Oral History Program Tom L. Van Cleave Interviewed by Ruby Licona 29 May 2013 i Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Tom L. Van Cleave Interviewed by Ruby Licona 29 May 2013 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. The working files, original recording, and archival copies are housed in the University Archives. Project Description The Weber State University Oral History Project began conducting interviews with key Weber State University faculty, administrators, staff and students, in Fall 2007. The program focuses primarily on obtaining a historical record of the school along with important developments since the school gained university status in 1990. The interviews explore the process of achieving university status, as well as major issues including accreditation, diversity, faculty governance, changes in leadership, curricular developments, etc. ____________________________________ 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: Van Cleave, Tom L., an oral history by Ruby Licona, 29 May 2013, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. iii Tom Van Cleave May 29, 2013 Abstract: This is an oral history interview with Tom Van Cleave conducted on May 29, 2013 by Ruby Licona. During the interview, Tom discusses his memories of attending Weber as a student as well as his career at Weber State University. Tom retired from Weber State University in 2011 as the Director of Planned Operations. RL: I’m Ruby Licona, faculty member in the Stewart Library at Weber State University. Today, May 29, 2013, we are talking with Tom Van Cleave who retired as Director of Planned Operations at Weber State in 2011. He has been on campus for quite a while and we thought it would be good for him to tell us his perspective of things that have occurred on campus during that time. Tom, why don’t you start out telling us a little bit of your background and how you happened to become associated with Weber State? TV: I was born right here in Ogden, Utah 66 years ago. I went to Ogden High School and graduated in 1965. I took my first class here at the university in 1966. I was working at the Marqus ROT Corp as a painter at the time, and I took a drafting class here. Actually, it was a blueprint reading class which sparked my interest. At the time, in order to register they had the old punch cards. Registration was in the shop area of the technical education building where you showed up and went place to place to get your cards so you could register. I took most of my drafting classes in the technical education building. I’d take one class a quarter because I had a job and a family, so I couldn’t really stay focused with my education. I would take a few classes and drop out and then take a few more classes later. RL: You were not a four-year student. 1 TV: I was not. I was most definitely a nontraditional type of a student. I went from job to job and I ended up at a place called the Amalgamated Sugar Company. You would know it as White Satin Sugar. I furthered my education there working for a mechanical engineer. His name was Harvey Bingham. I will never forget this man as long as I live. He was the mentor type. I would ask him a question and every engineer had a boatload of books, so he would pull a book and say, “Okay here’s the section. I want you to read this, then come back and we will talk about it.” In that process, he became more of my mentor than anything else. In 1973, the engineering section I worked in as a draftsman decided they wanted the engineer group at the sugar factories. They wanted me to move to Nyssa, Oregon, but I wanted to continue my education. Nysaa, Oregon is 50 miles away from Boise State or anyplace where I could get my degree. As a consequence, I had to decline that. I ended up working for a family-owned business called Precision Built Homes which later became Precision Built Systems. It didn’t take me too long to realize that the growth opportunities were just not there. I saw an ad in the Ogden Standard Examiner that they wanted an architectural draftsman. I applied for it and so did two other people that I worked with at Precision Built Systems. I interviewed with Bob Folsom, who was the Director of Campus Planning at the time. Bob was an architect and a very intelligent guy. RL: Was he Director of Campus Planning for Weber State? TV: Yes, that’s right. Anyway, I interviewed with him and then time went by and I thought the university had forgotten all about me. I didn’t know what the 2 bureaucracy was. I was used to private industries where it was, “You want the job? Okay, you’re hired.” They finally called and wanted me to come to work. Needless to say, I was elated because I had a long association with Weber State and I really thought this was going to be ideal for me. Plus, I could continue my education. I used to ride motorcycles at the time. I had a Yamaha YZ 400 and I was into racing and things like that. Just one week before I came to work here, I had a motorcycle crash and separated my shoulder. Of course, it was my right shoulder. RL: Which you used as a draftsman. TV: That’s right. Bob Folsom hired a two-armed draftsman and a one-armed one showed up. He kind of looked at me and was a little bit surprised that I showed up with my arm in a sling. I thought, “Oh no, I’m out of here.” He dealt with it pretty well. I learned how to draw by grabbing my sling with my left hand and moving the pencil with my right. That was back when we did all board drafting. I realized that this was my opportunity and I had to make the best out of it. Bob was very encouraging in that he wanted people to take advantage of what Weber had to offer. RL: That was in 1978? TV: Yes. That was 1978 that I was hired in. I’d take classes and I finally got into the mechanical engineering program which was basically nonexistent prior to 1979. Over time, I was able to take enough classes to finally graduate. I had graduated with my Associate’s in Engineering Graphics in 1974. 3 RL: When did you graduate with your Bachelor’s? TV: That wasn’t until 1986. RL: Better late than never. TV: Oh yes. I’ll tell you, it was a tough uphill climb for me. I had a family to support and a lot of times I’d have to work two jobs to make ends meet. RL: Do you remember any of the faculty that you worked with when you first got here? TV: I most certainly do. I took my first drafting classes in the engineering technology building on the west wing down on the south side. Later on, I took more classes at what we used to call the “TUB” which was the temporary union building. It was on the east side of building four. I remember taking drafting classes there in the wintertime and you could almost hear the wind whistling through. It was an old barracks is what it boiled down to. That’s where the union building was housed in the late 1950’s while the permanent union was being built. You never knew what you were going to get in that building. One of the more memorable professors I had was Park Guymon. He was a chemistry professor. He was tough, but even though I took those classes over 30 years ago, I still know the periodic chart fairly well. He worked us hard, but he was fair with everyone. He was one of the best professors I have ever had. He was super intelligent and just a great guy. Especially when you’d get him talking about horses, he could talk about horses forever. He was one of the better ones. Another professor, Carl Wood, in the mechanical engineering program was a hands-on type of a guy. He might still be here, or it’s just been a few years 4 ago that he left or retired. He could give you not just the theory of things, but the practical application of things. It was the same thing with Robert Parker. Dr. Parker was the type of professor that when you walked into the classroom and sat down, you’d have everything in front of you and a pencil in hand because the second he hit the door he was walking, talking and asking questions. By the time you realized what he asked, he would call you up to the board to explain the problem. You had to be on top of your game to stay with Dr. Parker. He was a great guy. RL: What did he teach? TV: He taught strength of materials, finite element analysis, and other classes within the mechanical engineering program. RL: You mentioned that while you were with Amalgamated Sugar, Mr. Bingham was a mentor for you. Was there a faculty member at Weber that took on that role when you came back as a student? TV: Some did in limited roles. Carl Wood was one and Bob Parker was another. There were others, but the names escape me right now. RL: You’ve mentioned several and obviously they made an impression, but sometimes somebody stands out more than others. TV: If anyone it would have to be Park Guymon. He was not in my major, but he taught me how to work hard, how to be prepared and how to think and rationalize things out. I have to tell you a story about a final exam I took from Park Guymon. I remember the final exam I was pumped, I was primed, I was ready. I walked in there and he handed me the test and I’d been studying and studying, but I 5 started down and went through a whole page and none of the questions looked familiar to me. I started to sweat. That’s when you wish, “I hope the hole opens up and swallows me right now.” I looked around and everybody has just got their head down and they’re going. I thought, “I’m a dead man.” Finally, on the second page, I found one that I knew. That started the process rolling. I took the full two hours to do that test. When I was done, I walked out to the parking lot on the east side of the science lab building and I couldn’t find my car. I had no clue where that thing was. As I walked around I thought, “Oh my heck, somebody stole my car.” It finally occurred to me that I had parked on the west side. I’ll never forget that chemistry final as long as I live. RL: Did you finally go back and answer some of the things on the first page? TV: Oh yes. I got the ball rolling and I think I got a 92 or a 90 on that test. It was one of those feeling I’ve never had a feeling like that in my life—the “I am sunk” feeling. If anybody was a mentor I think it would be Park. I still see him to this day and I stop and say, “Hi,” to him. His wife is absolutely wonderful, I remember her too. He is just a great guy. It’s been all these years. RL: He’s been mentioned to me by several people, not necessarily in interviews, but around different situations. Actually, one of my surgeons and another physician also had him as undergraduate students here at Weber State. You’re right. They are delightful people. TV: I had a lot of professors, but he’s the one that just stands out the most. Dr. Parker was from Chicago and he had kind of an accent. You’d ask him a question and he’d say, “Yea, yea, yea, yea.” That was one of the more humorous 6 things. Then you’d take some of his exams and you’d think, “Oh my, the humor is over.” Another one I had was Norman Smith. He taught thermodynamics and heat transfer. I remember Dr. Smith gave us take home exams. I had never had a take home exam before in my life. I thought, “Alright, we have a take home exam. I am living large. Life is going to be good.” Of course, I postponed it and started working on it on a Sunday and we had class on Monday. I must have spent eight to ten hours working on that one exam. It was a total nightmare. I learned really fast about take home exams. I had a couple more and they lived up to the expectations. He was a very intelligent man. We did a lot of formula derivation. Back then I was thinking, “Okay, I really don’t need to derive those formulas. Guys a lot smarter than me came up with them so they must have figured it out so I don’t have to, right?” No. We went through them step-by-step. It got you thinking. Rather than thinking, “I need this class to get out of here.” It got you thinking about the applications. He was a brilliant man. He didn’t stay with us too long before he moved on. I think from every professor I had I took something with me. Carl Wood was just one of the nicest guys you ever want to be around. I remember in one class he had the class down to his house for a barbeque after the class was over just to treat us. He was very patient and was able to explain everything. I was able to use a lot of that on the job through the analysis type of thing. RL: So you were working full-time at that time? TV: Yes. RL: Were you able to take advantage of a tuition cut or anything? 7 TV: Back then we were on the quarter system and we’d get five credit hours free and 10 percent off at the bookstore. I remember my first drafting book I bought at the bookstore. I thought, “This is outrageous.” It was this big, thick drafting book. I think it was $22.00. I about died. RL: That was a fortune at the time. TV: It was. Considering I was making about $2 an hour back then, so that gives you an idea. RL: What about on the work scene? You mentioned Folsom. Were there other people that functioned as mentors for you in the workplace? TV: I replaced a guy named Wayne Venable. Wayne had a heart attack and died rather suddenly. At the time, we only had about 7,200 students here. When I was hired in, there was me, Bob Folsom, and a guy named Fred Kendall. He (Fred) was the nicest guy I’ve ever run across in my life. Fred was the type of guy who would never speak an ill word about anybody. He was just that type of a personality. There was also a secretary and a student aid. That was it for the whole campus. They called it Campus Planning and Construction. As things grew and progressed we were able to hire more people. A lot of what I learned was from the guys in the shops. We were in the Architectural Services Department on one corner of the campus and the guys in the shop were up on the hill in what is now the Facilities Management Building. I tried to involve these guys in the shops especially in the practical applications. I could punch all the numbers in the world and I knew what had to happen and knew the design parameters of a particular piece of equipment. But, then you 8 start getting into installs and what actually makes it work and how to control it. That’s when I started talking to the guys in the shops. I gravitated toward these people because they were very smart individuals and very good at their trade. I learned a lot of practical things from the people in the shops. There were guys that had been plumbers for 30 years and guys that had been electricians for about the same amount of time. They knew how everything was supposed to work. I learned a lot from those people. I also learned a lot from Division of Facilities Construction and Management inspectors. They were on the construction end and they managed most of our major projects on the campus like the new buildings and major remodels and things like that. RL: The things that we now have to contract out. TV: Yes. I just had a vast variety of influences on that. Bob was very much an architect and more of an artist. I remember I took a class in art and architecture. I remember Bob saying that if engineers designed all the buildings on campus, they would all look like boxes. They have to have an architectural element to them. Historically, engineer types and architecture types have clashed. The engineer types want mechanical rooms with all the space in the world, while architects say that’s very valuable space that could go to other things. There’s always this clash type of a thing, which leads me to my next step. In 1991, Weber State College became a university. I remember that quite well, they had quite the celebration. I moved from working for Bob and he said he was disappointed to lose me because I’d like to think I did a really good job. I did get a lot of compliments from the faculty. 9 RL: You had been here at least ten years by that time. TV: It’s interesting because I only planned on spending four years. I knew when I had it good. It didn’t take me too long to figure that out. Anyway, I went to work for Dave Maxson, who was the Director of Physical Plant. Dave was one of the nicest guys that ever walked the face of the earth. He had a hospital background. My job was to bridge the gap between the architectural side and the practical side. I knew both ends of the business. I think I was successful in doing a lot of that. When I was working for Bob Folsom, I got here right after the Dee Events Center was dedicated and the Engineering Technology building was dedicated the year after. The next building was the Wattis business building. We had so much trouble with that building from the operations and maintenance end. It had stacked fan systems so if you have something go wrong with one fan system you have to disassemble one to get to the other. It had very cramped and compact mechanical rooms. It was very impractical. It had great big cooling coils on the fan systems and you had to actually cut a hole in a wall to get the old coils out and the new ones in. Be it my influence or complaining or whatever you want to call it, I was the go-between. As the next building, student services, was to be built it was the first time we were actually involved in the planning process. I went to all the planning meetings and the construction meetings. Sometimes my suggestions weren’t taken well and other times they were. It was a give and take kind of a thing, realizing that the architects had their point of view and the maintenance side had our point of view and we were trying to make those two 10 things mesh. Student Services was the first building that I was heavily involved in and it was a valuable learning experience. I learned a lot from a lot of people. I was able to temper my own feelings. That’s when I learned how to realize the other person’s point of view. I take a lot of pride in that one. RL: It’s growing up. TV: Yes, that right. Of course, it served me well as my career progressed with personnel issues. I worked for Dave for about ten years. Back then, we had a Director of Architectural and Engineering Services, Director of Physical Plant, and we also had a Director of Electronic Systems and Repair whose name was Sid Jensen. I had one of these projects going on that we had to have his help on right away. I went down to explain my problem to him and Sid says, “I need all this paperwork filled out in quadruplicate. It has to be signed off by anybody and everybody and you’re six weeks out to get the parts.” He proceeded for about five minutes and I thought, “My gosh, I will never get this done.” He finally talked himself down and says, “Oh okay, will this afternoon be okay?” Sid was the type of guy that had to get a chunk out of you. He had to do it and he loved it the entire time. Once you caught onto him, he had a heart of gold and he’d do anything in the world for you, but you’d have to endure it first. They did some studies across campus and they decided it didn’t make a whole lot of sense to have three separate directors running three separate entities and they should all be working together. RL: You needed an umbrella to cover. 11 TV: That’s right. They hired consultants to analyze our whole situation and that has evolved into what is called the facilities management department. Mike Perez was the guy that showed up on the scene. He came from SMU. They had a structure at SMU that was kind of what we were looking for, so Mike knew the ropes. He was quite a personality and you always knew when he was in the room. He was just the type that would attract people, very outgoing and a smart guy. He was a super sharp individual. We were used to the old ways of doing things and Mike started out by learning the ropes. He and his wife came from Texas. RL: When did he come here? TV: It must have been in 2000 that he came. RL: Is he still here? TV: No, he went on to the University of Utah. Anyway, I remember they were born and raised in Texas and I remember the day he got here we had an April 1st snowstorm. His wife had one of those big trench coats like what the football players wore with a hood. She was all huddled up and she looked like, “What in the world did Mike drag me into? The frozen tundra of Utah?” Their son, Michael, was out throwing snowballs and he thought it was the greatest thing. I’ll never forget the look on his wife’s face. Mike went through a whole series of meetings, planning sessions and mentoring and we evolved. RL: What was his title? TV: At the time, he was Director of Facilities Management. 12 We used manage this place by reacting. If there was a problem, we reacted. There wasn’t anything that was planned as far as maintenance was concerned or anything preventive. We ran it until it broke and then we repaired it. We had limited resources and limited technology to enable us to start planning this. We had started our facilities management work order system just before Mike got here. The realization was that we needed to start planning better. I remember the old Maximo program that just basically generated work orders. Prior to that time, the work orders were scribbled on a piece of paper and we called whoever on the radio to go fix it. That was the extent of it. We started refining. He was only with us for about three years, but he made a lot of changes. He brought us all under the same umbrella. Don’t get me wrong, there was resistance. To Mike’s credit, he pulled it off. He’s a high energy guy who would send emails at three in the morning or he’d be in Texas and send me emails. The University of Utah recruited him so that gives you an idea of the type of job he was doing for us. He replaced one of the legends down at the University of Utah, Randy Turpin. Randy even had a building named after him at the University of Utah. He was the Director of Physical Plant or Plant Operations. RL: They stole our person to improve their situation. TV: They had a void they needed to fill and they needed the right guy to do it. RL: What was your position under him? TV: I was the assistant director under Mike. When Dave Maxson, Bob Folsom and Syd Jensen all left within a short period, I assumed the role of the director. Dave had brought me along enough that I knew how things worked. I knew how the 13 budget worked and I was able to use that information that Dave gave me to manage that for quite a spell. It must have been six months or better before they hired Mike Perez. After Mike left, there was another long period because they couldn’t find the right person for the job. We had interview after interview as the university was looking for the right person. I was managing the department during this time period also. RL: You mentioned that Kevin Hansen managed Air Force bases all over the world. Did we recruit him away from Hill Air Force Base or did he come in from elsewhere? TV: He retired from the Air Force. He’d managed Air Force bases in Anchorage, Alaska and Cape Canaveral, Florida. We’re talking multi-million dollar budgets that he managed. He retired from the Air Force and ended up in Logan City Public Works. This was a long process that we went through. We had candidate after candidate showing up, but it was just not the right fit for us. The administration wanted the right person for that job. I remember the first time I met Kevin I thought, “Oh my gosh, a retired colonel, we’re all in a boatload of trouble.” We had several downloading sessions. He brought me under his wing more or less. We talked department-to-department and person-to-person about how we each saw things. We had several sessions of that. We were going to a conference in St. George and we talked the whole way there. Kevin saw things in an entirely new light than we were used to seeing. He said the first thing he noted was that the Administration Building had an old wooden sign. It was actually a metal sign framed with 4x4’s and it was kind of leaning up against the west wall. 14 Those were the kinds of things he saw, but we had been seeing it all along so it was just part of the landscape for us. That’s just one small example of what he saw. RL: Is that when we went through that major signage change all over the campus. TV: That’s right. He wanted to turn this place into a first class organization. It wasn’t without pain, don’t get me wrong, because we had people that were pretty much entrenched, that could not see the light and resisted. You’re bound to get resistance with any change. I remember back when we used to go down to the state surplus and get our service vehicles. By the time they hit state surplus, these things had been used to death. RL: 300,000 miles on a little truck. TV: Right. That’s not outside the realm of possibility. We were trying to piece things together and it was a mish mash of things. We had an old Popsicle truck that the plumbers used. That’s where we were at the time. Kevin was able to change that through budget management. You’ll notice all the service vehicles now match. They’re all in good shape and we rotate them. We don’t have to worry that much anymore about them starting in the wintertime. That’s just another example of the things he accomplished. RL: That relates back to some of the old Mike Perez thinking where you don’t just react, you plan ahead. TV: That’s right. It adds a professionalism that was lacking. At the loading dock at the facilities management building, we had a lineup of old beat up chairs that were scavenged from gosh knows where sitting on the dock out there. The guys would 15 go sit out there in the summertime. These things were worn out and beat up. We had a yard full of transformers that were taken out when we upgraded from 4160 volt to 12470 sitting out in the back lot. Our back lot was a junk yard. Kevin really drove the point home that this was not the way were going to run this facility. The chairs disappeared, the transformers disappeared and he was going to change this into a first-class organization. He asked me one day which section within facilities management I wanted to manage. I told him immediately that I am more in tune with the maintenance operations. That’s how my job title got changed to Director of Plant Operations. I managed what they call skilled crafts like the electricians, the plumbers, the carpenters, the painters, and HVAC personnel. RL: The ones who would be licensed and certified in the outside world. TV: Right. I also oversaw energy management. I remember my first energy project when Dave Maxson was still here. It was in 1995. We got a grant from the state of Utah for changing light bulbs. We had T-12’s and we were changing them to T-8’s. There were all these people trying to promote certain things and that’s where the analysis I performed came in. RL: What does T-12 and T-8 relate to? TV: These are florescent tubes that have two types of ballasts in them. They had the old magnetic ballasts and the new ones were electronic. That’s when I started to get involved in the energy management end. It kind of got to be my passion. I did a lot of analysis of the wattage and the light levels to determine which was going to be the best. They had several different types out there at the time. People 16 were trying to promote T-10’s and a primitive form of LED’s. I finally had to make the decision while working with other engineers and the first building we changed to the new T-8’s was the science lab building. That was the first building we retrofitted under this grant that we got from the Department of Energy for the state of Utah. The Lind lecture hall soon followed. At the time, Allied Health Science building phase one was already in place and they were looking at the Allied Health Sciences Building phase two. I had to convince architectural engineers and administrators that the T-8’s were the best thing to put in the new health sciences building rather than the T-12’s. I had to show them all the energy efficiency and so on. The numbers just really fell out and I was able to convince them to put the T-8’s. The Allied Health Science building phase two was the first new campus building to have the T-8 florescent tubes in it. RL: Then you went around and retrofitted the other buildings. TV: That’s right, over time. We still stumble into the T-12’s sometimes, but pretty much all of them are now T-8’s. RL: The experience you had with that is what led to your part-time position that you took on after retirement. TV: Bingo. RL: That’s energy analysis? TV: Yes. I’m the Utility and Energy Analyst now. I do the fun stuff. I tell everybody my story and say that I basically went from four meetings a day down to one or two a 17 week, which suits me just wonderfully. I think I got away from my passion when I got promoted up. RL: We’ve gotten a picture of how you’ve progressed through your work career here on campus. You said you grew up here in Ogden, do you have early memories of Weber prior to coming here as a student? I know people talk about Weber and I’m sure at that time were referring to it as Harrison High School, kind of looking down their nose. After people get here they have a whole different perspective on things. I’ve also spoken to some people who remember running around on the campus and sledding down the hills when we got snow. What are your early memories of the campus? TV: My brother graduated from the old Weber College down on 25th Street. I remember the Moench building. I couldn’t have been any more than five or six years old when he graduated. I remember the gym especially because of all the ramps going up to the spectator area. It was so fun for a five of six year old kid to go running down those ramps. RL: Was that the building down by the public library? TV: Yes, that’s was old Moench building. It was a very striking building. I’m sure you’ve seen pictures of it. My best friend, Brent, used to live near me on 28th Street just below Harrison and moved right across the street from the current university site. There used to be a big white two story building at the front of campus at about 3400 South. It had a pond out in the front that had little mosquito fish and goldfish in it. We’d sneak in there at night and try to catch them, but were very unsuccessful at that. 18 RL: It sounds like they were the kind of thing that even if you had caught them you couldn’t do anything with them. TV: We couldn’t, but we were kids and we didn’t think too far ahead. I remember the old married student housing on the west side of the Browning Center where the visual arts building is now. Another friend of mine had a sister that lived in there with her husband back in 1963 or 1964. I’ve had a long association with Weber State. RL: You’ve been here as a student and as an employee under quite a few different presidents on campus. I would imagine that when you came President Miller was still here? TV: President Miller was still here, but he was no longer president. He was still very much a presence. I was working for Bob Folsom as a draftsman and this gentleman came through and stopped by to talk to me and wanted to know how it was going. I didn’t know this guy. He just seemed like a pretty cool guy. RL: Was he president when you came as a student? TV: Yes he was, but I didn’t know him personally. I remember President Miller and his wife also. They were just the sweetest people you ever want to be around. After he came through that day, I went to Bob Folsom and asked, “Who’s that guy that just came through?” He said, “Oh, that’s President Miller.” The president’s home at the time was right at the top of 4100 South. It is office space for the athletics department now. His wife lived there. I met her and got to know her better when I was working for Dave Maxson. She was just the most wonderful person you ever want to be around. She was very appreciative of 19 anything you could do for her. She would bring us treats up at the office every once in a while when I worked for Dave. She would just stop by with donuts or cookies as a note of appreciation for what we did. RL: Each administration had its own flavor, doesn’t it? When you started working here it would have been President Bishop? TV: I came right after President Bishop left. President Brady was the first president that I worked under. I got to know him and his wife somewhat. They had a home here on Edgehill Drive. The college bought it off the market, but it needed some renovations. I was put in charge of the renovations, so I got to meet with President Brady. One thing about President Brady, he had a closet full of blue suits. Every time I saw him he was wearing a blue suit. His rationale was that it was one less decision he had to make in the course of a day. I worked with his wife, Mitsy, quite a bit. She was a wonderful lady. She was highly appreciative and a very classy lady. RL: You actually were in a position where you interacted with them at their home and not just on campus. TV: That’s right. RL: Any particular incidents that you remember with that home? TV: President Brady liked to play basketball and I remember we put a basketball court in his backyard. I made all the drawings and our carpenters did all the form work and poured the concrete. That was one of the more notables. We made some changes to the lighting and landscaping over there that she appreciated. I 20 was able to work with them at their own home which is one of the little perks of my job. RL: I’ve heard a lot of stories about his walking around the campus knowing a lot of the students, and of his interaction with the faculty. Was he just as approachable for the staff? TV: I was nervous about approaching people like the president who was really up there when I was just a lowly draftsman at the time. I was hesitant to approach him. I remember he had signs all over campus. He would write his thoughts and put them on signs and put them around campus. That was another little thing that he did. He was a very nice man, but very formal. I interacted much better with his wife who was less formal. My interactions with him were strictly on little projects. RL: After he left, we would have had President Nadauld. He was also fairly formal, wasn’t he? TV: At times. I’ve got to tell you a funny story about President Nadauld. This was before the Stromberg Center was built. We used to have faculty-staff basketball leagues at the old Swenson Gym. President Nadauld was very competitive and he loved basketball, but he is not all that big of a man. At the time, I was about my present size. I was in better shape, but I was a pretty good-sized boy. Anyway, we were playing basketball with teams and I went out to set a pick. President Nadauld ran into me and then hit the floor. I went about as white as your sweater. I thought, “Oh my gosh, I just decked the president.” I thought my employment was over, but he actually got up and he smiled about it. He said, “Nice pick.” There’s still a guy on campus that will never let me forget that. His 21 name is Mike Whetton, and every time I see him, to this day, he reminds me of the time I decked President Nadauld. We used to have fishing derbies at the campus in the pond. Physically challenged kids would show up and we’d plant fish in the upper pool and the guys from physical plant would go down and help these kids catch fish. You’d see these kids that are confined to wheelchairs who would just light up with their first fish. It was so rewarding to witness that. It was an annual thing with President Nadauld. After he left, the derbies pretty much died off. I really thought that President Nadauld was a very personable individual. I appreciated what he did, especially with that fishing derby. That was an indicator of what the man was really like. He was very compassionate and just a good man all the way around. RL: He was president when I arrived here. From my perspective, I didn’t approach him because he was the president. There were a couple of times when we interacted and he really wasn’t unapproachable, it’s just what you build into the position. When he left, we got Paul Thompson. He made a lot of changes on campus and had more of an emphasis on recruitment and diversity issues in terms of expanding the faculty and bringing in more people of color. I don’t know if that began with President Nadauld, but I know that there were internships that he and Bob Smith made possible for faculty members and there was more emphasis for students. The campus face has changed in terms of the student population with more international students and Asian, Latino, and African American students. What have you seem in terms of the makeup of the staff? 22 Since you have worked with people on the staff in different buildings, did you notice any particular changes as far as diversity when we started having the push on campus? TV: Not so much immediately. I was on the construction end. One of my favorite people on this campus is Forrest Crawford. RL: Absolutely. TV: He is absolutely the greatest guy I have ever met in my life. RL: He started out here as a football player. TV: That’s right. I’m going to digress further. There was a guy here, Darnell Haney, who used to play football for the Oakland Raiders, who came from Utah State. I knew Darnell because I was coaching little league football at the time in Washington Terrace and I coached his son. That’s how I got to know Darnell. I remember I was doing a project in the union building and I was talking to Lynn Kraaima when I noticed his eyes kind of shift. At the time, there was a promotion going across campus about a new club and restaurant opening up in town called Bigfoot’s. Anyway, I looked at Lynn kind of funny and then this great big furry paw hit my shoulder. I turned around and the most enormous creature I’ve ever seen in my life in a Bigfoot costume had ahold of me. It was Darnell Haney. I think I set the world record for the standing high jump thanks to Darnell. I wasn’t directly involved in the diversity effort, but I reaped the benefits by getting to know these people. RL: What were the changes that you noticed that were brought about? 23 TV: That is a hard one for me because I had the benefit of getting to know the people that got hired here, some of the guys I think back on like Henry Yamaguchi who worked up there. RL: I just wondered if you saw a difference in the face of the staff. TV: I’d have to stop and think about that because I didn’t really pay much attention to it. To me they were just good guys and that’s what matters. One of the better interactions I’ve had. I love to work out at the gym and I lift a lot of weights up there and I love interacting with the student athletes. These young men and women are about as fine a people you’ll ever meet in your life. I love to talk to people and getting to know these student athletes has been one of the more amazing experiences in my life. I have people stop me that I don’t recognize and they say, “I work out at the gym, we talk about this and this.” I’ve got to tell you a story about Fine Unga. He used to be a running back under Mike Price. I’ve seen him around for years. He looks like he could still play. One of his relatives, I think it was his nephew, was BYU’s all-time leading rusher, Harvey Unga. I’ve been a Chicago Bears fan since I was a little kid. I just mentioned it to Fine and asked if it was a relative of his who got drafted by Chicago. We got to talking and I mentioned to him that one of the things on my bucket list is to go back to Bears Stadium to see a Bears game. Later on, said to me, “Well, if Harvey makes the team, we’ll go back and see a game.” I just spaced it off again and then he brought me a hat that said, “Number 45, Harvey Unga.” I said, “What is up with this?” He said, “Harvey made the team.” I said, “Wow, that’s cool!” He said, “You pick the game and we’ll go back.” 24 RL: Did you get seats on the sideline? TV: We are going back on August 15, 2013 to see the Bears game at the Chicago Stadium versus the San Diego Chargers. One of the other notables was Frank Otis who played basketball for us. I’d be out and about and he’d stop me and I’d get to know him. RL: Did you get to play basketball with Damien? You couldn’t pull a pick on him. TV: Damien’s about five leagues ahead of me. He’d probably jump over the top of me. There again, Damien is another fine man. I was in a meeting and Kyle Tresnack stopped me because he recognized me. Bonnie and I are the ones with the towels behind the basket and we wave them at the opposing players when they’re trying to make free throws. He picked up on that. The things you pick up on and just these wonderful experiences, you cannot put a price tag on them. It’s just part of the overall experience up here. RL: With Thompson, there was an era when we started having more strategic planning on campus, which falls in line with what you were seeing in facilities management. I don’t know if the two are related or if it was just individuals that happened to be working on the same kinds of things. After President Thompson, we got Ann Milner, who is very highly thought of and I have not heard of anyone who was not sad to see her step down. TV: I am among those. I’ve known President Milner for a long time. I knew her when she was working for continuing education. Right after she became president here in about 2004 or 2005, we had a request from her to tour the infrastructure of the campus. She was very interested in the infrastructure of the campus wanted to 25 go see the chilled water plant, and the heat plant, and wanted to go through the tunnels. I didn’t know quite how to take this. Kevin Hansen assigned me to take President Milner on a tour. RL: Through all the mole holes on the campus? TV: Some of the places I’d say, “President Milner, you really don’t want to go down here.” She’s the only one that wanted to know how this place worked and what the infrastructure was like. We didn’t have any centralized air conditioning on this campus until 1968. They put two lithium bromide steam powered absorption chillers in the basement of the science lab building. As the campus grew, we had to add another central chiller. It was our first centrifugal that was installed in a separate vault way below basement grade on the south end of the science lab building. Once we got the new electric powered centrifugal in place, we abandoned the old absorption chillers which were a maintenance nightmare because they were old and antiquated. RL: It’s like the difference between air conditioning and swamp coolers. TV: Pretty much. The absorbers were an energy hog, very inefficient, troublesome, and a constant maintenance issue. The centrifugal at the time was a 1250 ton carrier and it pretty much took care of the campus. We’re talking the early 1980’s. The campus continued to grow and expand and we were running that chiller for all it was worth. We had no redundancy. We didn’t have a backup plan if that chiller went down. I remember on a July 4th weekend in the late 1990’s, the central campus chiller went down. At the same time, we had a stand-alone unit at 26 the Browning Center, which was installed during construction in the late 1960’s that went down on the same day. This was July 4th weekend, we had two chillers down and we had nowhere to turn. We couldn’t get anyone up here because people were out of town. We finally got ahold of someone from Carrier Corporation and he worked on the central chiller throughout most of the weekend. The Browning Center chiller was 24 feet down and it had two lines, one is the chilled water line that goes to the building and the other is the condensing line which goes to the cooling towers. The ground shifted and sheered the condenser lines, so we started digging. We had to bring in great big track hoes and we just started digging and digging. When we got down there we ran across all these cables that were sagging. Those were the feeder cables to the transformers in the basement. We had to get electricians up here to take care of that. In the meantime, we struck hardpan and hit groundwater and the basement of the Browning Center started to flood. You wonder how many things could go wrong with that project. Scott Jensen was the director of the Browning Center and had events scheduled. Needless to say, he was pretty anxious to get this done. An employee named Destry Labrum and I tried to line up electricians and anybody we could find. I lived here for two or three days until we got that done. I hardly slept at all. I remember telling Destry that the sweetest sound I’ve ever heard in my life was that central campus chiller. There was a reason we used to have earphones right there at the door. That thing was a high pitched screamer. 27 At that time, I thought that that old carrier finally getting back online was the prettiest sound I’ve heard in my life. It underscored the whole idea that if we lose a chiller, we’re dead in the water. That started the process rolling. In the meantime, we were doing a make-do kind of thing. We took out the old absorption chillers and we kept adding new chillers, but I did a lot of studies, which showed that we were still running out of capacity. The campus was growing faster than what we could keep up with and what we could support. I think that was part of the reason why President Milner wanted to see what was going on. I explained to her everything that we were doing. I even took her down to the vault with the old screamer and we both had our hands over our ears. We needed more capacity and redundancy in our plant. RL: She was very successful in her time in getting funding for new buildings and for remodeling on campus. We had Elizabeth Hall… TV: There was some visionary stuff going on with Vice President Simkins. He could see the need, so the cooling towers were in place before we got the central plant. President Milner was successful in convincing people to support the new chilled water plant. We’re talking 5 or 6 million dollars. Now, we have full redundancy. We are totally backed up. If we lose a chiller, we have total back up. Same with the heat plant. RL: We’ll continue as we get the funding for the new science building. TV: That’s right. We have capacity there to handle it. RL: Were you around during the construction of the science buildings or was that already in place? 28 TV: The science lab constructed before I arrived as part of the major building boom on campus, which happened between 1968 and 1972. RL: So you would have been here as a student? TV: I would have been here as a student. As a matter of fact, I took classes from Park Guymon and we had our labs in the science building. RL: You’ll come full circle because now they will get a new building. TV: That is a good thing. Honestly, the science labs have been a maintenance nightmare for us. Back then, the way they used to fireproof everything was with that spray-on asbestos. We have to be careful because they can’t do a lot in that building without removing the asbestos first. We can’t even work on things. It’s old and worn out. A lot of the components, like the exhaust fans on the roof, you can’t get parts for anymore because they don’t make them. We have to buy brand new exhaust fans with a little bit of a different configuration and adapt them to keep the building operational. RL: You described President Milner as very much hands-on from the ground up. I would imagine that having that type of an administrator makes life a little easier for facilities management operations. That area did not report directly to the president, it always reported to a vice president, is that correct? TV: That’s correct. RL: You just mentioned Vice President Al Simkins. Was there someone else in his place prior to his arrival that you remember? Were there influences on facilities management? 29 TV: The first vice president I remember really well was Dr. Folger who was a very personable type of guy and a very intelligent individual and he was very approachable. Even being a lowly draftsman, I was able to talk to him on a limited basis. I was very rank conscious, but he was very approachable. He came from the business end of things and had a doctorate in business. I wasn’t here too many years when Dr. Folger retired. RL: Did he come in from faculty? TV: He came in from faculty I believe. He could have been an academic dean. After that was Dr. Jerry Story. I didn’t interact with Dr. Story very much. Bob Folsom interacted with him quite a bit as far as anything to do with the campus. I didn’t really know the man very well. He seemed like he was a nice enough guy and he’d talk to you, but I wasn’t able to interact with him on a one-on-one basis. After that it was Dr. Simkins. RL: He was here for quite a while. TV: Until Dr. Tarbox showed up. RL: That would have been about 2005. With Al Simkins, you mentioned earlier that he had been interested in setting the plan in place to prevent catastrophes and to plan ahead for some redundancy and so forth. TV: Dr. Simkins was the visionary. He could see what was coming down the pike and saw the need to combine his departments. He saw what had to happen and was able to implement that. I was able to interact with Dr. Simkins through one of my all-time favorite people named Craige Hall. RL: Who became vice president over there in 1991. 30 TV: Yes, he was the associate vice president, I believe. I knew Craige when he was the director of the library here. We did some remodeling projects. He was one of the most approachable and fun guys I’ve ever been around, a super golfer who was terrific. We had a lot in common and he was very approachable. I just can’t say enough good things about Craige Hall. RL: He was the director of the library for twenty something years and also happened to be put over the computer center. I believe when he went to the vice president’s office, they moved the computer center so that it was still under him. He had quite a variety of things. He had physical plant, all of the budget and financial stuff, the athletes and the NCAA relationships and all of the facilities things. You just thought you went to a lot of meetings. TV: I remember when Craige got appointed to what we called mahogany row on the third floor. My previous dealings with certain faculty members that had been promoted to that level had not been very good. I got the feeling that once they were promoted to that level that they became very rank conscious. I didn’t know what to expect when I had my first meeting with Craige Hall in his new office. I was kind of sitting at attention and he looked at me kind of funny and said, “Thomas, how the hell are you?” I said, “Fine.” I guess I still didn’t loosen up enough because he took his shoes off and put his feet on the desk and said, “Well, take your shoes off, put your feet up, let’s talk about things.” It just put me at ease. We were able to interact in that manner, keeping in mind that he’s still at vice president level and I’m not, but he had that way of putting you at ease and he’d listen to you and address your concerns. He was every bit a manager who 31 could bring people together. Define the term “manager,” that would be Craige Hall. I got to know his wife, Deanna, very well also. She was a wonderful person too. Those two matched up so well. I remember some of the stories Craige would tell me about the younger days when he was running for student body president of high school and some of the things they did like an airplane drop with all these leaflets. They got in trouble for that for all the litter they were throwing out of airplanes. Some of the stories that he would tell were just absolutely wonderful. I was able to interact very well with Craige Hall. He’s a great guy. Vice President Tarbox was without a doubt one of the smartest individuals I’ve ever been around. He is extremely intelligent. RL: He didn’t come in from faculty, he came in from outside. TV: That’s right. He came in from the Board of Regents. We always called him Norm from the Board of Regents. You found out early on that if you have a meeting with Norm, you better have all your ducks in a row and be able to answer any question that he could throw at you. He’s very detailed and highly intelligent, but he was kind of pressing the need for the new chilled water plant and later on the new boiler addition in our heat plant to replace the two worn out boilers. Both of the boilers were over 50 years old. On the facilities side, he was very much the visionary. No doubt, Craige had some influence there. RL: You had Simkins who laid all the ground work. 32 TV: He did lay all the groundwork. Norm was able to take over and run with it. Our whole energy management program as we see it was championed by Norm. RL: Okay, that’s been the era that we’ve been in for the last few years with this ongoing green project and so forth. TV: Actually, the revolving loan fund. He championed this idea. We hired a young man as an energy manager, Jake Cain, who ended up working for me. He undertook this project to prove to administration that conserving energy and revolving and taking the energy savings and reinvesting it in the institution was actually a good idea. I remember he presented that to Norm and it’s something I’d been pressing for years to get a portion of our energy savings to reinvest in new energy products. We basically proved to Norm that we were getting a much higher rate of return on our investment through energy savings than we were in any other investment that the university had at the time. Norm championed that whole idea and we now have other universities coming to us and asking, “How did you do that?” That’s the type of visionary he was. He still is as a matter of fact. I think the world of Norm. He and Craige are wonderful. Every once in a while I run across Simkins in the grocery store and of course my wife, Bonnie, knows everybody. RL: She was in Human Resources for a while, wasn’t she? TV: Yes, that’s right. At one time she was working with the football team under Dave Arslanian. She was in charge of all the travel arrangements and had to feed the athletes and things like that. These are 18 or 19-year- old kids that have never been away from home before and she was kind of the team mom. I met her in 33 1990 when she was working for Sam Zeveloff. She went from Sam to football, and then went to work for Nandi in Student Affairs. She worked for Jan Winneford for a while and then went to Human Resources. As a consequence, she knows everybody on this campus. My standing joke when it comes to Bonnie is, “People know me not as Tom, but as Bonnie’s husband.” My real name is Bonnie’s Husband Van Cleave. I kid her a lot about that. I could carry on about Bonnie, but that’s not part of this here. We just have so much fun together. RL: Well, she’s part of the campus history too. TV: She is. Absolutely. She was my gift. She keeps me grounded and we get along so wonderfully. RL: In your working with buildings and construction around campus and so forth, you probably also had involvement with some of the deans and the different colleges. Anyone in particular that had an impact? TV: Warren Hill. I enjoyed working with Warren. RL: Warren Hill who is kind of grounded came here from Pueblo, Colorado and he got here in the early nineties. TV: Right. I got to know Warren. I still see him on occasion. He’s one of the greatest guys and super smart, very analytical. We got along pretty well. He was very influential and he has the type of personality that you go out of your way to try to help him out. People just gravitate to him. He’s very outgoing and just a great person to be around. My interaction with other deans has not been that extensive. RL: We had some long-term people like Dean Sadler over in social sciences. 34 TV: I took a class with Dean Sadler right after he got here. I think he got here in 1968. I’ve known Dr. Sadler since forever ago and he’s just another one of those great individuals. I interacted with him quite a bit. He was super charismatic and a great individual. He’d appreciate anything you could do for him and he’d listen to you. RL: They had some major problems in the social science building. TV: We had several problems in that building, which was built in the sixties We had insect infestations. I know that. We tried re-caulking and that building was another constant battle for us. The infrastructure is very dated. We also had heating and air conditioning problems. RL: I was thinking about the leaky roof. TV: Yes, we did have roof leaks. That building is an old building and it’s in need of a total renovation. It’s been a nightmare for us. RL: Was that one of the first major buildings on this campus? TV: Yes, it was built in that time period between 1968 and 1970. I do a lot of analysis of these buildings and there was a big building boom on this campus that took place between 1968 and 1973. The whole north end of the campus was totally torn up at that time. The education building was built soon thereafter. I remember seeing a campus master plan at one time and there was supposed to be a skyway bridge between the social science building and the education building. You can still see where it was supposed to be, especially on the social science building. On the second floor, midway on the east side of the building, there are some glass panels that don’t quite match up with the rest of them. At one time 35 they were double doors. We finally realized that the sky bridge was not going to be built, so there was a remodeling project to get rid of those double glass doors. We’ve had our share of leaky roofs. Right after Mike Perez got here, we had one of those canyon winds that was super bad. We lost a lot of roofs that day. Perez and I went to the top of the stadium to see what the damage was. We were out there hanging on for dear life watching the roof of the Allied Health Science Building disappear. RL: That building was fairly new. TV: Yes, at that time it was fairly new. I also remember all of our campus roofs had to be red. They had the tar and gravel build up type of roof made with what they call Red Scoria, which is lava rock. Canyon winds tend to pick those things up and make unguided missiles out of them. We replaced a lot of windshields after that windstorm. RL: Broken windshields of the employees? TV: Students and employees had broken windshields from the flying Red Scoria, especially in the A-1 parking lot. The social science building had that Red Scoria roof as did administration. As we started replacing roofs, we started the single ply roofs. That’s what started the process rolling. We still had to have red because those were the campus standards at the time. I have a confession. The first white roof on this campus is on the science lab building. I was responsible for that project and I picked white. RL: Were you thinking of heating? 36 TV: Absolutely. I was thinking about the air conditioning and the reflection of that roof in the summertime. I kind of violated the campus standard and I don’t know if Bob Folsom realized that or not. Anyway, that is my confession. RL: They can’t get you for it now. TV: They can’t come after me. Now we are all going with cool roof as our standard. The Stromberg Center roof is being replaced now. I think the Browning Center still has the Red Scoria roof on it as does student services. RL: When the student union building was remodeled and added to, was the roof changed then? TV: That’s right. That was built with the cool roof concept. There are a lot of lighting innovations and a lot of variable frequency drives in there. In a nutshell, rather than a big fan system with a 100 horsepower motor that ramps up right away, when you hit the switch, the variable frequency drives allow you to ramp up slowly to avoid sudden starts and a big spike in your energy consumption. That’s hard on the motor, the bearings, the belts and you name it. There are two different ways that we’re billed for energy. First, is our consumption in kilowatt hours and second, is our demand in kilowatts. When you get a big spike on an electric motor and you’ve got them all coming on within a certain timeframe, your bill goes up. The variable frequency drives are now our standard. We started incorporating those in the late 1990’s. Another great energy saving feature of VFD’s is that they provide us with the ability to run our fan systems at a reduced percentage of total load, depending upon the demands of the building. 37 RL: I would imagine those white roofs have made quite a bit of difference in reflection. TV: Absolutely. We have done so many things and those cool roofs have definitely paid off. RL: You’ve been here long enough that you were here to deal with that rounded cover that we had over the library. We used to watch when the wind came up and it would be moving and buckling. TV: Are you talking about the skylight? RL: Yes. TV: I remember having to replace that. There was a wind storm and we had the guys from the carpenter shop throwing ropes and cables on trying to tie it down and doing anything we could do to keep that thing from getting airborne. Of course, it was tearing up the roof all the way around it. RL: We made sure we didn’t have to walk from wing to wing in there because we didn’t know if the roof would disappear and you’d get sucked out too. TV: It was all hands on deck trying to save that skylight. It’s one of those things where it’s put in place and you don’t know what the consequences are going to be until you get a severe event like some of those that we had. There have been some innovations that have failed us. The Dee Events Center was built with an epoxy type of a roof. It was a much different configuration than what you see on the roof now. RL: Epoxy like super glue? 38 TV: Yes. They’d just build it up and coat it in fiberglass and epoxy. The downside is that it was not exactly proven technology at the time, and after a while the combination of all the elements the thing started to peel and we had leaks in the Dee Events Center. The roof looked terrible. It looked like a giant hamburger bun. Through the process of evolution, we ended up with the roof that we have now. It was one of those things that didn’t work out very well for us. Sometimes learning experiences come hard and that was one of them. RL: We’ve progressed through the different buildings. We had the student services building and Elizabeth Hall which is a little bit different. You said that we got away from the campus standard when we got away from the red roof. What about a standard as far as bricks or building colors? TV: Actually, that is still in effect. The brick color is called golden buff. That’s our campus standard brick and you see it everywhere. RL: Except the business building. How did that happen to turn out the way it did? TV: That was a sore spot with Bob Folsom. We had a dean at the time that wanted something unique. RL: What year would that have been? TV: That would have been about 1980 or 1982. It was one of the first major buildings built after I arrived on campus. I remember Bob Folsom was very upset about the glass, but Sterling Sessions forced that issue through. He was a very forceful individual and he was determined that he was going to have his way and he got it. It was a major sore spot with Bob Folsom that he was able to do that. There 39 are still some elements on that building that are the standard brick, but it isn’t pronounced. RL: At that time, the glass building would have been the trend, wouldn’t it? TV: Correct, but Bob was the architect and everything had to match. The student service building is also somewhat innovative with the exposed concrete and things like that. The architect’s name was Astel Erickson. I was involved in that building. We had some nightmares in the student services building too. From an energy standpoint, it was highly inefficient. We have all these great big high intensity discharge lighting. They are 175 watt HID and 250 HID and they were pointed upward through a skylight so that people could enjoy the ambience at night. I remember fighting him about that. They’re up there 24 feet and I wondered how in the world we were going to change those light bulbs. I was basically told that was a maintenance problem. So, we just let them burn out. That was our energy efficiency. It no longer shines up to the skylight in the middle of the night. I never saw the architect drive by too often to see that. He was the same architect that did the Allied Health Science Building phase one. We had a lot of leaks in that building from the sloped glass. You’d get a pinhole and it’d start to work, but the wind would make it move and it would leak. We’ve done that about three times to try and keep the leaks out and it still leaks. It’s just inherent in that type of structure. RL: The new dorms have normal windows and no big glass feature. It looks as though the new Stromberg addition is going to have a lot of glass. Is that going to 40 have a lot of glass in an open area? What will that do in terms of glass facing toward the west as far as requiring more air conditioning because of the heat with the late afternoon sun? TV: Remember when I was saying that if engineers built everything they’d all look like Wal-Marts? That building was kind of an ugly building and it needed some help. It was not a very welcoming building. I see both sides of the equation. West facing glass is an energy manager’s nightmare, but you have to be sensitive to the overall picture of things. That building is going to be spectacular. They’ve done everything they can as far as minimizing the impact on the HVAC. We have the low emissivity glass that is going to be throughout. The sun shining through is still going to have an impact, but we’re trying to minimize that impact. RL: Has it grown as the project has progressed? TV: No, this was from square one. RL: Was it? The early drawings that we had seen, it was a much smaller approach and it was really just going to be an entryway. Now it looks like major facilities are being added. TV: It’s funny you should mention that because I kind of picked up on that myself. From the conceptual drawings that I saw, this has grown. I’m not in the project management end anymore, so I’m not sure how this evolved. It is going to be a big addition. RL: Now you’re doing the energy analysis, not necessarily having anything to do with construction? 41 TV: Yes. I do a lot of energy analysis and scheduling of our buildings. We waste a lot of energy at night because the lights are on and nobody is home. The building automatic and control is a complex system where all the buildings are tied into our central automation center. Of course, we have controllers, wires, panels, and variable frequency drives in all of our fan systems so there are a lot of things that can go wrong. Part of my job is to look at all the spikes in consumption. I get read outs as often as I want to download them. I can see all the spikes in consumption and I figure out what is causing the spike or the increase in the loads in a specific building. We are soon going to be able to meter every building on this campus for electricity, chilled water, steam, water, domestic water, and natural gas, but to do that we have to have all of these meters installed. They all have to have certain set points and parameters to set them. Another part of my job is to dig out all of the information for a particular building and what it requires so they can adjust the control set points to the demands of the building. RL: While you’re working on this project, have you been able to find things that have required big changes that you were able to influence? TV: We’ve made a lot of big changes. Have you been to Dee Events Center lately? RL: Not lately. TV: The primary responsibility for this belongs to Jake, but I’m kind of a sounding board too. That kid is smart. Don’t tell him I said that, okay? In the Dee Events Center arena, we had forty-something 1500 watt HID lamps. Including the ballasts that were probably pulling at least 2,000 watts a piece. Multiply that by forty-something and all of a sudden you’ve got a big electricity load and also a 42 big heat load because of the heat coming off the bulbs. The amount of light you get off an incandescent light bulb is about 10 or 15 percent of the actual energy input and the rest is all heat. That gives you an idea of what goes on at the top of that dome where all the heat rises anyway. We’re using all LED’s now. I give the credit to Jake for this one. RL: That’s quite a bit cooler, isn’t it? TV: Absolutely, and it’s reduced the load on our chilled water plant. Plus, they’re so quiet. The humming from the bulbs is gone. The first time I was in there I thought, “My gosh, it’s quiet in here and all the lights are on.” It’s one of those side benefits from an operations perspective. We had so much trouble with those ballasts on those HID lamps. The heat was killing them and we were replacing some pretty high priced ballasts on a frequent basis as well as the light bulbs. Those LED’s are supposed to last for about 20 years or some phenomenal number. It cuts back on the maintenance burden. This is a win-win. We actually had engineers show up to see how we did it. We had the University of Utah show up and ask how we did it. We have people calling us from all over the nation asking how we did it and they want to come see it. Needless to say, that makes Kevin Hansen just delighted. One of his goals was that he wanted people to come to Weber State and see what we’re doing, rather than us going to them to see what they’re doing. RL: You save travel money. TV: Absolutely. Plus, it puts us on the map. It’s one of those really neat things that we’re doing. Have you seen all the solar panels on the roof of the Swenson 43 Building? That supplies all the hot water for the swimming pool. It’s almost a freebie. It cuts back on spending for natural gas. RL: Well, it cuts back on the whole global warming thing as well. TV: Absolutely, anything we can do. We’ve also seen a huge savings from our central chilled water plant. We send water out of the chilled water plant at 44 degrees. It goes down the campus through the pipes and goes to all the buildings and it comes back to us at about 56 degrees. When it hits the building, you don’t want 44 degree air coming out of the registers, so we temper it by running a boiler. It hits the reheat coils which are supplied by hot water. So, basically, we’re cooling off all this air and then heating it up at the room level. There’s something wrong with this picture. So, when we had to shut down our central steam system for the new boiler installation, we thought, “Let’s use this opportunity to accomplish several things, like some much needed repairs in our tunnel system and raise the set point on our chilled water plant to where we are now pushing down 54 to 55 degree water, and let’s see what happens.” Last year, we hit one million dollars in savings over our base year by doing just that. Rocky Mountain Power has kind of a love-hate relationship with us. They’ve built new plants to supply us, but we’re saving a lot of energy and a lot of money for the campus. Those are the fun things that we get to do. I remember Jake telling me that, after we raised the set-point on our chillers, Rocky Mountain Power sent their technicians to our sub-station on two separate occasions to verify that the meter was working properly. The energy savings were that substantial. 44 We’re working on projects now where I’m still identifying each individual fan system and scheduling when it runs and how often we should change the filters from both an energy perspective and an operational cost savings perspective. It takes more energy to push air through a dirty filter than it does a clean one. We still have to maintain a certain quality of air coming through our campus. I think we overachieve in that aspect. We’re using a Merv-13 filter, to replace the old Merv-8. The rating has to do with the amount of particles that are trapped. The higher the number, the more particles you trap. With these Merv- 13’s we’re able to maintain the air quality and we only have single stage filters instead of two-stage filters to do the same thing. We’re saving money on the operations end and by changing them on a regular basis we save energy. You make it a win-win situation for everybody. The customer is happy and we’re happy. We’re saving money from not only energy, but from our operations maintenance budget. RL: I was going to ask you if we are making enough power that it does not have to be purchased by Rocky Mountain. TV: We’re not to that point yet. We have several proposals in the works. Right now between the Davis campus and the union building, we might be at 8 percent of our total usage. We have plans in the works for Davis in particular. There’s a lot of wide open space out there. It’s in the planning stages and we’re running the numbers to see if we can fund it. We want to generate at least 40 percent of our energy consumption for the Davis. This is in the future. That’s what keeps me hanging around and showing up to see what happens next. 45 RL: Could you have windmills? TV: We’re thinking about that. The permitting is a nightmare. I think a guy at the mouth of Weber Canyon found that out the hard way that it’s a nightmare. You have to have a certain velocity of wind. The mouth of the canyon is really high velocity wind. RL: It can’t be sporadic. It has to be steady. TV: You don’t want this thing to get airborne on you. It has to be somewhat constant wind flow rather than in the morning the wind blows like heck at the mouth of the canyon and it dies off in the afternoon. I don’t know if Davis has the velocity. There are a whole bunch of studies that we have to do. RL: Solar panels are good anyway. TV: Solar panels are great. The cost is coming down and the efficiency is going up and that’s why I bought them for my house. I’m looking at a four to five year payback on my investment with all of the tax incentives and rebates applied. They become more and more viable all the time. It’s also a good recruiting tool. Students show up and they see the solar panels everywhere. The new generation is thinking green and they pick up on these things. It’s a recruitment tool, an energy efficiency tool, and it cuts down on the wear and tear on our equipment. RL: Earlier you talked about people who mentored you over the years. Have you had opportunities to pay it forward? TV: I try and take every opportunity. We have a bunch of young guys up there. RL: A lot of enthusiasm, but you have to curb it a little bit, don’t you? 46 TV: I’m able to mentor these young guys and show them the how and the why. Jake is to the point now that he can fly on his own. He knows about the politics and how to get things done. I’m still kind of a sounding board and we discuss things. In my many years there, we had a lot of people who were content to complain about their position in life, but didn’t want to do anything about it. I remember one young man that used to work for me. He came to me and told me that he wants my job. I said, “Okay, well here’s what you have to do.” I started laying it out for him and said, “You need your degree and you already have one of those, but the next person that sits in my chair will have a master’s degree.” His response was, “I can’t do that.” I said, “If you still want my job, this is the way you’re going to have to get it.” He decided not to go back to school and all I heard were his reasons why not rather than, “I can do that.” The person who took over in my position has a master’s degree. It has become more prevalent in what is now a profession thanks to Mike Perez and Kevin Hansen. It is now a profession, not just a bunch of maintenance guys in bib overalls. RL: It’s not an internship. TV: That’s right. We have some bright young guys coming up. There’s a young plumber up there named Dustin. He’s a real character in his own right. He wants to know how things work. He’s planning his future, he’s taking classes, and he’s getting his degree. I have an electrician who is the same way. They can see what they have to do to succeed. RL: It’s not just hands-on, it’s got to be an underpinning understanding. 47 TV: Right. The hands-on is the foundation. You know how things work, but now you have to figure out why it works. Those are the type of guys you try and mentor. There’s another young lady who works for us named Jenn Bodine. She’s about the smartest person I’ve run across too. She has her master’s degree, but now she’s curious about mechanical type stuff. She’s going back to school to get her mechanical engineering degree. I say, “Hey Jenn, I’m going down on campus, do you want to come? Let’s go see how this works.” That’s what I get to do. That’s another fun part of my job. I get to do those things now, whereas I didn’t have time before. RL: Okay, so we’ve touched on your time as a student and how you’ve progressed professionally. We’ve talked about your relationship with administrators and other individuals on campus. What haven’t we covered that’s important from your time here at Weber? TV: One of the more outstanding personalities from our facility is John Burkes. John was born and raised in Tupelo, Mississippi, and came to Weber State University about four years after I did. I met John one day at the old racquetball courts in the Swenson Gym. He was looking for a game and so was I. Over the course of the next 20 plus years, we became quite good friends. We played golf together, played a lot of racquetball and went on fishing trips together, the most notable of which was to the Kenai River in Alaska. I learned how to play racquetball by taking classes from Lyn Corbridge. Even though “Corb” is a few years older than I am, I could never beat him one-on-one. I also played a lot of racquetball with Ron Deeter and Scott Loughton. Mike Vause is another real character that I 48 came to know quite well. The English Department seemed to have a lot of them for some reason. RL: Connections that one wouldn’t necessarily associate with as someone in your position and yet it’s more of a social thing, but I’m sure it comes in handy as you’re trying to do your job. TV: It’s those intangibles that you cannot put your finger on. It’s not all about salary and benefits. It’s the other perks like the interpersonal relationships, the gym time, and the ability to interact with the deans and professors. RL: Let’s face it, in higher education regardless of your position, you’re not here for the money. TV: You’re not going to die rich from this place, but it’s good all the way around. You have to look at the total picture. That’s what kept me here for all these years. Many years ago, the student body president here at the time, Mike Aarve, wanted a “W” on the mountain like the big “Y” at BYU and the “U” at the University of Utah. I remember it went through a whole bunch of stages and I asked, “You want that thing where?” He wanted it above the campus. There’s a road there that sits right up on the side of the bald face hill. I thought, “How in the world are we going to do that?” You can’t pump the concrete up there. At the time, all they had was a bunch of rocks or a white wash that was the “W.” Anything to do with concrete or anything like that was totally impractical. So, they hatched this idea that they wanted a living “W” on the mountain made out of trees. This was in 1982, and I remember that specifically because Dean Hurst 49 and I were on top of the administration building with a transit and we had guys all over the side of this mountain laying out this “W.” RL: Was Dean over in development at the time? TV: I think he was. I had a broken collarbone at the time from the same motorcycle that I got my separated shoulder from. I had the radio and Dean had the transit and we were making these guys move all these 2x6’s. They were going all over this mountain laying out this great big “Flaming W” and it was huge. The students all got together and raised the funds. We put a drip irrigation system in with a pump and I think the pump house is still there. I can’t remember the exact number, but we hauled up thousands of trees. RL: What kind of trees? TV: They were Dwarf Sumac. We had a daisy chain of students and football players and digging them in with peat moss and we got all those dog gone trees up there. When we finished, we walked down and started admiring our work. Later on, it became apparent that something was going on up there because the trees were disappearing. What happened was we planted all those trees and the deer went nuts. They had a built-in smorgasbord. The official parting line was, “It’s all the alkaline in the soil that killed the trees.” A young man in our office was doing layout work for the new “Flaming W” a couple of years ago and he told me that the stumps are still there. That was one of our more notable, funny failures. RL: Oops. Was that paid for with student funds? TV: I don’t know exactly how they paid for it all, but I think lot of it was donor funds. 50 RL: Well, it was a good idea. TV: Nobody researched that very well. RL: Now we have the flaming “W” that’s lit just a couple of times a year. Is that done on extension cords or did you actually have to wire the mountain side? TV: Actually, they have a portable generator they take up there. Remember I was talking about, Lynn Kraaima? That was his responsibility. He’d haul a generator up there every year for homecoming and light the “W.” It’s a different configuration now than what it was back then. It’s all done by generator now. I don’t know who’s taken that over since he died. He was one of the other great guys I met up here. I’ve met a lot of great people up here. RL: There’s got to be a reason why we all come back and we all stay here. TV: That’s right. There’s got to be a reason to get us to keep getting out of bed in the morning. RL: Is there anything else that you want to talk about? TV: I could talk forever about this place, but those are the more notables. RL: I certainly appreciate you taking the time to come and talk with us. TV: I’m honored. I’m really honored with this. RL: You’ve given us a totally different perspective of the campus. Weber is made up of a lot of people at different levels with different responsibilities and you’ve shared some things about what you’ve worked with over the years. It all started out with a Weber education. 51 TV: That’s right. It all started out with trying to catch those old fish in front of the campus. We do have an aerial photo of campus that was taken in the early 1960’s that shows that house and the pond. RL: What was that house used for? TV: I’m not too sure what the house was used for at the time. We had a lot of residences that were along Harrison Blvd. There used to be a road that came right down past the bell tower. I remember parking my car there so I could go to my classes in the TUB. It connected with the road by the administration building and there was a row of houses in there. The university acquired a lot of houses over the years. RL: Speaking of white buildings and houses. Were you here when the president’s residence burned down? TV: I was not. I came right after that. That’s when Joseph Bishop was here. RL: So your memories are of different white buildings? TV: Yes, this was on Harrison Boulevard and the aerial photo shows it. It’s a validation of what I think I remember from my junior high school days. RL: That’s wonderful. Thank you for taking the time to come talk with us. We appreciate it. TV: Thank you for the opportunity. This has been great for me. It’s been a lot of fun. 52