Oral history interview with Anna Reardon, 1990 [text/print transcript]

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UNCG CENTENNIAL ORAL HISTORY PROJECT COLLECTION
INTERVIEWEE: Anna Reardon
INTERVIEWER: Linda Danford
DATE: January 14, 1990
[Begin Side A]
LD: Dr. Reardon, would you tell me a little bit about when you first came to UNCG [The
University of North Carolina at Greensboro] in 1941 [Ed. note: name of institution was
Woman's College of the University of North Carolina in 1941]; you were telling right
before the tape started about your living arrangements.
AR: About the living arrangements?
LD: Yes.
AR: It just seemed to be the custom. At the time, single women and single men on the faculty
didn't have apartments like people do today. We had a room in a private home, and I had
a very lovely arrangement with a family by the name of Ryan on West Market Street
right across from Peabody Park, you know? It—the second year that I was here—well,
when I came in 1941—Pearl Harbor [surprise military strike by Japanese Navy against
United States Naval Base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii] was December 1941. So you know
there were changes in lifestyles because of the war.
And the second year that I was here at Woman's College on Carr Street—one of
those little streets over near the campus. There was a man and his wife who had a very
nice little home. It was actually the last home on Carr Street on the south side of the street
before you come to Mendenhall [Street]. It was on Carr, not on Mendenhall. And he went
to Norfolk [Virginia] to work in the [United States] Navy shipyards, and they wanted
somebody to live in their home. They didn't want to just close it up. They had a teacher.
She didn't want the whole house by herself, so she asked me and a young lady in the
chemistry department if we would come and live with her. So we had that house for one
year, and after that year I went back to a room in a private home because the young lady
in the chemistry department, Margaret Endicott, left Woman's College, and she was
married and moved to the West Coast.
The—I lived, oh, I don't know how many years, several years, until probably
about 1946 or '47, when there was a death in my family out in St. Louis [Missouri], and
my mother moved to Greensboro to live with me. So, of course, then we did look for an
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apartment. And we lived on McIver Street, where the Biology Building, the [Eberhart]
Life Science Building, is now? There was a four-family apartment house right on the
corner, and we were able to get one of those apartments which was very, very convenient
to the science building. And then we lived in another apartment about four years or five
years later, and then we bought this house on Dover Road. And my mother passed away
in '59, but I've just stayed on here.
LD: Can you tell me something about the effect of the war on the college? Since you came in
1941, what was it like to be at WC [Woman’s College of the University of North
Carolina] during the war years?
AR: Well, it—as far as the students were concerned, the campus became very active. You
know, in Greensboro there was an army camp. You know about that? And there was a lot
of social life on the campus. In fact, it was always kind of amusing. The MPs [military
police] patrolled our campus. I don't know if anybody's told you that. There was a lot of
social activities because of the camp.
And from an educational standpoint, the government asked us—and, of course,
this affected the physics department. They asked us to teach a night class, some night
classes for civilians—Greensboro's people here. It was all men at that time, and they
called them the ESMDT course. And what we had been asked to teach was a course in
electricity and magnetism. And a course in Morse code [method of transmitting text as a
series of clicks, on-off tones or lights]. Now I know nothing about Morse code, but I was
asked to teach the electricity and magnetism course at night and the Morse code was
taught by Mr. Teague, Claude Teague, who was the business manager [director of
extension, assistant comptroller] at the time. He had been in World War I [centered in
Europe and involved the world’s great powers, 1914-18], and I think his duty was
connected with Morse code during that war at some of his duties. And on the top floor of
the Science Building—that little small room up there—the Morse code equipment. Oh,
several units of that equipment was set up permanently, and he taught the Morse code. I
think I had a class that was an hour and a half long, and he had a class that was an hour
and a half long. One night a week I think it was.
LD: So there were men educated at WC before the mid-'60s?
AR: There were men at Woman's College. Well, let me just talk about my time there. From
1941 on in the summertime I taught a course in physics. It was a seven-week course. It
was kind of off scheduled. It wasn't scheduled in the regular way. Usually summer
school's a six-week course. In those days we just had one session of summer school. But
my course, the physics course, was seven weeks. They asked me to teach the course.
Well, I think probably the war had something to do with it. They wanted to get physics
back into the summer curriculum. It hadn't been taught in several years, and Mr. Charlie
Phillips [director of public relations] came to see me about it and asked me if I would
teach the course for seven weeks so we could cover a whole year's work in physics—
physics 101 and 102—all in the summer. And from that time on, I think they still have
a—in fact, I know they still have a—in general physics in the summer school. So since
'41 on and I—that first summer, I had something like seven or eight girls. No, I guess I
had about nine girls and one boy. But after that summer I had more boys in the class than
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I had girls.
LD: And you continued to have boys in that summer school class?
AR: And continued to have boys in that summer school, right. And then a plan developed with
North Carolina State [University, Raleigh, North Carolina]. You know, as the years
progressed in the '40s, there were young men coming back from the war. And their
education had been interrupted and they wanted to complete their education. Well, there
was a dean—I've forgotten what his name was—the dean of the School of Textiles of the
time made arrangements with Woman's College to have a certain percentage of his
textiles majors who were at the place in their curriculum where they needed to take
physics. A certain percentage—it was about half of the textile majors—would come to
Woman's College in the summertime and take a course in physics. The other half of the
textile class was in some kind of a textile course on the State College campus in Raleigh.
The ones who took the textile course in the summertime then had time to take the physics
course the next year. You see, they swapped courses. And also the young men wanted to
speed up their education. They took my physics course for seven weeks, and then they
went into some mills. They were assigned to mills around the state where they had to
have some kind of work like practicum. So they had to have so many hours of practical
work in the mill where they able to get that schedule. For years that dean of textiles
scheduled his boys like that.
And one year—I don't know if I should mention this, but one year, when
integration became a problem or they thought it was a problem. In late May, the
legislature was still in session and all of a sudden they introduced a motion or an
amendment or something, and it was related to men registering at Woman's College.
Period. And the legislature voted not to allow any—on the campus we called them, the
"new men"—we kind of had a little joke about it. No new men could register on the
Woman's College campus. Summer school was coming up. They didn't want to interfere
with somebody who had—some man who had been registered before who was coming to
summer school to complete his degree or something like that. They didn't want to
interfere with that group of people. But they just didn't want any new males to register on
the campus. And immediately people became concerned about my students. But the way
the dean of textiles had his all summer planned, my boys were pre-registered before the
registration period for summer school. My boys were pre-registered. And the new rule
from the legislature didn't affect them, so I had the boys that summer. But then all that
was ironed out—the problems ironed out later in a year or two.
LD: What was the reason for wanting to prohibit men?
AR: They were just afraid that there'd be an influx on the Woman's College campus. Because
summer school had been—males had come to summer school for years and years and
years and years, you see. In other words summer school was integrated, but the academic
year was not integrated.
LD: When you say integrated you mean males and females.
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AR: Yes.
LD: When you carne in 1941, how big was your department? Were you the whole physics
department?
AR: When I carne in 1941, Dr. Calvin Warfield was the head of the department, but he was
not here in Greensboro. The summer before the academic year of '41 started, September
'41, Dr. Warfield was working for the government at Langley Field [Virginia]. He
intended to return in September. Those were the plans. He—I never met Dr. Warfield
until I came in September of 1941. I talked with him several times on the telephone. And
we carried on a correspondence. And I knew what my schedule was going to be, and all
that business had been agreed upon. And in the summer of '41, I was teaching up at
Hunter College in the summer session in New York City. And after that summer session,
I had a few weeks between my date of reporting down here and the end of that summer
school, and I went home. And while I was home, Dr. Warfield wrote me a letter, and he
said there had been a slight change in plans. "I'm real busy with my research. I'll tell you
about the change when I see you in Greensboro." Now we had already agreed on that on
certain dates I was to be here.
And when I carne to Greensboro and met Dr. Warfield what he told me was that
he was not going to be on the campus at all in a regular manner during this academic year
of '41-'42. He had planned—what he had planned to do was to—the government had
asked him to stay on with the research at Langley Field. And he had agreed with Dr.
[Walter Clinton] Jackson, who was the head [dean of administration, chancellor] of our
Woman's College at that time, that he would return to Greensboro once a month and take
care of academic business, and he would maybe teach a class—he would teach one class
while he was on the campus for a day or two. Dr. Warfield left the campus.
We met on a Monday in September. I’ve forgotten the date. Dr. Warfield came in
the night before, Sunday night. I came in on Sunday night. We met Monday morning. Dr.
Warfield had a desk that was piled high with summer mail. And he started talking to me.
And in no time at all the telephone started to ring, and it was one interruption after
another. You see, Dr. Warfield left Greensboro on the following Wednesday. He was
here Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. He was supposed to come back before the end
of September. Dr. Warfield never returned to Greensboro.
LD: At all?
AR: Never. Dr. Jackson called me over to his office, and he told me all the details of the
arrangement that had been made with Dr. Warfield. And Dr. Jackson told me that he
wanted me to look after the department. And he said, "Any time you have a question feel
perfectly free to pick up the telephone and call Dr. Warfield. And then Dr. Warfield will
be coming back once a month." You see, that had been the plan "He'll be coming back,
and you can settle department business then." Well, as I said before, Dr. Warfield never
returned. His research and the war—this was September '41 and December '41 was Pearl
Harbor. In about a month, Dr. Warfield made the decision that he would not return to
Greensboro that year. He did not give up the headship of the department, but he wasn't
returning. And he wasn't sure if he'd be able to return the second year, '42-'43. He—Dr.
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Jackson called me over to his office and told me that because of the uncertainty of the
world affairs—I mean people were beginning to suspect we were going to get into the
war. He—Dr. Warfield's plans were as definite as they could be, but there was a lot of
uncertainty connected with it. But Dr. Jackson wanted me now to take care of the
department. I should not feel like I had to call Dr. Warfield when problems or questions
or anything came up. I was to make my own decision. And Dr. Jackson at that time told
me that—he said, "Now if Warfield decides to give up the headship next year," he said,
"we will make you the acting head of the department, and we will increase your rank." I
came in as an instructor, you see. At the same time, Dr. Jackson asked me not to make an
announcement myself about the changes in the department. And I said "Well, I wouldn't
even consider doing that because it wasn't my place."
And Dr. Jackson explained to me that all of the announcements of changes of
faculty—it was a custom of Woman's College to make those changes in September. Well,
we went on for the year, and I took care of the department. The staff was Ruth Gill [Class
of 1938], who was a student, a physics major who had been working in the department
with Dr. Warfield as a laboratory assistant. The third person in the department was Betty
Meickle. She was a young lady, who in addition to being a physics major had gone into a
hospital in New Hampshire and learned how to be a x-ray technician. Now that sounds a
little queer, but back in those days the physics department taught a course in x-ray
technique, I think it was called, for the microbiology majors in the biology department. It
was a service course for that group of students. And Dr. Warfield—that was one of the
courses that Dr. Warfield taught. Well, my appointment was made in early April of 1941,
and Dr. Warfield knew that I wasn't able to teach a course like that. I mean, I hadn't had
the medical side of the anatomy business. He also wanted to enlarge his department, so
he got this Betty Meickle to come in, and I think he wanted to get rid of that x-ray
technique course as far as his schedule was concerned. And he had hired—before the
academic year of September '41 had ever started—he had hired Betty Meickle. So our
department was made up of four people: Dr. Warfield, who was really the head, Ann
Reardon, and Betty Meickle, and Ruth Dill, you see. But it degenerated into just three
people.
LD: And then after the war did the size of the department increase?
AR: After the war—I wouldn't say after the war, it was during the war. The—that first year
too there was supposed to be one physics major in the department. And I have forgotten
why she did not return. It was her senior year. All I remember is that Dr. Warfield was
very, very disappointed that that girl did not come back her senior year. But the next year
we picked up Woman's College girls to work on physics majors, and I would say the—
they were mostly girls who started out in math. And with the emphasis that had been—
that was being put on physics at the time, they decided to change over to a physics major.
Or some of the girls had double majors or had almost a double major. They'd major in
physics, and they would have more than a minor in math. The—starting—let's see, that
was '42-'43. Starting that year—well, that year we had students in advanced physics
courses, but we didn't have anybody graduating as a senior. But the next year, '33-'34
LD: '43-'44.
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AR: What?
LD: '43-'44. You said '33. You mean '43.
AR: '42- '43? Let's see. My first year was '41-'42. Then '42-'43. The next year, the group that
came in '42-'43 were seniors in '43-'44, and we also picked up some juniors. And after
that every year we had enough students to give our whole sequence of advanced courses
because we'd have juniors and we'd have seniors and they'd have different courses that
they'd have to take and the—we were graduating two and three girls in physics for the
rest of my time as head of that department. I eventually was made head of that
department. And we—let's see, I did write down here some dates because I always forget.
I was made assistant professor in 1942 and acting head of the department—the
announcement was made, but actually I was acting head my first year when I was here.
A funny thing happened about that. Dr. Jackson told me, and I know it was the
practice for all announcements to be made in September. Well, for that first year, the
announcements were made in May on Baccalaureate Sunday. And I had the habit of
going to church to the 8:00 [am] mass uptown and sometimes I would—well, the busses
wouldn't run on Sunday until 8:00. I think they started at 8:00, and I had to—if I was
going to 8:00 mass, I had to get uptown by 8:00, and I used to walk up West Market
Street, and sometimes a Mr. Martin and his wife and Miss [Augustine] LaRochelle, who
was one of our faculty, a Spanish teacher at the time, would pick me up. And that
particular Sunday, Baccalaureate Sunday that year, Miss LaRochelle—as soon as I got
into the car, she said "Well, aren't you pleased with the announcement?" And I hadn't
read the Sunday morning newspaper, and I said, "What announcement?" She said, "Well,
didn't you read the paper?" I said, "Well, no," I said, "I don't get the paper until later in
the day." And she said "Why you're the new head, the acting head, of the physics
department." And I was just taken by surprise because I had vowed to myself that I would
not say one word about that because I had promised Dr. Jackson. And Miss LaRochelle—
I've forgotten what she said, "Aren't you pleased or aren't you this or something?” And
unconsciously I said the wrong—I mean it blurted right out of me. I said something like,
"Well no, because I've known about it for a long time." And dear Miss LaRochelle—she
was a love of a person, but she always liked new news and gossip and so on, but she just
couldn't get over the fact that I knew about it. She never did know how long I knew about
it and I didn't tell somebody. But I was made—in '45 I was made associate professor of
physics, and in '47 I was made associate professor and head of the department and in '49 I
was made a full professor. That was my timetable. But, we—as I said, we graduated two
and three students there for a long time as physics majors, and the girls got real good
positions.
LD: I was going to ask you—what kinds of jobs did they go on to?
AR: One of my girls went down—she was from Georgia, from a little town in Georgia. A very
attractive young lady and really an excellent student. She had made up her mind as a
young girl that she wanted to work in Atlanta [Georgia]. And she wanted Georgia Tech
[Georgia Institute of Technology]—that's where she wanted to go. And she knew she
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wanted to teach. She applied. They asked her to come down for an interview, and she got
herself a job—a graduate right out of college. She got herself a job. I've forgotten the
actual details of her job but—at Georgia Tech—and she was there for a long time—years,
until she married one of the staff members at Georgia Tech and they moved to Fort—in
Florida, where—Fort Canaveral [Kennedy Space Center].
LD: Cape Canaveral.
AR: Cape Canaveral. He got a job with NASA [National Aeronautics & Space
Administration], and they have lived down there ever since. Another girl went to—not
one girl, but several of them—went over to Langley Field, and they have retired from
Langley Field. This always amuses me when the students, they write to me and tell me,
"I'm retiring this year." All those girls who graduated in the early '40s or in the mid-'40s,
have retired from their jobs at Langley Field, but they held their jobs all those years.
But another student went to Washington [District of Columbia]. She wanted to
work—she was another North Carolinian girl from a small town here in North Carolina
and she wanted to work in Washington. And she went up there and had an interview at
the Bureau of Standards [measurement standards laboratory]. And the man who
interviewed her had a grudge against women. And he wasn't at all nice to her, and finally
she very politely told him that she was interested in her work. She wanted to work in
physics, do laboratory, some kind of laboratory research in physics, and evidently he
wasn't interested in hiring a woman. And she very politely excused herself. She also had
an interview at the same time scheduled at the [United States] Naval Ordinance Bureau
[responsible for procurement, storage and deployment of all naval ordnance]. She
received a totally different reception there, and before she left, they offered her a job,
which she accepted. And she worked at the Naval Ordinance Bureau until—well, she got
married after three or four or five years. And after she was married she still worked at
Naval Ordinance, and then when she started to raise a family, she resigned. And a few
years later they asked her if she wasn't interested in coming back. And she worked at the
Naval Ordinance Bureau until she retired from there. So every one of the girls—and a
couple of them have gone into teaching. There's a girl up here in Roanoke, Virginia. She
taught in the public schools of Roanoke and her husband—no, wait a minute, where's
Salem College in Virginia? No, isn't it Roanoke College in Salem, Virginia. I think that's
it. Isn't it Roanoke College in Salem, Virginia?
LD: I don't know.
AR: Anyway, she taught in the public schools in a town in Virginia. Her husband taught in a
college. I've forgotten the name of that college. It's—I think it's Roanoke College. Her
husband—Roanoke College in Salem, Virginia. I think that's it. He taught—he was an
English major from [University of North Carolina at] Chapel Hill, and he taught in the
college, and she taught in the public school system, taught physics there. And she
received all sorts of awards for her teaching, and she has retired.
LD: Did you find it difficult to recruit students at UNCG? Was there a lot of interest in
science?
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AR: Well, I tell you, there was a time there, you see—I came along right before the war, and
the war actually—there was a lot of emphasis put on physics. And the students knew that
the government was having these night classes on our campus, and then also at the same
time or shortly after the war, they started having a television—a physics course on
television. There was a physics program that went on the air—I think it was 6:00 in the
morning. And the—I think it was the National Science Foundation [United States
government agency that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical
fields of science and engineering] that was responsible for that. But anyway,
whoever was responsible for it had invited institutions around the country to take part in
this television physics course, and we—what we did was, the students and the teacher,
not together, had to view the course every morning at 6:00. And on Saturdays, the
students came to the campus, and we went—oh, there was a set lecture series that we
were provided with—the teachers were provided with—and it was a review and an
extension of what was on television. There were a lot of demonstrations on television.
It was a very interesting course. It drew in all men, and they were from all fields.
I had—one man was the editor—I think it was from Reynolds Tobacco in
Winston [-Salem, North Carolina]—he was the editor of some publication that they had
for their employees and also for their customers and so on. He did a lot of traveling, and I
remember he told me that he was in Acapulco [Mexico] one weekend when he missed the
class. Or, no—it was during the week. And he was so afraid he was going to miss the
6:00 TV [television] broadcast each morning, but he was in Acapulco at some kind of a
convention, and he was able to get the program down there at 6:00 every morning. But
see, there was no activity on the campus, and the girls knew that. And industry was
coming in asking students to come and talk to them about possible jobs, and they were
particularly interested in the science and math majors—all the sciences and the math
majors—so the girls knew that, and if they had any inkling that they would like to go into
physics, that certainly encouraged them.
LD: So you wouldn't say you had any difficulty during the war in recruiting?
AR: No.
LD: Did you find any falling off in the late '40s?
AR: No, I think we still had—see, I mean, we never had dozens of people coming in or
anything like that. I think we still got students in when we went coed, when the campus
went coed. See, that was—when was that?—that was back about '63.
LD: '64.
AR: Some place along there. And we got some boys in then. But the boys were not as good as
the girls.
LD: I've heard several people say that.
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AR: The boy students that we got in were not as good as the girls. The girls had a better
background in math. Some of them had had a course in physics in high school. Some of
the girls who'd came and eventually became physics majors. And I know one little girl
came to me one time at the beginning of the year—I forgot now which one this was—but
she came to me, and she said, "I would like to be a physics major. Would you let me be a
physics major?" And I looked at her. And she said, "I haven't had a course in physics."
But she said, "I've done a lot of reading." And she had a boyfriend who had a course in
physics, and they talked about physics, she said. And I said, "Well, why are you asking
me to let you be a physics major—let you take a course in physics?" She said," Well, in
my high school when I told the counselor that I wanted to take the physics course in high
school, the counselor wouldn't let me take the course." And so I told her, I said, "Listen,
you can come and be a physics major ten times over if you want to." I said, "All you have
to do is study real hard and do the work." She did. She graduated with a physics major.
LD: You also—. My husband was telling me that you also were in charge of the audiovisual
equipment on campus
AR: Yes, I'll tell you— [laughs]
LD: He said they replaced you with a four-person—full-time, four-person unit.
AR: I'll tell you how that happened. The young lady who was the laboratory assistant, Ruth
Dill, she was a real nice young girl—but during that year, my first year on the campus,
she married a man that she had known for some time. He was in the Navy. He was a
lieutenant or he had some kind of title in the Navy. And they got married—like during
Thanksgiving vacation I think it was—and Ruth had charge of what was called the
audiovisual activities, which was the education movies, and we had a thirty-five
millimeter commercial movie in Aycock Auditorium every Saturday night. It was
something that was started back in the Depression [1929-1940 severe worldwide
economic downturn] days when the girls didn't have too much money to spend on
entertainment. And they carried it on for years and years and years—in fact, as long as I
was over there there was thirty-five millimeter commercial movies like you see in the
regular theater. Ruth had charge of that.
Well, after Ruth got married, every time her husband's ship came back into port in
Norfolk and Ruth got word, she would pick up and leave. And she left particularly this
thirty-five millimeter business—Saturday night movie things. And eventually I kind of
watched over it, and she would pass the information on to me. I mean—so we would
have a smooth running program. Well, Dr. Jackson got word of what she was doing—you
know, just picking up and leaving. And he called me one time. I didn't tell him anything
about what she was doing. But he heard in some way, and he called me to his office and
asked me if it was true. Well, the way he approached it I couldn't do anything other than
say, "Yes, I'm sorry. It is true." And I had tried to carry on.
Well, at the end of the year, he asked me if, as a favor to him, or maybe it was in
the course of the year, he asked me as a favor to him—no, I guess it was at the end of the
year as a favor to him because there was nobody else on the campus in the faculty,
"Would I take care of the audio-visual business?" And I got a student secretary. We
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needed some secretarial help. We didn't have secretarial help like we have on the campus
today. But he gave me a student secretary, and he put a little bit more money in the
program. And that's how I inherited it, and it went on and on and on, year in and year out.
Fortunately, I got better and better secretaries. The students were real good, actually. And
then I got secretaries like we have now. And it just developed.
LD: What kinds of audiovisual equipment did they have in those days?
AR: We had sixteen millimeter movie projectors. We had slide projectors. We had what was
available at the time, in addition to the commercial thirty-five millimeter equipment. And
that was something else. That thirty-five millimeter equipment had to be operated by a
union operator. When the university—or when the college, Woman's College, decided
they wanted to have commercial movies on the campus for the students, there was an
agreement made with the local movie people that we wouldn't cater to local
Greensboro—and the operation of it is a little different too. And we—the time came in
about a year or two when we needed to change that equipment. It—the quality of the
equipment that was originally bought by the—by Woman's College—it wasn't top quality
equipment. And our operator, who was actually the head operator at the Carolina Theater.
Although when Mr. Covington was not able to show our movies on Saturday night or
when we had foreign movies during the week for the different language departments,
when—if he wasn't able to take a scheduled movie, we had access to every man in
Greensboro who operated at a movie theater, and that was really very, very helpful.
We changed that equipment in Aycock Auditorium probably about '45 or so. We
found out that the government was closing some army posts. Sometimes an army post is
built and put active for fifty years. At the end of the fifty years it's closed. Well, there was
a fort like that over—or an army camp like that over in Tennessee. And we found out that
that movie equipment was for sale, and another camp down in South Carolina—that
movie equipment in their commercial theater—they always have a commercial theater
on—. It's a commercial theater because of the kind of movies that are shown. It's not just
a commercial theater for anybody to come in. It's for the soldiers. There's one—there was
one in South Carolina, and there was one in Atlanta, Georgia. We found out that the
government was selling the thirty-five millimeter equipment in those three places. And
Mr. [John] Lockhart, who was the business manager [and assistant comptroller] at the
time, and our local operator, Mr. Covington, all talked about the feasibility of maybe
getting some better equipment for a low price, if we could decide on one of these army
things. Well, we had to go and visit all these army camps. So Mr. Lockhart and Mrs.
Lockhart and I went on a tour of the three army posts, and the equipment at Chattanooga
had been out of operation just one month, and that was the post that was being closed.
And it was the best equipment. I looked at it, and it was in the best condition. And we
came back to Greensboro and told the [United States] Army in Washington that we
would be interested in buying that. And we sent people down to disassemble—our
operator went down and Mr. [John Moyer] Sink [Sr.], who was the superintendent of
buildings and grounds at the time—he went down. And a truck went down—a big truck
from the campus, and we brought the equipment back here.
And that's the equipment that's in Aycock Auditorium now that is used—I don't
know how much it's used now. But it was just as a favor to Dr. Jackson that I started that
11
business. I didn't know beans about that business until I came to Greensboro. But I sure
learned a lot. And that's where the union operator was a help, really. It was to our
advantage to have him. And we also found a good motion picture engineer who was in
that kind of business before the army picked him up during the war. And he was a motion
picture engineer working on equipment in various camps in various posts all over the
country. He was from Charlotte [North Carolina]. And that man installed the new
equipment that we bought from the Army in Aycock Auditorium, and that man serviced
our equipment for years. And lots of times he would come by and check the equipment,
and would never send us a bill for it. So we had a lot of advantages [laughs], I would say
that helped us with that kind of a program. But I carried that on in addition to my
department business.
LD: Okay. Tell me something about your interest in photography.
AR: Well, that was probably the reason—one of the reasons why I was offered the job here in
Greensboro. First of all, I got into photography in graduate school. Not photography as
the everyday man knows it, but regular, scientific research in photography. I went to St.
Louis University as a graduate student for a master's degree, and I stayed on for the PhD.
Dr. [E.H.] Poindexter, who was my advisor at St. Louis University, he—that was one of
the research fields that he got interested in. And he made a couple of discoveries, you
might say, in the field that he's been given credit for. He worked at Washington
University—not in St. Louis, not for his graduate work; not in photography—but he
worked with Arthur Compton on the Compton Effect [energy of photon decreases upon
interaction with matter]. He had a broad range of research interests, Dr. Poindexter had.
When I came along, it just happened he was doing some of this scientific research in
photography. The kind of scientific research that is done at—in Rochester, New York at
Eastman Kodak in their scientific laboratory.
And I got kind of interested in it, and when I—I had had some real good luck with
my research efforts, and I read some papers at the American Physical Society meeting
and different meetings. And also I had several articles published in it. While I was a
graduate student at St. Louis University, a group of business people, business men in St.
Louis who had joined the Missouri Photographic Society, wanted a course in
photography to teach how they could develop their film, teach them about a camera. They
joined the Missouri Photographic Society, and they were a little bit disappointed. They
thought they were going to get that from the society. And one of them approached St.
Louis University and asked them if there was any way that they could get the kind of
course they wanted at St. Louis University. Well, they asked Dr. Poindexter if he'd be
willing to teach this group of people. Well, Dr. Poindexter actually hadn't taught a course
like that, but he knew a man out at the University of Colorado [Boulder, Colorado] who
was kind of famous for a course of that type, and he had several books that this man had
written. And he decided that he could teach a course like that. So he told the dean at St.
Louis University and yes, he'd take that course on a Saturday because, see, these were
business people. Some of them were dentists and doctors. And it was a cross-section of
humanity, actually. There were about fifteen people, all told. He'd take the course on if
the university would buy certain equipment that would be needed, and if I could be hired
as a laboratory instructor in the course. And the university agreed. And we taught that
12
course—I taught that course with Poindexter for two years—my last two years at the
university, and I think he carried it on for a couple of years after that. Other people got
interested and came in. So that was my start in photography.
And of course when I was talking with Dr. Warfield, he told me, he said, "Now",
see Dr.—there was another man in the physics department before I came along—Dr.
[John] Tiedeman, but the April before I came here the Navy picked him up. He had had
some connection with the Navy in his past. The Navy picked him up and took him to
Annapolis [Maryland] to teach physics. See, they were getting ready for the war, and they
were trying to prepare their people. And they needed to increase their physics faculty. So
Tiedeman was picked right up in April and taken to Annapolis, and Warfield had to finish
the year by himself, actually.
Tiedeman started a course in photography back during the Depression days when
they needed to bring in a few more people into the department. The student body kind of
dropped down, and they needed to interest a few more students. And they used it as an
attraction to get a few more to account for having a physics department, I would say,
because I don't think they had any majors back in those days. Dr. Tiedeman was the one
who had the course in photography. Well, Warfield asked me—he knew about my
research, but he said "Could you teach this other kind of photography?" And I said "Well
yes," that I had had a little experience with it. So that started me off.
And I'll tell you, my first experience here in Greensboro—oh, back in those days
there were no ID [identification] cards. Nobody had ID cards in those days. But on the
Woman's College campus, all new students in September were photographed by the
physics department, photographed by Dr. Tiedeman using a little Leica camera thirty-five
millimeter camera. And Dr. Tiedeman made—it was either five or six copies of each
negative. Five or six copies of each student. And those copies were sent to different
offices on the campus. Like the registrar got one copy, and the dean of women got one
copy. I've forgotten who got all the other copies, but they were distributed among five or
six offices on the campus. All the new freshmen and any new transfer student was
photographed. Well, Dr. Warfield told me that that would be the first job that I would
have before classes started—to photograph the new students. And I said, "Well, yes," I
thought I could do that.
And when I came to the campus and met Dr. Warfield, one of the things that he
told me was that he had been looking, after he came into Greensboro, sometime I think in
the late afternoon, on Sunday. He came to the campus, and he was looking for the Leica
camera that they had been using to take these pictures. And he couldn't find the camera.
So when he got busy with telephone calls that first day that we met and with people
coming into the office to see him, there was just a continuous string of people coming in
because that was his first day back. He turned to me, and he said, "Why don't you go and
look for the camera that you're going to have to use to take the ID pictures." He took me
down the hall to the photography lab. He said, "This is the photography lab." He said, "It
should be in here. But if it isn't here, look here, look any place," he said. "Open any
cabinet, any cupboards." Here I was, looking for a camera I had never seen before. I
knew what a Leica camera looked like—in a place I had never been in before. I turned
everything upside down, and I never did find the camera. In fact, I spent that whole first
year still looking for that camera because it was a valuable camera. Finally, in the late
afternoon when we decided that tomorrow morning the camera had to be used, we needed
13
another camera. He called Mr. Farrell who owned the art shop downtown; they also sold
photography supplies. And he knew that he had a Leica camera. And I trotted downtown,
and that man who had never seen me before gave me his five hundred dollar—back in
1941—a five hundred dollar Leica camera to bring out to the campus and take the
pictures.
And the photography course was a very popular course on the campus. I
used to turn away students. And students would come and beg to take the course. And
again, it was a cross-section of humanity, but not—some science majors, art majors, but a
lot of other students. And I have had students carry on their work in photography. One
girl who was an English major (and she was really interested in journalism), she
eventually got on the staff of Vogue Magazine [monthly fashion and lifestyle magazine
published monthly in the United States]. And she told me she got her job because she
was able to do, in addition to her editorial business, she was able to do something about
photography. And she won some awards while she was working with Vogue.
LD: You continued to teach that course the entire time that you were—
AR: Yes. And after I gave up the headship of the department, and Dr. [Clifton Bob] Clark
came in—I think it was the next year after that— he came in and—or was it '65, I think.
He wanted to—well, we were getting to the graduate program, to master's [degrees].
We'd been in the graduate program with teacher education, but he wanted to get into the
physics graduate program. And he needed some space for some laboratory work, research
work. Well, a plan was devised where photography was moved. At that time they were
building the addition onto McIver Building. And at that time, the art department was
getting the whole addition onto McIver, and a plan was devised where photography
would be moved into the art department, you see.
The course would be actually moved and the laboratories would be moved over to
McIver Building. But no plan had been made in the McIver Building plan, in the addition
plan, for a laboratory. So they actually stopped construction on McIver Building, on a
section of McIver Building on the first floor there. And I remember Miss [Mereb]
Mossman [sociology and anthropology faculty, dean of instruction, dean of the college,
dean of faculty, vice chancellor for academic affairs] called me and she told me that they
had finally decided what area to give to photography for a laboratory. Of course, for the
lecture part I could use any classroom. But the laboratory part—and I had so many feet of
a certain section of building, and I could plan—no, I'm sorry. Before she called me, the—
one of the assistants in the business manager's office—one of the men there—I think he
was one of the engineers working within the business manager's office, he came into my
office one day with a roll of blueprints. And he said, "I think you'11 be pleased. I have
the plans for your photography laboratory." Well, that was new news to me, so I just said,
"You have?" And he says, "Yes," and he rolled out the plans on the table because it was
there in the office, and I looked at them. And he rolled over—you know, he had two or
three sheets of paper there. And I looked at them. And I got a little bit hot under the
collar. I didn't say anything to him for a while. But I looked over the plans, and finally I
turned to him, and I called him by his name and I said, "This is not going to work." And
he said, "It isn't? Why?" I said, "Why the way these plans are drawn up, we couldn't fit
the equipment that we now own and use in the course into this floor space, the way it's
14
divided up. We couldn't do that." And the poor man was kind of taken aback. And finally
I made the statement to him—I started rolling up the plans, and I said, "Listen. This looks
to me like something somebody copied out of a book." I said, "It's not going to work." I
said, "I'm sorry. Just please take these plans back to whoever gave them to you and tell
them that I said it's not going to work."
Well, the poor man—he was just about as tall as I am and he took his little
blueprints, went back to the Administration Building. And later on I was down in the
photography laboratory—we had a bell, a call bell system in the physics department, if
there was something that required me to come back to the office. It was supposed to be
important. The bell would be rung. I had a code. Each one of us in the department had a
code, and so I came back down the hall, and there was Dean Mossman. And she said,
"I understand you don't like the plans." I said, "It's not I don't like the plans." I said, "The
equipment which we now own will not fit into that space that has been given for the
photography laboratory." I said, "We couldn't use all the equipment that we have." And
she said, "Well," she said, "We've decided to let you draw up your plans for the
laboratory." She said, "The way you want the laboratory." She said, "You can go ahead
and draw up your plans. But," she said, "There is one condition." She was talking to me,
and all of this happened on a Friday. All this happened on a Friday—Friday afternoon.
She said, "You must have them ready by Monday." So I mean I was a little bit surprised
because usually you get a little bit longer than that. And so I said, "All right." And we
terminated our telephone conversation.
I had—over the years in my mind I had kind of devised what I would like to have
as a photography laboratory. I had made changes in the lab. In fact, when we got the
wings on the science building, I moved the mechanics shop down into the basement of
our wing, and I took over that space for photography. I had that as an enlarging room
where we did enlarging and printing—paper printing. So I had some ideas in mind. I
came back to the department that Friday night, and I started. In the physics laboratory we
had some large, very large, sheets of paper—great big paper—that the students had to
do—use in certain laboratory experiments. I took some of those sheets of paper, and I
drew the outline of the floor space. I knew the dimensions of it, and I started dividing the
space up, and diddling with it and I was getting absolutely nowhere. I really worked on it
for a couple of hours, and I didn't like what I had. And I'd do one thing, and then I'd start
doing something else and just—the two of them didn't go together. So finally I just tore
up all the little pieces of paper that I'd been working with, and I went home and went to
bed. When I got up that next morning, I got an idea.
I went back—that was Saturday. We didn't have any classes. We'd long since given
up Saturday classes. I got myself a meter stick and a notebook, and I went down to the
photography laboratory. And I measured every piece of equipment as far as how much of
the floor space it would take up, like an enlarger sitting on some kind of a table, some
kind of a support. It took up so many feet or so many inches and so on. I measured every
single piece of equipment in the physics department—in the photography lab. I went
back to the general physics laboratory where we had some nice great big tables, and I cut
up pieces of paper to scale, each one representing a piece of equipment in the laboratory.
But we had—I think it was about eight or ten enlargers, and some of them were different
sizes. I had a little rectangle that represented that enlarger. And once I had all of those
little pieces of paper cut up and each one was marked, then I made myself another floor
15
outline, plan—the dimensions of the floor—and I started laying the pieces of paper down
on this great big rectangle, which represented my floor space. And I played around,
moving those pieces of paper until I had my individual darkrooms, my drying space, the
area which I called a work room, a chemical—a place where all the chemicals were
stored, and the big enlarging room, print room. I had all of that laid out in these little
pieces of paper on my big rectangle. I glued each—when I decided that was what I
wanted—I glued each little piece of paper to the big rectangle.
By that time it was something like maybe 2:00 or 3:00 [am] Monday morning. I
had spent the whole weekend with the thing. The only thing I stopped for was to get some
food once in a while. And what I wanted to do was to take another piece of paper and
draw this out—draw all these little shapes. By 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning I decided it
was time for me to go home and go to bed. The next morning when I came for my 8:00
[am] class, I had a telephone call—I mean a message that Dean Mossman had called me
and I should call her as soon I was able. I called her and what she told me was something
like, "You have an appointment with the architect of the McIver wing at 10:00 [am]," or
something like that. "Do you have any plan to give him?" I said, "Yes, I do." Well, as I
positioned these little pieces of paper all around, positioned the equipment around, in my
notebook, I would write statements because sometimes something had to be so many feet
from the floor and so on. So I had my roll of paper, just one sheet, and I had my
notebook. And the appointment was over in—let's see, it was—[Albert "Bert"] Carpenter
was head of the department at the time. And his office, which was at another part of
McIver Building at the time because McIver Building was built in two or three sessions,
or sections. [laughs]
I went over, and the two gentlemen were waiting for me, and I just simply
rolled—before I rolled out my sheet of paper, I said to the architect, I said, "I want to
apologize before you look at this." I said, "Have just been working on this since Friday. I
was told on Friday that I have to have this ready for today." I said, "So I spent the
weekend working on it." And I said, "My original plan was after I had my plan firmed,
then I was going to take a clean sheet of paper and draw everything just like a blueprint."
Well, they didn't know what I was talking about, so I rolled the sheet of paper out. And I
said, "I just apologize for the state that it's in." And I explained the notebook.
I opened up the notebook, and said, "There's a statement in here about every piece
of equipment: where it has to be located, why it has to be there, how many feet above the
tabletop the safelight has to be," and all of that business. And the architect looked at it,
and Mr. Carpenter was on the other side of the table and he was looking at it upside
down. I was on the side with the architect, and the architect didn't say a word for a long
time. And finally he asked me, "What is this?" And he pointed at a little square. When I
rolled it out, I told him how I had located each piece of equipment to scale so that each
little rectangle or each little shape represented how much floor space that piece of
equipment was going to take up. And he pointed at this little square and there was
nothing written in the middle of that square. On all of the others I had "enlarger" and so
on—whatever piece of equipment it was. And I looked at the little square, and I thought,
"What in the world is that?" And all of a sudden, it dawned on me what it was. [laughs] I
said, "Oh, that's the trash can."
LD: Well, you had done a thorough job.
16
AR: And he laughed and he said, "Well." And he turned to me, and all this time Mr. Carpenter
hadn't said "boo." And the architect turned to me, and he said, "Well," he said, "There's
only one thing I want to say." He said, "I think you should be working for my firm rather
than Woman's College." [laughs] Or—we were UNCG at that time, rather than WC. But I
offered to take that and to draw—. And he said, "That's not necessary." He said, "My
men can take this and make a blueprint from it." So he took that plan, and he took the
notebook. And I got what I needed. But the other plan was not workable.
And I'll tell you something funny. A couple of months later, I was uptown at the
Carolina Camera, and Mr. Stanley was one of the men that worked in the Carolina
Camera at that time, and I knew him because I used to buy supplies there. And he was
waiting on somebody when I walked in. And he said to me, "I want to see you. I want to
see you." I said, "All right." And I walked over to the other side of the store, and I was
looking at something. And when the customer left, he came over and he said, "You know,
I thought you were a smart lady." He said, "But I sure changed my mind.” And I said,
"Now wait a minute here. [laughs] I didn't know you had made up your mind on that, but
what do you mean?" He said, "I'll show you what I mean." And he walked over to
another side of the store, where there was a rack with Kodak books, and he motioned for
me to follow him. And he said—while he was looking through the rack for a book, he
said to me, "Why are you letting those people out there pass off the photography lab on
you?" And I said, "What do you mean, pass off the photography lab on me?" He said, "I'll
show you what I mean." And by that time he found the book he wanted. He pulled it off,
and he opened it, and he laid it down on the counter and I just about dropped. On the two-page
spread that were open was the drawing, the same floor plan, the same plan for a
photography lab that the assistant from the business manager office had brought in to me
and showed me in my office months before, when I told him it wouldn't do. And it looked
to me like something out of a book. Well, it did. What the man who brought the blueprint
to me did was when he was given that job he went down to the Carolina Camera, and he
told Mr. Stanley that he needed a book to show a plan for a photography laboratory. And
Mr. Stanley showed him the book and the man bought him the book. And he just copied
it out of the book.
LD: Can you tell me something about Mereb Mossman?
AR: She was a lovely person, really. She was on the staff in the sociology department when I
first came. And—oh, I don't know—when she was Dean Mossman for a while—she was
made a dean, and then —she had different titles. But she was really a delightful person, a
charming lady and a very intelligent—real charming. She was always very nice to me.
You know, other than when she told me I had to draw my plans over the weekend.
[laughs]
LD: What about Dr. Jackson?
AR: Dr. who?
LD: Jackson.
17
AR: Jackson. Dr. Jackson was a love of a person, really. Dr. Jackson was, I would say, the
typical Southern gentleman. In addition to that, he was very concerned about his students,
very concerned. He—he'd always call them "my girls." "I must get that for my girls. I
must do this for my girls." And the students liked him very much. He walked around the
campus. He made a habit of walking into each building at least once a year. And he'd
wander around the building, and he would talk to the faculty and talk to the students that
he would run into. He wouldn't interfere with a class.
One time [laughs] I was in the photography lab in the old science building. We
had a chemical room where all the chemicals were stored, and then it was also fixed up so
that we could mix up our solutions. We mixed up all of our solutions from scratch. And it
was at the beginning of the year when I was showing the students how to mix up the
solutions and what they had to do. We measured everything in the metric system. And we
were doing that one day. And usually in September it was kind of warm, and I'd leave the
door open to the corridor because the room was a narrow, long room. And all of a sudden
I noticed—we were just about finished with our solution mixing, and I noticed that the
students got a little bit quiet. And I went on doing whatever I was doing and then there
was a little—there was a time when I stopped talking. And a voice from behind me said,
"Well." Oh—I know what I was doing. I was showing the students how to syphon their
solutions from a great big crock where we had to make a large volume of one solution to
syphon into a smaller jug. And when I finished with that, this voice said, "I now see that
I'm going to have to put a lock on my garage." [laughs] It was Dr. Jackson. He had been
standing in the doorway listening to me tell—show the students how to syphon. And
what he was referring to was his gasoline. But we all laughed at it. But he was a
delightful person. The first year that I was there, he helped me a great deal. He—I mean,
he told me that any time I had a problem or a question came up that I wasn't sure what the
answer should be, all I had to do was call him. And he said, "If you would rather," he
said, "just come over here," he said, "I'll be glad to see you at any time." He was a very
accessible person, really. And one time I was in his office, and after we finished talking
business he said, "I have something I want to tell you."
At that time and for several years after that we had a custom on the campus of
having what was called a university sermon. A minister from some denomination that the
religious activity unit—I forgot now what it was called—would invite a minister to come
to the campus and give a sermon, and they had music in Aycock Auditorium on Sunday.
And he would stay on the campus all day Sunday, all day Monday and Tuesday. On
Tuesday we had chapel at noon time—convocation at noon time. He would also talk at
chapel. That was the last time he performed. Between the Sunday sermon and his talk at
chapel he would visit classes, I mean classes would invite him to come and talk. He
would also have little meetings on the campus—like on Sunday night he gave a talk on
something that he was interested in or he had been asked to talk on. When Dr. Jackson
told me that he had something to tell me, it was—he said, "I was up in Boston
[Massachusetts] last year for the"—some big educational meeting—and he said, "one of
the Jesuit priests, who was located in Boston, was the main speaker at this meeting," and
he said, "He gave us a marvelous talk," and he said, "When I heard him," he said, "I said,
I must have him for my girls." I mean he was always saying things like that. "I must have
him for my girls in Greensboro."
Now it just happened that this Jesuit father was a radio priest—how you have—
18
ministers sometimes talk to you on radio—well, he was on a commercial station in
Boston. He was connected with Boston College, and Dr. Jackson talked with him, told
him about the university sermon system, plan, program on our campus. And the Jesuit
priest said, "I'll look at my calendar, and I'll tell you immediately whether I can come on
the dates." See the date had already been set in our calendar for the sermon. And he said,
"I'll be glad to come if I can, if I can work it out, all right." Well, Dr. Jackson said, "I
know you'll be pleased to hear this because St. Louis University is operated by the Jesuit
order of priests." And it was the first time a Catholic priest had been invited to give a
university sermon. And Dr. Jackson was just delighted over it because this gentleman
was really a very fine speaker, and he knew how to act around college students and the
girls just loved him. He stayed the Sunday through Tuesday. And people talked about
what he did on the campus, the different talks he gave to the classes that he was invited
to. They did for years, really. They remembered him for several years afterwards. But Dr.
Jackson was a—I would say he was an educator who was deeply concerned about—for
the individual student. He wanted to be sure he was doing the right thing for each
individual student on the campus.
LD: He sounds like a fine, fine educator and administrator. I'm going to have to knock off this
interview but I want to thank you very much. Was there anything that you wanted to say
that you'd like to add to the end? Any reminiscences of your years at UNCG? At
Woman's College?
AR: There are just two little things. One was during this war period, I—during the war period,
college students were encouraged to take up aviation, to learn how to pilot a plane.
LD: Really?
AR: And we developed a program on the campus. I gave the lecture part—the theory, how to
plan to go from here to there, the vector analysis business and the meteorology.
Everything that was connected with—we received a book. It all came from the
government. They gave us a textbook to follow. And I gave that lecture part. And out
here at our airport, at our local airport, the original airport that was out there, one of the
pilots who—that was his business to train people in piloting a plane—he agreed to
take on the girls, students, who were going to take the course and they got college credit
for it. And some of the physics majors took this course. I think we had about, maybe
about four or five students. There are only two that I remember. But the girls who took
the course actually got their pilot's license. And one girl—one day, I think it was the local
newspaper came out and took a picture—she was having a lesson. And they wanted to
take a picture in front of the plane that she was learning on, and she stood in front of the
plane. And that picture of that little girl [laughs], went all through the Army. She got
letters from all kinds of soldiers. [laughs] But the girls were serious about their flying.
Originally, I had hoped, or really I had planned, to take the course, the training course,
along with the students. But I just didn't have time to do it. There was some work that the
pilot gave in the beginning to—general instructions that he could give everybody at one
time. And then he took—made appointments with each individual student and gave her
her instructions individually. But there were—the two that I remember in the class is the
19
girl who, after she got her physics major, worked for the Naval Ordinance Bureau.
Margaret Ferabee [Class of 1948] was her name. And another girl that I remember from
the course was Betty—oh, dear, she was a Greensboro girl. Betty Bingham—Beaman.
You know, there's a Beaman Industries—some kind of a firm here in Greensboro. They
have something to do with building. Beaman.
LD: I've heard of Beaman Construction.
AR: Is it Beaman Construction Company? It's the Beaman family here in Greensboro. Well,
Betty Beaman was the girl in the family. And she took the course and she is the one who
kind of followed up with piloting after she graduated from here. She moved out west
some place and she took part in some of these races across the country. I don't know
where she is today. I know where Margaret is because Margaret writes to me once in a
while.
But the other thing that I remembered—it kind of came to my mind after you
called me, was something we used to have on the campus. It was an annual affair. It was
called the student science lecture. A time—a group of students, or maybe it was the
student council or somebody, actually approached the science faculty and asked them if
they would bring to the campus some name person each year to give a real good science
lecture—something that was different from what they did in the classroom. Well one year
I had charge of it, I don't know what—I guess we had a committee that ran it. Anyway,
the individual that I invited to come and give us our lectures—and there was a program
that we followed—the man came and gave a lecture, like on Monday night. I mean, it
didn't have to be on Monday, but I'll use Monday as an example. On Monday night he
gave a lecture. He stayed on the campus all the next day, and he was invited to give
another lecture that was a little bit more scientific for science majors. And that night he
gave another lecture that was of interest to the general student body, and we also invited
the Greensboro citizens—anybody. It was open to the public. There were three lectures
that this man gave on science, on his field. I invited Joseph Shea. Now Joseph Shea
[American aerospace engineer and deputy director of manned space flight at NASA] was
the man who was responsible for the planning of landing a man on the moon.
LD: And what year did you say?
AR: He was in the program from the beginning to the time when the man was landed on the
moon and was brought back. I have forgotten how I got on his track. Anyway, he was
down in Alabama at the big government place down in Alabama [United States Space
and Rocket Center, Huntsville]. And I called him and I didn't get him, but I left my name,
I told who I was and the telephone number and he called me back. And we had a very
nice conversation. And he again said, "I need to look at my program and see." Because
we had a date for this lecture series. And we—he called me back in a day or two and said
he'd come. That man came in like on a Monday—flew in here on a Monday—before he
came, he sent me instructions. He said, "There's some things I'm going to need. I'm going
to need a sixteen millimeter movie projector. I'm going to need an overhead projector.
You know what that is?" Fortunately, we had both pieces of equipment. "I'm going to
need two screens, two portable screens." And he said, "I'm going to have films, sixteen
millimeter film to illustrate different points in my lectures, and I'm going to have—"
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What do you call those things you put on the platform of the overhead projector? Oh,
I've forgotten the name for them. Want to throw on the screen? You know, the image
you—
LD: Transparencies?
AR: Transparencies. Of course. "I'll have a series of transparencies." And he said, "I want the
transparency on the screen the same size as the image for the sixteen millimeter film.”
And he gave me his reason for it; I've forgotten what the reason was. Well, we decided
for these lectures we always use the ballroom in Elliott Hall. I took both of those
instruments over weeks before the man ever carne to Elliott Hall, and I had a shop man,
he was a black man—Herman Oliver—who was very, very good. Herman went over
there with me. We had a transparency, and we had the sixteen millimeter film. And, you
had to locate two different pieces of equipment at different distances from the screens
because you couldn't have them at the same place to get the same size because the optics
of the two are different. And, anyway, we wiggled those pieces of equipment around, and
we got them where we had an image here and an image here that was the same size
And we very carefully measured, almost marked the floor where we had the two
pieces of equipment and where we had the screens.
And when Shea arrived on the campus, he was housed in the Alumni House, like
our special guests are, and he said, "Now the first thing I want to see is that equipment,"
he said, "Because that is very important to my lecture. It has to be just right." Well, we
already had the equipment set up because I knew he was going to be—I think I picked
him up at the airport—and I knew the time his plane was coming in, and I knew that he
would want to see that equipment. So all we had to do was walk over to Elliott Hall
Ballroom. And he had his transparency and he had a roll of film, and he put them on and
he turned on each machine and he looked at the screen. And he said, "Well, that's just
perfect." He said, "Have you done this before?" I said, "No, I have never used these two
pieces of equipment. I've used both of them, but I've never used them together with a
demand—with a request to have the same size." I said, "Got what we wanted that first
night, but we played around with it until we—." Well, he was just thrilled with it.
First of all, I went uptown to the newspaper, and there was a science editor on the
newspaper at the time. And I explained to him what we were trying to do. I did it way
ahead of time. And I had publicity on Shea. And I gave him that, and I invited him to
come to the lectures, all of them, any that he was able to come to, and he gave us some
wonderful publicity. Well, we had a nice showing from townspeople, I would say—didn't
have hundreds of people from town. But we did have an audience in that Elliott Hall
Ballroom of over seven—no, it was eight—almost eight hundred people that first night.
And there were some children there; little boys came. There was a doctor who lived down
the street here at the time, and he had about five or six children, mostly boys; I think one
little girl. And there was one little boy, who was very—one of his little sons who was
interested in the moon—and he brought his son. And that little boy sat up on the front
row with his father. He made his father sit on the front row. [laughs] And after the lecture
was over, the children and some older people too went up to ask Shea some special
questions and to talk to him. And this little boy, I think was the first one who popped a
question. And it was a real good question that he asked. And he kind of worked his way
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over to—when he asked his question, he was standing opposite Shea. And as Shea was
answering, he, the little boy, kind of worked his way over through the crowd to the side
of Shea. And after Shea finished talking to this little boy, other people started asking
questions, and Shea took this little boy and put him—moved him right in front. You
know how sometimes a father will take a son and put him—stand him in front of him and
put his little arms across his chest? Or his arms across his chest? Well, that's what Dr.
Shea did. And the little boy had a zipper—a jacket with a zipper on it and unconsciously
Shea started playing with the zipper, and he pulled it down and pushed up as he was
talking to the crowd. Well, the little boy almost popped all of his buttons. He was so
thrilled. Anyway, we had almost eight hundred that night for lecture.
The next day at 2:00 [pm] we had the lecture which would be planned for science
majors and people who were interested in knowing a little bit—by going a little bit
deeper into the material. We planned the lecture—not for Elliott Hall, but for the science
lecture hall in the physics department in the [Petty] Science Building. And at that time,
the room—now the room runs east and west. Well, at that time, the room ran north and
south. In the renovation of the building, the room was turned around. At that time, the
room would hold a hundred and fifty people. Shea needed just a sixteen millimeter movie
projector for that lecture. He—something told me that that room wasn't going to be big
enough. Now usually at that special lecture for science students we would only have
about fifty people. First of all, we had never had seven hundred, almost eight hundred
people, at the student lecture. We'd had a good crowd, but not eight hundred. Something
told me that the room wasn't going to be big enough, so I made sure that Elliott Hall
Ballroom was available.
We only had—well, we had several sixteen millimeter projectors, but there was
one that was newer and was a better quality and so on that I had used the night before. I
had moved it back to the Science Building to use in the movie booth in the physics
lecture room for the afternoon lecture. But we would need it in Elliott Hall if we got a
large crowd, and it had to be moved over. So I planned to hold down the science lecture
hall—the ballroom—for the same time. I had—this was—my janitor—I had him to stand
near the lecture hall to watch me, and when I gave him a certain signal, he was to go and
help Herman pick up that sixteen millimeter movie projector, put it in his car and ride it
to Elliott Hall and take it out of the car and locate it on the table in the ballroom. I took
Shea out to lunch, and we got back about 1:30 [pm]. And we were walking down the first
floor corridor and people were coming in the front door—the door that's on the lower
level there. And they were coming down—they had entered another door on the backside.
They were coming down the corridor—students and also local people. And when we got
down to the lecture hall, the lecture hall was about one third full of people. And people
were dribbling in from that back door that's on the lecture hall to the parking lot. And I
turned to—and Dr. Shea turned to me and he said, "Is that room going to be big enough?"
And I said, "It looks like it's not going to be." I said, "But don't worry," I said, "we are
all—already planned to use the ballroom again." I said, "Now would you mind just
walking over to Elliott Hall?" I said, "I'll get a student to walk with you." Well, I didn't
get one student. I think I got two or three. They all kind of—they just loved him. And the
three students took Shea over to Elliott Hall Ballroom. The two black men, Herman and
the janitor, rolled the movie projector over, and they had the movie projector over there
before Shea arrived. And I waited a little while until a few more people came, and then I
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said, "We are moving the lecture to the ballroom in Elliott Hall." The audience got up.
They all walked down College Avenue to Elliott Hall Ballroom, and I stayed in the
Science Building as long as I could, and then I had somebody—another student was
posted in the room to steer the people to the ballroom. We had—where in the past we had
had about fifty people for that special lecture in the afternoon, we had around five
hundred people. And that night for Shea's lecture, we had over eight hundred people.
That man told us everything about that moon program, taking the man from the
earth to the moon, landing him, and bringing him back home safe. He told us everything.
Now this was before, at least a year before, man went to the moon. He told us everything
that actually happened later. And I had—people in town called me when the man actually
landed on the moon. And they said, "I just can't believe that Shea told us all that has
happened."
LD: What year? Do you know what year that this lecture took place?
AR: Wasn't that in—no, wait a minute. My mother died in '59. It must have been in the early
'60s. It had to be in the early '60s.
LD: That's fascinating.
AR: Oh—I've forgotten now the exact date when the man landed on the moon, voyage took
place. But it was a year before the actual—
LD: I think the moon landing was in '69.
AR: What?
LD: I think the moon landing was in the late '60s.
AR: Was it in the late '60s?
LD: Yes. '69, I think.
AR: I've just forgotten the dates, completely forgotten the dates. But it was before—whatever
it was, it was before. Shea was here before, and Shea was with the program when the man
landed on the moon. And then do you remember when the three astronauts were killed in
the fire?
LD: In Texas.
AR: Well, when—Shea had nothing to do with that fire, but he was still working with that
program. After that fire, Shea was sent to Washington, DC, to the NASA office up there,
and he stayed in Washington for a couple of years, and then he got a job with Raytheon
[Corporation] in Newton, Massachusetts. But he was a delightful man. He was a good
looking—he looked like James Garner, the movie star. And—well, a lot of the campus
girls who'd ahhh over him. But there were a lot of the girls who were really serious about
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the moon program, and they were anxious to learn more about it. And he gave us three
wonderful lectures, really.
LD: Well, I really—I hate to break off with the interview. I have to get home with my
children. They're about to get home from school. But I want to thank you very much
again. This has been really fascinating.
AR: Well, I tell you, I rambled along. I hope this has done you some good. [laughs]
LD: Oh, no. I think you did a very good job, and you kept right to the point.
[End of Interview]