nd Armored Division -- and he was an armored officer -- "Now here I am an untrained specialist in your department." He said, "What were you going to do?" I said, "Well, General Doan in the 2nd Armored Division had accepted me to come and be in tank company." He says, "I'll talk to him about that," and he reached over -- they had a red phone system that red phones went to the different generals in different locations -- he picked it up and dialed 27 or whatever it was, and General Doan answers the phone, and I'm sitting there. He said, "I got a young captain sitting here that tells me he's supposed to be in the division. Tell me about him, what are you going to do with him?" Well, poor old General Doan hadn't remembered much about the phone conversation a couple of 19 months before or something, and said, "Well, I'm going to make him my aide." And he said, "Like hell you are. I'm keeping him here for that." (laughs) I did it all over again for another two years in the headquarters at [Usera?]. [01:26:32] It was a great experience. General and Mrs. Phillips were a mother and dad to us; they'd invite us to Sunday dinner, and little Tom would crawl around the floor or under the table, and General Collier would feed him peanuts or something. It was a wonderful time, and when the Colliers would take a trip and borrow the commander in chief's train, we went with them. It was marvelous. I saw all of Europe. I knew most everything that was going on in the intelligence field, and it was a great experience with wonderful people. But when he got assigned to go back to the United States, I took the Colliers up to the port to put them on. When I came back, this again on the commander in chief's train, I had the train stop in Mannheim, and I got off in Mannheim. I wasn't going to be stopped again and reported in to the 57th Tank Battalion and for the last year there had a tank company. That was probably the greatest experience of my life. It really was a good experience. We were hard training, we were well trained, good people. In the beginning we had a wonderful commander who was a major, and the division commander, General Doan, didn't want to put a lieutenant colonel in that slot. He wanted this man to get that experience, but eventually they had to pull him and let -- the lieutenant colonels were backing up. So we were out maneuvering and we came to the last day of the maneuvers, and the new battalion commander arrives, and we have this party in a beer hall. The new commander arrives, and one of the company commanders in Charlie Company walked up to the head table with two boots of beer. You know what that is? Glass things that replicate a boot. Big. He puts one in front of each of the two commanders and says, "Let's see who's the better man." This poor guy that has just got off the train coming down from Bremerhaven and crossed the ocean picks up his boot and starts to drink. The battalion commander we love drinks it down and wins the contest, and the new battalion commander was so tight from drinking that beer too fast his feet slipped out from under him as he sat at that table and went right down under the table. (laughter) That was his first day of duty, and he didn't improve much after that. We were all pretty cocky, the company commanders; we were doing a lot of good things. But he knew nothing about it. We told him -- we were told that he had served in a tank battalion in World War II, and that's all we knew about him. It sounded great to us, a guy with some real experience. Well, it turns out that he reported in to a replacement company, and they said, "Take this truckload of men and go forward to point A. There will be a sign on the road at so many miles or kilometers. Turn left in there, and that's where your unit will be." Well, he got down there and made the turn, then went up, and three Germans come out and say, "Achtung! Put him in the compound!" and he went directly to the prisoner-of-war camp. He never had any experience. He'd been a public information officer before, and he was terrible. He was so bad that in a morning meeting every time, when he would suggest something the other three company commanders, we'd sort of nod or shake no. And "Well, what's the matter?" You know why? We didn't get any leadership out of him at all. When it came time to leave there, I had probably the most frightening experience in my life. He stood up in front of the entire battalion officer group and said, "Well, now that Captain Todd is leaving maybe I can take command of this battalion." Oh, my God. 20 Oh, my God. He gave me an efficiency report that would sink anybody, but it just turned out that in that moment of time the army changed the efficiency report system whereby your commander rates you, and his boss rates you, and then a third person rates what they did. Well, the third person turns out to have been the fellow that had been recently the brigade commander, and he knew me, he knew my performance, etc., and he sent back the efficiency report to be redone. Ho. (laughs) Yeah. Those were good times though, good times. Scary times, but testing, really testing you. JC: Because you were right there in Germany during really the height of the Cold War. RT: Yeah. As a matter of fact, one time we were out on maneuvers, 200 miles from our base, when the French and British moved into Suez, because the Egyptians said they were taking over the canal. There we are sitting out in the woods saying, "Oh, my God," because the president had said, "Oh, no, you don't." Eisenhower said, "No, you don't. You can't do that. We give you a lot of money to bring your economies back from the war, and we'll stop it tomorrow unless you withdraw." But we didn't know all that, and my guys are saying "We're going to gyro to Cairo," you know, that (laughter) kind of stuff. We finally came back. But if we'd had to go, I haven't seen a unit that would be any more ready than we were. Yeah. It was really a great exper-- In a company command, everybody doesn't have to bypass the battalion commander who's a dud. But when you do have to do that, then you're really thinking on your feet. It was great. JC: What was your next assignment after that? RT: Would you believe back to Fort Knox? JC: Oh, really? RT: Yeah. I went back there to go to the Armor Officer Advanced Course, which was a nine-month course in there, in which they were teaching you at the next level. Now the course we took before at Fort Knox was a course we should have had before we went to Korea. I came away with a great impression of how good that was. It was excellence. When I saw General Collier working with the instructors and telling them how to handle this kind of thing. When I came back three years later, it was a well-organized organization. In fact, General Abrams had been there as the head of the command department. It was a first class education. I really and truly look back upon my Norwich experience as not up to that standard that the army was producing there. At the end of that course I had talked my way into becoming one of the instructors in the command department, and I was thrilled to death about that. On graduation day I'm sitting in my chair on the aisle, and as the assistant commandant went by my seat he stopped and said, "You're going to be working in my office." (laughs) So I then worked for Colonel Chandler, who was a first-rate soldier. He had been horse cavalry, in the Philippines, and was on the Bataan death march. He was really very much a gentleman, very much strong willed, and very much of a tutor, and I worked out of his office. My job was to arrange the schedules of the classes, and we had all kinds of classes -- enlisted classes, officer classes -- so that they would mesh how 21 many people, how many classrooms do we need, how many instructors do we need, on what day are we going to do it? I was bringing home page after page of long paper, and on the kitchen floor working out the details of making this thing work. It was great, but, again, there was an intermediary. There was a lieutenant colonel who was my immediate supervisor who, again, I thought to be a dud. On my first day of working there he said, "That's your desk right over there." And I'm, "Yes, sir." I went over to my desk. Now what do I do? Here I am, I found my desk. There was a major sitting at a desk facing me who never looked up. He was just scribbling away, scared to death of this guy evidently. A few minutes later he came over and said, "Well, here's the first project I want you to do. This is it. I want you to study this, and then rewrite it, and we'll discuss it." Fine. It wasn't five minutes later, he came over and said, "No, I want you to do this one instead." I went through about six of those before I understood what I was doing. I was hopeless that anything was really going to happen. That same day he came over and looked over my shoulder, and I looked up, and he said, "What are you writing there?" I said, "Well, sir, I'm writing myself a note so that I will be able to put these things in the appropriate order." He said, "Well, you're not saying it very well." (laughter) It was awful. My out was Colonel Chandler, and a major got assigned to the office, and he very quickly understood what was going on here and went in and talked to Colonel Chandler, and Colonel Chandler moved him out. Again, we got a very, very fine operating organization going. It was good; it was very successful. But, you know, every time there's some kind of a roadblock in your career, you've got to stop and figure out how the hell you're going to get around it. JC: What was after Fort Knox? RT: Twenty more years of -- let's see. I graduated from Fort Knox. I was selected below the zone for a promotion. Do you know what that means? JC: Uh-uh. RT: When you're considered for promotion a board meets in Washington, and everybody whose career appears between this date and this date is considered. Isn't that right? Well, what they started, and I don't know if they're still doing it or not -- I think they are -- they would go below this zone and choose certain people to be examined with this group, and I was lucky enough to do that and really jumped ahead. In the headquarters there was Major Howard from Norwich University. Major Howard didn't graduate from here, but he was an instructor when I was a student here. He was in another department, or I didn't see much of him. But when I came out on the below-the-zone list, there were two of us at Fort Knox that came out on it, and he called me on the phone, and he said, "Well, I thought Frank would make it, but I never thought you would." (laughter) So things are weird, but Leavenworth was an exciting time. I was a captain. The majority of people were majors and lieutenant colonels. A real shock of my life in the first day was seated at tables, and there's a blank card in front of you, and the instructor said, "Now write your name on it, not your rank. Write your name on that card." Well, the guy sitting opposite me was a lieutenant colonel, and I was a captain, and I don't know his rank. What do I call him? We were all calling each other by their first names 22 rather than you find in a unit. That (inaudible) [01:41:04] like that, I'm up against it here. So I worked hard, harder than I've ever worked, and at the end of the halfway mark in the course they gave us standings of where you stand in the course, and I was number five or something. I said, "I'm working too hard." Yeah, that was good, a good period in our life. We had Saturdays and Sundays off. I had a little golf group I played with on Saturdays, and Michelob beer was local out there. We'd buy a pitcher -- the loser would buy a pitcher of beer, and that was a big deal. That was a big deal. JC: So when did you go to graduate school at the University of Alabama? RT: Strange you should ask that. When I came to the end of the course at Leavenworth a general officer, a brigadier general, came out to the course to announce to the armor officers, to the infantry officers, etc., what your next assignment would be. About the third name he read was a good friend of mine, and when he read off where he was to go this guy went "Ooohhh." The general looked down at him and said, "What's the problem?" He said, "Sir, I don't think anybody in your office ever read my request." "Oh." He said, "Major so-and-so, come out here." The guy comes out from behind the curtain with a big notebook, and the guy flaps through it, and he looks down, and he says, "I don't know what you're complaining about. It says right here, 'Anywhere in the world but Fort Knox.' And you're going to Fort Knox, your second choice." (laughter) Then he got to my name, and he said, "I want to see you right after this." I thought, oh, God, what now? So I went in, and he was in his office. There was a temporary office. And he said, "We've got a problem here," and I said, "Sir, what is it?" He said, "Well, they've got you going to graduate school, and as the chief armor officer I want you to go to an armored unit." I said, "I have a choice?" He said yes. I said, "Where will I go if I go to an armored unit?" He thought for a minute, and he said, "You'll go to the tank battalion in Hawaii." I said, "Can I discuss this with my wife at lunch?" and he said, "Sure," and I came back and said, "We have decided that we're going to go to graduate school," and that's how that worked out. JC: So you went to Tuscaloosa instead of Hawaii. RT: Yeah. (laughs) JC: Now, what degree did you get at Alabama? RT: MBA. It was a good tough course, but it was in the process of changing the curriculum of business schools, and some of it was very tough. Part of it was very simple, but some of it was very tough. I established a schedule where I went in very early in the morning, got in there before 7:00 every morning, went down to the basement of the library where I had an assigned carrel and started working until it was time for a class to begin. I'd go up to the class and go back to the basement, eat my lunch in the basement, go home at 5:00, and hardly ever did any midnight work at home. We lived a good, wonderful family life in Tuscaloosa. Now, it wasn't all easy. There had been the problems of the colleges not admitting blacks, and the president of the United States pushing hard to make them do it. 23 Then there were the riots at Ole Miss, right at that time. The army sent down its chief person who determines whether the applicants will go to college -- army applicants -- and to which college they will go to. So we all gathered, and there were people taking nuclear physics, and [we have to?] discuss with him, and he talked it back and forth, etc. Finally one young captain in the back said, "Sir, this is all very interesting, but the army's practically at war with our citizens. What the hell happen-- What do we do? What are our orders, and what are our instructions here at the University of Alabama, if the same kind of thing breaks out on this campus?" This poor old duffer who'd been the president of some college someplace sort of shook his head and said, "Well, I hope you'd be on the side of the government." (laughter) That hit right in the heart of soldiers. But it was a good program. When I left I was going to be assigned to the headquarters in US Army Europe in the comptroller's office, and you're required to stay in that position for three years to make up for your being chosen for that job. They want to use your knowledge and experience. Just before I left they changed it, and I went to the US Army Support Command in France, which had 57 separate organizations that it commanded, to include a pipeline that came in at St. Nazaire and went out to all of the air bases and army refueling, etc., and repair of tanks, repair of everything. We took German factories over, used Germans. It was a very, very exciting assignment in terms of technology, but I got assigned to the comptroller's office in that damn headquarters, and I was one of three soldiers. The rest were all civilian employees, or French. One of the people that worked for me was from Yugoslavia; he'd escaped Yugoslavia. So it was a mixed up kind of place. We lived at a French house down by the railroad station. We didn't want to live in the government quarters, we'd done enough of that. We wanted to have an experience in France. From that point of view, it was wonderful. The job was terrible, just terrible. They expected me to know everything that they did in their routine because I'd been to this business program. Well, I had to really move fast to catch up with them. My boss was a man by the name of [Birossi?]. He'd been an Italian-American soldier in World War II who married an Italian and never went home, and when they created the support command then he stayed on in Europe and became a very important man in the headquarters as the budget manager of this very vast organization. I worked like hell to try and get it straightened out. They first gave me the responsibility of working the budget of a couple of the major organizations, one the tank rebuild plant, which was -- God, it looked like General Motors out there. I finally got frustrated with it all. We'd all sit in a room, roll out our papers, and bring in the guy, the comptroller, from that organization, and you'd sit facing each other with Mr. [Birossi?] looking over your shoulder, and you'd work out a budget for them. How the hell did I know? I didn't have any basis for doing it, but we'd discuss it to get it. When this was all over and calmed down I said, "This is stupid as hell," to [Birossi?]. He said, "What are you talking about?" And I said, "We've got the world's best information technology program right in this headquarters, those guys that are working the plants do it all by technical means, punch cards, and here we are sitting around trying to argue about a number on a sheet of paper that doesn't mean a damn thing." He said, "What do you suggest?" I said, "I suggest we go to talk to them, get onto their system somehow, and work this thing out that we can make a reasonable stab at it." He said, "OK, wise guy, do it." 24 Now, there was a lieutenant colonel in this overall office who was Birossi's boss, and I went to see him and told him, I said, "Now, I'm not competent to do this. There's no question about it. However, if you give me two of those young captains of finance that work down the hall from me, I can get this thing started and going." So he assigned these two guys to me, and we changed the whole system of how we did the budgeting of US Army Europe. I got some kind of an award for that. Then they put me in another job where I had all kinds of stupid responsibilities. I had a responsibility for efficiency of each of these many, many organizations, and I got permission to send people -- Frenchmen -- back to the United States to be trained in each of those depots to do it. Then we pulled all of this together right as the secretary of defense had initiated a program to improve work force relationships, his program, and they sent it out and said, "Everybody in the army, navy, and the air force will use these procedures." And my two-star boss said, "No, we won't. We're not doing that. We got a god system, we just got it started, and, well, that's the way it will be." OK, you're the boss. So six weeks later, maybe two months later, there's a message sent to the commanding general that said "We're sending over someone from the Department of Defense to look at your program." I got called in to the CG's office, and he said, "You got two weeks to put this program in place." Well, you know, I was put into a position where I got attention, and I could do what I wanted to do, and I could get help to do it, and everything just sort of worked together. It was a great experience. But, again, it's a case of speaking up and saying what you think is wrong and finding a way to do it. I went in on the train from Orleans into Paris to the IBM plant with boxes of punch cards in my (inaudible) [01:53:43] and brought them into IBM, and we worked it out with them to do it at first before we turned it over to our own organization. That's because if we screwed it up, we'd screw them up badly. But those two finance captains did all the work. I just plowed ahead. Another time, in that same job -- I really thought -- when I got there I said, "My career is ruined. My career is ruined. Who's going to believe that I was in a damn headquarters for a support group? No, uh. I'm an armored guy. No." But anyway, they came up with another program, again, out of the Department of Defense. This time it was to work specifically with -- I can't remember the name of it, but, again, it came out of the secretary of defense's office, and again I got the job to do it. But this time I had an opportunity to start from the beginning with it. It was a matter of saving money, and we were supposed to put out programs, out to our subordinate units, and help them find money and other ways of doing business (inaudible) [01:55:09]. We started with the laundries, a simple thing, and went into the laundries with the people we trained, and they would say to the laundress, "How can you do your job better?" They'd say, "Well, I've been working at this for six years. If we did this, and that, and the other thing," and all of a sudden we weren't doing anything but saying "How do you do it?" and then helping them do it, and getting their boss to agree to it. Well, then you had to take all this information and turn it over to another agency who would check your figures, and numbers, and back and forth, and everything. That all seemed to work out, and things were going along rather well when they put me in for an award as the civilian of the year for product improvement. I was called (laughs) into Heidelberg, and they put on a parade, and the commanding general and I are -- there were other people, for other reasons, being recognized that day. I'm standing 25 beside the commanding general when the troops are passing in review, and he said, "What the hell are you doing here? This is a civilian award." I said, "Sir, you signed it." (laughter) And off we went. I just kept working. Living there was great sport, except the French are crazy. We lived in a neighborhood, as I said, on Rue de la Gale, and the house was an old one. It was rent controlled, and we had to slip the landlord money on certain days, and you'd walk up to his house with a paper bag full of money. A door would open, a hand would come out and grab the paper bag out of your thing, the extra money for the -- crazy. In the neighborhood we never made close friends except in one instance. Our youngest daughter, Ellen, went to French school. The other two kids refused; they were smart enough not to do it. Ellen and her friend [Pascale?] (inaudible) [01:57:36] walked to school with her mother and Carol, over to school. The ladies walked back from school. After lunch, walked over, back to get, march them over, again, at the end of the school day. And they talked, and they talked, and they talked. Not a single word of English was ever spoken for three years between these two women. We get back to the United States and got a very nice letter from her, in English, and she said, "You never would have improved your French the way you did if you knew I had been a nanny in Great Britain and speak English." (Cates laughs) Now, that's the dirtiest, rottenest trick I can ever imagine happening. (laughter) When we had a problem with the house, you'd try and go out and find someone that would fix the faucet. Now, there are four sizes of pipe, and there are 12 sizes of faucets, and there are 14 sizes -- and they ask you which one do you want? You don't know. So somebody has to come and measure it and go back, and two days later you've got water running again. When it came time to buy coal, we went down to the place you buy coal, and it was a storefront on the main road, right in the main store, and he's got little glass canisters with different kinds of coal in the window. You don't buy coal that way anywhere else in the world. We went in, and he wanted to know how many radiators we had in the house, and how many veins each radiator had, and how many sections were in the stove, and then he could figure out how many tons it would take to heat the house. He didn't ask if there was any broken windows, or open doors, or boards off on the roof. They did it totally unscientific. Then when you come to that decision, then they say, "Now do you want it from Belgium? Do you want it from --" you know, down the list. We want anthracite from Belgium, OK. Then they come and dump it in the house with buckets in the window of the cellar, and the whole house is covered with coal dust everywhere. And it was expensive. Living there was not easy, but we made a pact that we were going to go once a month with the kids to Paris, every time, every month, and we did, and we traveled a lot. Not any great distances, but we loved parts of France. But the French were very difficult to live with. JC: Oh, I'm sure. I've been there once. (laughs) RT: The worst one was my father had a cousin who was, in relationship to Dad, it was about six up from him in the corporation, and he was the chairman of the board. We got a call that he was coming to visit the French company that was owned by the American company, and they were going to come down and see us in this hovel (laughs). And just about the time we knew that they were coming but not exactly when they were coming, 26 the French left us with a bit of a problem. When they put in the sewer system, they left the septic tank in the house, in the basement, made of clay, and it began to leak. Do you have any idea what living in that house was like? You couldn't flush a toilet. When I'd go off to work and leave Carol, they had a deal with these crazy guys coming in, and eventually they came in. One guy came in, and he took off the top of this thing, and then he went away. She chased him down, and he said, "Oh, you've got to hire somebody else. The union won't allow me to put the hose down in here and suck out what's left. You've got to find that guy." And it went on, and on, and on, and trying to live in that house. Fortunately we got it cleaned up before Uncle George showed up for lunch. (laughter) JC: Sounds like it was quite difficult living in that house. RT: It was very difficult. Every single day one of us crossed the street to the bakery that was directly across the street from us, and we'd order a demi pan, and bring it back for breakfast, or something else. And every single day that one of us went, my own experience was I'd walk in the door -- "Bonjour, Madame." (laughter) The only guy that spoke to us lived next door, and the reason he spoke to us was that nobody else in the neighborhood, or the town, or the city would speak to him, because he had been a butcher during the Nazi occupation and gave the Nazis all the best cuts of meat. We had no phones. It took three years to get a phone, and it was a three-year tour. If you got a phone, you had nobody to call; they'd all gone home. They're crazy, just crazy. (laughs) JC: So what was the next assignment after France? RT: Well, while in France the Vietnam War broke out, and people lieutenant colonel level in Europe were being pulled back to the United States and given a command in Vietnam. So I applied to get a command in Vietnam, and they said, "Oh, no, no, no, no, you haven't finished your tour for having gone to graduate school. You can't possibly go." This is talking to somebody back in Washington. Then another job opened up, and they needed a lieutenant colonel in an armored battalion, and I called them back again. I said, "I'll come back to this job after that. How about that?" "Nope, we can't do that. We can't do that." Eventually they said, "OK, when you come home from --" I put enough pressure on them. "When you come home from France, we'll send you to Vietnam." And when we came home from France, they said, "No, you're going to go to the Armed Forces Staff College. You've been selected among the army, navy, and air force to go to the Armed Forces Staff College, for six months. After that, we'll get you a job that will get you to Vietnam." Well, you know, it's frustrating, just terribly frustrating. After the Armed Forces Staff College they told me I would go to Vietnam, but first I would go to pick up 57 tanks that had just been manufactured of a new design, and I was to form the tank battalion in the United States, train it in the United States, and take it to Vietnam. When that day came, ready to go, we had three rounds blow up in the chamber back at Aberdeen Proving Ground, and they said, "Hold it. You're no longer on the list to go. But you are going to go to the Naval War College." I couldn't get to Vietnam! It was very difficult. 27 JC: What was the Naval War College like? RT: Terrible. The Naval War College, well, we called it the sleeping room. They had two major speakers every day, one in the morning, and one in the afternoon. That was fine. I mean, I loved to hear them, and they did have a message, but it wasn't work. It was sitting there like you're turning on the television. There was no challenge to this thing at all. Now you could go and get a master's degree along with it from George Washington, but I couldn't, because I had a master's degree, so they weren't going to let me take that program. So they hired somebody the University of Massachusetts had fired from their Economics Department, an old man, to be my mentor and take me through a separate program -- nothing comes out of it other than a dissertation at the end. OK, I'll put up with it, but he was awful, and it was a waste of my time. You never had time between these people to really go to the library and do something. It was 20 minutes. What can you do in the library in 20 minutes? No, you don't. Everyone went and get good coffee, sat around and talked, etc. Oop, time to go back into the bedroom. There was nothing going on in terms of substance in the place. When I had my first time as directing my little group, I worked long and hard on the assignments, and came in the next morning and said, "OK, let's see. Now we had readings in this one, and then we had a differing opinion from this requirement, and then this one, and another one. Commander Jones, what do you think about this?" "Oh, shit," he said, "You don't think I pay any attention to that, do you? I'm in the George Washington program. I'm not going to do any of this." That was a general attitude. There wasn't any depth to what we were doing. One day the admiral in charge, who'd married a British lady and had just come back from another tour in London, said, "How would you like to have lunch at my house with a guest speaker, Todd?" I said, "Gee, that would be very nice, sir." I got up there to discover there were 12 or 13 of us at separate tables and he and the speaker was at another table. What did we do? We sat around and chatted, and ate his food, and left. He said, "How'd you like that?" I said, "What are you referring to, sir?" He said, "Well, the opportunity to be with the speaker." I said, "We weren't with the speaker. You were with the speaker." "Well, how would you handle that?" "I'd put in a round table, and we'd all sit around and talk." "What a great idea." Really, really bad stuff. So he did, and then he invited me to come, and I went, and he said, "How did that go?" I said, "Sir, that was wonderful. But if you did that in the classrooms it might help, too." "We don't have round tables in the classrooms?" He'd never been in a classroom. We didn't have one single naval officer who was nuclear qualified come to the course. They sent them to the National War College. We didn't have one single graduate of a senior college who was on the faculty. I could go on, and on, and on about how bad it was. But one day, in Vietnam, I was sitting at my desk outside General Abrams's office, and I got a call from the naval head in Vietnam. I'm trying to think of his name. I know it as well as I know my own. But anyway, he called me and said, "Russ, I got to see General Abrams." I said, "Well, he's tied up at the moment. Come on up and sit down, and I'll get you in just the minute I can break into it." He said, "Good," and he came up. We sat there, and he said, "I got to talk to General Abrams. They're going to announce this afternoon that I'm the new chief of naval operations, and I don't want him to hear it from anybody else but me." I said, "Oh, have I been waiting for this." He said, 28 "What are you talking about?" I said, "You can do something about the Naval War College that I couldn't," and I laid it out for him, and he fired the guy when he got back there. This is Zumwalt, Admiral Zumwalt. He fired the guy and changed all the programs. I mean, they were tough on him, and they've got a good school there now, or at least the last I knew of it, a very good school that has been accredited. But it was awful. JC: Did you finally get to Vietnam after the Naval War College? RT: Yeah, that's why I was sitting in General Abrams's office. I was to be sent over to be on the command list, which meant this list of people the army feels are capable of doing a job as colonel in a combat unit. They sent my name over, and then they called me back and said, "We've withdrawn your name." (sighs deeply) I said, "Come on, guys. This isn't fair." He's "Hold it, hold it, hold it. They're looking for an assistant to General Abrams, and we've sent your name in." I said, "Look, I've met General Abrams a few times. I don't think he was very impressed with me. I don't think he'll select me off of any list of yours." He said, "There is no list. We only sent your name." (laughter) So I went over there, and I sat for, oh, eight months I guess in General Cao Van Vien's office, who was the head of the Vietnamese armed forces, and I acted as a liaison between General Abrams and General Cao Van Vien, of which there was no requirement. Those guys talked to each other whenever they wanted to. But I represented General Abrams when General Cao Van Vien called the other -- the Koreans, the Australians, the New Zealanders, etc., etc. -- together on a Monday morning to have a meeting, and that was interesting, and I learned a lot, and I met a lot of people. Eventually the secretary of the staff rotated home, and I took his slot. You actually work for the chief of staff, but I read and decided which messages that came in that night would go into General Abrams the next morning, so I got to work very, very early and stayed very, very late, day after day after day, seven days a week. But I really loved working for the guy. Every Saturday morning we would meet with the commanders of the army, navy, air force, etc., the CIA, in the basement of our building, and it was general so-and-so, admiral so-and-so, etc., and Colonel Todd. And Colonel Todd sat in the back of the room and checked -- again, a great learning experience. Watching the interrelationship between these very, very senior commanders was a great experience. Then I went with General Abrams every Monday morning down to brief the ambassador. We'd drive down in his sedan. On Sunday I'd prepare a book for him that he'd go over, and then he'd have that in front of him. He never read it. He never sat in front of the ambassador and read it. I'd be on pins and needles all the time that he'd turn to me and say, "What the hell's this?" (laughs) But he was great. Then I got a command. I left the headquarters and went out and joined the 24th Division as a brigade commander, and I'd been there about eight days when it was announced that the brigade was to go home. (laughs) The next day I got a call on the radio, out flying around in my helicopter -- I had seven battalions in the brigade at the time -- from the corps commander, General Davidson, and General Davidson said, "Meet me at coordinates so-and-so," and we both flew into a point. He said, "I'm pulling you out of this. I've got a problem with the Royal Thai Army. The officer we have working 29 with them is not acceptable any longer to the Royal Thai Army. I need somebody tomorrow, and you're it." That was the craziest thing I've ever been involved in. Wonderful, wonderful Thai commander, who began his military experience at age five in a military academy run by the government. He finished his education in France. The French owned Indonesia. Thailand (inaudible) [02:16:30]. So there we were. Day in and day out, he and I would receive the same briefing. He'd get it in Thai, and his aide-de-camp would give it to me in English. We never ever, ever came to the same solution. We were generations in thought apart. For example, in World War II Thailand never declared war on anybody, but went to war against the Allied forces when they thought Japan was winning. This fellow was a captain in the Thai Army, and he did something very spectacular -- whatever it was, I don't know, very heroic. He was called back to the capital, and he was given the Royal Order of the White Elephant or something. They'd give out five for every war. This was something very, very special, parades, the whole business. He went back to his unit, and then the Thais decided that the Japanese weren't winning the war, and they changed and became our allies. Now you're not going to believe this. They called him back and took the medal because he was fighting on the wrong side. (laughs) I could go on forever on this. My brain couldn't absorb it. When I'd left that and gone back to the United States, I guess when this happened -- I don't remember where I was, but anyway, I wrote him a letter, and I said, "What in the world is going on in Bangkok? You were the commander of the 1st Division, responsible for the security of Bangkok. Your father-in-law is the dictator. They're rioting in the streets, and, to the best I know, nothing's happening." He wrote back to me, after some (inaudible) [02:19:06] time, and said, "Well, you just don't understand our way of thinking. The soldiers had killed some civilians who were rioting, so I went back to my BOQ and stayed there two weeks, and when I came back my father-in-law had been deposed, and the fighting was over." Huh? (laughs) And it wasn't that he wasn't a good soldier, and it wasn't that he was afraid of anything. No, we'd fly around in his damn helicopter and take it places I never would have gone. On the other hand, he had some VIPs coming over, and he said, "We can't take the helicopter today. I'm going to use it tomorrow for some Thai VIPs, and I don't want any fingerprints on it, I don't want to make sure there's no bullet holes in the thing. We'll just take this other thing." What? We couldn't come together. At one point, the real one that almost got me in trouble -- I think it was on Thanksgiving -- our base camp also had three units in it from the 1st Cavalry Division, and the Thais, and the Thais who were responsible for the security, and I was responsible to the US headquarters. Well, on the big army base, maybe 15 miles away, on Thanksgiving night everything went up in the air, flares, and shooting, and machine guns, and all the Thais thought this was great, and they all did it. He called me in the next morning, and he laid me out. He said, "No Thai would ever do that. Your Americans did this." Well, OK, I'll suck it up. "I assure you it won't happen again, sir." So come New Year's time, I put out to my staff with each of his units, where they normally served, to stay with them all night and record everything that happened in that TOC. Next morning he got me again when I went in there. I said, "Sir, before we say anything else, I suggest you talk to your TOC officer." He went down there, and those 30 guys, we made them record everything, and he discovered that it was his units that were doing it. What do you suppose his answer to that one was? JC: I don't know. RT: He called in his senior officers and said, "I'm resigning from the army. You've let me down." And he went back into his hooch and stayed there for about three days. I woke up at the end of three days early in the morning, and the whole goddamn Thai Army that was posted in Vietnam was out there in a formation. I walked out to see what was going on and stood behind him -- he was up on a platform -- and they all apologized, etc., and he forgave them, and they went back into the woods to their positions. They'd left their fighting positions to come back and apologize to the commanding general. JC: Oh, wow. RT: (laughs) You can find one worse than that, I'll bet. My goodness. JC: Want to stop again? (break in audio) JC: Let's stop here, because we've done about another hour and 10 minutes. (break in audio) RT: Let's -- (break in audio) [02:23:15] JC: All right, this is Joseph Cates. Today is May 19, 2016. This is my second interview with Major General Russell Todd. This interview is taking place at the Sullivan Museum and History Center. This interview is sponsored by the Sullivan Museum and History Center and is part of the Norwich Voices Oral History Project. So when we left off last time we had gone through Vietnam, and you're ready for your next assignment. What was that? RT: OK. When the Royal Thai Army left Vietnam I moved out to a brigade, as I said earlier. But the time with the brigade was very unsatisfactory to me as a professional. It was a little more than a month, and that's not what I considered to be a command. So thinking about what would happen when I got home, I called to the Pentagon, talked to the people in armor branch. A lieutenant colonel sits on a desk and shuffles the papers for colonels and helps make the decisions. I told him I wanted to have a particular command at Fort Lewis, Washington, that I knew the command was about to change. And they said, "Oh, we've already appointed somebody to that port. But you are coming back to go to the Pentagon." 31 I had fought off the Pentagon earlier in my tour. When I was working for General Abrams I got a call from the Pentagon that said "We're bringing you back to the United States because a new position has opened up, and it calls for a brigadier general, and although you're only a colonel, we want you to fill that position." And I said, "Tell me about it." They said, "Well, you're going to be the army's first drug-and-alcohol-abuse officer." I said, "You've been watching what I'm drinking." He said, "No, this is what we've got in mind for you." And I said, "That isn't going to work. It just isn't going to work. I'm over here on a two-year tour, and if you want me to leave here, I'll give you General Abrams's telephone number, and you can call him and ask him to release me." Well, no, they didn't think they would do that. (laughs) So when I went back I went to the Pentagon, and there I went to work for a four-star general who I had met several times, because he traveled to Vietnam back and forth, General Kerwin, a wonderful, wonderful soldier. And when I reported in he told me that I was going to be the head of the department that he supervised for the Modern Volunteer Army. My job would be to coordinate all of the programs that were going on both at posts, camps, and stations around the country and around the world, and also within the Pentagon, to evaluate where we ought to be going. Well, OK. It wasn't my first choice. I had about, oh, 10 lieutenant colonels working for me in a very small office that didn't have any windows, and there was a lieutenant general working in the chief of staff's office whose title was the chief of modern volunteer army. So I was torn between two very senior officers who didn't agree with each other very often, and the job went on, and back and forth, and up and down, but a lot of answering letters from the Congress and this kind of thing, and then evaluating things that came from the field. Well, one day I was up in the next level in the Pentagon, because I'd been called by that lieutenant general, and he started chewing me out just something awful for reasons I couldn't explain. Finally he said, "I'm going down and see General Kerwin." My boss. What the hell's this about? So I was standing alone in his office. He went out a side door, and I said, "I've got to get to General Kerwin quick." So I picked up -- they have red phones that go between the very senior officers. I picked it up and dialed General Kerwin's office, and he has to answer that, no matter what's going on. And I said, "Sir, we got trouble," and told him what was going on. I saw him later in the day. He said, "Thanks. That really made a difference." From that moment on, he treated me like I was one of his best friends and had faith in what I was doing. Now, they did bring back in a major general who had just stopped commanding the 82nd Airborne Division, and he came in, and he was my immediate supervisor. But General Kerwin made a proposal -- not a proposal -- instructions to everybody about that time that said "Everybody that works for me in the deputy chief of staff personnel office is going to spend four years in this job." I could see my chances of getting a second shot at a brigade just going out the window. Carol and I had bought a house in Washington, the first home we ever owned. In France it was a rental, and everything else was army quarters. So this was special. She loved that house. She took a job in Washington, DC, in the personnel department, and then she had done a lot of that before, and that was sort of a big part of what she had done at Radcliffe after Smith, and she loved that job. In fact, everywhere we went she tried to find a job that would keep her busy and active. 32 So there we were, balancing back and forth. Now what do I do? Well, I'll go back to my old trick and call the people in my branch on the phone, and I called this young man early one morning before anybody else was in the office, and he happened to be there. I told him my plight, that I'd been really cheated in that one month I'd had in the thing, and General Davidson had said I was coming to Europe with him to command a brigade, and that didn't work out once he found out I'd never been in the Pentagon. "So I want a command, and I want to lay it out right now. I want you to start working on it." He said, "Sir, I'm not sure I can do that." I said, "Well, what time do you come to work?" He said, "Well, I'm in here by 8:00 every morning." I said, "Get in at 7:30 on Monday, because I'm going to call you every goddamn Monday I'm sitting at this desk," and I did. Eventually he said, "I've made an appointment with you with my boss, Colonel [Touche?], who oversees all the branches for colonels." I walked over, and it was my old friend from Fort Knox who had been the senior aide when I was the junior aide to General Collier. He had talked it over with the committee that makes these kinds of decisions, and they were going to put my name in nomination to go back onto the brigade commanders list. Great. A few weeks later I get a phone call that says "We put your name before the committee, and you are on the list, and you're number two." Uh-oh. I'm supposed to spend four years working for General Kerwin? (laughs) So a little later they call back and said, "Whoa. Wait. In the 2nd Armored Division the brigade commander has moved up to be chief of staff, and that brigade is open." I said, "OK. Now you guys call General Kerwin and tell him that you're pulling me out." They said, "Like hell we will." (laughter) So I went to see General Kerwin, and he sort of grimaced and (inaudible) [02:32:24]. He said, "You know my policy." I said, "Yes, I do, sir, but this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for me." And he said, "I'll tell you tomorrow." So the next day he called me, and he said, "Against my better judgment I'm going to let you go to that command. But let me tell you this. The day that's over you're coming back to work for me." I said, "Yes, sir. Thank you." I ran home. (laughs) A little later, in time, the moving truck was in front of the house. I'd gone home, checked out of the office, done everything appropriately, and gone back, and there was a phone call waiting for me at home. General Kerwin. He went on to say what he really wanted me to do, wouldn't I know, is that -- "Sir, we've made our deal," and he says, "OK, but remember, I'm going to get you when you get (inaudible) [02:33:21]." And that was very pleasing to me. I loved the idea of working for him. But, again, it was a matter of just working your way through the system. It was terribly important to my career and to me. People were telling me that "You don't have to do this" kind of thing. You know, "You've done all those kinds of things." But no, that wasn't the career I wanted. So I went to the 2nd Armored Division and took over the 3rd Brigade of the 2nd Armored Division at Fort Hood, Texas, and that was a real fun thing. I really enjoyed it. I had a lot of good people working for me. Some of them went on to become general officers later on. The first thing that happened was they told me that the brigade in one month is going to move to Germany on Operation [Forger?]. Does that mean anything to you? Well, in the Cold War we had built all kinds of home hutches and places to store tanks and materials that take a lot of time to get into the theater. If they said, "OK, the balloon went up. Come over here," you wouldn't have had any -- you'd have to wait for your 33 tanks for a month. So they had all those vehicles and stuff over there, and every year we went over and exercised the idea of flying over -- not me, the army did. It was my brigade's turn, and it was just great. I had planned that thing for every possible contingency, in my mind, and we laid it out with the staff. I said, "Now if this happens, or that happens, or this happens, this is what we'll do. Plan A, B, C, and D." And damn, I figured everything except it was going to snow at Fort Hood, and the air force wouldn't show up. (laughter) So we were about two days late getting there, and it slowed things up. But we went out on maneuvers for about a month and a half, and that was a great experience. I'd done it as a company commander when I was stationed in Europe, but as a brigade -- when I went over I've been detached from the 2nd Armored Division of the United States and attached to the 1st Infantry Division, when I got over to Europe. There for the first time I met a fellow named (laughs) -- I met someone, a senior officer, a brigadier general who, because my brigade wasn't part of his division, I had to go through the ropes of him looking over my shoulder for the first three weeks of what we were doing. It wasn't easy. Eventually he and I had a good reputation among each other, and then we're good. It worked out pretty well. Well, his name is Fuller, Fred Fuller. Just to move that part of the story a little further forward, when I went to Forces Command he was the DESOPS, and I was the assistant -- correction, he was the DESPER, personnel, and I was the assistant DESOPS. And again, good friends, you know. No, sir. I had to prove myself all over again to him. That was tough. That was tough. Then when I became division commander at Fort Hood, would you believe they made him the corps commander, and my boss again? And again, I went through the process. I called it rook training, he wanted to test me on everything that was going on, and then eventually he agreed, and we got along. That was a very difficult relationship I had with that individual. So we came back from Germany after the Reforger, and it was time to change division commanders. A general officer that I had met once or twice but didn't know came in as the two-star commanding the (inaudible) [02:38:26]. This was a fight for my life. He, in my opinion, didn't represent a good soldier. He would drive in his jeep with the two stars on the front, down the street, and the men in the division would say, "Hi, General," and he'd wave back, "Hi." No saluting, none of this. He would come around in my battalion and ask the company commander and the battalion commander to see their operational reports, and particularly the readiness reports, whether or not this tank would go or that one. He required them, not required them, but pushed hard for them to like take something off this tank and put it on that tank, and now we've created another tank that this one isn't working, this one if you take the parts and put it on this one, that's one less tank, but will look that much better. It was everything how you looked. Eventually he was promoted to lieutenant general and shipped to Europe, and his chief of staff caught on to his way of life, reported it. He got thrown out of the army, reduced to major general, and was retired. But that was a tough fight, that was a tough fight. In town now there's a major general, retired, John Greenway. Maybe you've met Phyllis. JC: I have. RT: Well, John Greenway was my chief of staff in the brigade, and I don't know how many times he saved my life. He'd say, "No, no, no, don't go up there and tell that general off. 34 Don't do it. Stop here." One time I actually said, "The hell with you, John, I'm going up there." I was really mad. Again, he had ordered my people to do something that was not proper. So John called up the division chief of staff, who was a good friend, and said, "Russ is on the way. Stop him." (laughs) So I never got in to see him, and I calmed down, and the chief of staff discussed it with me in a way. But it was a difficult, difficult system to live with, but I had wonderful people working for me. JC: Well, that's good. RT: Yeah. JC: What year is this? RT: Oh, my God. (inaudible) [02:41:04] I can't remember my birthday. (laughter) It was about '60 something, yeah. I came back to the United States, and I was assigned to forces command, where General Kerwin was, the man that said, "You're going to go work for me," and I went to work for General Kerwin just as I'd been promoted by the system to be brigadier general. I worked for him for two years and then another year with General Rogers, who went on to be the chief of staff of the army, and it was great. Real professionals who understood various ways of handling people beautifully. I must admit, he had a chief of staff who wasn't quite up to speed in my opinion, and as a result I found myself bypassing the chief of staff, which really isn't a very good idea. But both General Kerwin and General Rogers, when I was there, would call me on the phone directly and ask me to do something. As the junior brigadier general at Fort McPherson, Georgia, they immediately appointed me to be club officer, and to be the president of the Association of the United States Army chapter at Fort McPherson. I was really the junior guy in that headquarters as far as a general officer is concerned. The biggest thing that happened to me really there was that that's when we had the baby lift out of Vietnam, and then we had the evacuation of Vietnam. In the operations business at forces command, we had the responsibility of preparing those units in the United States, wherever they might be involved, to prepare them for the influx of people. I was up a lot of nights and really mad at the air force sometimes. They would bring in planes early, before we could finish taking people off the previous planes and get them, kind of thing. They finally came around. But it was a real wonderful experience as far as I'm concerned. I had the thrill of getting a thank you letter from the president and being called in by the State Department, who had the responsibility of taking these people once they arrived in the United States -- when they arrived in the United States the army was responsible for them. We took old barracks and tried to fix them up to be for families and all the rest of it. And the next step was to put them out into the population in America, and that was done by the State Department. At the end of this, the State Department gave me an award and invited me over to Foggy Bottom, and it was carried out in the formal part of that. It's a very ordinary-looking building, but inside, on the top floor, they have collected and put in there all the furnishing and antiques of America. They would go to somebody that had something that the State Department wanted, and they would say "We would like to have it, and we will replicate it exactly, and give you back the replication." They built -- it's a museum, it's a wonderful, wonderful museum of 35 American furniture through time. I was really impressed with it being there. I wasn't that impressed with the State Dept- people in Vietnam. (laughs) It was very interesting. JC: Yes, sir. So this was around 1975, that would be (crosstalk; inaudible) [02:45:47]. RT: Yeah, that's right. Yeah. I did one or two year. JC: Where were you from Fort McPherson? RT: From Fort McPherson, when my immediate boss left General Rogers called me in and said, "I want you to be my full-time top guy and deputy chief of staff operations." I said, "No, General, that isn't right." "What are you talking about, it isn't right?" I said, "You want someone that's been a division commander to be in that job. I mean, you're dealing with all those division commanders, and if the guy that's passing the instructions hasn't had the experience of being a division commander, it doesn't come through right." And he said, "All right. All right." About a year later I was on a board in Washington. You're sent in to do a lot of those things. Interestingly enough, on this particular one I was the head of the board for captains being promoted to major, and I got in trouble with General Rogers. The instructions we had were "These are the formulas, etc., that you follow when you're looking at the history of their being in the service. You can add to this other things, if you, as a board, want to do it." The first thing we added to it was that any captain who had served a normal period of time as a captain in the combat arms branches and had not had a company wasn't to be promoted on this occasion to major. Passing up a captain, you pass up the real army and the real understanding of the army, and, oh, boy. It turns out that we eliminated from being promoted five captains at West Point, instructors, and that reverberated around the world. (laughs) General Rogers finally calmed down. Then on another occasion when I was away in Washington he called me on the phone and said, "The major generals promotion list has just come out." I said, "Oh, good. Who's on it?" and they said, "You are." Oh, wow. After I went back he called me in his office and said, "Now, I'm going to send you to Fort Hood to command a division." Previous discussion, you got to have a command. I said, "Oh, my. Where's George going?" And he looked at me with this great strain on his face and said, "George who?" I said, "George Patton, 2nd Armored Division." I had been in the 2nd Armored Division twice. Four men have commanded the 2nd Armored Division, three of them during World War II. I knew that was my place in life. Well, he said, "You're going to the 1st Cav." Of course, when I'd been there as a brigade commander the 1st Cav was the enemy. (laughter) It was a little difficult to change my mindset that I was now the head of the 1st Cavalry Division, but it turned out to be a good assignment, too. We were immediately assigned a mission of working on something that was called Division '86, and this was the '76-'77 time frame. What we would do is to experiment with different organizational concepts, try them out, and another R&D organization would evaluate whether this was a good idea, or whether it wasn't a good idea. But, man, was that a lot of work. We had soldiers picking up their mattresses and marching over two streets, and then joining another company, because now we were trying -- we were going to have tank platoons with only four tanks rather than five tanks, 36 and these guys had to fill in for the -- you know, back and forth, and up and down. It was a crazy time, but it was very, very rewarding. We lived next door to George Patton and Joanne Patton, and as a matter of fact we had become very close friends over the time we were in the army. We went home on vacations sometimes by accident at the same time, back in New England, and other times purposefully. But we celebrated our twenty-fifth wedding anniversary together, both divisions, at the club, and it was officers. It was really good sport. JC: Was that your last command? RT: No. They sent me to -- at one Fort Hood, after two years of commanding the division, I went down and commanded something called [Tecada?] [02:51:38], which was a research and development experimental station kind of thing. I was doing to the rest of the world what they'd been doing to me, for two years I guess, at which point I was shipped over to Europe to be the deputy chief of staff for operations under General Kroesen. He was one of the most magnificent soldiers I'd ever met. I worked for him once before for a short time, but he was first class. Then I got a call from Loring Hart, president of Norwich University, who I'd gotten to know -- over his 10-year span as president -- pretty well. In my traveling around at various times, I was the head of the Norwich Club of Georgia, the Norwich Club of Fort Hood, the Norwich Club in Europe. They'd come over to visit, and we became close. I had come home on leave to see my dad, who was in bad trouble health wise, and I got a call from Loring Hart to my dad's home down in New Hampshire. He said, "I need you to come up here. I need to talk to you; it's important." And I said, "Gee, I don't know. Dad is not well, I don't know how long he's going to live, and I can't be here very long, so I really and truly want to see as much of him as I can." He said, "Well, afterward, after this weekend" -- it was a big alumni weekend -- "I'll stop in to see you." I said OK. Well, Mother got a hold of me, and Dad got a hold of me and said, "Go on up there." Dad said, "Get a hold of my classmates and tell them I'll be there next year." Well, I knew most of his classmates. When I arrived I found them at lunch in the Armory, and I walked down to the table, the half where they were, and started saying this lie about my father, he's going to be getting well, and he'll see you next year when he comes. All of a sudden the most unusual thing happened. There was this great noise in the Armory, and it kept getting louder and louder and louder. As this individual coming into the room got closer to our table, I discovered that it was General Harmon coming back, and all of these people were saying, "Ernie, Ernie, Ernie, Ernie." I couldn't believe it, you know, really and truly. It showed me just exactly how much he was loved by this institution. That doesn't mean he didn't make a lot of mistakes at times, but he really pulled us out of the woods. So Loring Hart stops in at the house and says, "The board at Norwich University has told me that 10 years is enough, and I'm going to retire. I want you to put your name on the list to be considered." I said, "You're a PhD, you taught English, you became the dean of the university. I don't have any of that." He said, "And you don't need it either, because I'm absolutely certain they're going to choose a soldier." I said, "What do you know, I'm qualified." I went back to Europe, told my boss, and then came back. I made a couple of trips back and forth. I told my boss, which was General Kroesen, what was 37 going on, and then went to see the chief of staff of the army to tell him that I was putting in my papers. You know, after you've been division commander you owe the army something, because of the experience they've given you. So I went to see General "Shy" Meyer, who I'd known in Vietnam, and I was a little dubious here. What will he say? So I told him, and he jumped up from behind his chair, rushed around to my side of his desk, shook my hand, and said, "Boy, that's just exactly what I want to do when I get out." (laughter) Then, unfortunately, and this doesn't have to be spread around, he told me that my name had been submitted to be promoted to Lieutenant General, and it is now before the Congress. Had I not put this in and had I been selected, I was going to go to one of two different jobs, and neither one of them sounded as much fun to me as coming home. Not that I could change my mind. Once you've told the army you're retiring, you're retiring. You don't change your mind. So that's how I got here. JC: What were the other two choices? RT: To be the chief of staff of USEUCOM, which was for the European theater of all of the activities there, and the other one was on the joint staff, doing the DES-OPS kind of work, which is called the J5. JC: So you come to Norwich. Talk a little bit about the application process, because I know Phil Marsilius says in his oral history that they gave you an eight-point plan that they wanted implemented. RT: Yeah. Very unusual I thought, and very useful. Before I get to that (laughs), Carol and I came. We went to New York City and joined a committee of the board who were involved in the selection process. The plane was late, the taxis weren't running, and we were late getting to this thing. Carol was a little nervous that that showed that maybe we weren't working hard enough to get there. They said to me, "We've just finished lunch. Do you want something to eat?" and I said, "Oh, yeah. How about a bowl of onion soup?" Carol said to me afterward, "You could have chosen anything but that cheese dangling out of your mouth." (laughter) But, to me, we had a wonderful conversation, and quite frankly I left in the cab going back to the airport with a member of the board who sat there and congratulated us, because they were certain that the board was now going to select us. Yeah, interesting. Where were we in our discussion? JC: The eight-point plan. RT: Yeah. I can't tell you what the eight-points are right now, but they were all reasonable, one of which was to make Vermont College work, the system of the two institutions together, and that's interesting, too. On that point I tried very hard -- they put a lot of pressure on Loring to go up to Vermont College at least twice a week. He'd go home, changed out of his uniform into civilian clothes, go up to Vermont College, and I don't know what he did, presumably he did good things, and came back again. I got into that routine with him, and I found that Vermont College was in deep trouble, I mean, in my opinion. Over time Vermont College had reduced the quality of their education in order 38 to sustain the number of students they needed, and they had all kinds of programs going that didn't make a lot of sense. They had a nursing program that was excellent. Excellent. They had just bought some programs from -- oh, what's the name of it? JC: Goddard? RT: Goddard College, and they were difficult to mesh into the family. For example, I hadn't been here very long, and I got a call from Mrs. Lippincott, who was the chief officer of Vermont College and had previously been Loring's assistant. I got a call that said, "There's going to be a graduation on Friday" -- this was about Wednesday -- "and it's going to be outside at Vermont College. It's going to be one of the Goddard programs that's graduating at this time. They would like to invite you to be part of their graduation." So I said, "Fine, I'll be there." But before I went I hadn't heard anything more, so I called up to find out, and I said, "Now, what's my role in this? Do I hand out the diplomas? Do I make a speech, do I congratulate them from the platform? What do I do?" They said, "Oh, no, they just want you to sit there and be present. They do all this themselves." OK. I can live with that, and we'll see what happens. The first student to graduate came up, gave a little speech, each one of them, and then took their diploma and put it from their left hand to their right hand, and went back to their chair. The institution wasn't involved. This happened seven or eight times before I really said this is something we've got to look at. Then they decided, or they didn't then decide, the next thing was to have a musical rendition. They had a fellow with a fife and a piano player, and they pushed the piano out toward the group, and the front leg broke off pushing it through the grass. They somehow got it jacked up and started, and the flute player -- well, it was awful, just awful. The next day I said to my vice president, Jim Galloway, major general, retired, I told Jim what had happened, and he said, "You know, you weren't the first. I was the first. The same sort of thing went on, but it was crazier when I was up there." I said, "Tell me." He said, "The flute player was in a tree." (laughter) So we spent some time trying to bring it into the focus. Quite frankly they had some fine professors. They just didn't have a system involved. JC: I've always heard Goddard is a little strange. RT: Well, put it this way. One time Carol and I invited the president of -- oh, in Burlington. JC: UVM? RT: N
Part one of an interview with Amelia Gallucci-Cirio. Topics include: Recognition of the September 11th tragedy underway. Amelia's involvement in the Center for Italian Culture and the Alba Program. Pride in the Italian heritage and the importance of preserving it. The history of where Amelia lived in Connecticut and Massachusetts, while she was growing up. Memories of her relatives. What Amelia's childhood was like. Where in Italy her parents were from. Amelia's experience attending Fitchburg Teachers College from 1934-1938. Attending band concerts in Caldwell Park. Dressing up for Sundays, holidays, and to go downtown. How Fitchburg has changed. How people's values have changed. The role of church in a community. Social clubs. How Amelia met her husband. Where Amelia and her husband have traveled together. What inspired Amelia to donate money towards the education of others and the preservation of Italian culture. ; 1 LINDA: This is Linda [unintelligible – 00:00:02] for the Center of Italian Culture. We are interviewing Amelia Gallucci-Cirio. And I'm sure I didn't say that in the Italian way. I'm sorry. AMELIA: Yes, you did. That was right. LINDA: Okay. It's Wednesday, September 11, and we are in the home of both Anna [unintelligible – 00:00:23] and Amelia's cousin, Rachel Montorri, and the address is 479 Lindell Avenue in Leominster. It's a beautiful morning. It's 10:20 a.m., and we're starting a little bit late today because there was a national tragedy today, and there are unconfirmed reports that there was a terrorist attack against the United States, and there have been two planes, at least two planes, that have flown and struck the World Trade Center. There was a plane that struck the Pentagon about a half an hour after that. There are unconfirmed reports of a fire at the State House, and The White House has been evacuated and the Blair House, many buildings in Washington. People are very, very nervous today. So we will talk a little bit about that, I'm sure, but Anna and Amelia and Rachel are here with us today, of course to talk about the Italian-American experience, particularly in Fitchburg and Leominster. And Amelia, thank you very much. I suppose that we have to thank you for a lot of different things. Not just for appearing today to… AMELIA: Well, I'm happy to do it. May I preface this by quoting something from Cicero? Cicero, the great Roman orator and statesman, said, "Not to know what happened before we were born is to remain perpetually a child, for what is the worth of human life unless it is woven into the life of our ancestors by the records of history." I think that's so important. LINDA: Now, did that sort of formulate your reason for creating the center? AMELIA: Yes. Yes, and one of the reasons was I wanted to -- I'm very much interested in Western civilization and the Italian language and its culture, and I thought I think I'm capable of making donations, and my Fitchburg 2 State College would be the first to accept it, although I've also made donations to other organizations. In Waterbury, Connecticut, we have a program that I hope is going to carry on here in Leominster also. It's the Alba Program, in which children ages 6 to about 13, 14, study Italian through playing games and celebrating holidays and birthdays and so on. And we've been doing that in Waterbury, Connecticut for about five years, and I hope the Center for Italian Culture will also take that on as another project. And I've already talked to Anna, and they're very much interested in it. LINDA: Now, this is in Italian language? AMELIA: Yes, studying the Italian language and its culture, and there will be four or five teachers teaching the youngsters. LINDA: Now, has it been successful in Waterbury? AMELIA: Oh, yes. They've been working for about five years, and it's down to Teikyo Post University in Waterbury, Connecticut, and they meet there at the center every Saturday morning for about an hour and a half, two hours. And the children play games and they learn Italian expressions, and when it's a birthday they celebrate and say buon compleanno and so on. And the grandmothers just love it because the children go up and talk to Nonna and Nonno and so on. Yeah. And I hope that that is one of the projects they're going to take on, and talking to Anna they seem to be very interested in doing that. LINDA: Certainly anything that perpetuates the culture. AMELIA: Yeah, that's right. LINDA: Now, what's that, the Fitchburg State College website—and I'm not sure, you probably know this, but your profile has an alumni. AMELIA: Yes. LINDA: And I read -- and the very first item is that there is, "Know thyself." AMELIA: Yes. Socrates said, "Know thyself." And so we've translated that into Italian. [Foreign language – 00:04:58], meaning "Know thyself." And I 3 think I'd like to use that as our motto for the Center for Italian Culture, and not always is it included, but that's what it means. LINDA: What does it mean specifically to you? And how does it help you live your life and give donations? AMELIA: It means that… well, I know when I was a child it was difficult. We didn't have everything. My father died when we were quite young, and there were seven in the family. My older brother, Joseph, who Rachel knows, took on the responsibilities of father. It was an old Roman custom that the oldest son in the family would take over when the father died. So I thought since I am capable of doing it, I want to help children who weren't capable of learning their language or taking part in going to school, and that's what I'm doing now. LINDA: And why do you think that's important to learn about your heritage? AMELIA: It's so very important because today with so many different ethnic groups, oftentimes Italians of the TV and radio programs always talking about the mafia, and I feel that we are somehow -- Italian people don't defend themselves. But I think during the Clinton Administration they did pass a ruling wherein the Italians during World War II -- I know my mother, she wasn't a citizen, and during that time she couldn't travel. She had to go to the post office to get permission to attend a wedding in Waterbury, in Rhode Island, rather. And we are often made the scapegoat, and I think that we have to educate our people and teach them something about our background, something about our culture. We have a great culture, and the school systems at one time didn't talk about that, but I think it is being included in the curriculum today. LINDA: How do you feel about The Sopranos then? AMELIA: Oh, I'm very much not in favor of that at all. And I think that the Sons and Daughters of Italy and the NIF, and now that we have several, much more than we did in the past, congressmen of Italian origin, I think they are working to try to get them to remove that stereotype and talk more 4 about what Italian Americans have contributed to society. Going back to the time of the Romans and so on. LINDA: How did you feel when Geraldine Ferraro was running for vice president? Not necessarily her as a person or what she stood for, but was there a particular pride, ethnic pride? AMELIA: I don't know, but I know when she was running for vice president, we attended the NIAF dinner in Washington, D.C., my brother Joe, Christine, my two sisters and I, we all went down to Washington. We all went there, and she was a speaker, and we were very much in favor, naturally, being Italian American. But unfortunately there was some negative advertising about Geraldine, and that didn't help at all. LINDA: I remember specifically that there were some questions about her husband's dealings, possibly in the mafia. AMELIA: Oh, yes, yes. LINDA: There was a real backlash with that just because they have an Italian last name, and just because they're successful, it doesn't automatically make you… ANNA: What is she doing now? LINDA: I think she's quite sick, or she was. AMELIA: Yes, I think she is. LINDA: I'm not sure the form of cancer. ANNA: Oh, that's too bad. LINDA: One thing has confused me, because I read that you were born in Fitchburg… AMELIA: Yes, I was born in Fitchburg. LINDA: We'll have to change that on the website. It says that you were born in Connecticut. AMELIA: No, we were born in Fitchburg. We were born on my grandpa, my grandpa Luigi Scarano came from Italy with my mother. Mama was 17 years of age, and with Rachel's mother, Filomena, who was 13. Grandpa came with his two daughters to America, and then my grandmother came 5 with the rest of the family, and they settled down first in Boston, I think. [Foreign language – 00:10:10] Did you hear your mother talk about it? They went there and then they all came to Fitchburg, and Grandpa built that tenement house on Second Street? Did you see it? RACHEL: Middle Street Lane. AMELIA: Right. When my mother married my father, they lived in Clinton. My brother Joe was about 5 years old. Then we moved to Fitchburg, and my sister Christina was born in the block where Grandpa, Grandma, your mother was there. We all lived in the block. And then I was born the following year, May 12, 1915. And we were there for a couple of years. RACHEL: Yeah, not very long. AMELIA: And then we moved back to Connecticut. My father followed a young sister—he was always protecting her—and we lived there for a while and then back again to Fitchburg, and my brother Tommy was born here. LINDA: No wonder you like to travel. AMELIA: And then we moved back again to Waterbury, Connecticut. My father was a baker. He came from a family of bakers, and he set up a grocery store and a bakery shop, and we were there about three years, and then we moved to Naugatuck, Connecticut because his sister moved closer to another brother, and we have been there ever since 1925. But I came back to Fitchburg where I was born to attend -- it was called Fitchburg Teacher's College, and I lived with my grandmother and my uncle Joe, who was a violinist. And Anne studied violin with my uncle, and I remember when she was downstairs practicing and I was upstairs studying. So I was going to Fitchburg, we lived in Connecticut, and then I came back to Fitchburg for my bachelor's degree, and then I taught in Naugatuck in Connecticut for about eight years, and then I married in '52 and went to Phoenix. LINDA: Could you spell Naugatuck?6 AMELIA: Yes. N-A-U-G-A-T-U-C-K. It's a small community. Well, I wouldn't say small. It's about 35, in between Waterbury and New Haven, Connecticut. ANNA: That's what it is now? The population? AMELIA: Yeah, I would say. But my mother was never happy there because her mother was in Fitchburg and her sisters and brother and so on. LINDA: So do you have any memories of Fitchburg? Let's say your earliest memory. AMELIA: Yes. I remember when we all lived on 2nd Street in the block. [Unintelligible – 00:13:07] Oh, I thought it was 2nd Street. ANNA: I think you're right. AMELIA: I always remembered 2nd Street. And I remember when Anna's mother also lived there. Her uncle, who was Rachel's father -- was he responsible for bringing your mother to Fitchburg? RACHEL: Yeah. AMELIA: I remember her father must have been courting her mother, and he was such a wonderful man. Oreste. We used to go there and we'd sit on his knee, and he would give us all – that, I remember very distinctly. Those were happy days. LINDA: So what were their names? We should get that on tape. ANNA: Oreste. O-R-E-S-T-E. Guglielmi. G-U-G-L-I-E-L-M-I. And my mother, Carmela. C-A-R-M-E-L-A. Giammarino. G-I-A-M-M-A-R-I-N-O. And my mother came to America when Rachel's father, who was Michael Giammarino, called for her to come, and my father at that time was living in that neighborhood. He was boarding in a house there. Yeah, he was boarding on 3rd Street, at the Lily House. And he courted my mother, and they were married in 1920. LINDA: So your father -- tell us the relations. ANNA: Yeah, okay. My mother, Carmela, and Rachel's father, Michael, were brother and sister. Now, Rachel's mother, who was Filomena, F-I-L-O-M-E-N-A, and Amelia's mother…7 AMELIA: Anna Maria. ANNA. Her first name was Anna, Anna Maria, were sisters. So we're first cousins. AMELIA: What would the relationship between you and me be? RACHEL: Distant cousins. AMELIA: Yeah, I guess. LINDA: So getting back to your earliest experiences, so you remember her father? AMELIA: Oh, yes, yes. ANNA: He would bounce them on his knee. AMELIA: In fact, my sisters always say that -- yeah, we remember when Oreste used to sit us on his knee and… ANNA: He loved children. AMELIA: Yeah, he did. He was a wonderful man. And then of course I remember when I lived on Blossom Street with my uncle after they moved, Uncle Joe with Grandma and Grandpa moved to Blossom Street, 82 Blossom Street, and that's where he taught violin. And he used to come there summers, and they had a beautiful home, and Tommy would get on the banister and slide all the way down to the first floor. RACHEL: We've gone by that house. AMELIA: Oh, it's terrible. RACHEL: There was one house that we went by and you were disgusted. Maybe that was your first home? ANNA: No, I remember just saying what a shame to see it like that. RACHEL: But it wasn't Blossom Street. LINDA: So now is Blossom Street considered part of the Patch also? ANNA: No. Blossom Street is towards Fitchburg State College. LINDA: Okay. Who owned that house? ANNA: Her uncle? AMELIA: Oh, Uncle Joe. And Grandmother and Joseph Scarano. ANNA: Who was the son of her grandfather, her grandparents? LINDA: Okay. So tell me more about the Patch.8 ANNA: The Patch started at First Street right near where St. Bernadette's Church. RACHEL: It used to be the school. ANNA: St. Bernadette's Elementary School at that time. And it went down to Fifth Street where they have the Fifth Street Bridge, which is now being repaired and remodeled. And it started from Water Street going back to Railroad Street. That whole small section, they called it the Patch. RACHEL: And it was predominantly Italian. ANNA: Yes. LINDA: But Amelia, do you have any vivid memories of maybe what you did for fun? AMELIA: As a child? LINDA: As a child. AMELIA: I really don't know, because when I left Fitchburg, I was about 3 or 4 years old, and then we did come back there during the summer months in our teen age. Prior to that, we didn't. Uncle Joe used to come down with Grandma during the summer months when we lived in Naugatuck, but not until my late teens, probably. LINDA: How did you travel back and forth? AMELIA: Uncle Joe used to come down and pick us up. Uncle Joe would come down and pick us up in Naugatuck. LINDA: What kind of car? What kind of automobile was he using? AMELIA: Uncle Joe always had a Chrysler. ANNA: We were young, and we thought that was special. AMELIA: And he always got a Chrysler because I think he had stock in the Chrysler. RACHEL: Could be. LINDA: When he came down to Connecticut to pick you up, how many of you were there? AMELIA: Well, my brother Joe was always working to support us. There was Christine, Connie and I, Tommy and Donald, and Mama. ANNA: Anne.9 AMELIA: Oh, and Anne too. Yeah, we used to come summers for a couple of weeks or so and then go see an aunt. The youngest of the Scaranos was Aunt Rosella. Do you remember her, Anna? ANNA: I do. AMELIA: She played the piano. RACHEL: She was the most Americanized than the rest of them. She played the piano… AMELIA: Well, she was the youngest and had more schooling than the older ones. LINDA: And where are you in relation to your siblings? Are you -- you're in the middle, perhaps? AMELIA: There's Joseph, Christine, and then I. I'm about the middle, the third. There were seven in the family. Two boys are gone, and there are four sisters, three are in Phoenix. No, two are in Phoenix, and I'm with them, too. So there will be three in Phoenix and one sister is still in Naugatuck, Connecticut. And Donald, the youngest -- actually, his name was Dante. Papa called him Dante. But when they went to school they Americanized it to Donald. Donald is in Phoenix also. LINDA: How was it growing up in Connecticut? Did you see… maybe you didn't get to Fitchburg enough to notice any differences, but do you recall any differences? AMELIA: In what? LINDA: On just growing up in your area in Connecticut and then coming up to Fitchburg, which is probably booming at that time. AMELIA: In Fitchburg? LINDA: A lot of different people. AMELIA: No, we lived in this tenement house that we bought, and my father ran a grocery store and a bakery shop on the first floor. You know, I have a lot of pictures that -- did you say that you wanted them? I could send them to you. I don't have them with me. And there's a picture of the family is standing in front of the grocery store and going to school in a two-room schoolhouse on Groveside School and going to the Naugatuck High 10 School. Christine and I were very much interested in books and studying, and we spent a lot of time in the library. So the years in Naugatuck when we didn't come to Fitchburg were not very interesting. It was mostly studying and being with my brothers and sisters and my mother, because my father left -- well, he went back to Italy when Donald was a baby, and my brother, Joe, being the oldest went to work. So Papa left when I was in the 7th or 8th grade, and when I was a sophomore in high school we found out that he passed away. So he's buried in Italy, and I've gone to visit him many times when I went to Italy with my husband. LINDA: Did you live in a predominately Italian section? AMELIA: Yes. We lived on what they call Little Italy. And speaking about Italian section, for the past couple of years when I go back to Connecticut, to Naugatuck, we have a little reunion. We had it last year, and all the Italian Americans from that Little Italy section, we get together and I entertain them to dinner. We had a trio come and play for us. We've done that for several years, but because my two sisters didn't come with me this year I'm not going to do it. I'm spending more time in Fitchburg. LINDA: So tell me a little bit about growing up in your family with seven children, your father's a baker, then he leaves to go back to Italy… AMELIA: Well, the reason for going back to Italy was that he wanted to claim his share of the inheritance, but unfortunately it didn't work out that way because his brother, his oldest brother, Pasquale… Oh, hi Kathy. This is Rachel's daughter. LINDA: Hi, I'm Linda. KATHY: Hi, Linda. [Crosstalk - 00:24:04] RACHEL: So, what have you heard from the last half hour?11 KATHY: Well, you know about the Pentagon? And now they just said there was another plane crash outside of Pittsburgh about 30 miles. They don't know if it's related. Pittsburgh, a big aircraft went down. ANNA: Another building? KATHY: No. It crashed. RACHEL: That's too bad. KATHY: Are you crying? AMELIA: No. I have tear duct blockage, so I've got -- no, no. I'm fine. KATHY: Well, don't let me interfere. [Crosstalk – 00:24:38] LINDA: Are there any reports of who's responsible? KATHY: What's his name, Arafat there, he said he thought it was a horrible thing, and he would never ever have caused such a turmoil – but who knows if you can believe him? But that's what he said. A lot of people. I called [unintelligible – 00:25:19] because she had worked there at the Trade Center, but she and her husband are okay. They weren't there at the time. [Crosstalk – 00:25:27] KATHY: Hopefully all the planes are now secure. All right, ladies. RACHEL: Where are you going? KATHY: I'm going to the dentist now. I'm getting my teeth cleaned. I'll see you. Take care. Goodbye. Nice meeting you. AMELIA: So you asked me about what was it like growing up in a family of seven? LINDA: Yes. AMELIA: So where was I now? So my father went to Italy to claim his share of the inheritance. The family came from a business family, and they were well to do, and Papa was one of four. So he went back, and his brother, who was the oldest in the family, and he evidently didn't get along, so he didn't get anything. He just passed away in '31 when I was a sophomore and Christine was a senior in high school. We were a very close-knit family. We worked together and studied together, and as I said Christine and I 12 were very much interested in the library. We worked at the Naugatuck Public Library, and we got a scholarship that summer, both Chris and I. RACHEL: And she lived in Spain. AMELIA: Well, Christine studied Spanish. This is after I got married. LINDA: Which town was your family from in Italy? AMELIA: My mother was from Lacedonia. Her mother was born there, and of course Rachel's mother. Lacedonia [unintelligible – 00:27:45] Cavallino, Italy. And I've been to there. When I went with my husband after we married and lived there for two years, we were coming back to America and he said, "You've got to see where your mother was born." So we went to Lacedonia, and we met some relatives. I have pictures; that was back in Connecticut. And then we also went to visit my father's home place. My father came from [unintelligible – 00:28:13] in Italy, and we went to visit the family home. And at that time we met this aunt who I asked if I could visit my father's grave, and she had a niece of hers take me to the cemetery, and he was not buried in the family mausoleum. He was buried just as a commoner. She didn't want him there. So we visited… LINDA: What region is that in? AMELIA: Pardon? LINDA: The region. AMELIA: Well, it's all Campagna, it's all that region, it's Campagna, but it's [unintelligible – 00:28:55]. Mama's was Campagna also, but it was [unintelligible – 00:29:00]. It's a little inland from Naples, right. And you know, right at the foothills, going up to [unintelligible – 00:29:10], it's in the mountains, it's a little town by the name of Galluccio. It ends in an "o." Our name was Galluccio. When Papa came to Ellis Island in about 1902, the immigration authorities couldn't spell it, so they left the "o" out. So "Gallucci" means roosters, it's the plural. And "Galluccio" is the singular rooster.13 LINDA: That's interesting. AMELIA: And we have roosters all over the house. LINDA: Did your parents ever share with you their trip to Ellis Island? AMELIA: No. I don't remember, but I know my mother said that when they came to America with Grandpa and her sister Filomena, it was a rough crossing on the French ship Nuestri, N-U-E-S-T-R-I. Mama did tell me that. And she said it was a very rough crossing. LINDA: The courage… AMELIA: Oh yeah. I don't know what ship my father came on, but he must have come about the same time. LINDA: It's really simple now. There's a website, although it's impossible to log on. AMELIA: Oh, I know. My brother Donald had a hard time getting that information. Grandpa came on May 27, 1902. He did get that information. LINDA: So it sounds like you're a very educated family, or at least you and your sister. And musical, too. Who instilled those qualities? AMELIA: Pardon? LINDA: Who instilled those qualities? AMELIA: Well, when we came to visit Grandma in Fitchburg there was always music, you know. Uncle Joe played the violin, Bella played the piano, and the [Guiliamus] were all musicians in their family. The four girls all played an instrument. Did you know that? Yeah. Her sister Lena played the piano, Anna played the violin, Mary played the… LINDA: The saxophone. AMELIA: Saxophone. LINDA: And Helen, drums. AMELIA: Right. And Helen the drums. And then my father learned opera. We had an old mahogany victrola that you used to wind up, and we had all the records of Caruso and [Jean B.[ and [unintelligible - 00:31:45], so we grew up in a family that was always moving. [Crosstalk] So in fact, even now, they're still very much interested in music. The opera season starts 14 in Phoenix during the second week in October; that's one of the reasons I want to get back. LINDA: Yeah. Where do you go for opera? AMELIA: [Unintelligible - 00:32:19] LINDA: Yeah. They do have opera. I think the music season begins in mid-October. AMELIA: October, yes. Pavarotti is coming to Boston. Oh, I'd love to hear him. He came to Phoenix one season but we just couldn't get tickets. ANNA: [Unintelligible - 00:32:41]. It's a movie. AMELIA: Oh, that's right, yeah. LINDA: Well we'll have to make a copy of this if this is okay. ANNA: She's responsible. AMELIA: Oh yeah, I'm the family historian. I think that was my graduation. ANNA: I hardly recognize her. AMELIA: No, that was Peter's wedding. There's Aunt Rosella. My mother was the oldest. Aunt Clair was the next, then Aunt Fil was third, and Uncle Joe, and Aunt Rosella was the baby. Yes. Filomena, that's Rachel's mother. My mother and Aunt Fil came with Grandpa. Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures of Grandpa. ANNA: That's Joe the violinist. AMELIA: Yeah, Uncle Joe. ANNA: I know. Clair and Rosella. LINDA: So how do you feel about Andrea Bocelli? Is he too much of a pop, more than opera? AMEILA: Well, I listened to him, and he hasn't come to Phoenix, but I still like Pavarotti, old days, more polished singing. Yes. LINDA: I went to see Andrea Bocelli when he was in Connecticut probably two years ago. AMELIA: He was in Connecticut? LINDA: It was at the Hartford Civic Center, and people were actually crying, waving Italian flags. It was quite an experience.15 AMELIA: I've seen him on television when they had that program, what was it? New York? LINDA: Radio City? AMELIA: Mm-hmm. LINDA: So mostly, I usually talk to interviewees about Fitchburg, but maybe what we should do -- actually, why don't we stay with Fitchburg a little bit since you attended school here, and you graduated in 1938? AMELIA: Yes. LINDA: So that means you began in '34? Was it a four-year program? AMELIA: It was a four-year program. I graduated from high school in '34. I got a scholarship for $150—that was money in those days—so I came to Fitchburg. LINDA: What was the tuition? Do you remember how much it was? AMELIA: Oh, I don't think tuition was -- well, being an out-of-stater was the reason why I had to pay more, and I think that the tuition was about $150 to $200. What I -- the scholarship I got in Naugatuck took care of that. But then the second year, being a resident of Fitchburg, I don't think there was much of a fee. LINDA: And was there any question of you attending college, or did you always assume that you would go on? AMELIA: Oh yeah, I always assumed that I would go on to college, and of course my sister, Christine, was very much interested going to school, but she and my brother had to work to support a family of seven and my mother, so because I had gotten a scholarship and Christine was working and Peter Paul at the time, right after high school, but she wanted to go to college so bad. So after I married, my husband said to me, "We've got to help your sister to go to school." So Christine after working for 26 years at Peter Paul went to college. She graduated from the University of Connecticut with a bachelor's, and she went on to study Spanish—she majored in Spanish—and she studied in Madrid and Mexico City. LINDA: What a nice story.16 AMELIA: And she's a retired teacher now. She doesn't teach now. Yeah. LINDA: So there were two of you from your family… AMELIA: Yeah, Christine and I, and my youngest sister Anna, she was interested in commercial, and she went into bookkeeping and that sort of thing. She went to a business school for a couple of years. And Donald too, the baby in the family -- oh dear, Rachel's going to take it out of me -- Christine, Connie, and I, we took that in Las Vegas. Yeah. ANNA: That's a nice picture. AMELIA: We're so close to Las Vegas; we go there a couple of times a year. Yeah. LINDA: So now getting back to Fitchburg, you came in 1934. AMELIA: Right. Four years. LINDA: Did you consider going to college anywhere else, or did you consider only Fitchburg? AMELIA: No, I considered -- maybe it's because we had relatives there. You know, my grandmother was still there and mama said, "It would be nice if we could come and visit you," and so on. ANNA: Was that a normal school then? AMELIA: Well no, it was the Fitchburg Teacher's College. It was known as a teacher's college. It trains teachers and industrial arts teachers. LINDA: That's right. AMELIA: But now they teach everything, don't they? Amazing. LINDA: And who did you live with? AMELIA: I lived with my Uncle Joe and grandmother at 82 Blossom Street. LINDA: Did you and Anna and Rachel go to visit? AMELIA: Oh yeah. Always together. LINDA: What kinds of things did you do together for fun activities? AMELIA: Oh, we used to go to Whalen. We used to go to Whalen Park, we went swimming. We used to go on picnics and family gatherings. Anna's mother was a great cook. LINDA: All of you were unmarried at this time?17 AMELIA: Yes. We were all single. I married late in life. I think it was 37 when I got married. ANNA: I still remember that time. AMELIA: Yeah, you were still in high school, Anna. And we attended concerts. Uncle played with the -- what was it? ANNA: The symphony. AMELIA: No, that was in Boston. He played with a band here in Fitchburg. What was it called? ANNA: It was a marching band, Fitchburg Community Band. They had Sunday afternoons at Caldwell Park. AMELIA: Yeah, Caldwell Park. Right. So we used to go to that. LINDA: Tell me more about that, about the concerts at the park. Was there a bandstand? ANNA: Gazebo, right? On Mirror Lake. LINDA: It's still there? I played there too. AMELIA: Do they still have concerts there now? ANNA: Mm-hmm. Sunday afternoon. AMELIA: Tell me what it was like going. For example, did you dress in your Sunday's finest to go? AMELIA: Oh yeah, we always did dress on Sunday. ANNA: We didn't wear jeans and sneakers unless you were in your own backyard. And if you had to go downtown, you had to change your clothes. AMELIA: Right. And girls always had to wear stockings. ANNA: And skirts or dresses. On Sunday you'd have your hat and gloves and bag. AMELIA: Oh yeah, and attend church first, right? LINDA: And when you would go downtown and it wasn't Sunday, would you wear a hat and gloves, or was that primarily… AMELIA: I think that was mostly for church on Sundays. ANNA: But you always dressed to go downtown. AMELIA: Oh yeah.18 ANNA: I think they had more pride in their appearance than they do today. I used to pick up my mother as well, and she always had the hat and the gloves, and they had to match. Every Easter you had to go out and buy a new hat. LINDA: Would you go downtown by yourselves, or would you travel with girls? ANNA: We would walk most of the time. A mile and a half was nothing, right? There were no cars. You'd walk downtown, and I think the main activity was going to a movie once a week. I liked going to the movies. And then you'd stop and have an ice cream on the way home. AMELIA: Uh-huh, and wasn't there a movie at Blossom Street theater where Uncle used to play? The Cummings Theater. That's right. And they always had music there, and it was live music. ANNA: Right. Because Uncle Joe played the violin there. AMELIA: Oh, but Blossom Street has changed so. ANNA: Oh, it's terrible. LINDA: What was it like then? Your memories? AMELIA: They were nice-looking buildings, there were some -- what was that building where your mother worked with Mr. [Burren]? That brick building. ANNA: [Chimmers]. AMELIA: And then there was an apartment there next to that, and Dr. Ames, who lived right next to Uncle Joe, that was a nice building. And across the street from Uncle Joe's building was the -- what was that funeral home? ANNA: No, that was the Knight of Columbus home. AMELIA: Oh, the Knights of Columbus home was next to that. So they were good-looking buildings, and they have taken me up there last year and this year, and I just don't… ANNA: Oh I know. It's sad. LINDA: What happened? AMELIA: I think a lot of Puerto Ricans have come in, haven't they? And a lot of blacks have moved in. And for some reason or another, the buildings are not kept up. You should see what they did to Uncle Joe's building. Now,19 Uncle Joe's—the house that he lived in—was a beautiful classical building. The man who built it was a contractor. I can't think of his name. He was a contractor and had beautiful columns on the porch, and whoever lives there now boarded it all up. It's not the same Blossom Street. ANNA: They were mansions, I think, on the street at that time. Beautiful mansions. Big homes and huge homes. And there are other things now. AMELIA: Right. Although, the upper part of Blossom Street is not as bad. It's still very -- it's still a nice neighborhood. And that's where Mike lived didn't he? Mike, your son? ANNA: Yeah. I think it's still nice. AMELIA: And I used to walk from Blossom Street along Pearl Street all the way to teacher's college every morning. ANNA: We did a lot more walking in those days than we do today. AMELIA: Ann, didn't you walk down from where you lived to go for your violin lesson with your violin in your hand? ANNA: Yeah. AMELIA: And your mother always walked to church, every morning. LINDA: I imagine that you're talking pretty much great distances? Like a mile and a half. AMELIA: Oh, I would say a good mile and a half, two miles, yes. ANNA: And I walked that to high school. A couple of miles. LINDA: You must have felt very safe. AMELIA: Yes. There are a lot more cars now than we had, too. ANNA: Especially in Coggshall Park. Nowadays they warn you not to walk alone. Walk as a pair. AMELIA: Right. And it was even safe at night walking. You can't do that today. LINDA: We can't have any movement on the table. I'm just afraid that we're not going to -- I feel bad telling you, but I don't want the tape to be… [Crosstalk - 00:44:50]20 ANNA: They would freeze it in the wintertime, and we used to walk up there for skating, ice skating. We'd come home at 9:00. There were no lights on, you know. But we had no fear. LINDA: When would you say things start to change? ANNA: After the '40s, I think. LINDA: After the '40s? ANNA: After the '50s? AMELIA: I know sometimes in Connecticut, when I used to go to meetings in Waterbury and I wasn't driving, I would take the bus home at night, even as late as 11:00, and walk up the hill to Culver Street where we lived then, and it was still safe. I would say, yeah, maybe I would say starting with the fifties, it wasn't safe, you know, to walk, to be alone. LINDA: So what happened though? Did people lose a sense of pride? ANNA: I think so. In the city we have the hippies and the campus unrest in the '60s. LINDA: But did anything like that happen specifically in Fitchburg? ANNA: Well, you read of accidents and crimes, and they would happen in the areas like Coggshall Park, for instance, and there were crimes up there. And then, you would, be wise not to go, and you wouldn't walk alone. And now, I don't think you'd even go up there in the daytime by yourself, never mind at night. LINDA: Well, I'm wondering is it a gradual feeling to see your city decay a little bit? I'm not from Worcester, but I've lived in Worcester since 1978, and that was certainly after the heyday and the booming industry, and things started, I suppose, or had already gone downhill. Now there's a real rebirth, but I was wondering, how do you feel living in a city you're so proud of and that your parents came to make a better life, and they worked so hard to make your life better, and they worked very hard to own their own home and they probably took very good care of it and had a garden in the back, whatever. And how do you feel, just being part of that generation that saw both ways of life: the working hard, striving hard, 21 having to work for every penny, to perhaps new ethnic groups coming in and being given money and not working? ANN: That's right. That's happening. AMELIA: I know when our parents came, a lot of them went to South America because they weren't allowed -- the immigration laws today are a lot more lax, I think. They allow everyone to come in, but at the time that our parents came to the United States, the laws were a lot stricter. A lot of them went to South America. Now, Grandpa's brother emigrated to South America, Argentina. He couldn't come here to the States, couldn't come to America. A lot of them went to Argentina and Australia, too. LINDA: Did your dad have to come -- so he must have tried to come later. AMELIA: Yeah, a little later. That's when the immigration laws, I think they were a little strict. But today they're allowing all types of people to come in. I don't know why, and… ANNA: There's a lot more crime. Either that or we're hearing about it. AMELIA: Well, I think when we were brought up we didn't have television. If we had radio, we were lucky to have a radio, and we were taught to knit, and to crochet, and to sew. Children are not taught that today. Our parents were at home. When we came home from school our parents were home, and they taught us all these crafts. Today, parents are working, they're not at home, they have television. I think we have a lot more outside influences that affect our way of living. And with the drug trade, too -- we didn't have that when we were growing up. I think that's why we had such change. LINDA: When you were growing up and you came home from school, your mother was there cleaning, cooking, washing. AMELIA: That's right. Washing clothes or getting ready for -- uh-huh. LINDA: And you were probably expected to help? AMELIA: Well, Mama would say to me, "You do your homework, and afterwards you can help me." And she taught me how to sew. I used to make all my clothes through high school. Of course I don't have time now, but yeah, 22 young people were taught crafts. They were taught to knit and sew and crochet. Kids don't know how to do that today. LINDA: What about values? ANNA: We were taught to say "Thank you," [unintelligible - 00:50:23]. AMELIA: Yeah, that, too, has changed, and I think it's all because of the fact that mothers are not at home to teach their children, and there are a lot more outside influences that affect children, and they don't have mannerisms. I don't know why but… ANNA: Well it all comes from the family background. AMELIA: Yeah, well that's true. ANNA: It's a changing world. LINDA: As I sit here and record, I'm interested in my own family history too, and that's really how I got involved in this project: because my great-grandmother and my great-grandfather came from Italy. AMELIA: Really? What part? LINDA: Calabria. AMELIA: Calabria, yes. LINDA: Sometimes I wish—and I know a lot of people from my generation—almost wish we could go back to a more simple time. And a lot o f times what I hear is that we have too many choices today, and that confuses people. Do you feel that you had choices growing up? AMELIA: Yes. I think they were restricted. There were certain things that we had to do, and after we completed those, then there were choices. ANNA: A handful. AMELIA: Well, I didn't have to be told to do my homework but if I hadn't done my homework and if I hadn't helped my mother with some of the cooking, then I was rewarded on Sunday. We were given five cents, and we could do whatever we want. And she would take us shopping and buy us a new pair of shoes or something that we don't usually have at home. But today I think the children have too much. At the age of 16 they're taught -- they're given a car. At the age of 16.23 LINDA: Now, if someone from your generation ever had a car at 16, would they have to work for it? ANNA: I don't think that would happen. If you had your license you may borrow. If you had to do an errand, borrow your parents'. For your own benefit? I don't think that would happen. AMELIA: I think that children are given too much today by their parents. Look at the parking lot, the high school parking lot. The cars that are there, I think that creates a lot of trouble. I think the parents are partly to blame for the shenanigans of the young people. They're not fit for them; they haven't taught them the value of… ANNA: Even bus transportation, you know, they were all bussed to school, then they join the gym for exercise. AMELIA: Right. LINDA: I never thought of that. ANNA: They could walk, save a lot of money. AMELIA: Of course, they use the excuse that there's a lot more traffic, which is true, and there is a lot more traffic and more dangers, that's true. ANNA: We have a lot of traffic here. Worse, isn't it? LINDA: But as I talk to second-generation Italian Americans and, again, just going back one generation, everyone had to work hard, and all of you seem very happy and stable and have good values. Are those being promoted in your own families? ANNA: In my family, I think I passed it on to my children. They're all good. And I think they are passing it on to their children. But they're still young, and you wonder, as they grow up are they going to get into other things. You don't know. There's a lot of outside influences now. AMELIA: That's right. Going to school and intermingling with other children, other children that haven't had the upbringing and are taught the values that you have taught yours, and they're influenced by them, you know. LINDA: How much of that is an Italian-American experience? ANNA: I think it is a Italian-American experience.24 AMELIA: Oh, definitely. I think there is that among the Italian-American families. ANNA: There's that spiritual and moral life. AMELIA: And helping within the family. ANNA: They're helping their family by helping other families too. AMELIA: As well, yeah. ANNA: You see that need and you try to alleviate the problem if you can, lessen the problem. AMELIA: And the fact that they're Catholic religion helps, you know, from the start, and you can bring it on to your children. ANNA: Loads of people don't go to church like they used to. AMELIA: That's true. ANNA: I think that should help a lot. Truthfully. LINDA: Speaking of church, did all of you -- perhaps not you, but you probably attended St. Anthony's? AMELIA: Oh yeah, my mother was married there. Rachel's mother, your mother. St. Anthony's of Padua, is that the St. Anthony's… ANNA: St. Anthony of Padua. I was there until I married, and then I moved to Leominster. LINDA: So you think that that was a great influence on people? ANNA: Definitely. AMELIA: Oh yeah. I think it's up to the parents to instill that in their children, and I think among the Italian Americans it's far greater than maybe in any other group. Don't you think, Anna? ANNA: I do, yes. It probably came from the old country too. And if you go to Catholic school, that all helps. LINDA: Now, did both of you go to Catholic school? AMELIA: No. There wasn't any. No. ANNA: The only reason I was able to go to St. Bernard's for eight years was because Uncle gave them lessons. AMELIA: Oh, at St. Bernard's school? ANNA: You don't remember that?25 AMELIA: No. ANNA: I think that helped them to get that in. AMELIA: Grammar school? ANNA: Grammar school. Eight years. LINDA: They didn't allow Italians, or there wasn't enough room for Italians? Which was it? ANNA: I think it was mostly their own parishioners, right? The children of their own parishioners that would attend the St. Bernard's school. And it wasn't until the mid '60s that the other parishes built their own schools. AMELIA: But did you have to pay anything to attend? Oh you did. There was a minimum. Uh-huh. I know that the Catholic school that we have in Naugatuck, they have a lot of the children from not necessarily the Irish or the Italian, but a lot of the Protestants are going there too. They feel that they're doing a better job teaching than they are in the public schools. ANNA: I think it is that way now. I think there are Protestants of other nationalities who go to, for instance, St. Anna's school, which is a mostly Italian parish. But I'd say half of the students at the school are of other nationalities. AMELIA: Yeah, and the tuition is very high too. ANNA: Yes. It's not affordable for many, many people. AMELIA: I know my sister Christine, she made a donation to the appropriate school in Naugatuck, and she gets thank-you notes from parents saying "Thank you, we appreciate the scholarship that you gave to our child so he could attend a Catholic school." LINDA: So tell me: what it was like going to St. Anthony's? ANNA: Church. AMELIA: I don't recall, because I was a little girl when we left Fitchburg, but we went to Naugatuck. And as Anna said before, we would dress up in our finest, you know, and attend mass. And then after that go home and have a nice big Italian dinner with the family. ANNA: The whole family would go to church together.26 AMELIA: Father and mother and children, yeah. LINDA: And when would you go to confession? AMELIA: The day before, Saturday. ANNA: About two in the afternoon, you'd be called in. "Clean up, get ready for confession. Dress. Go to church." Confession, I haven't gone in years. AMELIA: And we always dressed up. Isn't it a shame to see children in shorts going to church? ANNA: The parents sometimes are worse than the kids. LINDA: If you weren't going to a parochial school and you were Catholic, where did your Catholic education come from? AMELIA: They had classes. ANNA: They did? AMELIA: Yeah. ANNA: The parish had nuns, and Saturday would be catechism. Saturday morning. And in fact, a lot of -- we spoke of knitting and crocheting and embroidery. They would have classes taught by the nuns. AMELIA: The nuns would teach, yeah. ANNA: And your summer was not spent out on the street. You'd go to a school where you would learn to embroider and crochet and knit. Cutwork, beautiful cutwork. Nuns would teach. And this is how summers would go. LINDA: Every day? Every day of the summer? ANNA: Every day. You'd have either the morning session or the afternoon. Or both. If your parents -- especially if the mother was working, the nuns would take over. LINDA: When you were kids or even when you came to college here in Fitchburg, did you ever go to any of the social clubs with Anna or Rachel, or…? ANNA: Marconi Club. AMELIA: Oh, that's right. Was that in Fitchburg? ANNA: Yes. AMELIA: I don't remember.27 ANNA: They still have it, but you weren't [unintelligible - 01:02:36]. AMELIA: Your father was really [unintelligible - 01:01:44]. Oh yes. ANNA: He built that club. AMELIA: Oh really? ANNA: He built the building, and all the Italians that came from that region would meet with him. AMELIA: Do they still have…? ANNA: The still have it. AMELIA: They still have it. Isn't that nice? LINDA: Did you belong to any social clubs in Connecticut? ANNA: There weren't that many there. AMELIA: Yeah, they did have a social club. I remember going to high school with my sister Christine and some of the other Italian girls living down with [Litley], that's where we lived, we would get together every Saturday night, and we would knit or sew or crochet or do something. ANNA: Parishes had social clubs. We had the Children of Mary that all the young girls that were not married would belong to that, and they would meet maybe once a week, and they would have breakfasts, trips; they would organize trips. Then they had the Lady of Mount Carmel for the married women, and they would have the Sacred Heart of Jesus for the men, the young boys. And they would organize trips, and there would be a bus going up to Caldwell Park -- not a bus, they would walk there -- but there would be a bus maybe going to some other distant park where they would take a picnic lunch. I remember going up to Simon Park… AMELIA: Oh, the family. ANNA: Yes. We would cook the dinner at home and bring it up there and eat with all the friends at Simon Park, right? That was… AMELIA: Still around? ANNA: Yes. So I think that was the social life. It was all within the parish or the Italian-American community. LINDA: Amelia, when did you get your interest in art?28 AMELIA: Interest in art? Well, that started in high school. I was very much interested in art. Our high school, Naugatuck High School, had a lot of Roman statues throughout the corridors, and they took -- it was through the library that we took courses, my sister Christine and I. We would go there and they would have different people in the community talk about art during the time of the Romans, during the time of the Middle Ages and so on. LINDA: So when you came to Fitchburg was the art museum established? AMELIA: No. I wasn't down; I don't know if it was established at the time. I had become interested in the art museum just recently after Fitchburg State College, last year when I told Mr. Peter Chin, who is the Director of the Fitchburg Art Museum, that I was very much interested in Western civilization, and that's when we became involved In Fitchburg State College working with the museum. LINDA: Do you ever wonder how your life would have been different if you perhaps fell in love and married someone from Fitchburg? AMELIA: Not necessarily, no. I think that the man that I married was a businessman and very much interested in Italian culture. Even though my father and mother instilled in me the love of Italy and the love of Italian culture, I still feel that he got me more interested. We've traveled to Italy and saw a lot of art, architecture, and learned more about our background. LINDA: How did you meet him? AMELIA: Oh -- did you ask me that question the other day? Someone asked me, "How did you meet your husband?" LINDA: Maybe I did. AMELIA: Well, I was studying here at -- it was during the time I got my master's at BU, and Uncle Joe played with the Boston Symphony in Boston. And they were having a concert, and -- oh no, I was teaching in Naugatuck -- and they were having a concert in Boston, so I took a train from New Haven to Boston. I was supposed to meet my uncle. And on the train, I went into the dining car, and there was a gentleman sitting across, and he 29 looked over and he said to me, "May I join you?" I said yes, so we had dinner together, and it was my husband whom I had met. ANNA: She was getting the idea. AMELIA: Yeah, so we started correspondence, and that went 'til he came to see to visit my mother and the family and so on. And the summer of '52 we got married. 1952. That's a long time ago, isn't it? LINDA: Did he live in Boston? AMELIA: No, he had a -- his place of business was in Brooklyn. He was originally from New York, and he had a vending repair shop and did very well. And he was going to Italy in '92, and he said to me, "Why don't we go together?" LINDA: In '52? AMELIA: Yeah, in 1952. So that's when I got married. And we married and then we went to Italy on honeymoon on the Conta Bianca Ma, on the ship that my father sailed on, never returned. And we stopped in North Africa, in Casablanca and all those beautiful places, Algiers, and -- with the ship, you know, Conta Bianca Ma, it took about 12 days and many of the passengers aboard that ship were World War II veterans. So we had a lot to talk about because my kid brother, Tommy was… ANNA: In the service. AMELIA: In the service, right. And then we got into Sicily and then went to Naples and disembarked and traveled all over Italy. We lived in the Busi area for two years, and in '54 we returned to America, and then that's when I went to see, visit my mother's home place. My husband said, "You can't leave Italy without seeing your mother and father's birthplace!" and that's… LINDA: So had he sold his business in Brooklyn and went to… AMELIA: Yeah, he sold his place in Brooklyn and wanted to get married, and he always wanted an Italian-American girl, so that was it. LINDA: Was he older than you? AMELIA: Yes. He was about nine years older than I. He died in 19 -- very bright man. He had a lot of money. He went to Phoenix and invested in 30 property, but we came back every summer because it was hot in Phoenix, temperature of 107, 108, 110, and we used to come back to Connecticut and then we went to Italy. I've been on all the liners: the Sistulia, the Independent, the Lucania, the Julius Caesar. LINDA: So did you enjoy taking a liner instead of -- do you still do that? AMELIA: No, we fly. The only liner, really, is the Queen Elizabeth, and then you go to London. I took that in '92. My sister, Connie, on the Queen Elizabeth about five days, and then we flew back on the Concorde. Nice experience. LINDA: What was that like? AMELIA: Oh, in 3 hours, 19 minutes, we were at Kennedy from London. LINDA: Do you feel differently when you're on that plane? AMELIA: It was wonderful. There was absolutely no turbulence, and my sister Connie is definitely afraid of flying. And even on the Concorde she said, "Are we all right? Are we all right?" Lovely, smooth flight. LINDA: What was it like taking off? AMELIA: You hardly know you take off, and we did not aboard the Concorde from the outside. They have a beautiful reception room where you go in from the airport. Let's see, what was it? What was the airport? ANNA: Kennedy? AMELIA: No, in London. Heathrow. Right. And you approach it from the inside, a beautiful dining room where they had all kinds of food, breakfast and all kinds of drinks, champagne in "orange," as it's called, boxes, which is mimosa, it's a mimosa. And all kinds of things. So actually, we boarded the Concorde from the inside. I wanted to get on from the outside so you could see her, you know. A wonderful experience. LINDA: But do you feel yourself really reaching great heights? AMELIA: No, you don't. You don't feel a thing. In about five minutes, we had climbed 26,000 miles. LINDA: Incredible.31 AMELIA: I have all those pictures in an album with all the notations. Yep, it's such a voluminous thing that I didn't want to take with me. But that was lovely. I'd like to do it again. LINDA: Well on July 17th, I was leaving London and there were cameras everywhere and I thought "Oh no," and we pulled into the airport and I thought there was a plane crash but it was the first Concorde taking off after that crash, I think from Paris. AMELIA: Yeah, Paris. Right. LINDA: They're rebuilding. AMELIA: Oh, they're rebuilding it? Have you been on a Concorde? LINDA: No. AMELIA: Oh, I see. Quite an experience. I think we reached the height of 58,000 feet. LINDA: Incredible. AMELIA: Wonderful. You don't feel yourself descending at all. And the food they serve, everyone has an individual table, there's all kind of linens and sterling silver. There are only 96 passengers. We tried -- Christine was supposed to come with us. She said, "No, I don't want to come." But she said she'd like to go on the Concorde. ANNA: Sounds like Connie. AMELIA: Yeah, I think British Airways -- what is it? About nine hours to cross? I think it's a long flight. LINDA: Well, it's longer coming back because of the wind. Actually, I think it's a little bit less now, maybe seven. So did you ever feel different being Italian? AMELIA: No, I don't. I'm very proud to be an Italian. LINDA: Yeah, I know. But ever growing up, did you ever feel discriminated? AMELIA: No, because at home my father always talked about Italians and what they've contributed, you know. And he was an educated man. In fact, did you know that my father was supposed to be a priest? LINDA: No, I didn't know that.32 AMELIA: Yeah. He attended -- what do they call it? Gymnasio was their high school. Was that right? LINDA: Gym -- AMELIA: Gymnasio. Is that the word for gymnasio? Papa attended the… yes, Papa attended the gymnasio, which was the high school, and then he attended Luceo, which is the junior college. ANNA: This is where? AMELIA: In Italy, in [Salunca]. Most families that had visited, they were bakers and they had a nice -- most families sent one child to study to be a priest, and my father was chosen. He was there two years and he didn't like it. What he saw, he didn't like. So he got on his horse and ran away, and the horse was riding along, went galloping up along a body of water. And he was so afraid that the horse was going to go into the water, so my father threw himself off and he had a great big gash here. Yeah. I remember him telling me that. Now there was always -- my father always told us about things of Italy, you know. Things Italy had done and the records that we played so that there was always culture at home. I was always proud to be an Italian. LINDA: So you're hoping that Alba Program, is that what you… AMELIA: Yes. LINDA: What does Alba mean? AMELIA: Alba means dawn, and since these young people are young, they're just beginning, the beginning of the day, Alba. And I gave it that name, and we've been doing that for five years in Waterbury. And I have an appointment at the University of Connecticut, where my sister graduated, and I have three nieces, all graduated from the University of Connecticut, majored in Italian. They have their doctorate in Italian. So I want to set up a center for the study of Italian culture there. I'm meeting with them on Monday of next week. LINDA: At the University of Connecticut? AMELIA: Yes. UConn, we call it. 33 LINDA: They have the Oral History Project. Like, at the Dodd Center I think they call it. AMELIA: I don't know. I'm meeting one of my nieces who teaches at UConn. She teaches Renaissance art, and she's going to take me there. Do you know any of the professors there? John Davis, I have an appointment with him. LINDA: So what was the turning point for you to start donating? AMELIA: To what? LINDA: Start donating money and trying to establish… AMELIA: My husband was always interested in doing something for -- in the school system, and it was he that said I should contact the Italian-American community in Waterbury when they advertised they wanted money for the Italian classes. Remember I told you? So shortly after he died, I decided to do that, and he was a very smart man at buying property, and I have sold property that has run into the millions, and I want to donate it to the school. So that's why I'm donating to the Center for Italian Culture, to Fitchburg State, to Post College in Waterbury, and to UConn. And also, the Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies in London, I am a lifetime member there, and my husband was always interested in that. LINDA: How did that come about? AMELIA: I just love Western civilization. Done a lot of reading, and then there are -- the Romans occupied London for almost -- let's see, about 500 years, and they are very proud of what the Romans had given to London. In fact, Queen Elizabeth, when she visited Italy and she attended one of the sessions of Parliament, she got up and said, "I want to thank you people for bringing civilization to London." So we are members for the Society of Promotion of Roman Studies, and they will be a contributor upon my death. I mention them in my will. It was he, really, my husband that started all this interest in Western civilization. LINDA: Truly admirable. /AT/pa/rjh/es
Education has the power to provide opportunities for meaningful, personal growth. In this research I usc my own, personal narrative as a means to explore various feelings of accomplishment and disappointment throughout my educational experience. Written reflections from graduate-level courses and a self-written story of my educational experiences, including my role as a teacher, were used for data analysis. These artifacts were coded using NVivo software. Coding revealed four themes: Self-worth and Selfesteem; Freedom through Authenticity; Regret; and Change and Redemption. Discourse, which is a guiding, invisible force, shapes the narrative, or lived experiences, of individuals. Its influence on my narrative was examined. The discursive claim of education is that the main goal of education is about and in the best interests of students. As my experiences in education were not positive and I felt that I did not receive what I needed, I assumed that my narrative countered the discourse. The findings showed that it was not I who countered the discourse, but rather my mental illness. This finding revealed the oppressive force of discourse upon the teachers in that there was not room for mental illness in education. This brings into question the discourse about viewing teachers solely as professionals as opposed to teachers as people. ; SELF-FULFILLMENT THROUGH EDUCATION 2 Acknowledgements I most appreciate Dr. Louise Moulding. Qualitative research is not her thing. I know she did this for me. Dr. DeeDee Mower was the framework and the scaffolding who kept this project steady throughout its construction; however, long before we were aware of DeeDee's expertise, Louise took on this project with me. She remained my chair though she felt, and verbalized, that she was not the best candidate for that role. I cannot think of a better person to have guided me through this project. I do believe that there is no one else with whom I would have rather gone on this journey. She made me feel safe and she made me feel loved. This was a very special project, so I needed a very special person to chair it. Thank you, Dr. Moulding. You helped me change my life. Love is not enough they say. That is why we needed Dr. Mower. She was the shepherd of us sheep lost in the pasture of qualitative research. We often strayed, but she kindly brought us back. She brought her expertise, but she also brought excitement. I was discouraged a few times-more than a few times. DeeDee was always so excited about this project. She saw something I could not see. She saw power in this research beyond what I had ever considered. Her wisdom was indispensable. I have never experienced as much altruism in life as I did in her office as she taught me the language of narrative research. It has always seemed that she was invested as much as I was to this project. I did not spend a lot of time in Dr. Stewaii's office, but it is in her class where my journey began. She allowed me to explore my story within the contexts of her course. My reflections were priceless to me. They were precious. I will continue to appreciate the respect and care Dr. Stewart showed toward my feelings. Her comments were insightful and helped me continue my growth. I felt validated as a person and encouraged to stay on SELF-FULFILLMENT THROUGH EDUCATION my journey of self-discover because of the comments she wrote in the margins of one of my assignments. She made me feel special. 3 In addition, I wi~h to thank Hayley Blevins and Erin Furlong for their support. We went through this program together. They became my very best friends: we had a lot of fun. They loved me, they laughed with me, and they even cried with me. This experience was overwhelming with the many emotions that came with the project. Our friendship became my strength many times. I am fortunate to have met them. I think they are great, and I love them. Thank you also to Weber State University and the M.Ed. program for providing the platform for this research. SELF-FULFILLMENT THROUGH EDUCATION 4 Table of Contents NATURE OF THE PROBLEM . 7 Literature Review . 8 Purpose of Education . 9 Personal Experiences in Education . 12 The Role of Expectations . 1 7 Self-efficacy for Educators . 21 Why Narratives Are Valid in Educational Research . 23 PURPOSE . 29 METHOD . 30 Instruments . 3 0 Procedures . 31 FINDINGS . 35 The Four Major Themes . 35 Self-worth and Self-esteem: Authenticity and Freedom . 36 Regret . 39 Change and Redemption . 40 Conclusions . 43 REFERENCES . 47 APPENDICES . 51 Appendix A: Institutional Review Board Approval Letter . 51 SELF-FULFILLMENT THROUGH EDUCATION 5 List of Figures Figure 1. Coding data for final analysis. This figure shows the interactions of the three research questions in data analysis . 34 Figure 2. Four themes emerged from the overlapping area of the three research questions. The arrows show the interconnectedness of all four . 36 SELF-FULFILLMENT THROUGH EDUCATION 6 Abstract Education has the power to provide opportunities for meaningful, personal growth. In this research I usc my own, personal narrative as a means to explore various feelings of accomplishment and disappointment throughout my educational experience. Written reflections from graduate-level courses and a self-written story of my educational experiences, including my role as a teacher, were used for data analysis. These artifacts were coded using NVivo software. Coding revealed four themes: Self-worth and Selfesteem; Freedom through Authenticity; Regret; and Change and Redemption. Discourse, which is a guiding, invisible force, shapes the narrative, or lived experiences, of individuals. Its influence on my narrative was examined. The discursive claim of education is that the main goal of education is about and in the best interests of students. As my experiences in education were not positive and I felt that I did not receive what I needed, I assumed that my narrative countered the discourse. The findings showed that it was not I who countered the discourse, but rather my mental illness. This finding revealed the oppressive force of discourse upon the teachers in that there was not room for mental illness in education. This brings into question the discourse about viewing teachers solely as professionals as opposed to teachers as people. SELF-FULFILLMENT THROUGH EDUCATION 7 NATURE OF THE PROBLEM The purpose of education today seems to be influenced by economy rather than by humanity. Its extrinsic rewards are favored over its intrinsic power for personal transformation and growth. The earliest colleges were institutions used to prepare its students to become clergy. In the 1700s universities began to offer a breadth of courses that enabled individuals to reflect and reason. Experiences during university studies crossed many subjects. Students were mentored so that they would be able to apply the knowledge from these subjects to their own growth and identity. The goal was to allow individuals a range of opportunities that would engage all parts of their lives, both present and future. The early 1800s marked an initial shift in the view of education that abandoned the emphasis on the learner, his experience, growth, and identity replacing them with what the learner should learn. College attendance became more common and those pressures led to a decrease in the quality of instruction. The educational philosophy concerning the purpose of education is again focused on practical measures and extrinsic gains. This comes at the cost and marginalization of the intrinsic benefits of education. Despite this current situation, education still has power to provide intrinsic benefits. These benefits are still of value independent of the extrinsic benefits and need to be acknowledged and encouraged. The expectation an individual holds as he experiences education enhances or diminishes the potential for education to aid in personal growth and transformation. Thus, students who enter their scholastic endeavors with hopes of becoming a better person or a belief that they will gain a new view of the world are likely to find such things, while SELF-FULFILLMENT THROUGH EDUCATION 8 those who seek only a degree and better employment are likely to overlook and graduate never experiencing the available benefits. Society continually undervalues intrinsic aspects of education, which encourage students to do the same. Education is a lived experience that shapes identity and should be a foundation for a stable view of one's self. However, as students increasingly enter college without the realization of the role education can play in self-views and self-efficacy, they graduate with only a degree, mostly unchanged. Eliminating academic studies that may not be practical or directly applied to the workplace neither produces college graduates who have attributes employers state they look for in candidates nor does it project happiness or satisfaction in their future professional lives. The professional benefits may feel hollow or inadequate because individuals also need a sense of fulfillment. By sharing and discussing the intrinsic benefits of education, expectations of students may shift and graduates may feel a sense of fulfillment and self-pride. Literature Review The contemporary debate about the main role of education in society is not a new idea with such dialogue recorded as far back as the early eighteenth century, before American independence (Spring, 2014). Early colleges resisted focusing on specialized and practical curricula, opting instead to uphold the principle that the student graduate having developed "a balanced character that could fit into any intellectual conversation or gathering" (Spring, 2014, p. 70). However, over time higher education shifted toward specialized curricula that would land graduates in occupations, and ultimately came to care less about the intrinsic benefits of education, such as a sense of fulfillment or SELF-FULFILLMENT THROUGH EDUCATION 9 identity, than the knowledge or skill sets they attain (Hanson, 2014). As this shift continues, the expectations for growth in universities decrease as knowledge and occupational tasks increasingly become, not means to an education, but the "benchmarks and we abandoned the big questions about who our students become" (Hanson, 2014, para. 3). Purpose of Education The marginalization of intrinsic benefits of education existed even in the eighteenth century (Hofstadter, 1955/1995). Higher education, and education in general, has historical foundations in religion. The instruction focused on doctrines and teachings from whatever religion managed the institution. Courses, such as Greek and Latin, were not offered as means for personal growth, but to enable the students who were expected to become clergy or civic leaders to fulfill their responsibilities. In the eighteenth century colleges began to depart from this practice (Spring, 2014). Despite this departure from narrow religious curricula, there were individuals who proposed universities what would exclude "all but the useful and vocational subjects" (McCaughey-Ross & McCaughey, 1980, p. 251) this meant the elimination of classical languages completely, and restricting instruction of science and mathematics to direct applications similar to today. However, these proposals were originally rejected in favor of a far greater breadth of instruction (Spring, 2014). Samuel Johnson was instrumental in these changes when he became the first president of what is now Columbia University in 1754 (Mccaughey-Ross & McCaughey, 1980). In the announcement of the university's opening, Johnson explains the proposed instruction to be: SELF-FULFILLMENT THROUGH EDUCATION 10 . In the learned languages, and in the arts ofreasoning exactly, of writing correctly, and speaking eloquently; and in the arts of numbering and measuring, of surveying and navigation, of geography and history, of husbandry, commerce, and government, and in the knowledge of all nature in the heavens above us, and in the air, water, and earth around us, and the various kinds of meteors, stones, mines, and minerals, plants and animals, and everything useful for the comfort, the convenience and elegance of life, in the chief manufactures relating to any of these things; and finally to from the study of nature to the study of themselves . and everything that contributes to their true happiness, both here and hereafter. (as quoted in Mccaughey-Ross & Mccaughey, 1980, pp. 251-252, emphasis added) Changes at other universities followed: arithmetic became a requirement for college admission; mathematics became required in three of the four years of college instead of one; science equipment such as barometers and microscopes was imported; and readings by Locke, Newton, Copernicus and others were assigned readings (Spring, 2014). A graduate of baccalaureate programs in the 1 gth century was expected and assumed to be one who was balanced and engaged in all the facets of his intellect (Spring, 2014). However, this changed decades later as the demand for education rapidly increased (Spring, 2014). In the haste to respond to the demand for more and more universities, the quality of instruction was ignored (Spring, 2014 ). The proposals to exclude the classics, depth in mathematics and science, and reasoning, which had been rejected in the past, gained favor. The majority of causes were economic since limited content would result in the hiring of fewer faculty, who could then be assigned a maximum amount of courses. But appearances also played a role, as the time-to- SELF-FULFILLMENT THROUGH EDUCATION 11 graduation rate could be more efficient. Not only were instructional concerns ignored, the construction of universities was also poorly planned and poorly organized. The goal of education became simply to provide "every locality with a cheap . institution that would make it possible for the local boys who desired degrees to get them easily" (Hofstadter, 1955/1995, p. 214). In fact one historical researcher pointed out that Often when a college had a building, it had no students. If it had students, frequently it had no building. If it had either, then perhaps it had no money, perhaps no professors; if professors, then no president, if a president, then no professors. (Rudolph, 1962/1990, p. 4 7) Philosophies of education today are similar and with a similar cause. The narrowing of curricula in the early nineteenth century resulted from an increased demand of college attendance. Today there is again an expectation that all children should have the opportunity to attend institutions of higher education. There is also an idea of the "cheap institutions" quoted by Hofstadter (1955/1995) earlier; demands for grants, debt forgiveness (whether federal or through future employer), or other financial aid such as scholarships has been increasing rapidly (Cronin, 1986). Educational achievement is now narrowed to data that can be published and explicitly verbalized. There is little acceptance of alternative forms to demonstrate educational success (Burwood, 2006). It is ironic to learn that the very employers students hope to impress by their resumes, grades, and efficiency of scholastic achievement tend to say they value qualities of diverse and intellectually curious people (Hanson, 2014). The emphasis on test scores, economics, and career and technical readiness is at odds with the attributes employers seek when interviewing candidates for positions. Recognition of the intrinsic benefits of SELF-FULFILLMENT THROUGH EDUCATION 12 education seems to be superficial when accrediting agencies are not known to hold educational institutions accountable for the personal growth of their graduates even when it is explicitly written in the institution's mission statement or objectives (Hanson, 2014). When individuals and universities do cite these benefits they are mentioned only as support to the extrinsic benefits to society such as communicating in occupations, saving the government welfare money, and so forth (Times Education Supplement (TES), 2005). It is now the credential that matters most, not the education or the process (TES, 2005). In both secondary schools and within higher education, grades are inflated and content has been diluted to increase graduation rates with an inattention to student achievement or competence (Carter, 2007; Goos, Gannaway, & Hughes, 2011; Hanson, 2014). Promoting programs that provide only the content of subjects without the reasoning, application, and history of the material has caused some to ask, "What kind of 'graduate' [are] these courses producing?" (Smith, 2003, para. 11). The associated expectations and assumptions surrounding diplomas, certificates, and degrees is that they are symbols of sacrifice, dedication, enlightemnent, and application of traits such as perseverance, but "all too often the piece of paper is confused with the territory that it purports to describe" (Starr-Glass, 2002, p. 224). Therefore, such expectations and assumptions that have accompanied academic progress for hundreds of years are no longer a guaranteed result of educational achievement such as graduation. Personal Experiences in Education The statement, "Education holds a miraculous and transformative power," is an example of intrinsic benefits. It is also the title of a recent report on education (Adkins, 2012). What is interesting about this title is that the great majority of the report is spent SELF-FULFILLMENT THROUGH EDUCATION 13 overviewing the state of American education and its impact on economy, such as salaries and costs per pupil, and touting the monetary advantages of graduating from both college . and high school; the monetary disadvantages of not completing school, and other economic boons from education. Yet, the author, the executive director for the Council of State Governments, titles his work Education Holds a Miraculous and Transformative Power and concludes the piece with an unexpected redirection of thought: While the statistics are telling, for me, education has always been a very personal pursuit. I can still name each of my elementary school teachers . These educators . had a profound impact on my aspirations, my career and my enjoyment of life . I was blessed with dedicated teachers whose passion for learning helped kindle my own pursuit of knowledge . What a miraculous and trans.formative power education holds! (Adkins, 2012, p. 3, emphasis added) There is a natural question as to why an author would spend so much time discussing the extrinsic aspects of education and its role to produce economically viable citizens only to conclude with emotional recollections. It is because education can, and does for many people, provide means for personal growth to transform them into the very best versions of themselves independent of societal and personal affluence (Smith, 2003; TES, 2005). However, it is important to note that in spite of the heartfelt description of his own childhood experience in education, he states that he knows that his daughter is successful because of her test scores with no mention of any personal transformation (Adkins, 2012). Possibly nowhere else in education has this point of personal fulfillment and intrinsic benefits of education been advocated more than in the arts. It is well known that SELF-FULFILLMENT THROUGH EDUCATION 14 funding for such programs in public education has faced cutbacks providing another example of favoring extrinsic aspects of education. Of course, there have been many who fight for the arts to stay, but often these arguments approach the battle from the wrong angle (Koopman, 2005). The justification for the persistence of art curricula has been housed within the tenets that they enhance the traditionally respected subjects such as reading, math, and science, because that is the currency used for influencing law and policymakers. Even when these claims can be supported with research, they tend to be correlational; however, Koopman (2005) contends that justification in relation to math and sciences should not be required. When individuals are self-aware and have created stable identities, they are more likely to stay in college, improve weaknesses (Carter, 2007), and find satisfaction and happiness in the workplace over their lifetimes (Hanson, 2014). When education is free from the oppressive pressure of efficiency and task achievement, it can shape the understanding students have of themselves when they ask "Who am I?" (TES, 2005). Koopman (2005) asserts that the benefit of forming self-identity ought to be adequate to argue the benefits of arts in education and ought to be valued independently of practical and extrinsic educational goals. In a hierarchy of learning, changing as a person is placed at the top (Wood, 2015), yet this type oflearning remains undervalued. This has diminished opportunities for personal growth, which have become a secondary goal of education, if a goal at all. Sandra Smith's (2003) personal story may be helpful to explain the dual and contradictory claims that education is providing both practical and personal gains. Sandra was well aware that college education would prepare her for and provide better SELF-FULFILLMENT THROUGH EDUCATION 15 employment and economic stability. Sandra explained that though she did go to college (being a single-parent and working as a low-wage input clerk) with the hopes of improving her social and economic status, she also wanted to study something she loved, being English literature, "and maybe even to achieve personal transformation along the way" (Smith, para. 5). These expectations shaped her experience. Her university requirements included a breadth of courses before any specialized courses could be taken. Because of these courses, Sandra "discovered a new way for seeing [her]self' and has "never seen [the] world in quite the same way again" (Smith, para. 6). In her writing, Sandra reminisced about courses in sociology, geography, and cultural history. She shared specific content and its transfer to her life, thoughts, feelings, and philosophies. She learned how to develop and communicate ideas, to question the status quo, to gain an active frame of mind in addition to practical skills such as pdoritizing work and developing strategies for success in new situations. At her "traditional university a degree meant much more than the subject in which you majored" (Smith, para. 6). Of course she also learned linguistics, grammar, the history of the English language, and "how to write a whole lot better" (Smith, para. 7). In fact, she got everything she had sought. She did graduate in English, and loved her major, but of the internal changes mentioned in her writing, none of them were in direct relation to that major. Those changes resulted in experiences and learning that were outside of her initial focus; they came because the university requirements held to the historical roots that education has outcomes of educated, well-versed beings not simply graduates with degrees. Upon graduation, however, Sandra concluded that her degree in English would likely not lead to a position that would yield economic independence (Smith, 2003). With SELF-FULFILLMENT THROUGH EDUCATION 16 this concession, she returned to school with the aim of getting vocational training. She quickly found that the attributes which are claimed to be encouraged in schoolingdiscussion, questions, and creative thought-were not so welcome, instead favoring preconstructed work skills. In spite of this she found the experience to be positive due to its learning opportunity. Her goal was different from the first; she was not in school to study something she loved or maybe to experience personal transformation. However, her perspective favoring learning as the goal increased her satisfaction and still allowed for personal growth. She did learn skills for the work place, except they were not fully adequate. In a sad irony, Sandra took her up-to-date skill set directly into the workplace only to find that they were not up to date (Smith, 2003). Instead she found that in today's workplaces "there is no time to find your feet or acquire specialist knowledge. You have to hit the ground running" (Smith, para. 10). Design of courses was formed wholly for the needs of business and industry. This relationship between higher education and industry no longer supports educated beings. Rather, it supports the production of what Hanson (2014) terms human capital, viewing students as the currency of American economics. Sandra's story, though, actually provides an example that even this goal of skills-based education is not being met. Sadly, this extrinsic model of education caused Sandra to doubt the value of personal growth and transformation in education. She wondered for a time if her first four years of college had been a waste, eventually concluding: . That it cannot be just about training for the workplace. There's probably something very wrong with a society that is driven by market forces to turn its back on millennia of knowledge and learning in favor of narrow vocational skills. SELF-FULFILLMENT THROUGH EDUCATION . I think that a workplace that has little room for arts/humanities graduates is missing something vital. (Smith, 2003, para. 12) 17 She was correct. Education does not need to be justified in terms of objective and practical measures. Even though not all parts of education are "necessary for subsistence, [they can] crucially . contribute to the fulfillment of one's life" (Koopman, 2005, p. 93). "The question, 'What is [education] good for?' should be answered by the response: '[It is] good for life.' Or, better still, '[It is] good for nothing. [It is] good life itself'" (Koopman, 2005, p. 96). The Role of Expectations The effects of expectations and perspectives on the perceived benefits of obtaining an education were briefly noted in Sandra's story, yet it is an important supporting idea when considering intrinsic benefits. Bruner (1966) has stated that people. are naturally curious with a desire to learn. This desire seems to be innate beginning with infants (Martinez, 2010). As individuals grow, this curiosity becomes more complex as various factors shape the motivations behind the will to learn. Bruner (1966) divides individuals' motivations as either competence-based or achievement-based. Tippen, Lafreniere, and Page (2012) divided motivation into similar divisions of grade-oriented and learning-oriented. Competence-based motivation serves to fulfill the basic need that humans have to use learning to exert control over a situation. This could be analogous to grade-oriented motivation, which leads to efficiency, and, in a way, control of one's educational experience. In contrast, achievement-based motivation does not allow satisfaction to occur due solely to evidence of skill or ability, which evidence could be analogous to a grade, but rather the actual application of that skill or ability. For example, SELF-FULFILLMENT THROUGH EDUCATION it would not be enough to get a grade; one must show how his or her ability to get the grade affected his growth. 18 Achievement-based motivation requires greater self-awareness or metacognition (Tippen et al., 2012) Learning-oriented students were more likely to have a high level of conscientiousness in addition to the characteristics discussed as desirable by employers: self-discipline, independence, intellectual curiosity, creativity, and an openness to experience new opportunities (Tippen et al., 2012). Students who were motivated by learning were also seen to self-impose high academic expectations. The opposite was found for grade-oriented students who displayed conforming and uncreative approaches to learning. Interestingly, neuroticism was highly correlated with grade-oriented students. This may relate to the controlling component of Bruner's competence-based motivation since pressure to control the outcome of grades creates stress when the success, in this case the grade, will be determined by the teacher or professor. Even though this knowledge about motivation has been communicated, a focus on objective and businessready education persists. As such, there is pressure upon educators to decrease the standard required in order appease those students who refuse to use learning as motivation. Otherwise, such students would perceive their professors as unfair, provide them with poor evaluations, which may directly affect their positions (Goos et al., 2011). As the environment where "students are consumers and grades the currency exchanged for measures of success" (Goos et al, 2011, p. 95) continues to grow, competency-based motivation is encouraged over achievement-based motivation and grade-oriented motivation is encouraged over learning-oriented motivation. For example, in assessing a skill, a teacher may simply accept an explanation or description of what SELF-FULFILLMENT THROUGH EDUCATION 19 must be done, grade-oriented and competency-based, rather than requiring the student to show understanding through action or the creation of a product, learning-oriented or achievement-based. There may be some who contend that the students may already have a grade-orientation when they enroll in college. However, it has been shown that as students spent more time on campus and in classroom settings during their first year of college, they became more work-avoidant (low effort) and grade-oriented (Kowalski, 2007). This can cause educators and students to lose faith in the caliber of the education provided (Carter, 2007; Hanson, 2014; Smith, 2003). Bandura proposed a different idea termed self-efficacy. This is a person's belief that he or she is capable of doing something regardless of his or her actual ability. Bandura (1977) describes four different ways that an individual's self-efficacy can be positively affected: mastery, through repeated success in an experience that required effort or perseverance; vicarious experience, observing others' success and believing "I can do the same"; social persuasion, when others praise and encourage actions voicing their belief of the individual's ability to succeed; and lastly, emotional and physiological states, the effects of a person's physical and mental health, may also alter ones perceptions of ability. I will use Krista's story to illustrate some of these ideas. Krista did not complete high school in spite of loving school and her teachers (Lebrun, 2013). However, for reasons unstated she did not complete high school; she did not finish ninth grade. She did her best to find work in the mall or at restaurants. At one point she shook blueberry bushes as a harvester, which apparently paid a decent wage. Despite the bush-shaking income, life was hard and she was tired. She was tired physically and she was tired of looks and judgments. "Determined to prove to people that SELF-FULFILLMENT THROUGH EDUCATION 20 [she] was more than a blueberry-shaker or a hamburger flipper" (Lebrun, 2013, para. 4) she decided to get her GED. Krista had an expectation that school could change her and improve her life. Just as self-efficacy can be positively influenced, it can also be negatively influenced. Being viewed "with pity or disgust, as if you are worse than the gum stuck to the bottom of [a] shoe" (Lebrun, para. 4) is an example of how self-efficacy can be diminished. This being her experience, Krista began her journey with feelings of uncertainty. This changed through a mentor at the community college she attended. Through her encouragement, Krista earned her GED. In contrast to the negative influences of society, this mentor had "looked at [her] as though [she were] somebody . [and] made her feel like [she] could do anything" (Lebrun, para. 5). This is an example of how social persuasion can increase self-efficacy. Upon completion of her GED, Krista displayed the influence of Bandura' s mastery experience describing her sense of identity and rise in society. Upon reception of her GED, "just like that, [she] was somebody . [she] could do anything" (Lebrun, para. 6-7). Education has that power. It has the power to shape a person's identity and a person's self-image. Krista's example does not end with a GED, however. With new confidence in academic success, stemming from mastery of previous educational success, she returned to community college. Her expectations were unclear, but not undefined: "I had no clue what I wanted to be or what I wanted to do, but I knew I wanted a college diploma to hang next to my GED" (Lebrun, 2013, para. 7). Krista was not operating under an expectation that college would provide her a skill set and a myriad of knowledge to recall. She was not returning to school with the needs of industry in mind. She returned to get what a college diploma is purported to represent-a changed person. Similar to SELF-FULFILLMENT THROUGH EDUCATION 21 Sandra's experience, Krista took courses in multiple areas leading to an associate's degree. Upon graduation she realized that she loved learning. It could be said that Krista was a learning-oriented student. She graduated with a bachelor degree in education, then a master's. With a little social persuasion from the dean of her university she finally earned a Ph.D. She started at a community college in Florida; now she teaches at a community college in Florida, yes, the same one. "I not only got my start at a community college. I got my future" (Lebrun, para. 13). Self-efficacy for Educators Krista's story is insightful and exemplary of the way education can shape a person's personal growth and sense of fulfillment. The GED to PhD experience is not common, but the impact of education is. Self-efficacy for teachers has traditionally been related to teachers' belief that they will be able to elicit desired outcomes from their students (Williams, 2009). That is the traditional meaning of education-the classroom, the students. Interviews with practicing teachers revealed a common theme. Teachers' self-efficacy is most positively affected not through student achievement from their instruction, but rather through personal interactions with their students and the faculty (Hargreaves & Preece, 2014). The literature rarely represents teachers as individuals separate from their professional roles. In review of the research regarding teachers' emotions, Gargante, Monereo, & Meneses (2013) found that " . Teachers' emotions are generated and applied only to specific objectives, such as in their preparation and professional development, in process of educational changes, in teaching situations, or in teachers' professional lives . Although teachers' emotions are clearly identified and labelled . there are few SELF-FULFILLMENT THROUGH EDUCATION 22 classifications to sort [them] into relevant and useful categories in education . Emotions are [mostly in] only two categories, positive and negative emotions. (p. 3) As established earlier in this paper, attending school is a personal and can also be an emotional experience. For teachers in New Zealand who returned to school to update their credentials both were true (Williams, 2009). Over two hundred teachers entering a university program to upgrade teaching credentials participated in a survey examining both personal and professional self-efficacy. Over half of the participants had more than twenty years of teaching experience. Unlike the United States and most of Europe, New Zealand has traditionally only required a certificate program for education, not a baccalaureate degree. Only recently, at the very end of the twentieth century was a degree required. Though it was not a requirement for practicing teachers, many went back to college to attain the degree, which explains the large sample size. Partial credit toward the upgrade, which amounted to approximately two thirds, was awarded to those teachers for the education attained in their initial certification along with work experience. Most of the teachers stated they experienced doubts of success, discomfort or intimidation at the beginning of the program, not only because of the program but also because of the newly-graduated teachers who already had a degree (Williams, 2009). As the program progressed the experienced teachers realized they could be successful. These mastery-experiences positively influenced their self-efficacy. At the end of the program self-efficacy had improved dramatically in both confidence personally and confidence professionally. Closing interviews did not reveal many comments about confidence in their ability to teach. However, "several interviewees spoke of becoming 'a different SELF-FULFILLMENT THROUGH EDUCATION person', having 'an extra spring in my step' . or 'walking through the world with a head held high'" (Williams, 2009, p. 607). One specific teacher was quoted as saying: 23 I always thought I was . quite good in the classroom but academically average . . . I was stunned every time I opened a paper and there was an A . Coming here and doing those papers made me realize . I actually can. I actually have a good academic brain and what a shame it's taken me until my 40s to find out. (p. 607) Through the process of upgrading their credentials, the teachers in New Zealand showed that it is not just the teacher who gained greater self-efficacy, but also the person. Far too often the personal is taken out of educational research forgetting that these experiences have power. Education is not an isolated, sterile environment in which humans exist for the first twenty-five or so years of life. That is why education has such broad implications for personal growth. Education is a process of becoming a new person. Starr-Glass (2002) explained that the woman in his research "is a real person, not just a straw-woman set up for the sake of argument or rhetoric" (p. 221 ). We are all real people. We are not numbers or imaginary visages. We are real and have real emotions. Education has the potential to provide a place to experience them as a means for the growth of self and identity. "A good degree opens the world" (Elmes, 2015, para. 11). Why Narratives Are Valid in Educational Research Education is a part of life. In the United States, this statement more than likely elicits a visualization of a schoolhouse with classrooms filled with desks and tables. This common view of education is provided, shaped, and determined by discourse (Foucault, 1972). Discourse, in qualitative terms, is overarching ideas and frameworks within which SELF-FULFILLMENT THROUGH EDUCATION 24 individual experiences occur. Narratives are the experiences themselves. It is within this relationship that narratives are subjected to the power of the discourse to frame and shape realized experiences. Whether speaking of formal or informal education, learning is a natural part of one's life experience. Learning is believed to occur through a sequence and collection of experiences. "To live is to live in time, from moment to moment, from episode to episode" (Koopman, 2005, p. 93). Learning is a process over time, which varies among individuals. Because education and learning are of an experiential nature, it makes sense to study education in terms of discourse and narratives (Clandinin & Co1melly, 2000). There is no way for an individual to share a story without using narrative. Focuses in U.S. education have shifted more and more toward measuring academic achievement based on statistics and what students know rather than what they become (Hanson, 2014). Narratives have been useful in analyzing language and linguistics (Althusser, 1970/1971; Sartre, 1988) and ethical, moral decisions (McCarthy, 2003). These historical and traditional uses of narrative research will not be examined here. Instead, the more recent application of narrative research in regards to identity and self-fulfillment will be examined. A study of nurses specializing in the emergency department (ED) of hospitals examined certain personality characteristics in relationship to the nurses' practices when treating geriatric patients presenting with cognitive impairment and pain; this sample population is notable as it presents complex needs (Fry, MacGregor, Hyland, Payne, & Chenoweth, 2015). The results support the claim that learning and self-analysis are positively assessed and improved through use of narratives. In the case of these nurses, SELF-FULFILLMENT THROUGH EDUCATION who are in a non-traditional, but still educational environment, it was concluded "confidence and self-efficacy was [sic] developed through the experience of nursing praxis . communication, and interrelationship with patients and caregivers and the wider social and physical environment within the ED" (p. 1627). The results also included nurses' comments during focus groups, which provided insight to the changes that occur over time, context, and experience. It is possible that a person's narrative, or story, can be shared and interpreted differently at one time or in one context in one narrative, but then change in another narrative (Georgakopoulou, 2013). 25 The discourse of nursing praxis did not change resulting in new nursing practices, but rather time and context changed nurses' narratives of self and of nursing praxis, which may no longer fit within discursive nursing practices. It is through the sharing of narratives that the power to employ a dynamic relationship between a person's past self and a person's current self through reflexivity is allowed. Narratives can continue to be defined and interpreted in different ways through time and context. It is because of this that students use narratives to create, develop, and alter their identities as they "think, talk, and tell stories about who [they] are, where [they] have been, and what [they] have done" (Hanson, 2014, para. 7). Engaging in meta-narrative may reveal conflicts between accepted discursive understandings and an individual's narrative. This can be specifically useful to resolve ideas about the ability to be different from and yet the same as others; to maintain a self-view of constancy over time (even a lifetime); and one's place in the world-"Am I acting on the world, or is the world acting on me?" (Bamberg, 2010). In the context of this paper, "Am I constructing my experience(s) in education and therefore SELF-FULFILLMENT THROUGH EDUCATION myself, or is my place in education determined outside of myself?" Bamberg terms this as the "two directions of fit." 26 Because narratives shape a person's identity and discourse shapes narratives, it makes sense that a study and analysis of an individual's narratives ought to be used to understand what education is actually accomplishing in regards to both narratives and educational discourse. This is to say that narratives have inherent power to provide meaningful information about identity and personal growth, particularly meta-narratives. However, this power is constantly ignored in favor of the informative powers of discourse. Koopman (2005) states that "the concept of fulfillment indicates that our experience . need not be that of an external power [such as discourse] to which we are exposed. It suggests how we might optimally realize our temporal existence" (p. 93) through sharing and experiencing narratives to inform discursive traditions and see beyond them. A student's self-view is not objective and is not stagnant. It is inextricably coru1ected to all things he experiences, thinks, and feels. Thus, it follows that education and learning become part of a student's identity, who he is, while also becoming part of his past (Hanson, 2014). It follows, then, that there is information regarding education and learning that can only be recovered and presented through narratives. This information can only be useful when gleaned from authentic, personal narratives. This research, for instance, is based on my personal narrative. As such, I have chosen to write using first-person voice. The discourse of academic writing is well illustrated by Nash (2004) as he explains his cause to liberate academic writing: The denial of the value of the selfs stories in an academic setting is born in the command all of us have heard in school at some time: never use the 'I' in formal SELF-FULFILLMENT THROUGH EDUCATION writing. The 'I', we have been told, is incapable of discovering and dispensing wisdom without the support of the 'them', the certified experts. (p. 54) 27 Using made-up, rhetorical examples does not allow for a discursive analysis, as those will naturally conform to the discourse (Georakopoulou, 2013). However, Bamberg (2010) has indicated that an individual considering hypothetical situations for himself, such as "what ifl had made [this choice]?", may be a safer and more reliable way to explore one's self-identity with greater clarity. This is true because meta-narratives have the ability to consider deviations from or discrepancies in the discourse. There are really two parts to this idea: the ability to view one's possible selves based on hypothetical decisions in the past; and the ability to view one's possible selves in the future based on decisions currently being made. This latter part is quite relevant to this paper as a student's perception of academic achievement is shaped by discourse. Relating back to Bamberg's "two directions of fit" would raise the question as to how a student views himself in regards to education. Is it education to student or student to education? It is known that narratives are not fixed (Bamberg, 2010). One reason is that they are shared for a variety of reasons, which alters what is determined as relevant to be shared. Some examples include trying to get out of an undesirable consequence, consoling another, and teaching or sharing one's understanding with others. Again the dynamic nature of narratives is seen as a person interprets and re-interprets his life at different times. Comparing such narratives can show themes (sameness over time) in a person's life, while also showing changes. Narrative research is of particular importance when viewed in light of the latter as changes in self-identity or life-interpretation can often be unexpected and may not otherwise be noticed as discourse limits what can be SELF-FULFILLMENT THROUGH EDUCATION 28 shared and what will be seen (Dyson & Genishi, 1994). Narrowing the experience of education to charts and graphs of some such variable like graduation rates or time spent in a library does not represent what is actually occurring in a student's life. "Students use narratives to build and maintain a sense of who they are" (Hanson, 2014, para. 23). Considering the narrative nature of a student's education, it only makes sense to incorporate narratives and discourse into the field of educational research. SELF-FULFILLMENT THROUGH EDUCATION 29 PURPOSE The historical timeline of American education has seen changes from narrow religious curriculum, to broad learner-focused curriculum, to today's narrow business-driven curriculum. The current curriculum marginalizes intrinsic benefits of education limiting opportunities for personal development, the formation of self-identity, and new perspectives on life and the world. To promote the self-fulfillment and satisfaction individuals will have in both their personal and professional lives, intrinsic benefits of education must again be valued in their own right not secondarily to extrinsic benefits. The current practice, which devalues the personal components of education, limits and ignores the potential power that individual narratives have to inform discursive practices and beliefs. When the sharing of narratives is consistently censored, prevented, or otherwise limited, unknown and unexpected truths will remain undiscovered. The purpose of this project was to offer a place for me to examine my life: beliefs, philosophies, feelings, self-esteem/self-efficacy, and identity. I am the purpose of this project. I can truly say, "It is all about me." My journey through life is not only different, as all journeys are, but very unique and not very happy. I entered the M.Ed. program at Weber State University with a desire to change. I wanted to find love and meaning in my personal life; I wanted to be happy. The purpose of this project was to reach a place where I could overcome feelings of shame, guilt, and regret as I looked back on the choices I had made, specifically in regards to my education. It is about me, and in a way it is me. I do hope that it will resonate with and aid others. I hope it will build camaraderie and unity among other teachers, but ultimately, the purpose of this project was just as the title says: self-fulfillment through education. SELF-FULFILLMENT THROUGH EDUCATION 30 METHOD Educational discourse stresses the quantifiable and utilitarian aspects of education. This has led to an ignorance regarding the potential for education to provide a platform for individual growth and the lived experience of students. This driving force of education has had direct, negative effects on my life leading to confusion, unhappiness, and eventually resentment toward educational praxis. Because the motive of this project was to sort through my own personal concerns, narrative research was utilized. There have been some persisting concerns about the use of narratives as a methodology in educational research. These are addressed in the previous section titled "Why narratives are valid in educational research" and partly in the literature review. Unaddressed in those sections are concerns regarding personal narrative. Since it has already been established that each individual is shaped by discourse, the validity of findings can be questioned. Operating under the basis that subjectivity has power and provides benefits to educational research, this method is appropriate for use. Instruments Narrative research, by its definition, is based in storytelling. The story then becomes the primary artifact for analysis. It was imperative, therefore, that my story was told. This was accomplished through a written reflection of my educational experiences using a technique known as stream of consciousness (James, 1890). The idea is that thoughts cannot be viewed as isolated or chopped apart; they are always flowing-like a stream. The use of stream of consciousness shows this interior monologue through writing. Structure and grammar are abandoned to allow for an exploration of associated thoughts. In a colloquial sense, it allows, and possibly encourages, the storyteller to go SELF-FULFILLMENT THROUGH EDUCATION 31 off on tangents. Once finished this narrative was not reviewed by me until months later when I coded the data, which allowed for greater objectivity on my analysis. My written narrative provided the bulk of data. In addition, ten other reflective artifacts were used for analysis. These were written as requirements for courses taken in the M.Ed. program. It is important to note that they were not written with the intent to be used or analyzed in any project, which provides greater objectivity of the data. Of the ten, eight artifacts came from an educational psychology course. The professor required her students to design and propose assignments that would be used to assess his or her competence of the material presented in each chapter of the text. In a research methods course in the prior semester, I was first exposed to narrative research during a routine search of literature for an assignment. I initially questioned the validity of the article for publication, but after reading it felt a powerful connection and considered employing it in my own project. Entering the educational psychology course with that consideration, I felt it may be useful to practice writing narrative pieces. For each chapter in our textbook I wrote a reflection of when I felt or identified with the psychological theories presented whether professionally as a teacher, personally as a student, or as an individual. The other two artifacts came from an independent studies course in which I read literary classics, and the other from a curriculum and assessment course. Procedures· NVivo software was used to code the data. This software allows for electronic coding and sorting of written data into categories, including cross-referencing. The narrative and reflective pieces used were uploaded into the software. As I read over the SELF-FULFILLMENT THROUGH EDUCATION 32 sources I created categories and assigned sections of texts to a category. All categories were developed after the coding process began; there were no pre-defined categories. Any length of text could be selected and assigned to one or more categories. Through the use ofNVivo, all original sources remained intact while new pages were created-one for each category-which contained the references from all sources for that category in one place. It was also possible to delete references from within a category, move a reference into a different category, or to keep a reference in that category and add it to a different one at the same time. In other words, coding could be done from within the original source itself or from within a category page. Narrative research allows themes to appear without predefined categories. This avoids the forcing of references into specific categories, which provides greater validity to and confidence in the conclusions. Although the initial coding did not have predefined categories, research questions had been generated months prior. These questions were not used to create categories or guide the coding process. I developed three research questions regarding how the timing of my master's degree, my mental illness, and motivation affected my educational narrative respectively. These questions in themselves would threaten the claim of objectivity of the coding; however, I actually misplaced and forgot these research questions. I was troubled about losing my research questions; but it turned out to be an unintended positive means to improve the strength of my claims. It was under this condition that I coded the original sources without influence from the three research questions: Why were my goals for my education different during my master's degree than those in my public school and undergraduate degree? What SELF-FULFILLMENT THROUGH EDUCATION 33 influence has my mental illness had on my educational experience? How does motivation affect educational experience? When I was writing the narrative piece, which provided the core of data for this project, I felt anxious and an unwillingness to explicitly state anything about mental illness. In fact, at times, I would reword, rephrase, or entirely remove sections of the narrative as I wrote it. I knew it was an integral part of my experience, but also felt as though it should not be present in the writing. As a result, very few references to my illness survived the written telling of my story. Once I began developing research questions, I felt guilty that I was not as forthcoming about that part of the story. Dr. Mower told me that it would be fine and still useful because it might be able to strengthen my case that the discourse prevents the honest expression of my narrative. I felt that I, again, had prevented my project from showing what I believed to be a very impactful part of my narrative. First, I diminished and limited the inclusion of mental illness in my written narrative, and then I forgot to include it in my coding. It was discouraging. Dr. Mower again thought it was just fine and said the bit about the discourse battle. The pep talk was not effective and I remained saddened. This experience will be of importance in the findings section. I was disappointed and honestly felt that my project had been compromised in some way; yet, I continued. As aforementioned, normally in narrative research one would decide which categories to use for continued analysis and allow overarching themes to appear. However, since I had specific research questions, this traditional methodology was adjusted. After identifying which of the many categories ought to be used for further analysis, I created three new categories, one for each of my research questions: Master's, SELF-FULFILLMENT THROUGH EDUCATION 34 Motivation, and Mental Illness (see Figure 1). I reviewed the coded data within each of the original categories and then performed a secondary coding of the data into one (or more) of the three research questions. Any references that did not fit within those three categories were abandoned. I printed the coded data within the three research questions and then performed a tertiary coding. Just as the first coding process, I allowed categories to appear without predetermined ending points. This coding was done by hand. Figure 1. Coding data for final analysis. This figure shows the interactions of the three research questions in data analysis. Only categories that fell within the overlapping area of the three research questions were considered for final analysis. Four categories remained for final analysis: Self-worth and Self-Esteem; Authenticity and Freedom; Regret; and Change and Redemption. It is worth noting that the references within these four categories remained in the data pool after three separate coding procedures. Unlike during the original and secondary coding, the emotional influence and the overall feeling of the references were added to the criteria. Therefore, themes rather than categories will be used to refer to these four groupings. References that were accepted for final analysis were also reviewed as to whether they showed examples of the discourse or a counter-narrative, meaning that my experience opposed the discursive claim. SELF-FULFILLMENT THROUGH EDUCATION 35 FINDINGS Discourse is an idea that has developed an identity. It has power and influence over an individual, a group, or even an entire society or culture. Discourse shapes the experiences of individuals. It is an invisible hand that directs actions, thoughts, words, and beliefs. The personal stories and lived experiences are narratives. The discursive view is that narratives are fiction in themselves, that there is no individuality. Discourse makes the rules and people unknowingly obey. It is this reason that my final analysis includes this section in addition to the research questions. This research brings into the light the reality that what the discourse claims to be may not be at all. In fact the actual realities which are lived and felt every day might be completely the opposite. Though I set out to reveal the discourse and its oppression on narratives, I found that narratives may also perpetuate the discourse not only through conformity but also by agreement. My story illustrates all three of these situations: countering against, conforming to, and agreeing with the discourse. The Four Major Themes Four major themes emerged while looking within the overlapping area of the three research questions. These were: Self-worth and Self-Esteem; Authenticity and Freedom; Regret; and Change and Redemption (see Figure 2). SELF-FULFILLMENT THROUGH EDUCATION 36 Figure 2. Four themes emerged from the overlapping area of the three research questions. The arrows show the interconnectedness of all four. One theme included references about self-worth and self-esteem. Positive references such as "I feel more empowered," were coded together alongside any negative references such as "I did not deserve to have fun." The second theme presented many different feelings that have in common living with authenticity. Although the term authenticity was never mentioned in the data, I often refer to the "real-me." Other references in this theme share my desire "to be free from it all," and resolving feelings of instability. The third of the four themes was regret. Regret was also one of the original categories during the first-order coding of the data. The final theme focused on change and redemption. References included thoughts about change when I wrote," . education has the power to change people . it could change me," as well as references to applicable changes as in my world views or my motivation behind my actions. All four themes were closely intertwined. This finding was not surprising considering this was a single, personal narrative. More than being intertwined the first SELF-FULFILLMENT THROUGH EDUCATION 37 two themes were more akin to a pair. The best term for the relationship is mutually inclusive. The categories are distinctly different but necessarily interactive. I explain this term as analogous to the relationship between twins. Each has his own name, personality, habits, friends, and so on, yet always the relationship with his twin is apparent and powerful. Certainly what one twin does affects and causes changes to the other, but often both operate separately while never operating independently. In the good, in the bad, in the confusing, in the times which would otherwise fracture a relationship forever, twins are together. So also were my feelings of self-worth and my feelings about emotional stability, authenticity, and self-entrapment. The remaining two themes were also closely related and in a similar way. Contrastingly, the relationship between change and redemption and regret was more similar to cause-effect and correlation. More often than with the other pairs, references from these two themes were often found without the other nearby. However, this quote may illustrate how regret can act as an impetus for change: "I want to show the world that I can take all of those regrets and the guilt and the shame and remedy them by living by a different pattern," whereas these quotes show how change can expunge regret: "My master's degree is all about redemption." "It will give me my life and my joy back." Self-worth and Self-esteem: Authenticity and Freedom Living with authenticity, I found, brought relief. My writings mention more than once that I believe that education had the power to change individuals, and I knew that I would need to put myself in a position to take advantage of that. The data showed that I lived with a lot of shame because I was not willing to take that risk. "I could not force myself to be the best version of myself. I held myself back . and I was unhappy and SELF-FULFILLMENT THROUGH EDUCATION 38 unfulfilled." Of the many, many other entries that portray this, the feeling is most appropriately captured in a quote from Great Expectations (Dickens, 1860/1979): "In a word, I was too cowardly to do what I knew to be right, as I had been too cowardly to avoid doing what I knew to be wrong." This trend began in my k-12 experiences. As it continued, "I became more aware of the conflict between my values of growing and . [my] actions." In fact, I received "my bachelor's degree with a lot of regret and disappointment." My master's experience was different because I was willing to be authentic. I decided that I could not sacrifice.myself any longer. This relief is shown as "I am so very proud of myself. I am proud that I am doing it [meaning making education about my personal needs for once,] and I am proud that I am doing it now-earlier than later." As part of my master's program I enrolled in an individual study course. I elected to read classic literature. In part, the motivation of this was to overcome the fear that someone would one day discover, that as smart and educated as I was, I was not well read. I had not had the opportunity in school to read these books, and I had not yet taken it upon myself to procure them from the library or bookstore. These readings yielded far more than overcoming the embarrassment from the deception about not reading a few famous books. In these books I found myself and my identity. "I understand myself more because of this course," I wrote in my final reflection. One book was particularly affecting. A young, innocent man posing for his portrait was introduced in the opening chapter of The Picture of Dorian Gray (Wilde, 2011 ). As Mr. Gray experienced the world, he behaved in dishonest, lustful, and other undesirable manners. Through some magic, never fully explained in the book, the manifestations of these choices never SELF-FULFILLMENT THROUGH EDUCATION 39 showed on his face but rather on his portrait. Likewise he did not age rather his agedness appeared on his portrait. Thus he was able to maintain the appearances of a good, scrupulous man while living quite oppositely. I considered the similarities to my own life: "I feel that I misrepresented myself;"" . No one knew me. Not even my family. I could not share myself with them (referring to anyone, not just my family.)" Reading the book felt like a confession-as ifthe author of the book knew my story. It brought relief, though nothing had changed. I viewed Dorian Gray as myself in fictional form and the portrait as a representation of my soul. Others saw my accomplishments. I saw "a fraud and a man who cut the corners of his education." This book strengthened my resolve for authenticity in my education. "I do not want to look at my portrait and find it ugly and dirty and unbearable to look upon, while I appear so youthful and enviable." Instead of hiding my portrait away in the attic and behind locked doors, as Mr.· Gray did, I found that I was "as open as possible" which led to "a greater connection to humanity." Regret Many references of regret were accompanied by guilt. This was not surprising and those references, though applicable here, were better placed in the first theme of selfworth and self-esteem. What was surprising were the feelings of loss which also accompanied regret. Loss of enjoyment was one common regret, which appeared in the very opening line of my written story: "My biggest regret of my college career was that I never enjoyed it." In another reminiscing thought: "I wish I would have done more in my college career that involved . enjoyment." Yet another: "I wish I would have slowed down and enjoyed youth . "In addition to loss of enjoyment was the loss of self-improvement. This regret often came because "I held myself back." Others were formed SELF-FULFILLMENT THROUGH EDUCATION 40 while "I was frozen in fear," or because "I could do only those things in which success seemed inevitable . " I missed an opportunity to study red pandas in China. "I really wanted to go and it felt right. I had the money," but I did not go. Many of these regrets were due to social pressures. The judgement and approval of others was a deciding factor as to what I would do. "One reason . I never felt fulfilled is because I was accomplishing things to impress and fill up others buckets, not to fill up my own." One of the most interesting issues of my regrets was that I felt I had no power to change them. The feelings of loss expressed with regret came with a sense of permanence. There was a forever loss. In many ways and in various amounts of words, I expressed there are things "I will never get back." I also found that regrets were persistent. With each new regret, the "burden of [my] mistakes" would grow larger. In fact, "mistakes and regrets pile[ed] on [my] body simultaneously." Regrets, it seemed, could be created, but never destroyed. Change and Redemption I was constantly "wait[ing] in fear and hope both to be found out as a fraud . "I convinced myself that if someone were to call me out I would be forced to change. My high school counselor did just that. "I realized that she knew how I was not living up to my greatness and . gave partial effort for appearance only. It was a powerful moment in my life, but one that still did not allow me to change." I think the most interesting finding about change was that there was so little of it for so long. The second theme about authenticity and freedom presented many desires for change. Thus, motivation for change was always present, yet change did not occur. I later wrote about a requested substitution of course requirements in my bachelor's program. Again, the data showed that I was not SELF-FULFILLMENT THROUGH EDUCATION 41 completely open to embracing change. "Part of me hoped that [my advisor] would deny the request, but part of me was ready to fight her if she did." One of the premises within the literature review focused on the shift education has taken in focusing on data and grades, not the student. In my mind, this was the new discourse on education. I would call this the discourse of educational prestige. It was my belief that the discourse of educational prestige is what prevented change and growth. I believed this was the oppressive force, which had prevented my self-fulfillment. There was a great power and a sense of defiance when I wrote that I applied to the master's program "to find myself personally, not professionally." I felt I was proving something to the world when I wrote in bitterness, "This time it is about me." I found out that the discourse of education still maintained a focus on the students' best interests. Through analysis of the data, I learned that the discourse of educational prestige was not a discourse, and it already had a name. Its name was mental illness. For me it came in the fonn of bi-polar and social anxiety disorders. One common finding about change was that I refused "to deviate from the path that I had planned earlier." Once I made a plan, I felt obliged to see that plan true to the end, even after it was clear that it was a bad plan. Mental illness was the invisible force, which silently shaped my narrative to oppose and resist change. Thus, when opportunities came to improve or change, I would not take them. "I felt that I did not deserve [to change] because I had made a mistake in not planning for those opportunities." This was a dominating thought. This was what held me back. It was this logic which made regret permanent. My narrative became a collection of unhappy experiences though the influence of mental illness, not the discourse. Despite that reality, I did change. I did make "it about me." I did "make a difference. A difference SELF-FULFILLMENT THROUGH EDUCATION 42 for me." All of those changes happened, but they did not happen because I overcame the discourse. The reason that my master's experience yielded more rewarding outcomes is not because I was more aware and more empowered to fight the discourse, but rather that I was more aware and more empowered to fight my mental illness. Before my master's degree I viewed education as a means to gain social approval and self-worth, which caused me to take classes and participate in extra-curricular activities "that would be impressive and [make] people love me." This is apparent in the two examples with the high school counselor and college advisor. Contrastingly, I entered the master's program believing that it "could help me deal with my emotional insecurities and other personal chaos." Directly stating my need for emotional support is what made this time around different. "I am here to be healed," I wrote. This does agree with the discourse. Education is power. This theme is also about redemption. I found in the end that redemption is not what was there. Even though, "My master's degree is all about redemption." When I imagined this moment in my story, I wrote, "I will see my own portrait of a man redeemed of errors and a man regained of his confidence and self-worth." I do not think that redemption has taken place. The words speak of redemption, but instead I found healing and forgiveness. "I just want to be at peace," I said. "I want to feel stable." The data showed those wishes were granted. The discourse would claim that these changes in my self-worth, self-esteem, and self-acceptance were socially constructed, that there was no individual force from my narrative, but I know it is different. I felt the battle against the discourse as I pushed SELF-FULFILLMENT THROUGH EDUCATION 43 myself to find a place in the world and in the teaching profession with mental illness. I felt the pressure of the discourse every time I added a bit more of myself to the project. The discourse does influence my life, but it is not the only power that exists in my life. I have my own power to fight the discourse in the times when my experiences no longer agree with the discourse. Conformity is not guaranteed. I do have a voice, and that's what this is. This is my narrative. It is I. Conclusions I found that discourse is not inherently evil. In fact, narratives may very well agree with discourse more often than they do not. Contradicting my expectations, the data did not support that discourse was the oppressive enemy I had villainized it to be at the commencement of this project, or at least not to the severity I assumed. I found, rather, that it was the mental illness that shaped and oppressed my narrative. However, though the discourse did not oppress my narrative directly, it hid from view my mental illness, which prevented me from growth. I was unable to face my mental illness because I was not fully aware of where or what it was. It is in this way that, for me, the discourse was oppressive and was an enemy. One clear example of the role mental illness played in my narrative comes from the paired themes of self-worth and authenticity. In that section I quoted the disappointment and shame that came with the reception of my bachelor's degree. The discursive practices regarding graduation are celebrating, rejoicing, and congratulating. Clearly my experience countered that discourse. I assumed that my nanative was countering that discourse. Reviewing the data I found a quote about how I would feel upon reception of my master's degree: "The acceptance of my degree will in a way be an acceptance of myself." Here, my narrative agreed with the discourse. In light SELF-FULFILLMENT THROUGH EDUCATION 44 of these contradictory experiences, I conclude that it was my mental illness that countered the discourse. Another example was shared under regret. It was the missed opportunity to study abroad in China. I regret not going because it would have been an awesome and rewarding experience, "but in my mind I did not have the time." "I tried to convince myself that I should go and get the experience but every time I thought about taking the trip I felt overwhelmed with all the pressure to get my degree as soon as possible." The discourse on education supports unique, personal, and expansive experiences. In other words, the discourse supported the trip. It was my mental illness that pressured me into living a narrative without a trip to China. Mental illness expects conformity. It shapes narratives and counters discourse. The reason I did not see mental illness in each of these examples is because mental illness has no place within the discourse. In some professions, mental illness is acceptable and even expected. These are often the arts. This is not the case in teaching; even art teachers are held to a different standard when it comes to mental illness than their non-teaching counterparts. I have written that it is the mental illness which counters the discourse. That mental illness is part of me. Mental illness and my narrative are linked. In that way, my narrative does counter the discourse. Because the discourse said mental illness in educators cannot exist, it was difficult to distinguish between the influences of the discourse and the influences of my mental illness. It was difficult for me to find my place in this profession. I knew that I had a mental illness and I knew that I wanted to be the stable, helpful, competent teacher that the discourse advertised teachers to be. I wanted the discourse. I agreed with the discourse. However, I also had a mental SELF-FULFILLMENT THROUGH EDUCATION 45 illness, which meant I could not fully embrace the discourse. This conflict was confusing for me as a student and later as a teacher. It caused me to feel "uneasy and [lack] confidence in myself . for being unable to decide within which arena I belonged." The discourse celebrates differences and individuality. I felt that mental illness was too diverse for celebration: " . Being different and unique is not easy," I explained, "This is especially true when it comes to intellect. It is extremely isolating." There was no room for mental illness, so there was no room for me-or for teachers like me, I suppose. With all of the findings about the oppression of mental illness, I return to the final theme of redemption. Redemption is about being saved. I found there was nothing from which I needed to be saved. The discourse informs us that mental illness is to be hidden and controlled. I believe this discursive influence caused me to feel that I needed redemption from my mental illness. The discourse was wrong. I still feel that there is a necessary battle with my mental illness, yet I also found that the acceptance of my mental illness opened the doors that led to self-fulfillment. Mental illness is not a sin, which requires redemption. Had I continued to hide my mental illness, I would not have gained access to the good in education-the good of the discourse. I now have far fewer regrets, and none that haunt me, because I ensured that I received both satisfaction and growth in my master's program. I found that enjoying life is not regrettable. I found that selfimprovement is not regrettable. In the final analysis, as I looked upon my po1irait, I did not find a man redeemed of his errors, but I did find a man regained of his confidence and self-worth. Whether fighting or embracing my mental illness, the data showed that it is only when I accept its existence that I feel at peace. Itis an authentic way to live. I found that being the best is not as good as being the best me. SELF-FULFILLMENT THROUGH EDUCATION 46 Finding that mental illness is what caused much of my frustration and dissatisfaction in education advocates for more narrative research on mental illness in teachers including the narratives of teachers without mental illness. This recommendation echoes the observation in my literature review that there is little research in education from the perspective of the teacher, particularly in separation from instructional strategies and professional duties. Teachers are a major part of the educational system both in effort and in number. 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