1

AN INTERVIEW WITH ALFRED LATA

Interviewer: Jewell Willhite

Oral History Project

Endacott Society

University of Kansas

2

ALFRED LATA

B.A.,

M.A.

Service at the University of Kansas

3

AN INTERVIEW WITH ALFRED LATA

Interviewer: Jewell Willhite

Q: I am speaking with Alfred Lata, who retired in 2003 as Lecturer of Chemistry at

the University of Kansas. We are in Lawrence, Kansas, on July 27, 2004. Where

were you born and in what year?

A: I was born November 14, 1931, in Cleveland, Ohio.

Q: What were your parents’ names?

A: My father’s name was John and my mother’s name was Belle.

Q: What was your parents’ educational background?

A: My dad came to this country when he was 16 from Poland. I assume he went to

school at that point. I didn’t hear about any subsequent education for him. My

mother probably didn’t finish high school. She probably went through the eighth

grade. That was not discussed very much.

Q: What was your father’s occupation?

A: My father was a machinist, a radial drill press operator in a company originally

called Harris, Siebold and Potter. It then became Harris Intertype. He retired

from that company after working there for about 32 years. My mother died when

I was in the service, when I was about 23 years old, I believe. My dad lived in the

house. I lived in the same house for 30 some years. When I got married, we

moved into that house also. So I was born and bred a Clevelander. My mother

was a homemaker.

Q: Did you have brothers and sisters?

4

A: I was an only child, but I lived in an extended family, which included my

mother’s sister and her husband and daughter and my mother’s brother. So there

were seven of us. We lived together. My cousin was six years older than I was.

Q: You said you were born in Cleveland. Did you grow up there?

A: I lived in Cleveland, except for my time in college and in the Army. I returned to

Cleveland and did graduate work there and taught there and left in 1965. So I was

there for about 34 years.

Q: What elementary school did you attend?

A: I attended Broadway elementary school, which was closed by the Board of

Education when I was in the third grade for reasons, apparently, of safety and

conditions of the building. This was interesting because several years later a

Catholic school moved into that building and used it for a number of years. After

that I went to Miles Park Elementary School, which was several miles away. I

initially too the streetcar and then the bus, which was certainly different for me. I

was one of the few students who had transportation, other than foot or bicycle, to

a school.

Q: Were you a member of Boy Scouts or Y groups, things like that?

A: I was in Cub Scouts for a while and briefly in Boy Scouts. When I was young,

probably from age five to seven, I studied violin with my uncle, who lived with

us. He was a professional violinist and had worked in the pits in the theaters.

When he became ill, I stopped. I never took up the violin after age seven but

started piano and studied music theory and harmony when I was 10 years old and

continued that until I was 15.

5

Q: Where did you attend junior high and high school?

A: Junior high was Albert Bushnall Hart Junior High, and it was literally a stone’s

throw from our house. It was across the street but one house away. I went there

for three years, seventh, eighth, and ninth grade. Then for senior high I went to

South High School in Cleveland. I was there for three years. It was several

blocks away, but it was walking distance for me.

Q: Did you continue music lessons through this period of time?

A: From age 10 to 15, piano, theory and harmony, etc. with the group called initially

the Cleveland Music School Settlement. It was in the northeast, several streetcar

rides away. Piano lessons for a while were nearby in the neighborhood with a

teacher that they sponsored. But the other classes, such as theory and harmony,

were at their school, which was a converted very large house in a very nice

neighborhood. The rooms were used as studio rooms and classrooms. I

remember having classes in a room that had apparently been a residence over the

garage. The classes got smaller as time went on. As I said, it was a number of

streetcar rides away and at the age of 10, 11, and 12, my mother would go with

me and we would make an afternoon after school of it or a Saturday morning.

Q: So you always like music and didn’t mind practicing?

A: Yes. I did mind practicing. I did not practice enough, which in retrospect, as with

all those who don’t practice enough say, “Oh, I wish I had.” And I say so. My

aunt played piano and my cousin played piano. It was not an unusual thing to

stand around the piano and sing. She would play show tunes and other pieces,

Gilbert and Sullivan. So I sang a lot at home. So in junior high I sang also. I was

6

in vocal competitions, solos, from seventh grade on through 12th

grade. Every

year I participated and got some good ratings, mostly good ratings. The

classifications were excellent, very good and good and I had mostly excellents

and a couple of very goods. So I was pleased with that. At South High I was

interested in mathematics and science, but extracurricular activities were mostly

in music, choral music, some theater, and some drama. I was in, I believe, one

play but certainly all the musicals, which were done every year. We did Robin

Hood in 1947 and we had a young man who, was a veteran, probably 21 or 22

years old. He had been in the service and returned to high school. He was our

tenor, a very mature voice. We did Bohemian Girl and then the last year we did

The Mikado.

Q: I suppose it was a very large high school, as those in the city often are.

A: It was about 700, which was not one of the largest schools in the city. The other

thing was that there were split classes. There was an A and a B division. If you

started in September, you had the full year done by June.

Q: They used to do that. Then some people started in January.

A: I was one of those. I started in January and I graduated in January. In our school

of 700 my graduating class of 1950 only had about 70 people. The other classes

would have 150 to 180. Those were the June graduating classes.

Q: Did you have influential teachers as you were going through high school or earlier

or perhaps some of your music teachers?

A: Yes. We had early on in seventh grade the vocal music teacher, who was very

involved in things. I mentioned the vocal competitions. We had just a great

7

number of students go into those. We maxed out whoever we could enter. If we

could have three seventh grade boys, we had them, three eighth grade boys, three

girls. We had duet groups. We had trios. We had quartet singing. I think we had

26 entrants in this competition. She was there a year or two and then she left. But

that interest was sustained by a number of students, me included. In high school I

had a choral music teacher and drama teacher, Paul A. Barnes. I was interested in

working with him. My math teacher, who I thought the world of, was W. O.

Smith. He was hard on us and made us work. Carl Sudor was my chemistry

teacher. I was looking forward to taking chemistry, which we did in the

sophomore year. Then we took physics in the senior year and biology, etc. I

enjoyed high school. It was a good time.

Q: Did you have summer jobs or jobs after school?

A: No, I didn’t. That was free time for me. That was at that point not uncommon.

The kids just kind of hung around and played ball, read, listened to the radio, and

just got together.

Q: When you got out of high school, did you go directly to college then?

A: I graduated in January of 1950 and made my applications to colleges. I worked

for WBOE, which was the Board of Education, America’s Pioneer Radio Station

WBOE. I was an announcer two mornings a week. I did the sign on and also did

some of their dramatic productions.

Q: Were these live on the radio?

A: They would record them. I did my announcing live and the programs which were

broadcast out to the schools. I’d grown up with that. Each school had several

8

radios that would go from room to room, depending on the subject. In elementary

school Dr. DeJose was teaching French to the elementary students on the radio.

The teachers would get information about it. Then at a certain time in the day or

several times a day those would be broadcast.

Q: That was probably kind of unusual for that time.

A: It was, and that’s why it was America’s Pioneer Educational Radio Station. They

had studios atop the Board of Education building in downtown Cleveland and a

transmitter outlying. And it was FM, which was unusual at that point. It was one

of the early FM stations. So it went on for a number of years. My cousin, who I

grew up with, became a teacher and she moved to that station and became a writer

and producer of radio programs for them. I enjoyed my time there and got to

meet a lot of people and learned a little bit of radio work.

Q: Was it always assumed that you would go on to college?

A: Yes, that was a goal that was well set for me.

Q: Where did you go to college?

A: I went to Princeton University. I went in 1950 and graduated in 1954. This past

spring we had our 50th

reunion.

Q: How did you happen to choose Princeton?

A: I was looking at a number of schools, and I thought I might like to look at the Ivy

League. So I chose one there. I chose schools nearby to Cleveland. I eventually

applied to four and was fortunately accepted by all of them. I had scholarships to

my two first choices. I was debating which one to choose. I thought it would be

good for me and interesting to go to Princeton. It is a choice I have never

9

regretted. I mentioned or 50th

reunion. We had about 740 in our class. That was

about what they had run for a number of years. Now, it being coed, it is a larger

class. We had 740 and graduated about 680, I believe.

Q: It wasn’t coed when you were there?

A: No. It was not coed until the mid seventies. We had about 140 fellows die in the

50 years, at least that we know. Some you lose track of. At our reunion we had

about 345 come back. That was a four-day reunion. It was good to see old

friends and see how they had changed and learn what they had done.

Q: When you went to Princeton, what was your major?

A: I had considered economics when I first went, but I had always been interested in

science and always been interested in chemistry. So I majored in chemistry. The

system we had, your sophomore year you took at least two courses in your area,

science, humanities, or social sciences, of the five that you had. Then your junior

and senior year you took two courses in your own department. So that’s what I

did. Junior year you had a junior paper to write and lectures involved in the

department. Everyone had to write a thesis their senior year. So I had the good

fortune to work with Dr. Ralph Adams, who had just gotten his Ph.D. at Princeton

and was an instructor in the Chemistry Department. I worked with him for my

senior thesis. Clark Bricker, who was a KU for a number of years and with whom

I worked, was one of my professors in my junior year and also in my senior year.

He was my junior year advisor. He was an instructor who I had for courses both

my junior and senior years.

Q: What were you studying for your senior thesis?

10

A: My senior thesis was constant current deposition in a mercury pool. We were

trying to take metallic ions and reduce them and have them come into mercury

and then strip them back out of the mercury and see if we could do this

quantitatively and use this as a means of analysis for solutions containing these

metallic ions. I kind of got into the mercury and the ions and mercury because

my junior paper with Dr. Berger the year before had been on amalgam electrodes,

the passing of current through mercury, which contained these metals dissolved in

mercury to see what kind of effects it would have. We hoped to pursue that but

didn’t think it would be probably productive in the senior year. The literature

didn’t seem to show that there was success in that area. I had hoped initially to

use those metals and the ions as a catalyst in some other reactions. But instead we

went to constant current deposition and stripping that mercury, which was an

interesting project.

Q: We you also in music groups at Princeton?

A: The first year I did some work with the Chapel Choir, but I didn’t stay with that.

I also rowed for a while on the freshmen crew, but I got sick and was in the

infirmary for about a week, so I didn’t pursue that. I was in Freshman Glee Club

and I was a solist in the Freshman Glee Club. We traveled to various girls’

schools and gave concerts and had dances afterwards. Then from my sophomore

year on I was in the Varsity Glee Club. I traveled with them in my sophomore

year. We made a trip out to through Texas to California. We flew out and were

in California for a while, then Denver and Minneapolis. I think we visited five or

six cities across the country.

11

Q: Was this what you did in the summer?

A: This was in the spring. This was our spring break. We would leave on the Friday

before spring break began and be back on the Monday that school began, eight to

ten days later. The trip to California was interesting because we refueled on our

flight. I believe our last stop was Minneapolis on our way back to Newark

airport. We refueled in Cleveland. I had let my folks know that we were going to

be there. I arranged to stay for 24 hours in Cleveland. The rest, of course, went

on on that flight, but I picked up a flight the next day. I got stuck in fog coming

into Newark and we had to fly around Newark in the fog for about an hour.

Eventually I got back. It was nice to stop off at home because I had foregone my

spring break. We didn’t go home very often. I was 500 miles from home. The

trip to and from Princeton was the New York Central from Cleveland to

Philadelphia, from Philadelphia to Trenton, Trenton to Princeton Junction,

Princeton Junction into Princeton.

Q: How long did that take?

A: It took us about 12 hours and it was an overnight thing. We would go in a group.

The fellows from Cleveland would travel together. We would leave about 8

o’clock at night. Actually, we would be in Trenton about 8 o’clock the next

morning. The train made stops in Philadelphia, Trenton and New York. So we

would have to take kind of a local train from Trenton to Princeton Junction, which

would be about 12 miles and then take what we called the PJ&B, Princeton

Junction and Back, a little electric train with two cars with pantagraphs on top,

etc.

12

Q: When you were going to Princeton, did you live in a dormitory? I don’t know

that much about Princeton.

A: You lived in dormitories. Very few of the students were married. If you wanted

to get married during the year, you either had to get the dean’s permission or you

left school. As it happens, graduate school was much the same way. It was a

pretty celibate existence. The graduate students all had their meals together. As a

matter of fact, graduate students wore academic gowns to their meals, which I

think precluded the use of napkins, from what I’ve heard. We weren’t quite all

that academic in our regalia, but we lived together. There were a number of

dorms. You were assigned one your freshman year. The other years you could

pick what dorm you wanted to live in. There was a drawing for when you got to

choose your room. You would go with your roommate and keep an eye on what

rooms were available. You had a list of what you wanted. The first year I was in

Pyne Hall. I had a roommate for half a year and for half a year I was alone. He

moved to live with someone else. My sophomore year I had a delightful room in

an old dorm. We had a living room and a bedroom. We had a fireplace. We had

a refrigerator. We could have a piano. We could have liquor in the dorms if we

wanted. Our two rooms had 11 windows. Our living room had 10 windows and

it had a tower room. It was a circular with five windows in the tower and a

window seat all the way around. It was a delightful dorm. The last two years I

lived in a dorm very close to that one, Witherspoon, or Spoon as we called it,

which was Northwest College. I had the same roommate there. We lived in two

different rooms, one my junior year on second floor and the other senior year on

13

the third floor. The thing that I really enjoyed and I find it unfortunate, I think for

many students at KU is that we lived together. This is why reunions were so

important. We got to see people who we lived with and were in classes with, that

we spent seven days a week, essentially 24 hours a day, together. The athletes

that we had were roommates. They were suitemates, they were dorm mates. We

ate meals together the first two years. The dining halls were called Commons.

They were big, big dining halls, very tall. The buildings were Collegiate Gothic

in appearance. It is kind of what you would expect when you say college. Wow,

that’s what you think of. So the dining halls were big. They would hold several

hundred. We all lived together. We walked to classes together. We were in

constant touch with one another. So going back 50 years later and seeing them,

you remembered all of these things. It was a delightful college experience. It’s

what I expected and what I got. It was more than I expected, I really think.

Q: You mentioned Clark Bricker. Are there other influential teachers you remember

from your Princeton days?

A: Elliott Forbes was our Glee Club conductor. I got to know him well because we

did spend some time together. We traveled on tours in my sophomore and junior

years. My senior year I didn’t go. I chose not to. I had thesis work to do. The

thesis was equivalent to a course. They thought that you would put in about a

course work of time. All the students had to do it. It had to be typed up and

submitted and accepted. You were given a grade, which was one fifth of your

senior grade. Ralph Adams, as I mentioned. Ralph Adams was Buzz. All the

instructors at Princeton were always just Sir. There were very few ladies as

14

instructors. I know Mrs. Terkavich taught Russian. I think she was one of the

few. Ralph Adams was my freshman laboratory instructor. He was one of the

instructors in a laboratory course I took my junior year in analytical chemistry.

He was my senior thesis advisor. I graduated in 1954. In 1955 he came to KU as

an assistant professor and I knew that. I had written to him a couple times when

he was here. Indeed, when I got out of the service in 1956 in Oklahoma I came

through Lawrence to stop and see him, but as it happened, he was at home in New

Jersey visiting his mother. So I missed him on that occasion.

Q: You said that you went into the service. Was this directly after you graduated

from Princeton?

A: I graduated on June 15, 1954. As a college graduate about 95 percent said, “What

am I going to do?” I had some time. I was an ROTC commissioned second

lieutenant. I had some time before I went into the service, so I went to Western

Reserve University and took some summer classes in education with the

possibility of going into teaching. I went into the service in late August of 1954

and went officers’ basic course Class 103 at Fort Sill, Oklahoma.

Q: Was this the Army?

A: This is the Army. Unfortunately, I got a call in late September that my mother

was ill. She had surgery for cancer. So I was gone for about a week. Then I

came back and finished my course in January. I had the opportunity with about

six other second lieutenants in my officer basic class to go to guided missile

school. We had all been tapped. We were all either engineers or mathematics,

physics, or chemistry graduates, science or engineering related. We were

15

assigned to Fort Sill until the orders would be cut to go to guided missile school.

Well, that meant we would have to spend extra time in the service. And I

thought, well, I had a two-year commitment and I only wanted to stay for two

years, so I turned down guided missile school. But having been assigned to Fort

Sill, the others all went off to Alabama. I just stayed at Fort Sill for my entire tour

of service. I was initially in a group headquarters, which had a number of artillery

battalions under us. Later on I moved to gunnery battery, a 280-millimeter gun,

what was called the atomic canon. I was assigned there as a survey officer. I

went on maneuvers at one point that ran for six weeks down in Louisiana. That

was in November of 1955. In January of 1956 after coming home from a field

problem I got a call that my mother had died. So I left on ten days of emergency

leave and was home.

I had met a young lady who was working for Special Services, uniformed

civilian personnel in the Army.

Q: Was this while you were in Oklahoma?

A: Yes, in June. I knew that one of her jobs was to have a woodworking shop. I was

assigned to help build a mess truck for my outfit to go on maneuvers. You I got

in touch with her and got permission to use the wood shop. Later on we knew one

another. We saw one another on the post and the officers club and such as that.

We finally went out in January of 1956 on a Saturday. As it happened, my

mother died the Monday after our date. I disappeared and she never heard from

me again for about three weeks. Because when I got back from my emergency

leave we immediately went back out in the field and I was incommunicado. So

16

she thought she had not impressed me on our date. Before I left the service we

had talked about the possibility of getting married. We got engaged in December

of 1956 and got married on June 15, 1957, three years after I graduated from

college.

Q: Where did you go when you got out of the Army?

A: I went back to Cleveland and went back to graduate school at Western Reserve

University in the School of Education. In a year I had enough credits in education

to get my teaching degree. I got my Master’s Degree in Education in May of

1957. I went to Williamsburg, Virginia, and married Mary Winston Jones. We

came back to Cleveland and moved into the house that I had grown up in. I got a

job starting in September teaching in Shaker Heights High School, which was

about five or seven miles away from my home. I taught there from 1957 to 1965,

when I left to come to KU.

Q: Were you involved in musical activities in Cleveland?

A: Before we got married Robert Shaw came to Cleveland as associate conductor for

the Cleveland orchestra chorus. He had rehearsals on Monday night, and

unfortunately, I had a class on Monday night. I was going to audition but there

was going to be a conflict. When we got married, I auditioned that year. I had

the good fortune to sing with Robert Shaw and the orchestra chorus for the next

seven years. I sang in some small groups of his and I was in one recording that he

did. I was in the church choir at his Unitarian Church for about three months, but

scheduling meant that I had to drop out from that. My wife and I also got into a

Little Theater group. I did some plays in Little Theater. I had done some drama

17

work at Western Reserve. I had done no theater work at all when I was in

college.

Q: Was your wife an actress?

A: She was not an actress. She was a designer, a set and scene designer. So she

followed that activity. I did the acting part.

Q: How did you happen to come to KU?

A: I got a call from Clark Bricker, when he had been here. He had come here in

1964, I believe. He was looking for someone to work with him on the general

chemistry laboratory program. He knew that I was teaching school. I had been in

touch with him. So he asked if I was interested and I made an application. I got a

call to come down for an interview. It was interesting too when I got the call

from him it was when I was at school. There was a phone call for me and I went

down. I got down to the office. The telephones weren’t in the classrooms. The

fire alarm went off. Everyone evacuated and I’m there kind of keeping an eye on

who might be wandering around and watching this phone call. He asked if I

would be interesting in coming. I said I would consider it and we would talk

about it. So I had an opportunity to come for an interview in January of 1965,

after I had been teaching at Shaker High for about eight years. I had the good

fortune in the sciences at Shaker High. There were only seven periods a day.

One of those was lunch. The teachers only taught four classes if you were in the

sciences because you had laboratories. In English you had only four periods a

day because you had themes. The students had a theme a week to write. For

10th, 11th and 12th grades that was the standard. The social sciences and the

18

other classes had five classes a day. At one point about 1963, I believe, I started

an advanced chemistry class and had two classes of students who were the

accelerated math students. They were put into a package for physics and then I

had them for chemistry. They were a delightful group of students.

Q: Usually when people come to KU they had a Ph.D. Were you coming here with

the intention of getting a Ph.D.?

A: There was the possibility of that. I considered that but didn’t pursue it. I had a

position as a lecturer in the department. I was not on the professorial ladder. The

lecturer can supposedly be any level, assistant, associate or full professor. I had

no graduate students. I did not have a research program, although I could pursue

what I wanted in research or teaching activities. My responsibility was in the

laboratory aspects of the course. So I did not have a Ph.D. and I was a

representative non Ph.D. in the department.

Q: Did that mean you did lectures in chemistry?

A: Sometimes I would be the backup person if someone was absent in a general

chemistry lecture. But principally my responsibilities were in the laboratory to

work with the graduate students who were the teaching assistants. I had

responsibility for the maintenance of the equipment, made sure solutions were

correct, organized the experiments, designed experiments and activities such as

that. I did not lecture except for a couple of semesters when I lectured the course

itself. Otherwise my responsibility was the laboratory.

Q: How did what you taught change over the years. Did chemistry change a lot

during that time?

19

A: Not so much what was being taught, not at the general chemistry level. Certain

aspects did start to change. General chemistry has undergone several changes

from what I’ll call the forties when it was descriptive. Later on general chemistry

became more physical chemistry, more mathematically oriented. Now it’s

changing in laboratory and becoming more instrumentally oriented, computer

oriented. We did use a number of instruments in the program itself. Computers

have come in. The biochemistry aspects have come in. But there is definitely a

place for the chemistry fundamentals. If the fundamentals are there, the other

aspects are much easier to learn. Instruments tied to computers have come in

within the last several years. That’s changed some of the aspects. In some cases

some of the older chemists probably still believe there may be to much “black

box” going on. You have a test tube, you put it in a black box and you read

numbers and that’s it. For beginning students you want them to have a little more

understanding of what’s going on. If they see numbers on the screen, they believe

them. I think people say, “We’ve got to be more critical. We’ve got to look what

the chemistry is, not just what the numbers are.

Q: Since you came in 1965 you were here in 1968, ’69, and ’70 when a lot of things

were going on. How did that affect, you, your family or the chemistry

department?

A: It is an interesting aspect. There were a number of things going on in Lawrence at

that point and on the campus.

Q: Oh, yes. Living away from the campus, it’s amazing what a few miles will do.

We didn’t hear things, we didn’t see things from home. But they were going on.

20

I was on the roster to be one of the proctors in one of the buildings. In Malotte

Hall we had a roster of who was going to be responsible for staying at night, and

what graduate students. As it happened, the list was long and the time was short.

I wasn’t called upon. Before they got to me they decided that they would not

pursue that. We had times classes were disrupted. I remember that one year

classes ended early. We didn’t have final exams. There was some turmoil as to

how students would be graded. How will those grades affect their postgraduate

aspects of law school or medical school. Students, of course, figure that they can

catch themselves up on the final. Well, the final never came. So some were hurt

by that. I remember shootings in town. I remember one of our graduate students,

an Afro-American student, was shot in the leg by a ricocheting bullet as he came

out of his apartment. He lived near the Union. This was just an accident. He

happened to be coming out and he was by no means the target. Still, he was

wounded. That was a time of turmoil. I think that compared to all the noise about

what should be done by the administration—Larry Chalmers was in charge

then—I think that a lid was kept on things very well at that point, for what could

have been. Of course we had the Union fire, arson. I don’t know looking at it in

retrospect with that as a terroristic activity how you could have known that would

happen or how you could keep it from happening. But I think things were under

control fairly well on his watch. That was the feeling I had.

Q: I imagine that your particular students were not that much involved probably.

A: I have the feeling you are right. I have the feeling that they were not that

politically oriented.

21

Q: That seemed to be the case in the scientific fields.

A; I think so. I know that a lot of them felt that they had their work to do in the

laboratory. The graduate students had to do their research. They could do their

politics on their own, but they did have to put in time in the laboratory. That’s the

way they felt. It was not coming from on high. It was just, “I’ve got to get my

work done.” One activity that happened that I think is delightful. Abby Hoffman

was going to come and speak on campus. He was going to be in the Field House.

There was great consternation in the community and in the state about the fact

that they should not have him come. I watched him on some talk show. He had a

patch on his pants that was an American flag. Well, the show I saw did a blue

screen and screened him out. People said he shouldn’t come here. But there was

a feeling, “Let’s let free speech be free.” He did come to the Field House. When

he came there were 13,000 people. Abby Hoffman spoke for two hours, I believe

it was. When he was done, there were 3,000 people left. When I heard him on

television I thought, “I really don’t want to waste the time going to hear him.” I

didn’t think he had anything to say. I asked people who had been to hear him.

They said, “He had nothing to say. There was nothing going on.” The best thing

we could have done was expose him for what he was. I understand that his final

comment as he was leaving was, “This is a drag. I’m going to K State.”

Q: Do you have children?

I have a son John who was born the 30th

of November 1959. Registration for the

draft was not in force at that time. It did come back, however, for anyone born on

the first of January 1960. So he missed having to register for the draft by about

22

30 days. I have a picture of my father in uniform. He served in the First World

War. And I have a picture of me in uniform. I am considered a Korean War

veteran. I’d like to tell a story. I think it’s interesting. My dad came to this

country when he was 16. He came with a cousin. My mother was born in this

country, although her parents had come here and some of her older brothers had

been born in Poland. He parents came here with a small family. They decided to

go back. I think this was the hope of all Europeans coming. They were going to

make their fortune and go back. Well, they didn’t make their fortune, but they

went back. My grandmother got there and looked around and decided she wanted

to come back to the States. Well, my mother was born in this country, so she was

an American citizen. My father was not. They got married in 1917. As was the

situation then, the wife took the citizenship of the husband. So my mother lost

her citizenship. A bill was passed in Congress that said that any alien who had

served in the United States armed services could, if he chose, claim American

citizenship. My father chose to do so. So he became an American citizen by

virtue of his service in the Army. However, the bill was written so that it was

only the person and not the family. So although my father became a citizen, my

mother did not trail after him as a citizen. So my mother had to go through

naturalization procedures and go to school and pass the exam and be sworn in as a

citizen. She always chastised my father that she was born here, he was not. But

he was a citizen and she was not because she married him.

Q: That is strange.

23

A: It was a bone of contention in my family. I was talking about John, who was born

in 1959. He was born in Cleveland. In 1966 we had twin daughters, Jamie and

Betsy (Elizabeth). They were born on March 3, 1966 in Lawrence. They grew up

in Lawrence. The kids went to Lawrence public schools. They all attended KU.

John started at Benedictine, but he graduated from KU and has a master’s degree

from KU in Sports Administration. He is now living in Tallahassee and getting a

Ph.D. in Sports Administration and also working for the Athletic Department at

Florida State. Jamie and Betsy started at KU. After several years Jamie went to

Phillips University in Enid, Oklahoma. She got her undergraduate degree in

Sociology. She came back to KU and got her master’s degree in Social Welfare.

Betsy attended KU. When Jamie was in Enid she came back for Thanksgiving

vacation. She and Betsy were in an automobile accident on Nov. 22, 1988. They

were both life flighted to the Med Center. Betsy died on that day as a result of

that accident. She was married and was pregnant. So we were distressed.

Q: Did your other daughter survive?

A: Yes. Jamie is married and now has two little girls. We have three grandsons,

who at this point are 20, 18, and 17. They are John’s sons. Jamie now lives in

Topeka. She has two daughters, one of whom will be 3 in September and the

other is about 17 months younger.

Q: When you were at the University, do you remember outstanding former students

who have gone on to greater things?

24

A: I had them early in their career. I had them as freshmen. Many of them were still

looking for what they were going to do. We would have 600to 700 to 1,000 a

year going through the course.

Q: That’s a lot. It would be hard to remember any of them.

A: Yes. Chemistry 21-22 was the beginning of the sequence, if you were going to go

on in chemistry or science or be premed or predent. Chemistry 11 and 12 were a

general course for those who were looking at that as their terminal chemistry

course. The students in 21 and 22 would go on to organic chemistry, if they were

premed and on into analytical and physical chemistry if they were going to be a

chem major or were interested in those aspects. Those courses changed in

number. Chem 21 and 22 became Chem 184 and 188, as they are designated

now. And 11 and 12 became Chem 144, which is now done as a one-semester

course. It doesn’t have a second semester in the general course any more. We

had, obviously, some very good students. Some stand out in my mind. One I

know I hoped I could convince him to go on in chemistry. He was an outstanding

student. But I could not deter him from his career plans, which were not to major

in chemistry. I think he could have gone on to very fine things. Every once in a

while I meet people in the community or outside the community who say, “Oh, I

took chemistry in 1969. I took chemistry in 1972. I remember the lab and I

remember you. You lectured such and such or I saw you in the laboratory.

Q: Have the students changed, do you think, during the time you have been here?

A: The students have changed.

Q: How so?

25

A: Now in the courses there are about the same number or maybe some fewer taking

chemistry in general. I think when I retired we were at about 800 taking the first

semester. This means that fewer students proportionally are taking chemistry of

the entering class. There are still excellent students in that group. There are still

very good students in that group. But there are probably more students who are

not dedicated. I think one of the things that happens is that students are not

willing to put forth the time into their studies that the studies require. I’ve gone to

Meet the Prof Night and conducted some sessions. I try to point out that if you

are carrying 15 hours, three hours for every class hour is 45 hours a week. Forty

five hours a week is more than a full-time job. You can’t have a 45-hour

academic job as a student and go out and work 40 hours on your own. So I think

that for many there is not the dedication that is required. I think many students

come to the university with the feeling that it is an extension of high school and

that they can get away with the same effort that they put forth in high school.

Those who realize that it is going to take a lot of effort do well. I think maturity is

something that comes forth. I know we have a number of students who come

back as older students. They go out, they don’t do well. They go out in the world

and get a job. They may be married. They come back to school and they are

doing beautifully because they are dedicated. It must have been in the early or

mid seventies. I think it was post Vietnam. I had a student come in one day. He

said, “I came to KU as a freshman. I didn’t know what I wanted to do. I didn’t

know how to study. And I got all “Fs” the first semester. I was doing poorly the

second semester, so I decided I may as well go into the service.” He joined the

26

Air Force. He was in the Air force for three years. He came out and came back

to KU. He said, “Now I know why I want to study, what it is going to mean to

me. I am getting “As” in all my courses because I am putting forth the effort. I

know what it means. It probably took me the freshman year and three years

outside to see what’s there.” He said, “I’ve seen people who have been to college

and I have seen people who haven’t. I realize that if I go to college I can do more

than if I haven’t.” So I think a matter of maturity is important and hopefully

students can mature as quickly as possible in their academic growth.

Q: I imagine that you have been involved in musical activities during the time that

you have been in Lawrence.

A: I have, some in church choirs in several churches, St. John’s and Trinity

Episcopal. My wife is an Episcopalian and I am a Catholic. So I have sung in

both those choirs. I started singing in a group that was formed by Ralph

Christopherson, who was a colleague in the Chemistry Department. He was the

Associate Chancellor for Academic Affairs before he left the university for other

pastures. He started a group called the Voici de Camera. It was a nonette, three

sopranos and two on all the other parts. We sang at venues around town, at the

Art Museum and we did some Madrigal Dinners. I was with them for about 12

years. When he left the group kind of disintegrated. I joined another group later

on called the Motet Singers, with Dave Chrisophy as the conductor. There were

about 16 of us. We do 17th

, 18th

Century modern music. We, again, sing at

various venues. We do church choir replacements during the church choir

vacations in August. We sign at various churches around town and various other

27

places. They are an interesting and fun group. I’ve been with them 10 or 12

years, I guess. I’m not sure when I started. That group is still in operation. I

started from the Voci de Camera. We had some people who had various interests

in town. A couple were involved in Concerts for Young People. They decided

what they would do was to have operas for children. So what they did was they

would choose some operas and make them abbreviated in form. One was Hansel

and Gretel. I did that. They did was I called The Magic Piccolo. We did The

Magic Flute in 45 minutes. They cut out the love songs. They left in the humor

and the comedy songs. I’ve done Don Pasquale with them and The Mikado.

We did an original opera written by John Clifford, who was with Centron in

Lawrence. John Posgrow was the composer. It was called Malluli and the Fear

Monster. My wife designed and built the costume for the monster. We did that

for Concerts for Young People. We have done it around the state a number of

times, I believe 20 times around the state. One year we had an accident. There

was a wreck where the car with all our stuff in a trailer. A semi ran through the

trailer and over the car. Our tenor was pinned in the car for 45 minutes. The alto

had to crawl out through the window. The car essentially was crushed. They

survived nicely, through the power of prayer. A week later we did it again with

all new furniture because all our furniture had been destroyed. It is a delightful

show. We’re trying to get it reestablished and done again. That would be fun to

do, because it is a play that speaks not only to children but to adults. It is nicely

written and the music is interesting and it has a wonderful story. I’ve also been

involved in town with Community Theatre. I’ve done a number of productions at

28

the University with George Lawter, when George Lawter was in the Music

Department and conductor of the KU Symphony. I did a number of operas with

him as a faculty member, performing operas on main stage, what is now Crafton

Pryor main stage at Murphy. I’ve done a number of plays there in the summer

and also have been involved in a couple of musicals. I’ve done Falstaff, Love for

Three Oranges, and Don Giovanni on main stage. I was involved in Camelot.

Q: What part did you play in Camelot?

A: I was Pellinore. I’ve done it on the main stage at KU and I’ve also done it for

Community Theatre, the same role. I really enjoyed it. That was fun. At KU,

also on main stage, I really enjoyed A Little Night Music, which we did about 20

years ago. They have just done that again this past year. I enjoyed that. So I’ve

done a number of musicals at KU. Now I’m working at Community Theatre,

plays, etc. I’ve probably, going back in my career from Santa Claus in

kindergarten, one or two things in elementary school and high school, etc. I’ve

probably been involved in 85 to 90 productions. I’ve done things with the

Lawrence Ballet School when they did Nutcracker. I did not dance, which is

good for all of us.

Q: You played somebody in the first scene, I suppose.

A: I was Drosselmeyer in the first scene. I did that for about five years. The

children knew all my lines. So if I had any problems I could turn to any child and

say, “What do I say?”

Q: That must have been great fun.

29

A: It was. Working with those children was just loads of fun. All the people I’ve

worked with in the theatre have just been delightful. It has been loads of fun and

taken a lot of time. I know there were a couple times when I was doing things at

KU I’d be leaving Chemistry going home and I would see other cast members

coming back, if it was a production, for makeup and costumes. And I was going

home for dinner. And dinner would take about six minutes and I’d turn around

and come back and have to catch up with them with makeup and costumes.

Q: I don’t know how long the Community Theatre has been going on here. Was it

here when you came?

A: No, it started later. They used to work at the Lawrence Art Center, which was in

the old library, which is the Carnegie Library. I was in the first musical that they

did there, which was Fantastics.