Oral History Program Robert Jones Kristi Watchman Ca. 2003 i Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Robert Jones Interviewed by Kristi Watchman Ca. 2003 Copyright © 2015 by Weber State University, Stewart Library ii Mission Statement The Oral History Program of the Stewart Library was created to preserve the institutional history of Weber State University and the Davis, Ogden and Weber County communities. By conducting carefully researched, recorded, and transcribed interviews, the Oral History Program creates archival oral histories intended for the widest possible use. Interviews are conducted with the goal of eliciting from each participant a full and accurate account of events. The interviews are transcribed, edited for accuracy and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewees (as available), who are encouraged to augment or correct their spoken words. The reviewed and corrected transcripts are indexed, printed, and bound with photographs and illustrative materials as available. Archival copies are placed in University Archives. The Stewart Library also houses the original recording so researchers can gain a sense of the interviewee's voice and intonations. Project Description The Weber State College/University Student Projects have been created by students working with several different professors on the Weber State campus. The topics are varied and based on the student's interest or task for a specific assignment. These oral history assignments were created to help Weber State students learn the value and importance of recording public history and to benefit the expansion of the Weber State oral history collections. ____________________________________ Oral history is a method of collecting historical information through recorded interviews between a narrator with firsthand knowledge of historically significant events and a well-informed interviewer, with the goal of preserving substantive additions to the historical record. Because it is primary material, oral history is not intended to present the final, verified, or complete narrative of events. It is a spoken account. It reflects personal opinion offered by the interviewee in response to questioning, and as such it is partisan, deeply involved, and irreplaceable. ____________________________________ Rights Management All literary rights in the manuscript, including the right to publish, are reserved to the Stewart Library of Weber State University. No part of the manuscript may be published without the written permission of the University Librarian. Requests for permission to publish should be addressed to the Administration Office, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, Utah, 84408. The request should include identification of the specific item and identification of the user. It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: Jones, Robert, an oral history by Kristi Watchman, ca. 2003, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. iii Abstract: The following is an oral history interview with Robert Jones. The interview was conducted in 2003, by Kristy Watchman, at Robert’s home. Robert tells of his experiences at Weber State University. Robert’s wife was also present during the interview. KW: My name is Kristy Watchman I am interviewing… BJ: Bob Jones KW: At? BJ: My address is 331 East 4675 South and I am in Washington Terrace. KW: And what was your birth date? BJ: June the 8th 1935, in Butler Ville Utah. KW: And who are your parents? BJ: It was Omar Ferman Jones and Blanch Eva Wilkinson, right. KW: And… When did you go to Weber State? BJ: I started going there in 1956 after I got out of the Navy. I was going on a G.I Bill so I worked all day long and went up to Weber, but then it was just uh, Weber College. I went up there from 6:00 to around 9:30 Monday through Thursday of each week. KW: What was it like going to Weber State? BJ: Well, it was kind of tiring to stretch out the day that long. But some of the interesting things about some of the classes that I was taking at the time was that the classes that I took on Monday I also had on Wednesday and the class that I had on Tuesday I also took on Thursday. So, I didn’t have much time to get 1 prepared for those classes, but uh, got through quite a bit of it. It was just, pretty stressful raising a family as well. KW: What kind of classes did you take? BJ: Well I started out taking Business Administration, I was going to major in Personnel Management. Then locally I got a job that involved accounting, so I switched over and started doing Accounting classes as well. So basically though it was Business Administration, I specialized in Accounting. KW: Did you have to do any of the General Ed Classes? BJ: Oh yeah, you always had to do the ones that they required. At that time I think it was about 91 credit hours that you needed to get in order to graduate. Now I was going half time, at that time. So it was going to take me twice as long to get a degree, but uh, when you’re working all day and raising a family, that was the only option I had of getting a better education. Four years, that’s what I said I went full half time, so my four years equated to two years. KW: How has Weber State stayed the same? BJ: It stayed the same because it is in the same place but, at that time there was about three or four major buildings and then a lot of the temporary, classrooms you might say. There were a lot of temporary buildings around there at that time, because the building was just getting started on expanding. But the campus now is just huge and so it would be pretty hard for me to find my way around now. KW: What kinds of variety of classes were available? BJ: I’d probably say, except for technology that’s come along, pretty much the same stuff that’s always been at any college or University. Like I say, the technology 2 has expanded so much that it wouldn’t even come close to what it is going on now. Even in the basics that I was taking like, accounting classes and any other classes that they teach. It’s from generations past, during my generation when I was younger to now, My Gosh, there is no comparison. KW: Did you have a lot of speakers come? BJ: No, a matter of fact, we didn’t. Again it might have been because in the evening classes, once again, there had to be a different set up where they didn’t exactly teach the same way as the night teaching staff. So no we didn’t have visitors come in there. The professors or the people who taught the courses, pretty much had sole control. KW: What was your most memorable experience at Weber State? BJ: Well, it was a different one than probably most people have because, one of the alternate classes that I had chosen to take was Botany. I didn’t know from beans anything about flowers, and trees, and leaves or any other kind of growth. So that stayed in my mind more than any of it, in fact I still have the Botany book that I had there. We went out on field trips on that, just around the campus, identifying different, like I say flowers, weeds, the only one I really remember is the Rose family Rosa AC. That’s probably the thing I remember most. Then we would have to go out and get the samples, bring them back into class and put them under the scope and start identifying parts of them. Actually that was one of my hardest classes too. But it was memorable for that purpose, I did get through it and I did get a passing grade. But I’m sure even that’s changed now. You can’t change the botanist or the trees, you might have more of a variety now but basically, they still 3 have the basics for a Botany class, I’m sure. Maybe different ways of teaching it now, but they still have the same things. KW: Can you go back and tell me a little bit more about the G.I. Bill? BJ: The G.I. Bill, I was in the U.S Navy from 1952-2956, in the United States Navy. During the Korean War, the Korean War had already been going for about a year when I went in. Anyone at that time that was in the Military could earn this opportunity to use a G.I. Bill that was in place at that time. I spent four years and so I had available to me, I can’t say it by money because I don’t know what it was, I just had the ability to take a bunch of classes. Pretty much the Government paid for it. I had to get certain grades of passing; I had to attend as required and just had to keep it up. Like I say they pretty much paid for it. So of the four years up there I got two years of college because of the half time status. But the G.I. Bill I distinctly have, because there have been two wars since then, since the Korean War, Vietnam then the one that’s been going on with the terrorists. So I don’t know what’s out there for them now, but I am sure there is still that availability because that is one of the things, that I understand now, they are trying to get people in the Military for is that being one of those and getting a college degree. KW: Do you think you would have went to Weber State had you not had the G.I Bill? BJ: No, because I couldn’t afford it. Very, no, I just uh, twenty-one, when I got out of the Navy, I had been married for two years, we had one child with another one coming very quickly and uh, I had gotten a job. At that time wages would sound impossible to live on, never less we was able to get by, but no I wouldn’t have 4 been able to afford it. There wouldn’t have been an incentive because I was raising a family. But I did want to get an education. I had a high school education, but I did want a college degree, I didn’t want to lose it. I think, had I not had the responsibilities of a family I probably would have went on strait through full time, during the day and everything. Those were the things that took place at that time. KW: So the G.I. Bill was definitely beneficial to you and your family. BJ: Yes, the G.I. Bill was fantastic. I did have to buy some things, but compared to the education that they were paying for it wasn’t that much, believe me it wasn’t that much. KW: Did the bookstore charge you an arm and a leg back then? BJ: We thought so! But I guess it wouldn’t compare to now-a-days. Besides that, we were always hoping and wishing that the next class we went to would teach it to the ones coming into the class so that we could sell our books to them. The book store at that time you could sell the books back to them, of course discounted, but you could sell the books back to them. So you really weren’t out that much. But towards the end of the approximately four years that I was at Weber, they started not accepting the books back. They started to everybody that came in to teach, started using different books than the teacher that you had just gotten out of. So here lies after all these years, I’ve got a bunch of college books, still on my shelf that were what I used in those days. That’s a lot of years ago! KW: That sounds much like it is today. Spend $400 and get $20 back. BJ: Yeah, yeah, really. I’ve got some books back from that era if anybody wants to buy them! 5 W: The class that I really enjoyed when you took it was the art. KW: What art class was it? BJ: Oh that was Literature! It had to do with the, uh, see I must be getting old, I can’t remember all of that. You had your English literature classes and you had your arts classes, music classes and everything. Yeah I had some of those classes, because I loved that Kind of thing in my life. I still do now enjoy art; I enjoy poetry and all of those things. That was enjoyable too. It was all new; I had gone from high school then into the military for four years then back out into college. I wasn’t a typical right out of high school, going to college person. KW: Was math really hard for passing? I know for a lot of people they go back after a couple of years and they can’t remember anything. BJ: That was so hard I couldn’t begin to tell you. Because of just what you said, I never was great in math, to think of the positions I had in life, the jobs that is, being directly related to it, that I am surprised that I had them. It was difficult then, again, the amazing thing about all of this I had passing grades. W: Do you know the thing I think that is the hardest is taking all the classes on things like Trigonometry and all of that stuff. KW: All of the things you will never use? W: You’ll never use that stuff. You waste your money on, fry your brain trying to figure it out and you’ll never need it. BJ: I had taken some accounting classes at Weber and a couple years after that I had the opportunity to work for a large corporation. Witten automated business systems; Witten was a big name then, probably is to a point now. They were 6 going to hire me in as a junior cost accountant. That would be my truly, first accounting job. It’s because I had the previous training, because that’s some of the first things I took was the accounting courses. But I wanted to make sure that I could do a good job. So I took the same courses over, a couple of the same kind of courses over, then I took business courses a long with that, just basics like salesmanship. That was kind of an interesting thing though. In the salesmanship class one of the projects we had to do, is each of us after a part of the year had gone by and we had been learning from the book, we each had to pick a product or pick something. We wanted to show in front of the class our salesmanship. We had to sell the class, we would be judged on that, it was a big part of our grade. Mine was a very popular one because I went out to one of the local ice cream plants and I got some different types of popsicles or ice cream on a stick and I borrowed one of their freezer chests. When it was my day to present that, I got before the class and gave my presentation and to prove that all that I was saying was true, I offered each one of them some of the treat that I had been selling them, telling them about. W: Every professor should do that. BJ: I got a pretty good grade for that because, how are you going to deny that’s not a good product that I was selling them on. Of course I asked them afterward “Now is this the kind of product that you would go out and buy?” Everybody said yes, so it was a good job. It all had to do with business and accounting but accounting was the number one thing. I went through this corporation in nine years from Junior Cost Accountant to Accounting Manager. All because of those classes I 7 had taken and the couple I had retaken up at Weber. That set me on a course where I had a lot going for me. Later jobs, also it helped in other jobs along the way. It turned out to be pretty good. KW: Did any of your parents or children attend Weber State? BJ: Well, my parents of course, didn’t. We had six children and two of the six did, we wanted and encouraged all six of them to go up there, which we would pay as much as we could, and of course they would have had to get a job. The two that went up there had to get a job, but um, one of my daughters went up there and she went to Weber’s Nursing School and she has been a Nurse at McKay Dee Hospital for over twenty-five years now. The other was my oldest son, after getting off of his mission for the LDS church he wound up there and finished with the little bit that he had already started in banking and finance. He now has a very prominent job in the Church Office Building in Salt Lake City, and the last couple of years, before he even had ten years there he was appointed as a Manager of the financial section of the taxes. It was very, very helpful. He had worked in various lending institutions and mortgage institutions, so he had a good base for it. The work that he did up at Weber, of course just put him as a prime candidate for good jobs. He is very thankful that he went up there and so is my daughter. W: Then Jodie, our daughter-in-law, went up there and got her teaching degree. BJ: Yeah, but those were our only two kids. I have to say my parents were just hard workers all of their lives. KW: Are there any other stories? 8 BJ: There probably is if you can just push the right button and I can come out with them. KW: How about we ask Grandma? What was it like being married to a college student? W: Oh, I thought he was so dumb! He had to go up and learn all that over! No, I couldn’t even comprehend what he was learning, it was so… It crossed me right out because I couldn’t even understand how you could do math that way. That wasn’t the way I learned math, add, subtract, divide, multiply and why do I need all of these N’s and Y’s over P’s and all this stuff. It blew my mind! I could never go out and do all of that! I look at these kids today out here doing math in school and I couldn’t do their homework. Even my eight year old, just his math! I was a good student, but I can’t comprehend it. BJ: I think I helped you do most of your math when I was in high school didn’t I? W: Probably, I can’t comprehend the way they are teaching. KW: If you could have gone up to Weber State, would you have? W: Well at the time I wasn’t interested. I just wanted to get married and be a Mother. I think the little bit that I’ve gone up to Weber State has been with the Institute program. I have loved that. I would like to continue doing that. But I, I, no, I could never make it passed a test. So no, I won’t go. KW: What was it like during the time you guys were going to school and stuff? Like world events and things that were happening in the community. W: Cool things, the Flower Children were in. Oh my goodness, Flower Children. BJ: The hippies. 9 W: The drugs were introduced. I thought the world was going to fall apart. BJ: There is everything for every generation. The music always changes each generation, now the music we had back in ours, which was in the 50’s and even in the 40’s, the music they had back there now is popular now! It’s kind of a circle of time because, they’re playing a lot of the music back in the- W: Like Grease! That was it that was us! But we would never be allowed to do the crap those kids did in the school. I mean if we had gone in there trying to smoke or do anything like that, they wouldn’t put up with that. I am glad they don’t put up with it. I think the kids some days go up there and think they got a free rule, because nobody can touch them. That is wrong because somebody should be able to say, “You dumb idiot, stop and look what you’re doing!” Boy, is that an interview! KW: That is an interview. W: Well, that’s just your grumpy old grandma. KW: Any more stories? BJ: Well, like I say, there was a hardship, not just hardship for me going up there at night. It was a hardship for my wife because, she was left here and our family was growing and we had kids at home. W: When our little girl walked up to her Daddy, as he was getting his coat on to go to college one night, she said “Daddy! When are you going to stay home and play with me?” That kind opened all of our eyes. BJ: That ended my college days. W: We decided the family was more important. 10 BJ: And as you know, that was your mother. KW: Yeah, it was. BJ: But uh, all of a sudden we decided, “Hey, this hectic life is getting to them. They don’t need to have that.” That was our choosing, by the time we got the kids off, get them out on their own, not necessarily married and gone but older. So many years had gone passed, it’s pretty hard to think about going back to school. The hardship was on both of us because after going to work all day, five days a week, and after work going up to Weber to take those classes and trying to cram in between each day. W: We could do nothing on Saturdays, Saturday was for homework. BJ: Friday, we tried to get something in there. Because all I had to do was work, I didn’t go up to school. I was told I was like a zombie. It was the honest reason that I didn’t continue my education up there. Because I felt the obligation and pressure that I wasn’t spending enough time with my children and that was far more important than anything I could see. KW: One more quick question, did you guys live near the campus? Did you live here, or in an apartment? BJ: When we started out we lived in an apartment, actually it was a three-plex, it was in the inner-city of Ogden. It was on 29th and Charles. Trying to start to raise a family then was difficult because it was so small, but uh, that’s where we lived when I was starting school. Then actually in 1958 we had qualified for a new home, where we are right now. W: Making $1.99 an hour. 11 BJ: Yes, making $1.99 an hour and we qualified for a home, think about that! The thing is, we jumped at the opportunity, then in July of 1958 we moved to our present location, we have been here ever since. So this is where we was for the bulk of my schooling up there. But I would have loved to say, “Hey, yeah I was a four year graduate of Weber State,” Weber College in those days. I love the campus; I love the thought that “hey, I am going to learn a lot more than I ever learned before I walked into the doors up here.” All through my life in my career, those few years and those struggles we had, have benefitted us more than you could ever imagine. Because I could say I had education beyond twelve years. Then I had so many jobs with the practical application that each time that the conditions warranted it, I went to a different location or to a different company. I just went one or multiple steps up from where I had been as far as income is concerned. The greatest thing, even with those few years of college that I had, they are what got us through some pretty rough times. Where they were not so bad of times, so I owe a lot to them up there because they were there when I needed them. I was able to provide, not great but pretty well for my family. The only unfortunate thing about that, they were mostly grown up at that time. I wish I would have had the education right out of high school, but never the less we had some. I am glad to say that I can still put it on my resume. KW: There were a few things you said that caught my interest. Right now there’s a lot of building and stuff going on downtown Ogden, because a lot of people have moved out, what was it like living in Ogden at that time? 12 BJ: It was fantastic, where we were living in that three-plex, we would take the children we had then and that was two children and I think another one on the way and we could get our strollers and walk up town. W: And look at all the little Mom and Pop shops and it was so fun! BJ: No mall. KW: There is no mall anymore either. BJ: In thirty some odd years, they would have been better off never having that mall. It ruined the city of Ogden, we enjoyed it, in the Summer time we would just walk up town. Up town Ogden and that was pretty neat. It was a place where not a lot of crime was going on. However, 25th street was a pretty bad street then. KW: What do you mean by bad? BJ: Anything that went wrong, whether it be knives, shootings, murders, anything else, most of that took place on the lower part of 25th street. Now it’s a historical street. It’s neat that you could go up there walk in any place you want and not fear because of the type of situation that was there when we were young. It was a rugged place at that time. It was nothing that Ogden was very proud of that street, but now they are very proud of it. I wouldn’t trade places with anybody because we remember all the things and one of the oldest hotels that had been there forever, which is where the Key Bank is on 25th and Washington. That was The Broom hotel! That was a turn of the century hotel that was a- it was such a grand place! There’s a lot of pictures of The Broom Hotel, of course they had businesses in it, on the ground floor. Then the hotel was pretty much, I can’t remember how many stories, it seems like it was about four stories or something 13 like that, it was just a lot of fun to go in and look. We would go in and see parades, we would go down there for Santa Claus and The Village, for the children. We would always like to go over to the Farr’s ice cream and buy the kids some. KW: Okay there was another question that I had. Wasn’t a lot of the homes up in the Terrace, weren’t they old army barracks? BJ: Nope, they weren’t army barracks. The old, these were built, and they were post World War Two homes. What they were, they were either single dwellings or multiple dwellings joined together. They were very inexpensive and that’s what they were built for. Is because after World War 2, troops were coming home, this was a federally funded housing project as you might call it. They were all built out of wood there was no, and they all, everybody’s house looked alike. They basically were the same color in those days. It was a project, in fact there is another one that was similar to it and that was Ground View Acres. If you go up there right now, you can see what, except there wasn’t the two story houses. The houses joined together. So this was in fact if you look on the street now the city of Washington Terrace passed a bill where they put the old names under the new street numbers. Army Way, all the old numbers. When we had our house, it was a corporation after the government that let people buy them. We found out when they was getting ready to build the houses, they had some ones for us to go through and we picked out the one we wanted. Then you joined the corporation, in order to get one of the old units, as they called them, because what they would do depending on your style that you had picked out, they would poor a basement 14 foundation, take the house or the old unit that you had bought in membership. They would sit it on the new foundation and completely build a new house around it. So that’s why these are nice homes in the Terrace, because they are so well built. They are a house within a house. KW: So the myth that they are old Army barracks is false then? BJ: It is they never have been old Army barracks. They have been homes, a project. They have been a housing project. KW: And then one more question. What was it like to live during the Depression? BJ: I didn’t live during the Depression. W: Well I remember some things. Like we couldn’t have sugar. BJ: No, she is getting confused with World War Two. We had rationing because of World War Two and that’s what she is talking about. I remember that. In fact I still have some tax token, plastic tax tokens from World War two because, you know you could only get so much. You had to be rationed out for gas for your car, of course I was just a kid. But it would be hard to get tires, it’d be hard to buy a car because they are all being made for World War Two, all of the vehicles. The plants were not putting out very many cars at that time. But The Depression itself that is in my parent’s time, but not in my time. KW: Do you remember any stories that your parents told you about? BJ: Oh, they were constant. About the shortages, in fact my father before he even met my mother, he was originally, as near as we can figure from Indiana. When I say as near as we know of, because he was an orphan. When the Depression come and he was a young man, he joined the CCC that was an organization that 15 was created during the Depression to help young men out to make a little bit of a living doing government projects. CCC was Civilian Conservation Corp. That lasted for quite a few years and they had sent my father as a young man out here to Utah, to the camp that was south of Salt Lake. He was up in the area where my mother was born. They told us as the years went on that all of the things that they did, that the hardships they had, the handouts that they had to seek. Down in the Salt Lake area if they wanted to get some food, they would go to some of these farmers like if they had potatoes, after the farmer got all of the potatoes out that he could, then they would let people come on to the land and pick up the potatoes that the machine didn’t pick up. They could have that, and that was a giveaway program from some nice people. They also had to stand in line to get food and so on and so forth. So it was some hard times, extremely hard. We are all built for a generation in time and they had the strength for that. I dare say that would be difficult for me to do, yet at times I think “gee, we had it kind of tough.” But I think every generation would say that. KW: Grandma, what about you? Do you remember any stories about the Depression? BJ: You’re Dad used to have a lot to say. W: The thing that really got me was the “No sugar” thing. There was only such a minor amount that you could get, that I used to have to have honey on my Oatmeal. That really frosted me. I couldn’t understand why they wouldn’t give me some sugar. BJ: Yeah, there were hard times. W: It was hard. 16 BJ: There was big Soup Lines, everybody was out of work. Some of the things they had to do during the Depression, remember your dad even talking about all of the roads he worked on and so on and so forth. There was just a big hard ship for everybody, because there wasn’t jobs. Just no jobs at all, they had a very meager substance and when I was a child that I can remember right. I remember the fact that the things that my mother and Dad really liked to eat, I didn’t want no part of. But they were grateful in those days in that period of time, where there wasn’t jobs or anything, that they would go out and buy what they want, they had to take what was theirs. Maybe we all should have gone through a time like that when we could appreciate all kinds of food, rather than being, pick and choose. W: I remember my Dad and my Mother both, {inaudible 8:19}, to make money. BJ: Now you are talking about Sugar Beats? Isn’t that where a lot of sugar comes from? W: Yeah KW: I know your dad had to go to work when he was really young because of, didn’t his dad die? What kind of jobs did he do? W: He wasn’t very old, but his grandfather was the Bishop over there in that ward and he gave him a job. He got a dollar a month. If he would go to the Church house and start the fire and keep the fires going so that they could warm up the church house. That was his job. He got one dollar a month. KW: Wasn’t he the oldest in the family? W: No, he was the third boy. KW: Third boy. 17 W: Third child. BJ: But the times have changed now. I am just keeping track here, when she said about what her dad had to do. My Dad died when I was just Thirteen years of age and so I was the youngest of five children. The only boy and it just brought back some memories. In those days we didn’t have a nice gas runner or air conditioner or anything we had a big old furnace that you had to put coal in. But you had to get it started and every winter morning, especially after my dad had showed me how, after my dad had died, I had to get up every morning. Boy those houses got awful cold in those days. They didn’t have near the kind of materials that they use for houses now. I would have to go down and open it up and shake the old coals down, we had to dump those too. In the winter time, you would just go out and throw the coals out in the snow so you could get traction on the road. Just get some newspaper and some sticks and light a fire. As soon as you got a pretty good fire then you start putting in the coal and you kept on doing it the whole day long if you wanted heat. W: You used to have {inaudible}. BJ: You used to have a coal shoot. W: A coal shoot, and a truck full of coal that dumped that coal down that shoot down to your basement. BJ: It was just like, kind of a closet down your basement; it was wooden shed in the basement. You open it up and there was all the coal that he had dumped down the shoot. W: Can you imagine all that black dirt and all that coal? 18 KW: I bet it was a mess. BJ: When the fire got going throughout the house, there was a lot of cleaning to do, because all this black soot type smoke, before it got burning good. When it got burning good and the coals were red you didn’t have all of that. But to get them going, yeah you uh, it was quite a mess. They had a hardship keeping houses clean. KW: Okay, that was good, thank you. 19