Oral History Program David Kennedy Interviewed by Richard Sadler, Richard Roberts, and Howard Noelle 2 March 1987 i Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah David Kennedy Interviewed by Richard Sadler, Richard Roberts, and Howard Noelle 2 March 1987 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. 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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 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. 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It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: Kennedy, David, an oral history by Richard Sadler, Richard Roberts, and Howard Noelle, 2 March 1987, 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 David Kennedy. The interview was conducted on March 2, 1987, by Richard Sadler, Richard Roberts and Howard Noelle (INT) in the LDS Church Office Building. Mr. Kennedy discusses his student life at Weber College during the 1920’s as well as some of his own opinions on the higher education system in the United States. INT: This is an oral interview of Elder David Kennedy conducted on March the 2, 1987, at approximately 10:30 in the morning at the LDS Church Office Building, 47 East South Temple, by Richard Sadler, Richard Roberts and Howard Noelle. Which years were you at Weber College? DK: Well, I went to Weber in the early 20’s. I graduated from high school at Weber in 1923 and then I went on to college there until ’25. Then I went on a mission to Great Britain for two years and came back in ’28 and went again to Weber until the end of that school term in ’29. INT: You have received an honorable doctorate? DK: Yes, I was invited to the University to receive a doctorate, and did, and gave a talk at the graduation convocation. It was an interesting one because I was Secretary of the Treasury at the time, and I had an entourage of people with me, the secret service and so on taking care of me. It was a very happy occasion. INT: You mentioned that you had some happy experiences at Weber College in the ‘20’s? DK: Well, I did. I had a lot of activities at Weber. I was involved in many things, and of course I had romance there; I found my sweetheart at Weber. We had a very hectic, 1 whirlwind romance of about four years and then got married while I was at Weber. The things that I remember so much was the Weber Herald, I was active in the sport’s editor at one time of that and then I was business manager, the Acorn, I was also working on that in many ways and was business manager of it. I was active student body activities. I had a position, I don’t know whether they have it now, I was still Student At Large one time on the Board of Control. Then I was Secretary and Treasurer of the Student Body, I was also in many other things. I wanted to sing in the Glee Club, I liked music and I tried desperately to study music at Weber. Manning was the choir leader at the time, and so I joined the Glee Club and I paid my tuition at the school. We sang in rehearsal a few times, then he asked me to stay afterwards and run a scale, then he told me that I was pitch deaf and that I couldn’t sing in the Glee Club. I said to him, “I’m a student here, Professor, I want to learn and you ought to teach me. I will study and I’ll work hard to learn to sing. That’s your job, and I’ll be the student. I paid my tuition, so I have to stay in the Glee Club.” He says, “Not in my Glee Club.” So, we had quite a debate there but he won it and he told me that I would go into debating because I was quite an arguer. Then I went into study instruments and I couldn’t find the tuning of the instrument, so I got a mandolin and had lessons on the mandolin. I played in the little string orchestra we had there, but I couldn’t tune my instrument and if I didn’t watch the leader closely I would be continuing along the wrong way. He watched me and I could start if he had the baton at the beginning. I had many happy occasions there. We had one hike up to Mt. Ogden and David O. McKay used to come quite often to Weber and give us lectures. Well he went with us up on Mt. Ogden and we took flagpole up and had to carry cement 2 and water and everything else to put that flag pole up, which we did. That’s one that I remember so vividly. INT: Aaron Tracy was the president when you were there, is that correct? DK: Well, there were several presidents… INT: Tell us about Owen Beal, do you remember him? DK: I remember him but I can’t give you… right now. INT: How about Henry Aldous Dickson? DK: Oh, I know Henry Aldous very well. He was there when Joel Ricks was president of the university at that period. Of course, Aaron Tracy was almost an eternal president but I was so active in student body affairs. We had to question the Constitution and so I worked at that at long length. I had a mentor on the side, Ernest Wilkinson, he was my debate coach, too. He instructed me at the devotional where this was being presented to rise to a point of order and object to a number of things and get that changed. I did that and Aaron Tracy was presiding and he wasn’t going to recognize me, but I kept on shouting and he finally recognized me and we won the points. It was quite a debate. Then after the school term he called me and he said “Well, you presented a real problem with that constitution, and it will not be validated next year.” I said, “I’ll be back next year and we’ll see that it is.” He quietly told me, the way that Aaron could do, that that’s not my job. I’m a student and if I want to be a student at Weber I better not oppose him next year on this. I came next year and behaved myself. But I learned to love Aaron Tracy because he was good in English and he gave me a love for the 3 English language and I followed through with that with Talmage and Winslow in Great Britain. So, that was good. INT: Can you telling us anything about Willard Marriott, a classmate of yours? DK: Yes. Willard and I knew each other very, very well. He was in the student affairs also and he was several classes ahead of me. He was in the college, I think it was 1922, when he was on the Board of Control and he was president. I was on the Board of Control in the high school and we worked together there. Then we competed in a lot of oratorical contests and he used to kid me in Washington about it; in the student body he was ahead of me, but in the other I’d win them over him. We kept that friendship all through his life, so when he went to Washington ahead of me— I went in ’29 and he was ’27 I think— he offered me a job in his little hot shop that he just started on 14th Street and Georgia Avenue. I didn’t take it, I went to work for a stone corporation. Bill was very active in church work and he was later stake president and I was bishop. Then we were appointed to a number of things together; one was a Nauvoo restoration, we were trustees of that. He and Hally and Lenora and I would go to Nauvoo and to Williamsburg and other places on that assignment. When I was Secretary of the Treasury I used to go up to his farm, Fairfield Farms, and ride with Bill; he like horses and I did too. His background was a rancher and mine was; he was a sheep man and I was sheep and cattle so we had a lot in common there. Then one Thanksgiving I was Ambassador in Brussels at NATO, and I had to come back to go to Camp Bay to see President Nixon. Lenora stayed in Brussels, I was just flying over and back. They saw in the paper that I was back in Washington, so Hally called me and invited me to go to Fairfield Farms for Thanksgiving with them. I said “You just have your family, you don’t 4 want to have me there I’ll be an outsider and upset your family Thanksgiving.” And she said, “No, you’re family. Come on up.” So they picked me up and we went up to Fairfield Farms. It was interesting because when we got there Bill got out of the trunk a number of mincemeat and pumpkin pies and he asked me if I’d get in the jeep with him. He wanted to deliver them to all the people who worked on that farm, they had several houses, and some of the neighbors. So on Thanksgiving Day we went around and gave them up enough pies for their Thanksgiving dinner. That was typical of Bill. INT: Was he highly regarded as a student? DK: I think he was, I don’t know. As an individual, he was highly respected. I don’t know about the academic. INT: Did he teach courses at Weber State? I think he taught English, didn’t he? DK: I don’t know whether he was a teacher but we had assignments, maybe that was it. I just can’t— INT: You debated Bill Marriott, did you? DK: Oh yes. We had… Let’s see... I can’t think of his name now… INT: Was it Leland Monsen? DK: Oh Leland Monsen was there, yeah, he was a student when I was there. He worked for a railroad and he was married and decided to go on to school. He was older than we were and he wanted to go into speech. He was the last person that I ever thought that should go into speech because he spoke so slowly, pronounced ever word. “I… am… going… to… be… a… speech… teacher.” So he wanted to go into an oratorical contest and he wrote his speech and I read it over. It was good, it was very good; well written. 5 Then he started to give it and I coached him and told him to speed up. “You can’t keep an audience there. You just have to work on delivery, the substance you have.” Well, he did it but he didn’t even place; he was out. I think about two or three of them was that way, and he thought it was his manuscript and not his delivery. So I said “Look, you take my speech and I’ll take your speech.” He agreed, and I won first or second place with his speech. He didn’t show. Then he came to me and he said he wanted to go to the University of Chicago, and I thought he’d never get in there. But he was a hard worker and persistent; he made it. Chauncey Brown was there— I don’t know if you knew Chauncey— he was a very able speaker. INT: Tell us about your early life. Where are you from and how did you make the decision to go to Weber? DK: Well, I was in Randolph, Utah, born and raised there but I only went to school there for the first two grades. The first grade was in the schoolhouse where we had all eight grades and the old Kennedy Bill which later became Argyle and then ended. We moved to Ogden in order to have doctors for Mother because she was sick; an invalid. So I went to Madison School— that was my first school in Ogden, just across Lester Park— and then to Central Junior High School; it was on Adams and 25th, it was a junior high. Then I was in Ogden and went to Weber. INT: What were the activities like at Weber? What kinds of things did you do in the class and out? DK: Well… Break in audio … a woman. I taught shorthand at Weber, about the same way that Bill Marriott had taught English or so. It was not a schedule thing, but the teacher was always having to go do his duties in the office, so Marlon Schade or I would be 6 asked to take the class. I guess we took that class dozens of times; it was mainly girls, I think we were the only two boys in there. You asked me about the activities there. I remember we had a lot of dances. I think every Friday we had a dance, and so we enjoyed this social life, it was our whole life, really. Then the games, we played basketball, I didn’t, but we had Tim Schade there and they won the State. Bonesy Jones we used to call him; he was a big, tall fellow, about 6 feet. Now they have about 7, they ought to raise the baskets up. I attended all the games that I could go to, whether they were at Weber or outside. Being Secretary Treasurer of the Student Body I collected all the money, so I had to be at the game to see that we got it going. Pete Couts and some of those fellows were players of football. We had very little in track or baseball, but basketball and football were the two that we were in. They offered me to be an Honors Student, to be business manager because we were losing money on the Herald that came out every two weeks. We had the Acorn to get the ads for and we tried two or three people to do that but it was a flop, we weren’t getting it, so I said “I’ll do it.” They said to me “Well, you can be an Honor Student for that,” but I didn’t need that because I was getting it for debating in the other things, so I said “How about a commission?” So I got a 20% commission, but they’d measure the Herald and I’d have to pay for the ads and then collect from the business people. I got so many ads we had to put extra pages in the Herald and that one year I made $1800 for the Acorn ads and the for the Herald. Then they wanted to cut me back when they could see, and I wouldn’t let them. It was interesting. I didn’t collect all that $1800 because when I went on my mission I was still trying to collect from some of the merchants in Ogden. I remember the Ogden Theater, the first time I went in to see Mr. Perry, he didn’t want to talk to me. So I came back 7 another day or two later and he didn’t want to talk to me, I came back again about two or three days later and he wouldn’t talk to me, so I just stood there until he had to talk to me. Then he finally took me and threw me out, physically, he pushed me out of the door. I kept coming back; he couldn’t get rid of me. Finally he took ads and we got the ads, and those things are wonderful. When I came back from my mission I found a number of these bills that I had not paid for and I thought I’d collect then, but I didn’t have time. At that time it was income taxes and I didn’t have any, so I didn’t have a chance to write them off. INT: Did you know President Shurtleff? DK: Yes. INT: Would you describe him and his involvement? DK: I don’t know too much about it, I know he was very active. He was our stake president for years, as you know. I think he was succeeded by Browning, George Browning. I just remember him as a very old man and as a great spiritual leader. He had great influence in the community. I don’t remember just what he did for Weber. INT: Did you ever meet David Eccles? DK: No, I didn’t meet David. I think at that time Taylor, Hugh and Chase Taylor’s father were living in David Eccles home. Mariner was the one that was there at the time I was there and he was running the bank in Ogden. I didn’t know him well. When he went to Washington and went to the Federal Reserve, I was at the Federal Reserve and that year I was President of the Employee’s Club. We had a meeting at the country club congressional and I was conducted it and he sat by me. He said, “Where are you from?” 8 and I said “Utah.” “Oh, I’m from Utah, too.” I said “I know that.” He said “What part of Utah?” I said “Ogden.” He says “I’m from Ogden, too.” I said, “I know that.” He said “Did you know me there?” I said “I knew you but you didn’t know me. I saw you in that little dark room, that little cubby-hole at the bank and you were just always in there and I didn’t see anybody in with you. I wondered what you were doing.” He said “Did you know George?” I said “Yes, I knew George very well.” “He was working.” So then he said “When did you come over to the Board?” And I said “I came back here in ’29 and came in in the 1930’s to the Federal Reserve.” Well he says, “I can’t be blamed for bringing you in then, can I?” I said “No, on the contrary I came in first but I’ve been blamed for bringing you in.” I didn’t of course, but we became very good friends and I worked with him. In fact, I was at the end of my assistance of Eccles at the Federal Reserve and worked closely with the Eccles family. INT: What classes do you remember at Weber and maybe teachers or, again, maybe some more of those schoolmates that you continued on through the years with? DK: Well, I remember a number of the teachers like old Doc Lind (John G. Lind), he was a chemistry teacher and math and so on. Blaylock (John Q. Blaylock) was there a lot; I had a lot of classes with him, a very spiritual and strong man in the church and a good teacher. There was Sister Tanner (Lydia H. Tanner), she was the domestic science teacher and an outstanding woman. She was just a sweetheart. I taught the shorthand class in that room next to her and they made a lot of candy and they were making it for the missionaries. That was good candy, and I found that it was in the closet all boxed up and so I served it to the class. I had a little office upstairs with a typewriter and things because of the secretary work. I took a box up there. And then they missed the candy— 9 two or three or four boxes of it— Sister Tanner came in and she said to me “Would you know where that candy went? We were making it for the missionaries.” I said “Well, I thought you were making it for us. I didn’t want it to get stale there, so we ate it.” I thought I’d be kicked out of school for it, but she was so sweet she says “Well, we just have to make some more candy. You won’t take any more of it, will you?” I said “Not if you don’t want me to.” We had Barrett (C. Elmer Barrett) and Manning were the teachers in manual training and I took a lot of that. I made a whole set of furniture, I still have a desk that I made at home now. I made a chair, a table— Earl, my son-in-law has the table— at Weber when I was in high school. INT: What about William Terry? Did you know him? DK: I knew William Terry very, very well. And I know his son. INT: Bill Terry. DK: Yeah. He was one of my teachers and a very good teacher. INT: What did he teach you? DK: It was math, I think. INT: Who would you think was the best teacher that you had at Weber? Who made an impression on you the most? DK: I don’t think I could say that any one of them made the strongest impression. I think that several of them had a major impression, they were all different. I should say that Dickson, I think I took a class from him. I think that Joel Ricks’s wife, I think she was the sister of David O. McKay, you’ll have to look that up but I think— INT: I will. Now isn’t David O. McKay married to a Ricks? Is that the relationship? 10 DK: Oh, maybe that’s the one, but this woman— I couldn’t give you the name— I think she made as an important of an impression as anybody on me because she used to visit with me often times and talk about different things around the class. The thing that I remember about Weber was that they were interested in the individual, not just me but every one of them. They were very patient with us, I should have been kicked out of the school about three or four times. For example, Leeks McKay, Leland McKay, was running for Student Body President; I was his campaign manager. There was a panel up in the hall, off from the ceiling, and I conceived the idea of taking a big banner and taking that up in the attic and going across the rafters and putting it down there and floating it while the assembly, because all the students would see it. INT: Would this be in the Lunch Hall? DK: Yes, in the big basketball hall where we played basketball and danced. And that was high, so I got up there ahead of the class and I got this banner over and I had ropes on it. I was walking over, and the students were all in there then, and I tripped. My feet went off of those rafters and I hit those metal panels and knocked about eight of them off of there. They came down and of course made a terrific racket and they fell down into the students. But the students had cleared out; it could have killed them. And I fell through the thing and I was like this on the darn thing. I would have fallen down there but I got cut up on my arms so I pulled myself back up in there and I didn’t know whether to run or to go ahead. So I said “Well, I’ve done it now,” so I put the darn banner down; I had plenty of room then. And that was in the spring, see, when we were running for the President for next year. When I came up I got out of there and a day or two later President Ricks called me and he said to me “David, do you know anything 11 about that banner going down there?” And I said “A little bit.” He said, “If you find out who did that, would you have them put it back up there?” I said “That’s pretty high up, I don’t think they could do that. It’s easier to knock down than it is to put it up.” And he said, “Well, if I were you, I’d have someone replace that.” I said, “If I can find the person that did it I might.” And that’s the way it ended, but we did have it put back up when school was out, Father got in there and we had to do it. INT: Was Joseph Anderson a classmate of yours? DK: No, I don’t remember. There was a Reese, a doctor; there was Emmett who became a surgeon at Mayo. He was an urologist. In fact, he operated on Bill Marriott. No, I don’t remember him. INT: Now you achieved a lot in your life. What would you say Weber gave to you that helped you in life? DK: I think the emotional exercises on morality and ethics and the values of life, I think, also, with David O. McKay coming there so much, that we got an appreciation of excellence. Well, Aaron Tracy was the same. He had no tolerance for mediocrity, he just wanted the best he could get out of you. David Wilson was there too, he taught commercial law. In fact, I took a class or two from David and followed him through his life, pretty much because he was in New York and an attorney in Ogden, so he had influence. A number of those people I think, in that young age, they taught values, they taught work ethics, and I think they inspired me to go on further education. Harvey Taylor is another one I’d like to mention. That fellow made a contribution at Weber and later went to BYU, I think. INT: When were the Devotionals? How often? 12 DK: As I remember we had them once a week and quite frequently we had visiting speakers; Adam Bennion I remember came a number of times, we had also President McKay, he was in the Council of the Twelve at the time. There were other general authorities who came, but we had a lot of them with the teachers and with the students. I don’t know how many times we had different ones from the student body speak. I remember Van Tanner at one time got up to speak and his mind went completely blank. He stood there and he couldn’t utter a word, he just stood there and finally he sat down. They got up and explained what happened and later on Van could do it very well. I think the experience we had in those Devotionals of participating, I participated a number of times and many others. We had a lot of drama there, too. I forgot those. They’d have students put on a show and so we’d have to practice for the drama. I did not participate in that except to attend, but that was good. INT: Was there a conflict between students and teachers wanting to teach them good moral principles and Ogden’s 25th Street being so close? Was that a problem? DK: No, and I don’t think 25th Street was a bad place at that time. We used to go down 25th Street, and Ross and Jenk’s was there to eat and we’d go all over Ogden. I don’t think it was— that developed later. The White City was on the hill, that was a dance hall, the Berthana down 24th Street; they were highly respectable places, they were not alleys or anything else then. In fact, the Marion Hotel was considered a good hotel, the Healey Hotel down right near the Station. I worked at the Marion Hotel part of the time when I was a freshman at Weber. David Mattson owned the hotel, he’d been formerly Treasurer or Secretary of State here in Utah, and he ran it as a family place. He used to boast about me being the youngest hotel clerk in the United States. Jack Mattson 13 worked as a clerk there, too. His wife became the secretary to Brian Eccles. Jack lives here in Salt Lake now. 25th Street was all right then. INT: Were there some common gathering places for students where everybody seemed to congregate before or after school in the neighborhood there? DK: No, I don’t think there was much; at least I didn’t participate in getting out with students after school. We go for home and had to go to work, most of them had to go home and go to work; I did. I had a job right afterwards. We used the Weber Gym when it was built a lot, things like that. I think the patterns have changed quite a bit in colleges now. INT: How did you find payment of tuition, was that difficult to make for most students? We’ve understood that at times people could turn in different kind of credits for tuition like maybe a payment in agricultural goods. Was that out of the picture when you went to college there? DK: I don’t remember any payment in kind for tuition. Tuition was not high in amounts, but of course income was scarce and a lot of people I’m sure had some difficulty. That didn’t seem a problem to me. People dressed pretty well for school, I don’t remember going in Levis or things like that at Weber. I remember wearing trousers and just normal dress. INT: Not even Skowcroft’s never-wrecked jeans, huh? DK: That’s right, the Skowcroft Company. INT: What kinds of activities— you’ve mentioned the hike up to Mount Ogden— what other kinds of activities do you remember? Did you go sleigh riding? I know sometimes people went up to Huntsville in the winter for parties and things like that. 14 DK: Oh, we did a lot of things as groups. We did a lot of hiking in the spring or fall around and up into Mt. Ogden area or above the Mayland Heights and things like that, not up to Mt. Ogden. We had lots of picnics. I think the activities were mainly the dances every Friday. In the week-times we had occasionally some dances at four or five o’ clock. They’d serve pies from the domestic science department; they’d make a lot of pies and we’d serve them, or they would. I can’t remember them charging us for them. INT: What were the responsibilities of the Student Body President? What did that person do? DK: Well, they had a discussion with the Board of all the activities of the school. I think the planning of the events like dances and programs and things like that, and they’d appoint everyone to do different things. INT: You had a Devotional weekly. In addition to that did you have student assemblies where you put on a different kind of program on a regular basis? DK: I’m calling them Devotional, but it may be called the other I guess. I thought it was Devotional, where the students would put on the program and everyone talked and things like I mentioned. INT: But there wasn’t a lighter kind of a program, a musical or comic skit or something? DK: Well, they had a girl by the name of Fisher (Mary Fisher) that played the violin; it was beautiful, and she participated in that and different ones. They’d have a choral group or sometimes they’d have a barber shop group, things like that. But I thought that was considered Devotional as well because there was always a tone of instruction and devotion there. INT: Nothing too light. Was there ever a light-hearted presentation? 15 DK: I think that was in these programs in the afternoon or something, where we’d have either dances or some other kind of an activity. INT: Did you have a lot of homework? DK: Yes. I don’t think that it was overly burdensome, but they’d be outside assignments. I remember I got behind one time in a class where we had a lot of reading to do. For two or three nights I spent nearly all night long reading and got an hour or two of sleep. And I think I had about 8 or 10 novels that I had to read. One of them was not a novel, the Oregon Trail, and a lot of them were somewhat historical books. I came into the examination so blurry eyed and so tired that I didn’t know whether I could remember anything. But the teacher was very good about it, she let me stay as long as I wanted to answer the questions. That’s just an exception, I think the others were— INT: You mentioned you met your wife at Weber. How did that happen and how did the courtship go? DK: Well, I really didn’t meet her at Weber, she was at Weber with me. We moved into Riverdale and her father was the bishop of the ward and we moved in right across the street from her. Father decided that because of Mother’s health that he’d let the boys run the ranch and he’d try to come down and live there, but he couldn’t live there because he’d get ants in his pants and have to keep going back to Randolph. So Mother thought if he got a little something to do at home he’d be willing to stay there. So she got him to get some chickens, but Father couldn’t do anything in a little way. He got some chickens, all right, 10,000 of them and he didn’t know the chicken business and so he had two big long coops of 125 feet long each with all these chickens. Then we had to get baby chicks in the spring and then we’d have to kill them for the market, the 16 roosters and the friars, so we’d buy 15 or 20 thousand chickens in the course of the spring and sell them to the restaurants and the railroads and everybody. This was a terrible lot of work and then we had seven acres of property, and this was not ranching property, it was garden property and so he put in sugar beets. Boy that was work. He found out that ranching was a lot easier and better so he went back to the ranch. But while we were there, she came over to buy some eggs and she fell in love with me, she said, because I was scrubbing the floor for Mother. Mother had rheumatism and walked on crutches and stuff, so I helped her out. Her father was bishop so he had to visit us quite often and I started to go with her after six months, and after I went with her I never went with any other girl. So at Weber, when school was out and those times I was not working, why, I’d drive her home because I had to come in from Riverdale and I had a car. Most of them had to get on the Bamburger or get on the street cars, you see. There were not many cars at that time driven to school like there are now. So, I’d go from our house in Riverdale and there’d be a lot of them walking to Weber; they’d have walked three miles to the street car on 36th Street. They’d take the street car and walk up there, and in the winter time that’s quite an ordeal. I don’t the kids could do that today. But I’d pick them up and others that had cars picked up as many as they could. Frequently, they’d get a ride. So I took her— she didn’t have a car— so I took her most every day to school. Then she used to help me, she’d come up to this office and we ate some of those chocolates together and she’d type for me. It was a happy time. INT: Were you married before you went in the mission field to England? DK: Yes, Bishop Jacobs was our bishop in the bishopric and Bingham was, after 25 years, made a patriarch. Then, they didn’t call you on a mission at 19 as they do now, 17 sometimes they did, but I had the time to go on a mission the whole time, I expected to, but they didn’t call me, so I was 20 years of age. I got old and we decided to get married, we’d been going together for four years and we sent out the invitations. Bishop Jacobs got the invitation for the marriage and I guess he got inspiration at the same time, so he called me in and asked me then to go on a mission. And I said “Well, aren’t you late Bishop?” and he said, “No, no.” He said, “You go ahead and get married and then go on a mission.” They don’t do that now, but he said “I know Lenora and I know you and that’s the thing to do.” So I said, “Maybe she’ll have something to say about it.” I talked to her, we didn’t have a question of whether I could go on a mission, the only question was whether we would prefer getting married and cancel the invitations and back out. Her father and mother said no, you get married and she can live here. My father and mother says no, you get married and she can live here. So Lenora went back with her parents and I went to England and served under James E. Talmage and John E. Winslow all the time, I never got out of headquarters, out of libercal. INT: 42 Islington? DK: No, 295 Edge Lane. That was the mission headquarters for Europe and libercal. INT: Did you take missionary training classes at Weber? DK: No. INT: How about religion classes? DK: Yes. INT: Every semester? DK: Oh, yes. Every semester and every quarter. Yes, we had very good religious classes. 18 INT: Do you remember any religion teachers that you’ve had? DK: I was trying to remember the name of the man that always talked on the Book of Mormon… I’ve forgotten his name for the moment. He’s one that did make a great impression; he used to have special lectures at Weber where the whole student body would be there. Mills. He owned the property on the bench about where you got the college now. INT: Yeah. John Mills (John M. Mills). DK: Is that it? Well, he knew the Book of Mormon I guess as well as anybody ever knew it, at least in my judgment. He read it so many times and he lectured it so much that he would go through the Book of Mormon and he’d get the drama of it as well as the doctrinal— he never missed the doctrines. But he also got the history of it and the background. That was a very good one. The other one in religion that I really liked was Blake Blaylock, I had a number of courses a time or two with him. I can’t think of the others. INT: I’d like to perhaps get your feelings on the changing role of higher education. How has it changed from the time you were in college to now? DK: Well, I think there have been many changes in it. I think in the earlier period you didn’t have the competition or the numbers going to college that you have now. Many of them dropped out, I don’t know what the percentages are so maybe I’m wrong in this. But you had no problem of getting into the major schools like you do now. The major schools didn’t have the same problems that they have now with money. It seems to me that the deeds of all those colleges to date, spend most of their time trying to conjure up ways to 19 get money, more time than they spend in the academic and that. The presidents of all universities, their principal job is to raise money and public relations now. Then, I think it was more the old carl measure type, of course that was a church school and you didn’t have the other side as much, and at Weber it was the same. That is just what was good in the schools and students and things like that. You have that, and then you have the pressure now more, I think, of the students. I don’t think that the students were as political minded and all of these causes-minded as they are today. Some of them were, we had agitators then, I was one, but just a few. Now, it seems to me like— well, maybe it’s the media, you see now we have instant reaction to anything worldwide and you don’t have all the facts. I used to read the newspapers and they’d done a careful job, they’re not all editorials like they are today, names on all of them. They were news and then editorials, but they’d done a careful job. Now, they got have it over the air immediately. Actually, some of that is distorted. The conflicts are shown. For example, apartheid in South Africa; very sensitive, very difficult problem. No one agrees with what South Africa’s done and if they move as fast as the agitators they’ll have anarchy and chaos and half of them will be killed. So you got to have balance. Twenty years ago in Chicago, at the Conover Bank when I was chairman, we had agitators at the University of Chicago on about apartheid. I was trustee at the university, so they insisted that we not do any business with South Africa, that we cancel lines of credit to anybody that’s doing business with South Africa. We were having our annual shareholders meeting and so they decided they were going to protest us; big banners up the students there, and they came around the whole building. Our shareholders had a hard time getting in so I thought “Well, what they’re after is publicity and a lot of fanfare,” so I had scaffolds 20 built out in front and put television up there but didn’t put any film in it, I just put the machines up there and people working. They got a big kick out of that. So there’s nothing in the paper the next day; they didn’t know about it, and they were really upset. Well, I sat at the shareholders meeting while the students were out there and protesting. They have a right to protest, let them protest. We’ve had this standby credit with South Africa for years, it hasn’t been used, we’re lending to a lot of clients in Chicago area who have some business in South Africa; we’re going to continue it as long as U.S. policy permits. The only way the University of Chicago or any of them can change the policy in this bank is to get rid of me. Let them get the votes to out me. That was published. INT: That got in, huh? You mentioned earlier the role of the president as raising funds, do you feel that that is a proper role of higher education, to go to the private sector for contributions? DK: Well I’ve taken the position generally that states and public schools should rely on taxation, they have the taxing purpose and they should tax the people for whatever money they need for education. But the private schools that don’t have access to taxation have to get their money from donors or somebody that can, and I know that that doesn’t work because the darn legislations can’t or there’s lead above and beyond and some of them have competence in many fields that are of interest to business or of interest to somebody else. At the earlier period, some years ago, the corporations could not make contributions to any extent because they’d be criticized by shareholders or by government regulations and so on. Now that’s changed substantially, so they can and that’s another factor. University of Chicago is sponsored originally by the Rockefellers, 21 Northwestern University was sponsored by a church. Most of them were by churches. That’s all disappeared now and gone to other places. But the University of Illinois and the other state schools in Illinois had a taxing power so I was a thorn in their side for quite a while there on that. But we finally bowed into it and said ‘Well, there’s areas where we can contribute and help because that will help us.” Now you do it on a basis that you’re going to get students from there is going to raise you up and that kind of thing. It’s all indefinite. INT: Inconclusive. Would you feel comfortable giving an endorsement to education in general, to the importance of education and higher education? DK: Well I think that if we’re going to exist in this kind of competitive world then we’re behind the 8 ball in so many fields, that we’ve got to put more emphasis on research, on education, and to get away, to a large extent, from just the professions like law, where we have so many lawyers— I’m a lawyer so I can say that— get the engineering, get the many other fields in the competitive world we’re in with Japan and other nations. They’re putting emphasis on education, they’re school days are longer, they’re school years are longer, they’re ability to get into a college is almost restrictive. They have to take examinations and all that sort of thing and a lot of them can’t get it in their own country’s better schools, so what do they do but come to America? How many students do we have from other nations? I think we’re paying for all that, a lot of them are here on scholarships from over here because they’re better students. Take the Chinese; of all the nations of the earth, there are more students in the United State from Taiwan than any other country or small country. INT: Do you feel if we’re to compete in the market today that education is— 22 DK: Yes and it has to be, I think, a less specialized education and a more general. When I was at the bank they were all trying to get Harvard graduates from the Harvard business school. Well, that’s a great school, it’s a good business school, it’s better in publicity than it is in training, but it’s very good. And I wanted to go to all the major schools in Kansas, in Colorado, in Utah, in Nevada; a broad section. And I didn’t want all MBA’s, and I found that the ones with a broad education had to be trained as well as the ones with the specific education in the MBA program in the bank. For two years we had to train them or they didn’t know banking and so I think a broad education is what we need and I found a lot of that when I was going to school because I wanted the specifics. I made a lot of talks in GW about how strong the romance language and all these things were, how I think every person in grade school ought to be taught at least two or three languages. INT: So a liberal arts education, a broad education. DK: Sure, because now we’re not national; we’ve got to be international. You can’t exist in this country and put walls around it or we’ll have to go down. And so I think, and that’s why I was interested in this international school for international studies at the BYU, is to get our people acquainted with the world in which we live and the cultures and the history and the background of the people of the world. Where can we do that except in school? The homes can teach them morals, they can teach them basic principles of ethics and religion and work and living, but you’ve got to go to the schools. So, we ought to spend more time in getting our people so they can read, so they can write, so they can be understood. You’ve got to communicate, and they’re all talking about these schools of communication now. Each college now has a great school of communication, 23 well that’s for TV, and that’s all right if that’s what they want to go in, but I want them in the classroom to have these young kids be able to tell what they know and write it down. So it has to start there and work right up and maybe we got to put less in the class or something, I don’t know. But we’ve got to put more emphasis now on real academic work more I think than ever before, because we’re behind some of the countries in many fields and in many parts of this. We’re ahead of them a lot, too, we’re not behind in everything. INT: How did you feel your education at Weber prepared you? Were you behind other people that you competed with or did you feel you had a good basic education? DK: Well I thought I was ahead of them. I wasn’t as smart in some of the details but I was smart in this sense that I thought I could do it if I worked and put my mind and heart in it. I was in a conflict all through school, so I wasn’t a top student and I didn’t want to be. I wasn’t trying to be the number one student, I was trying to have my home, have my life, have my social life, my other life, and the work. I had a family, so most of the time I went to college, see, I was married and having children and working a long hard time like in this Depression period. I was right in the center of all the bank failures in the United States and I was working night and day when I was going to law school, sometimes I didn’t go home, I just went to sleep on the couch in my office and then went on to school. Now they just about have to go to school full time in order to do it, at least that’s the way I see most of them, maybe they can and some of them do full time and they can do a little part time work. INT: Do you feel you were able to rely on that which you were taught at Weber to bring you through your career? 24 DK: I had a feeling that we were taught to work, we were taught to study, we were taught to be on our own and that we had certain intelligence, maybe not as good as the other person, might not be as smart as the other person, but we can make up for it by additional effort. I thought the Weber training was basic, I always have. When I went to GW or to Rutgers, I didn’t play around like I did at Weber in the sense of being in the newspapers and all these other activities because I had a family and I was working and you couldn’t do this all. But I think it’s good for students to be in the outside activities. I’m encouraging my grandchildren to be in drama, to be on the TV like when Barbara was going to BYU she was on this radio thing on music because she had to learn what the musicians were about and things, you know. Patty was in drama and a lot of the plays, took many parts in the plays; I think those things help you too. But the main thing at Weber I think that helped me was debate because there, you couldn’t win a debate unless you knew the subject one side and the other, and we had good coaches. INT: Ernest Wilkinson was one of them, wasn’t he? DK: Oh, Ernest was there the first one and then Leland Monsen and we had to do our homework as we took either side of the question. And we could go to the debate and sit down just before the debate and they say you’re on there for the radio. At least, at that time, they really worked us over. Jim Neal and I went through the whole Pacific Northwest and we had a meeting with the colleges and the universities and it was a fun experience. 25