Oral History Program Lee Forsgren Interviewed by Sharice Stagler Circa 2010 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Lee Forsgren Interviewed by Sharice Stagler Circa 2010 Copyright © 2025 by Weber State University, Stewart Library 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. 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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 This work is the property of the Weber State University, Stewart Library Oral History Program. It may be used freely by individuals for research, teaching and personal use as long as this statement of availability is included in the text. It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: Forsgren, Lee, an oral history by Sharice Stagler, circa 2010, 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 Lee Forsgren conducted by Sharice Stagler over the phone. Lee talks about his experiences at St. Joseph’s High School in Ogden and the time when it seemed close to closing in the late 1970s, as well as some of what he’s done after attending school there. LF: Hi, how are you doing? SS: Good. How are you? LF: Good. I apologize my call went a little late, it’s just end of the session stuff coming up. SS: Well, that’s all right. LF: So, you’re writing a senior thesis on St. Joseph’s High School in the mid-to-late 70s, is that basically correct? SS: Yeah. I’m doing a broad overview of the entire history but focusing mainly on change that has occurred mainly in the 70s, trying to keep it open and what went on in that time. LF: Okay. I can certainly talk to you about that at some length. Another source that I would recommend that you talk to who’s been involved with the school for the period is Sherri Lambert Hansen. If you want to go onto my Facebook page, I’ve got a St. Joseph’s High School sub-envelope and basically, big surprise, everybody in there at the point is from my era, most of which are either my class, the year ahead of me, or the year behind. But Sherri’s been involved with it. [She’s] a year ahead of me, she was class of ’78, and then she was director of alumni for the school for a number of years, so she’s been fairly active in the school. At that period, there wasn’t as big a separation as there is today between 1 the grade school and the high school. I mean, there were always two schools, the grade school and the high school, but it was the presumption. For example, if you were at the grade school, you finished the grade school and you hadn’t flunked out, you’re automatically admitted to the high school at that point. My understanding is that it’s not the case today. SS: Oh. I didn’t know that. LF: I mean, it’s highly likely that you get in, but it’s not automatic. There is a little bigger separation between the two entities. SS: Okay, so she’s involved in both schools still, now? LF: Yeah, she was the alumni director for both. SS: Oh, okay. LF: Anyway, so that would be another source. You can actually interview her directly. She’s from Utah, I’m in Washington DC, there’s less of a difference. SS: Yeah. Okay, so you started your Catholic school education in fifth grade, you said? LF: Yes. SS: What made your parents decide to put you in St. Joe’s instead of staying in public school? LF: Ogden City school system. They considered that I was [unintelligible], and I wasn’t learning, and the quality of my product coming out of school did not meet what they expected, so they sent me to St. Joseph’s to try to upgrade it. Not a particularly unique justification for sending kids to a private school. SS: Do you remember how much the tuition was then? 2 LF: Oh God, it… I don’t remember what it was in the fifth grade, I remember what it was when I graduated: $560 a year. SS: Oh wow, that’s not bad. LF: [Laughs] Not bad? Let me give you a little frame of reference to the rest of the world. I went to my [unintelligible] a few years back, and a couple of the parents who currently had kids at St. Joseph’s were complaining bitterly about how steep the tuition was, which is what, about $6,700 a year, isn’t it? Something like that right now? SS: It’s upward to eight now. LF: Okay, it’s eight. I have a son in a private school in Alexandria, Virginia. Do you have any idea what I pay a year? SS: How much? LF: $27,800. I’ve paid upwards of $24,000 since he was in kindergarten. SS: Wow. Well, you’re lucky you only have one son in there then. LF: My only problem is, St. Joe’s a pretty good value for $8,000. Especially when you look at how well their kids do for college admittance. Their college admittance the last few years has been more or less comparable to some of the best private parochial schools around the country, as far as the percentage of [students] who go to college, number of kids receiving college scholarships, the colleges they’re admitted to. All of the things that you measure private parochial schools by, you know, St. Joe’s doing real well. Anyway, I’ll get off the sales pitch. SS: When you were at the school, were you there when the sisters left? 3 LF: They actually left after I did. I think they left in ‘80. Actually, as bizarre as it sounds, I have a next-door neighbor who actually went to St. Joe six years behind me. It’s bizarre how we live together now. [Calls out to neighbor about St. Joe’s] Yeah, I just confirmed. My next-door neighbor was, like I said, six years behind me, so he would’ve been class of ‘85. By that point the sisters were gone, they had two brothers in there. They had— [Call drops] [Call resumes] SS: When the school was rumored that it was going to close, how did the students get involved? LF: Well, on an organized way, it wasn’t. I guess let me back [up] and give you the history of the newspaper article that got you started, and then I’ll talk a little bit about what the fallout, if any, of it was. Basically, in the spring of 1977, the Ogden City Council put together what they called their Junior Council Members. So, they invited each of the three high schools physically located within Ogden City to send a representative to be that high school’s representative on the City Council. There was a lot of people cruising up and down Washington Boulevard at night and basically the city didn’t have any understanding of what the kids like, so they said, “Well, okay, send a representative to the Council so we can get high school kids’ and college kids’ input.” They also invited Weber State to send a representative. I got picked as St. Joseph’s representative. I happened to also be the only one who ever regularly attended. I attended those meetings from the first of June 4 through the tenth of January of ‘78 when I was replaced. They were supposed to only be temporary, six-month appointments, so I was a month over. In that six months, I attended every meeting, including the several closed-door executive sessions, and I was the only one who regularly attended. I think Ogden High’s representative came twice, Weber College’s came once, and Ben Lomond’s never came once. The article you said, that was triggered by was there had been rumors floating for a long time. Word was getting around there was not necessarily that strong of support from the bishop’s director of education in Salt Lake for the diocesan director of education, and that the school was in some degree of financial trouble. There had been very strong support at that point, particularly from—there were four parishes in Weber and North Davis County at that point: St. James, St. Joseph’s, St. Mary’s, and St. Rose of Lima out in Layton, those were the only ones. I know there’ve been expansions since, there are other new parishes, but those were the only ones that existed at the time. By far, the strongest support came from the priest at St. Mary’s who was also a teacher. All the Jesuits were out at St. Mary’s, and they were all teachers at St. Joe as well as being diocesan priests managing the parish. The second largest supporter, and a very strong supporter, was a longtime Monsignor LaBranche from St. Joseph’s. Well, Father LaBranche died rather suddenly toward the end of the period while I was on the City Council. I made a fairly impassioned statement at a City Council meeting that I wasn’t sure the school was going to continue to exist, given Father LaBranche’s demise. 5 It was one of my first—well, step back. What I have done since graduation: I went to the US Merchant Marine Academy, graduated there, drove oil tankers on the West Coast, got laid off, drifted to Washington, and I’ve been working in and around Washington in the political arena since then. I mean, I’ve been Committee Council, I was appointed head of Congressional Affairs for NASA after the Columbia Accident. I make my living to this day in and around politics. But that was probably my first experience with the power of the media to shape things. The reporter who covered the City Council was taken with my plea and wrote a front-page story in the Standard. He also called the three Salt Lake TV stations saying, you know, “The school’s in danger of closing,” etcetera. Inside the school we knew there was a threat and there was a lot of discussion about it, but it was not well known to the community, shall we say. After it showed up on TV, first of all, not the least of which, it forced the bishop and the head of education for the diocese, you know, a microphone being stuck in his face saying, “Is this true? Are you going to close it and why?” It also triggered at the time support from the public schools who suddenly didn’t want those other kids dumped into their system. Long-winded way of saying I didn’t know what I was doing at the time, but I ended up kind of breaking the damn that turned out okay. At the time, the principal was a guy named Paul Willard, who was also my basketball coach and to this day is a mentor who you may also want to call, he lives up in Park City. SS: He actually moved back down. I talked to him last week. 6 LF: Oh, is he back? Okay. To this day, I remember Coach coming in and pulling me out of class, which was never done at the time. Basically, you only got pulled out of class if a parent died or something really serious happened, otherwise they’d [wait till after] class and grab you. He pulled me out of class and he said “Lee, what did you say to the City Council last night?” I explained it, and he said, “Well you may not have known what you did, but all hell’s breaking loose.” Then he kind of smiled and said, “From our perspective, I’m not sure it’s a bad thing. Officially, I can’t be for it, but I’m not sure it’s a bad thing.” It raised the profile. It generated a lot of support. It started a coalescing of support from other factions in the community beyond the students and particularly the parents at the time. I mean, let’s be honest, without the Evanses, without Bob Evans, the school would have closed four or five times. The amount of financial support that he himself poured into the school and the amount of support he raised from others is the real reason the school continued to exist. Those types of things, and then the strong statements by the student body that they loved the school and we wanted it to stay became a bit of a rallying cry. It made the person who took Father LaBranche’s place at St. Joe, who was somewhat suspect that it was worth it, because the parishes contribute a significant sum per Catholic student to the school. Some of the parishes weren’t sure. There was some question that some thought [if] it was worth the money for the parish or not, whether it was a religious education that reached a broad enough spectrum. So, I guess that’s a long-winded way of saying—I won’t say that that article was a catalyst. It think it certainly helped to build the support and 7 at least it shone the public light on the school and that it was in a certain amount of trouble at the time. Like I said, it was well known within the school, but I’m not sure how well it was known in the community. SS: How do you think that people’s feelings changed, especially the students, when the school was able to stay open? Do you think that they felt different about their education after that? LF: I’m not sure they felt different. I think what they felt, you know, no one appreciates what they have until it might be gone or is gone. I mean, does that make sense? SS: Yeah. LF: I think particularly those who were there when there was risk that it was going to close appreciated the school a little more and did for a while, and I think that probably continued for a few years after. I’m not sure that in and of itself would have sustained the school for the long term. I mean, I think what sustained the school for the long term was [unintelligible] support of parents. You know, they grew the school a little bit, they stopped from where they were going to close it to making some commitments to do some physical additions and things like that over time, basically modernized it slightly. SS: When I talked to Paul Willard, he mentioned a couple of other factors that helped in keeping the school open when he was principal. He had mentioned pledges that the parents gave, as well as starting the SPREE. LF: Oh yeah, there’s no question. I was gonna say, one of the things that started my senior year was SPREE. In fact, one of the things I did when I was on the City 8 Council was to get the authorization to paint a J on 25th Street, down at the corner of Washington. It said “Come to the St. Joseph’s SPREE,” with a J in the middle of 25th street, as a way of providing advertising. The City Council approved our painting that. So, SPREE happened. I think that SPREE, that pledge and that financial commitment, that’s where parents really took over. I would completely agree with Paul Willard’s assessment that the parental pledges and the development of a solid fundraising base. I now see it both in the political terms and then being on Board of Directors of a pretty old, pretty successful school and seeing some schools [unintelligible] older, famous, and given the fact that they keep producing lacrosse players that kill infamous schools like Landon that are in our conference, and what they do for fundraising. It got St. Joseph’s doing what every other successful private schools around the country had to do to survive. We were decades behind doing it, and they’re still in many respects babes in the woods about it, but that’s the difference. SS: What kind of extra-curricular activities did you do when you were at St. Joe’s? LF: Well, my senior year I ran cross-country, I was the yearbook editor, I was allstate basketball, I ran track, I was the speech champion in legislative forum in forensics, and I did competitive drama. SS: Oh wow, so you were in a little bit of everything. LF: Oh, and I was on the Student Council. SS: Do you think that going to that school gave you more opportunities to participate? 9 LF: Without question. One of my best friends started at St. Joe as a freshman, then went to Ogden, then went to Judge, and he wasn’t able to do—Well, let me step back for this. When I worked for Senator Hatch, which was the first person I worked for when I came to Washington, I reconnected with a guy who I had first met both doing competitive forensics, [Legislative] Forum. I told you that Ogden High School’s rep showed up twice? Ogden High School’s rep was their student body president, a guy named Bob Madison. Bob worked for Hatch at the same time I did, and his uncle was the chief of staff that we both worked for, and Bob and I talked. That would’ve been early 1985. Bob was joking around, he says, “You know, got to do all kinds of things. I did [Legislative] Forum and Student Government, and that was all I could do. I really wanted to play football; I couldn’t do both.” That was just at Ogden High. I mean, you look now, going to St. Joe gave you options to do all kinds of things that going to a bigger school that’s just not possible. SS: When you left there did you go on scholarship? LF: Well, the US Merchant Marine Academy is one of the five federal academies. Everybody there’s on scholarship; it’s a congressional appointment. So, yes, but on top of that I had scholarships to Perdue, Duke, Weber. I also went to Weber because I knew I wanted to go to one of the academies. St. Joe at the time, its science program wasn’t all that, [unintelligible] didn’t offer physics, so I went to Weber on an early admission program starting my junior year. I was almost a sophomore at Weber by the time I graduated from high school. 10 So yeah, I was on scholarship. I’ll tell you, at the Merchant Marine Academy, just like at West Point or Annapolis—also, a little digression, in my class and the class ahead of me, that was a total graduating class, they were 34 and I think we were 32. Maybe it was the other way around, but it was something like that. That’s roughly the right numbers, roughly 66. We had appointments to West Point, Annapolis, two to the Coast Guard Academy, one to the Air Force Academy, one to the Merchant Marine Academy (me), two full rides to Notre Dame, a full ride to MIT, and then multiple other scholarships to the U, Utah State, etcetera. So, I mean, even back then scholarships were fairly plentiful for kids coming out of St. Joe. SS: So, if you would’ve stayed in Utah, would you have sent your son there? LF: If I still lived in Ogden, there’s no question my children would be there, yes. SS: Did you have brothers and sisters also that went there? LF: No, I was an only child. SS: Oh. Did your parents go to a Catholic school? LF: No. My mother and real father were divorced when I was a year old. My mother and stepfather married when I was, I don’t know, second grade maybe? Six or seven, something like that. My mother and stepfather divorced when I was out of college, but my stepfather is still on the Board at St. Joe. His name is Herschel Hester. No, neither my mother nor my stepfather went to Catholic schools, but they were very much taken with the quality of the education. SS: So, what has been his motivation to stay on the Board if even after you’ve been out of the school for so long? 11 LF: Well, he’s a deacon at St. James, but he’s been involved in the school for a long time. SS: Oh, I see. That’s interesting. Well, I can’t think of anything else. LF: Well, if you think of anything else you can drop me an email or give me call. One of the things I can say is I’ve looked around. A lot of kids who’ve gone through St. Joe who’ve gone on to be pretty successful. For example, I mentioned my nextdoor neighbor is the son of an Air Force officer who was assigned at Hill and went to St. Joe while his father was assigned at Hill. He went on, followed his father into the Air Force and just made colonel, and the book is he’s on the fast track for general. The kid that went to West Point is a doctor and he’s got a pretty good shot at making surgeon general of the Army, he’s on that track, a guy named Roberto Nag. I mean, there’s been some very successful people who’ve come out of St. Joe. Then you got people like me who tell people when they ask them what they do for a living, I tell people I’m a child pornographer because it’s higher on the social status than Washington lawyer-lobbyist. SS: [Laughs] Well, it seems like it’s a successful job you’ve got. LF: Yeah, I mean, I’m laughing. I’ve done okay. I play the political [unintelligible] about as high a level as you can play. I mean, I do Disasters ‘R Us. I handled the Exxon Valdez for the only House member for Alaska, drafted about 60% of the Oil Pollution Act that’s gotten a lot of write-up lately since the Gulf oil spill. I was asked, because of that experience dealing with crisis, even though I didn’t have any space expertise, they brought me over to NASA to help ‘em clean up after the Columbia accident. You know, initially just try to get us on our way 12 back to the moon and on to Mars, although that’s a little bit in a fair amount of jeopardy. If you’ve looked at the job losses at ATK, you can talk about that. In fact, it’s kind of pathetic, I’ve talked to some of my classmates who work out there from St. Joe that keep saying, “You told us a year and a half ago this was coming. How did you know?” It’s like, it’s pretty simple when you’ve seen at the big picture what direction it’s headed. We’re trying to stave it off, but we’re in a tough spot. It’s fun. The reason I stayed in Washington and that is, you know, it’s like if you want to be in movies you live in L.A., if you want to work on Wall Street you move to New York, if you want to do national politics or government at the national level, you live in Washington. My office is a block and a half from the White House, and I’m just eight miles away in Northern Virginia, in Alexandria. SS: Oh, wow. Well, it sounds like you’ve done really well. LF: Any other questions? ‘Cause I gotta jump here in a second. SS: Oh, no, you’re fine. LF: Okay, well, if you have any other questions, give me a buzz. SS: All right. Well, thank you so much. 13