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AN INTERVIEW WITH ALFRED LATA
Interviewer: Jewell Willhite
Oral History Project
Endacott Society
University of Kansas
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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?
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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.
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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?
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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.
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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.
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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?
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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.
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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.
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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
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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.
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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?
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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?
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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
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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
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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
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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.
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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.