Oral History Program Jeri A. Thompson Interviewed by Eric Westbroek 16 June 2008 i Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Jeri A. Thompson Interviewed by Eric Westbroek 16 June 2008 Copyright © 2014 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 Kelley Evans, 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: Thompson, Jeri, an oral history by Eric Westbroek, 16 June 2008, 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 Jeri Thompson. The interview was conducted on June 16, 2008, by Eric Westbroek, in South Weber, Utah. Thompson discusses her recollections and experiences of being a student of Weber State University. EW: Good afternoon Jeri. JT: Good afternoon. EW: Will you please state your full name and spell it for me. JT: It's Jeri A. Thompson. EW: Okay. I'm just going to ask you a few quick questions. Just to get started. JT: Sounds good. EW: Okay. I can specifically remember the first day attending Weber State and how I was feeling about the whole new experiences and challenges that I was going to face. Can you tell me a little bit about your first day? JT: Well I don't remember the first day specifically. I remember the first term. They were on a term basis then instead of the semesters. But I remember worrying about being able to find my way around, because there were so many buildings and making it from one class to the other in time. Cause you had so far to travel. And I was also terrified whether I would even be able to get good enough grades to pass college. Because it just seemed like a giant step ahead from what I had been doing. EW: Yeah. I felt a lot the same feelings; just getting the grades and a trying to compete with you know, other students. Where was you graduation ceremony held? And did you attend? 1 JT: I did attend. It was held in the football stadium, outside in the sunshine. It was pretty warm with the black caps and gowns, sitting out there in the sun in May; hot May afternoon. EW: Okay. What did you graduate in? What was your major in? And why did you choose it? JT: It was called data processing. I can't even remember the exact information technology degree these days, but I think they just called it data processing back then. And the main reason I went in to that, I actually was planning to go in to nursing. In high school I had taken a CNA class and been certified as a CNA, and had been working that summer before I started college. And applied to the nursing program, but they didn't generally accept first year students in to the nursing program. They wanted you to get your generals out of the way. So, in the meantime my mom who worked at Hill Air Force Base and my brother-in-law who worked at Sparry Corporation, told me well since you can't start that why don't you just try some of these computer classes? We really think that's the way, that you'll like that and it will be a good career also. So I gave it a try that first semester and went straight through in my four years with that degree, and didn't look back to the nursing. EW: Wow. Yeah that's quite a switch from nursing to computer programming, computer systems. That's interesting. Okay, some of the issues right now Weber State is facing, I feel, is that parking is getting worse, because of the growing student population. It's a hassle to park. Can you tell us about parking at Weber State when you attended? And if you drove or if you commuted? JT: I drove, drove from Layton. I lived in Layton. It was getting bad then. I always took the first class of the day because you could generally find a parking place without any problem. I usually would end up parking up above the science building. But even back then that was 2 in the early 70's or mid 70's it was starting to get bad. I can't imagine what it's like up there now. EW: Yeah. So you graduated what year exactly? JT: 1977. EW: And do you remember who the dean was? JT: I don't have the faintest idea. EW: Right now the campus is under a lot of construction. There's a lot of new buildings, once again to accommodate to the growing population of students. They are tearing down a lot of the original four buildings. They tore down I think two of them now. I don't know if they are planning on tearing down more. And making this really big building. Do you remember if there was any sort of construction going on when you were attending? JT: Well back in the 70's even there was talk about getting rid of those four business buildings, that's were all the business classes at least most of them were being taught. I even think that they may have started construction in one of them, but or maybe they were just doing a remodeling job. Because I can remember a floor being closed in the one that had two floors. I think it was the first one. That was also the time that they were building the events center. Which I think opened in about 1977, right after I graduated. In fact I think we were probably the last class that had to graduate in the football stadium, although I could be wrong. EW: Did they hold most graduations in the football stadium before the Dee Events Center was built? 3 JT: I think that's the only place they held them before. They didn't have one in December that I'm aware of, like they do now. Cause the football stadium wouldn't have been nice in December. EW: Were you the first person in your family to graduate? JT: Yes, I was out of my mom, dad, and sisters. EW: Okay. So while you were attending did you live at home? JT: I did, I lived in Layton at home and just drove to school. EW: Do you know what car you were driving? JT: Part of the time it was a 1963 Chevy, and then that died. And I was driving a Vega, it was a new one '75 '74 something like that, Vega. Which they don't even make anymore. EW: Most students nowadays. They seem to be juggling school, work and many of the students now have families and kids and stuff. I know you know because all of your kids, three of your kids attended Weber State and graduated, they all worked. Did you work while you were attending? JT: Well I didn't. Most of the time I attended I didn't work. I lived at home, and my mom and dad both worked and all through high school I had kind of been my mom's house keeper. I cleaned house for her and got dinner ready before she got home for work. I just sort of kept at it for the first few years of school. Then I went to work in the computer lab, just part time in the afternoon, my last couple of years. Most of my junior year, and then during my senior year I actually got a job with a mortgage company doing data processing. It was a company recruiting, called the school and was looking for someday. So I got a job that way. EW: What did you do while you were working at Weber State? 4 JT: That was back in the day when they had the IBM 360. At first there not even any terminals that students sat down at. They would do their programming, code them on punch cards. Sit down at the key punch machines and type them out and then we would have to take those cards that had their programs on them. And run them to the computer center and they would process them. It was a day turn around and then you would pick up the punch cards and the listings it had printed out showing the results of their programming and bring them back down. So the students could see how it worked and fix things and resubmit. EW: Wow. That's amazing to think of Weber State without computers everywhere. Because right now I don't know how many computer labs there are, and always open for students. JT: They were just getting the terminals, the pc's in that were connected to the computer up in the center the last year or so that I was up there. EW: Things have changed. That's for sure. JT: That's for sure. EW: Okay. There seems to be a problem right now with Weber State and their marketing. They don't seem to pull a lot of students to the basketball games, football games any of those extra circular activities. Did you attend those? JT: Maybe a little bit, but not very much. I thought, it's probably the same now, there were a lot of older like you said married people who were doing it because it was a convenient place a fairly economical place to get their degree. It would work while they did go to their regular job, and raised their family. I just didn't have a lot of friends that were going to school there so I just pretty much went to school and left campus also. 5 EW: So a lot of the fellow students, a lot your peers were older or married and had kids, that was a lot of the student body? JT: Yeah, a lot of the people I was in classes with were older married people. EW: Yeah, I think that is the majority of students still. JT: Yeah, I think that was the case back then even. EW: Okay. Well thanks for letting us into your home and asking questions and answering them for me. JT: You're welcome. Thank you. 6