Oral History Program David Walling Interviewed by Lorrie Rands 9 January & 6 February 2024 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah David Walling Interviewed by Lorrie Rands 9 January & 6 February 2024 Copyright © 2025 by Weber State University, Stewart Library Mission Statement The Oral History Program of the Stewart Library was created to preserve the institutional history of Weber State University and the Davis, Ogden and Weber County communities. By conducting carefully researched, recorded, and transcribed interviews, the Oral History Program creates archival oral histories intended for the widest possible use. Interviews are conducted with the goal of eliciting from each participant a full and accurate account of events. The interviews are transcribed, edited for accuracy and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewees (as available), who are encouraged to augment or correct their spoken words. 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 and Davis County Community Oral History Collection includes interviews conducted by Weber State University faculty, staff and students, and other members of the community. The interviews cover various topics including city government, diversity, personal everyday life experiences and other recollections regarding the history of the Weber and Davis County areas. ____________________________________ 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: Walling, David, an oral history by Lorrie Rands, 9 January & 6 February 2024, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, Special Collections & University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. iii Abstract: The following is an oral history interview with David Walling, conducted on January 9 and February 6, 2024 at his home in Ogden, Utah, with Lorrie Rands. Walling talks about his memories of growing up in Ogden and various parts of the world with his Navy father. He also talks about his memories of being in DeMolay and his time at Weber State College. Also present is Raegan Baird. LR: Today is January 9, 2024. We are in the home of David Walling in Ogden, Utah. We are conducting an oral history interview for the Weber State University and Weber Davis Community oral history. I am Lorrie Rands conducting and Raegan Baird is on the camera. All right. Thank you, David, for your willingness to share. I'm always appreciative of that. So, let's just start with when and where you were born? DW: I was born in Ogden, Utah, at the Thomas D. Dee Memorial Hospital, May 9, 1963. I was born to my parents, Eugene Curtley Walling, retired as a captain in the United States Navy, and to my mother, Grace Ann Hall Walling. She was a third-grade school teacher. LR: Was the hospital the one that was right there on 30th? DW: Thomas D. Dee Memorial was at 26th and Harrison, now a park. LR: Okay, I was thinking of the one that was right over here. DW: Yeah. Thomas D. Dee Memorial Hospital's over on 26th and Harrison. LR: Okay. Sorry, go ahead. DW: So, initially, we were here at the house. My mom was pregnant, and she had come home ‘cause at that point in time my dad was stationed in San Diego, California. He was the executive officer of the USS Fiske, DDG-9 destroyer. Because he was going to be gone for six-month tours, she always came 1 home to her mom and her dad. Just before she was to give birth, she got word to my dad, and my dad was able to make it from his ship. It was a long process of ship transfer, helicopter to aircraft carrier, aircraft carrier to San Diego, San Diego civilian flight to Salt Lake, rent a car, come up to Ogden. He made it just before I was born. LR: That's cool. DW: Then after, he had—sorry, I get emotional about this. My dad just really tried to be there for me. I miss him. But anyway, he made it, and then four days later he had to return. He had to make it back to the ship. So, my mom and my grandpa and grandma work here taking care of me. Once his ship had returned, my mom packed up and drove back to San Diego and met him there at their apartment. That's where my life started, with my dad—and mom—in the Navy. After San Diego, he got orders to go to Newport, Rhode Island for the Naval War College, for his command staff college. After graduation from there, then we moved over to just outside of Paris, France, where the European Command was at. Housing wasn't available for military personnel yet in France, so we stayed at a hotel for six months. It was a very, very nice hotel, and we got to get to know the staff really well. That's where I got to meet my French lady, Monique le Grand. All the staff loved kids, and I was no exception. In fact, that hotel was where the [something in French] was created, back in King Louis’s era. After that, president de Gaulle, he wanted the European Command out of France, so they were moving over to Patch Barracks, Stuttgart, Germany. My dad was part of that move going out from France over to Germany, so then we found ourselves in housing in Germany on the base. They had turned 2 a German panzer, the stern, into an army base and headquarters for European Command, which is still there to this day. So, after our tour over in Stuttgart, Germany, then we went back to Newport, Rhode Island, where my dad took command of another destroyer, USS Fiske, DDG-842, and he did a year there. After that year of command, then he was back out doing command staff duties on three different aircraft carriers while we were still at Newport. Then he gets the orders, and he comes home, it was so funny. He comes home and he's shaking his head, and he goes, “I can't believe we got these orders.” “Well, what’s the orders, Dad?” He says, “We're going to Albuquerque. What in the hell is the Navy doing in Albuquerque?” I was so grateful. In Rhode Island we lived in two places; we lived in Portsmouth, Rhode Island and North Kingstown, Rhode Island. Portsmouth, Rhode Island, I called it the river house, ‘cause it was right on the riverside where the Narragansett River comes into the ocean. You have fresh water and seawater mixing, so you have a whole bunch of different types of fish. There was a rock jetty out in the backyard that you could go and fish, or you could jump off of it into the water and swim. The neighbors also had a floating dock out there that had a dive board, and their requirement was you had to be able to swim out to the dock and then be able to swim back without any help. If you could do that, then you could go out and play. I worked on my swimming to be able to get where I could go out there and do that. After the river house we went to what I called blueberry house because it was on Blueberry Lane and there were fresh blueberry plants all over the 3 place. It was a perfect place for a boy to live, because we had a small frog pond that would freeze over and we'd go ice skating. In the back, we had a big swamp and we could put on army fatigues and go tromping through the swamp and tromping through the skunk weed and get all stinky. Then there was woods out there that you could go through, and it was just a paradise for a little boy. Then after that, we moved to Albuquerque, and that was a totally different environment. I was not happy. It was dry, it was dead. I was used to the green; I didn't want just dry and dead. So, I was just biding my time in Albuquerque till we could get back to Utah. LR: I have a couple questions, if you don't mind. I know you're not very old, when you're in France, but you talk about Monique le Grand. Why do you remember her? DW: Well, because she befriended me. There wasn’t a whole lot of children at this hotel, so she kind of took me under her wing and would help me learn some French. To this day I can still remember a couple of songs that she had taught me. She was like a second mother to me. After we had gone, had checked out and went into the building, she kept track. In fact, when we were in the river house she came to visit. Then when we were in Albuquerque she came to visit. So, that's why she's my French lady. LR: That makes sense. About how old were you when you met her? DW: Let's see, that would have been ’66, so that would have been three. LR: Okay. So, when you moved to Germany, how old were you? DW: Four. LR: Okay. What are some of your memories of Germany? 4 DW: I remember the very tall, three-story, long, houses that were basically military barracks that they had redone the insides and made them into family units. So, you had lots of stairs, and then the top floor where the soldiers used to store their weapons and ammunition, and that was this huge indoor play area that had a pitched roof. You could go up in there and have their birthday parties when the weather was inclement. You could ride your ride-y toys up there because it was all wood floors, well-maintained. The Army had really done a really good job of recreating housing and being able to keep the wood flooring. They stained it and varnished it, and it was a beautiful, beautiful place. Then I remember these large areas that would have been where the soldiers would have fallen out into formation. Now this was our big yard play area with lots of sidewalks, so you could ride your bicycles, your ride-y toys, and I had a pedal car, so you could ride all those all over the place. Then of course, a lot of kids at Stuttgart. So, you know, there was playing tag, and hide and seek, and Rover-Rover, and all of the other games that kids play. They had one play area that had swings and stuff, but that was kind of far away for me as a little kid. I didn't really get into it because everything was like too big for me, so I stuck more around the housing area. LR: Okay. So, when you moved to Rhode Island from Stuttgart, how old were you? DW: That would have been ’69, so I would have been six. We were basically three years over in Germany. LR: Yeah, okay. So, you were a world traveler and you were only six years old? DW: [Laughing] Yeah. 5 LR: That's cool. DW: I can remember coming home because my dad had to go out, during Stuttgart, and had to go and do some stuff, so Mom flew home again because my grandpa was getting sick, and he was going to die. We came home and I was able to get an extra flight in, and I can actually remember flying in Lufthansa Airlines. I thought that was really cool. LR: So, Ogden was always home base? DW: Yes. LR: Okay. You talked a little bit about, Rhode Island and what you remember there. So, when you moved to New Mexico, you were nine? DW: Yeah. LR: So, you started school in Rhode Island. When you moved to New Mexico— DW: I was in the sixth grade at that point in time. LR: Talk little bit about the difference in culture and environment? DW: Okay. Culture. As a kid, you really don't get into it as much, but it was just the surroundings. I mean, here now we are in this—luckily my dad bought a house that had grass in the yard, and he paid a lot of money to maintain the grass, because that's a lot of water. A lot of the houses around there were already starting to go into minimal maintenance rock yards, rock gardens, and then a lot of people had swamp coolers and my dad insisted on having central air. So, it was kind of nice to have that difference. But in Albuquerque, every house is surrounded by cinder block walls on three sides, where in Rhode Island there was no fences other than for cattle. I mean, in houses, you could you can use other people's yards. It was just more open and it was green, lots of trees. Here in [Albuquerque] you 6 hardly saw a tree, and if it was, it was kind of an ugly thing. Then there was all of this gravel and dirt and dust. It just, to me, was ugly. I did not like Albuquerque. I mean, I knew why my dad was there. You know, it was his job, so I accepted that, but I didn't enjoy it. I tried to make the best of it. We had an arroyo, a floodplain, that was on the other side of the houses across the street, and we were playing in that a lot. My mom found out that if it's raining in the mountains, you get the kids out of the arroyo, because pretty soon flood water would come down. So, every once in a while, my mom would come yelling out, “Get out of there now!” We'd climb, and at that point in time it was all still dirt. Later, because the erosion was getting so bad, they cemented all of the arroyos. So, as we got older, now we had a “skate park.” We could take our skate boards. LR: Cool. How was school different? DW: Because of the basic Hispanic population, it was tougher. They were tougher kids. They weren't so soft, I guess you could say, as the New Englanders would be. They were street smart, street tough kids. You had to learn a totally new way of communicating and, you know, working with people. A lot of times you got bullied more because you were so, as they would say, milquetoast in comparison to them. You were innocent and unwise of what's going on, so they took advantage of you a lot of times. But I did find some friends that were nice, and we stuck together and if one of us got into trouble, the others would try to help and the whole bit. LR: Okay. So, because your dad was more in the command structure, was there ever a worry that he would be sent to Vietnam? 7 DW: Well, when he was with the USS Fisk, he was actually over in Vietnam. He was on a six-month tour out there. He was in support of Marines doing an amphibious assault on one of the portions of Vietnam, and his six-inch guns were the platform artillery for their beach assault. So, he actually did get—but he said they never got shot at. They just shot. LR: Okay. I realize you were really young and maybe didn't quite get that he was in that. DW: Yeah. At that time, the thing that really affected me in Albuquerque was watching the kids that were in high school getting ready to graduate. You’d get to know ‘em and they were kind of into the hippie thing and longer hair, and then all of a sudden, they get drafted and they're gone for a year and they come back and they're a totally different person. They weren't the happy-golucky kid that left. I remember this one kid, he was really messed up, and we could even tell he was messed up bad. One time I came up to him and started talking to him, and he stared right through me as if I didn't exist. That was first time that I had seen the thousand-yard stare. I didn't know what it was at the time, but I just knew it wasn't quite right. Later on, I learned what it was and I was like, “I've seen it.” LR: So, how long did your family stay in New Mexico? DW: We stayed until ’78, the early part of 78. My grandmother passed away, leaving the house to my mom. My mom had been up here for over a year taking care of her mom. Her mom had dementia, and my mom also, which means I'm prone to it as well. That's why I want to kind of get my history in, because I got my history with my mom videotaping late, and I think I lost a lot 8 of stories, but we got as many as we could on video, so we just have to now process the videos and edit ‘em. But, that's why I'm kind of wanting to do this. With my dad, even got shorter amount of video with him, but I at least I got to see stories. LR: Right. So, you spent the most time in New Mexico, it sounds like? DW: Yeah. Up to that point, yeah. LR: So, you were there, you started sixth grade. DW: Yeah. That school was kind of a hard school. I didn't really enjoy that school. Then I went over to Grant Junior High, and that was fun. I had fun and Grant Junior High. I was part of the band, I played trombone, and Mr. Alderman was our band teacher. Kind of bald head-ish, but long hair, roundish face. Nicest guy you could ever meet. We got into marching band and we marched down, during 4th of July celebration in Albuquerque, downtown. We played at high school football games. We also played junior high football games. We did jazz band, and we also played in the orchestra. Now, some of the fun stories about Mr. Alderman was, one time he had a substitute teacher come in, because he had to take off and take care of some family business. He let us know, so us kids decided that we were going to play a trick on the substitute teacher. We all switched instruments. We're supposed to be one of the best bands in the city, and here we’re squawking and making a huge racket. The teacher’s like, “Okay, stop, stop, stop. Let's try this again.” Then the teacher finally figures out: “Okay, everyone back to their own instruments.” Another time, Mr. Alderman was late to class, and so us guys decided that we were going to have some fun. We took all the band stands and put 9 ‘em all the way down and then flattened them out, and then we start stacking them into a pyramid against the wall [laughing]. LR: I’m sure he appreciated that. DW: He walks in and we’re all sitting there with no band stands. He looks up and there's the tower of band stands, and he goes, “Okay, that's impressive. Now, how do you get those top ones down so we can get going here?” So, we went back and got the ladder from the janitor and we started carrying ‘em back down. LR: Were you in band the whole time you were in junior high? DW: Yes. LR: Okay. Then where did you go in high school? DW: My freshman year, I went to Sandia High School. LR: How do you spell that? DW: S-A-N-D-I-A. It was a horrible high school. I wanted to go—‘cause Mr. Alderman was actually, between my senior year at junior high and my freshman year of high school, he was going to go over to become the band teacher of Manzano High School. I wanted to go to Manzano because it was more of an upper-class school, but the school district wouldn't allow my parents to transfer me there. There was no exceptions, there was nothing. My parents tried and it was like, “Nope, you’re zoned for Sandia, you’re going to Sandia.” I got there and there was literally gangs in the hallway. They were smoking marijuana in the hallway in the school. These girls had these leather pouches on their belts, and for a while I didn't know what those were, until one day I found out they had barbed wire rings, razor rings, and they’d fight with 10 other girls with these rings on. Yeah. Then these guys would carry a leather strap with them, a thin leather strap. It was like, I didn't know what that was for. But I looked at the guys and they had cut marks on their forearms, and what they’d do is they’d strap a hand to each other and have a knife fight at school. I watch these things go on, and it was a total shock to me when I saw that. That was gang stuff going on. So, I stuck with a few friends from junior high that was in band with me, and we stayed away. In fact, we most of the time would go outside of the school, walk down, and come back in, not to have to go through the gang infested halls. But we did have some fun. I mean, the cafeteria food, of course, most high schools are ucky. But they did have, DECA, a snack building, and you could go and buy snack foods. That's what we did for most of our lunches, we’d go buy a can of pop, bag of chips, maybe jerky or something like that for lunch. Then we'd take the cans, and most of the surrounding area of the school was all sand, and we'd make a rectangle and play can football. It was a small field, but we would all play football. If you stepped on the can or kicked the can, well then get the next can and we’ll just keep playing. Then once we're done, we’d just take the cans, throw ‘em in recycle, and go back to class. LR: So, you were there for a year. DW: Yeah. Then my dad said, “Okay, I have the house in Albuquerque here, and we have the house in Ogden. Where do you want to go?” I said, “Ogden.” At least it's greener than Albuquerque, and it doesn't have the gang population and the gang mentality like Albuquerque have. LR: So, for your sophomore through senior year you were at—? 11 DW: At Ogden High School, yeah. The same place my mom had graduated from. She graduated in ‘50. LR: Okay. So, I know that Ogden wasn't unknown to you because you've been coming back and forth for the majority of your life, but actually going to school in Ogden, how was that different? Did you experience the culture shock that a lot of people do when they move to a new high school? DW: No, it felt like normal. I mean, I had friends. There was a doctor and his wife, Doctor Neil, and I played with his two youngest sons, Jim and Mike. Then the house that’s right above us here, that was Doctor Rogers, and he had older kids, but they would play. Once he moved out, then we got the Kenny family, Colonel Kenny, Air Force retired, and I played with his youngest son. Then we had other kids that we’d—intermittently, throughout the time we were here for six months and it was school time, I'd go to Wasatch, so I'd go half a year to the elementary school that I was at, and then about half a year at Wasatch Elementary. So, I found friends through Wasatch. Then once high school came, you know, it was kind of like a family reunion type thing for a lot of us. Then we got to hang out more. LR: Right. Okay, so your dad stayed in Albuquerque— DW: Well, he was down in Albuquerque, and my mom was up here. I was down with him helping to get the house packed up, and my mom was rummaging around in the house in a depressive state. For three months, she never got out of her PJs. She’d just rummage around. My dad came up, and he could see that she was just rummaging around, so he had all—this was the last move that the Navy was going to pay for, so he had everything moved into a house just down past Taylor and 36th 12 Street, rented a house, and we completely packed the house and the garage with all of our stuff. So, nothing got moved up here in this house. We moved all of the house stuff into a storage unit, and then my dad started to re-model the house, because if the house had stayed the way it was, my mom was going to stay in the depressive state. So, my dad decided that, “Nope, we're going to change things.” The first thing he did was doubled the living room size, and then the kitchen—where the kitchen is now was just the kitchen itself, and it was yellow and it had windows on three sides, then the sliding glass door. Where we're sitting right now would have been the outside patio or the yard. Then the next iteration after that was a few changes, and then this last one was this big room that we've added onto it. Actually, if you see that beam there, that's where the wall of the kitchen was originally. LR: Okay. Well, that makes sense. Wow, he did a lot of work. DW: Yes, he did. LR: Okay. So, this would have been 197—? DW: Eight, yeah, my sophomore year. So, my sophomore year we were still living in the rental house, but my dad was up here with the contractors working. LR: Was he retired by then? DW: Yes, he retired in ‘77. He put 31 years of Navy service. He started in the Navy at 17 as enlisted. His dad had to sign him into the Navy. Then he got four years of enlisted service, and then he went to University of Kansas, was a theater major, and was Naval ROTC. After his graduation from KU, then he went back onto active duty as a reserve officer. Then two years later, he was 13 able to request his active-duty status. From there, it was just progression up the ranks. LR: He retired as captain, that's pretty impressive. I know most people don't realize that captain in the Navy is nothing like captain in the Army. DW: Correct. Yeah. In fact, my dad had this this incident where he was going to get billeting for his team—because in Albuquerque he was a team lead of the nuclear inspection teams that went around the world inspecting nuclear warheads at military bases. Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, Coast Guard, whoever had nuclear weaponry. They would go in and do that. Well, he was going to an Army base, and so he’d call up and says, “This is Naval Captain Walling.” Because if he just said Captain Walling, he’d get like, “Yeah, yeah, yeah.” You know, “All three, go away.” But when you're O-6, that's all a different matter. LR: That is true. Okay, so what year did you graduate from Ogden High? DW: 1981. LR: Okay. Did you take band at Ogden high? DW: No. In fact, at Sandia, I met the band teacher, and there's this movie out of this band teacher. I can't remember what the name of it is now, but he swears at the—and they're not kids, they're like college students, college age—and he's swearing at ‘em and he's throwing instruments and things at ‘em in the movie. That kind of reminded me of the Sandia band teacher. He was like a dictator. Oh, I hated him. So, within a month of being in band, I quit, and I never went back. 14 No, I wanted to play football because my friend Jim Neil played football. I tried out for the football team, and during one of our practices we were in the weight room, and all of a sudden, I watched all these juniors and seniors outside of the weight room congregating. I said, “Something's up.” Some of the bigger guys walked into the weight room and the other ones just stayed outside. They turned off the lights, closed the doors, and then all of a sudden, they go, “Rumble!” Next thing you know, we're getting punched on. I hear weights flying everywhere. I'm crawling, trying to just get into a corner underneath a piece of equipment so they can't get to me. Okay, it's initiation, I got initiated. So, I come home and my dad sees some bruising on me, and he goes, “What's going on? What's up?” “Oh, it’s just football practice Dad, you know, nothing.” He grilled me and grilled me and grilled me till he got the truth out of me. The next day, he marched me down to the principal's office and says, “I want to know why the head coach of football would allow this to happen.” Well, the coach got called into the office and had to explain what's going on and got in trouble for it. Well, now the juniors and seniors on the football team want to get after me, so I now am having to avoid the majority of the football team. Luckily, I had done some running it at Grant Junior High, so I wasn't unfamiliar about running, but now I had to use it to stay safe. One day, the head coach of the cross-country team was watching me run away from the seniors. The next day he comes up to me and he says, “Hey Dave, have you ever thought about trying out cross-country and track?” [Laughing] He says, “That's pretty good. You know, the 100 yards that they 15 can run you kept just above them, and then after that you just kept going.” So, I joined cross-country and track team. My senior year I was able to go to state and place 25th in state behind Ed Eyestone. Ed Eyestone had gone to Bonneville High School, and he's now the head coach at BYU of cross-country and track. But back then, he was just a real fast runner. My senior year I was able to break the five-minute mile on the one-mile track at 4:58. He was already breaking 4:20 on the mile, so much faster. He's also now a three-time Olympic marathon runner. He had gone to three different Olympias to run a marathon for the United States. Just amazing, amazing kid. But I mean, we ran. I ran behind him, but we ran [laughing]. LR: Are there any other stories from your time at Ogden High that you'd like to talk about? DW: Yeah. We had a chemistry teacher that was a really nice guy, and my friends and I were really interested in rockets. We were doing a whole bunch of research in the library about how to make a rocket. We're trying to figure out would it be better to do a solid fuel rocket or a liquid rocket, you know, get closer to what NASA does and stuff like this, so we're doing all this research, and we find that he has this asset in his collection that it says if it's crystallized it is explosive. Well, he had some crystalized stuff. So, we scrape some of that out, put it into a rocket to see if we could get it to ignite. Luckily, we didn't know how to ignite it. He walks up and we're in the middle of the football field, 50-yard line, with our rocket all set up, and he goes, “Guys, what are you doing here?” “We're trying to get this rocket to go off.” 16 He goes, “What are you using?” We told him what the fuel that we were [using was] and he says, “How are you going to get it off?” “Well, we're just going to try to light it with a fuse.” He takes a deep breath and says, “Okay, I'm glad that's the way you're going to do it, because it's not going to work, and I'm glad it doesn’t work, because the amount of crystal acid that you have in that rocket would have taken out the football field from the 30-yard line to the 30-yard line.” He says, “How far would you have been away?” “Oh, we would have been in the bleachers right here.” “And it would have taken you out too.” So, we handed the rocket over to him, and that was the end of our experiments with rockets. LR: I didn't ask this initially, but you were an only child? DW: Yes, only child. I called it the only lonely. LR: Yeah, I've heard that. As you interacted with your friends, did you ever feel the sense of like—because a lot of them probably have siblings. Did you ever feel a sense of just, “Wow, that’d be nice?” DW: Oh, yeah, always. I always asked my mom, “Why can't I have a brother or a sister?” Just before my mom passed away, she admitted to me that she had gotten pregnant before she had met my dad, and she self-aborted by punching her stomach till the time the baby was dead and naturally came out. So, I would have had a half-brother. I guess I get to meet him when I get up there in Heaven. LR: Okay. You graduate from high school in 1981, do you have plans? Do you want to go to college? Were you encouraged to pursue an education? 17 DW: Oh, yeah. My dad wanted me to have a college degree. At the time when I became 13, we'd been in and out, I joined DeMolay, which was a masonic youth organization for boys. So, until we had moved up to Ogden, I was kind of—intermittent when we were here, I'd come and do things. But once we came up to Ogden then I was full time in the DeMolay until I turned 21, since then you're a senior DeMolay and they want you to become more like a chapter dad more than a member. LR: Okay, and what’s it called again? DW: DeMolay. LR: DeMolay. DW: Yeah. It's named after a chevalier. The president of the chevaliers was Jacques de Molay. The church wanted to know where the chevaliers had all of their riches that they had gotten through the crusades and the whole bit, and they wanted to know who all of the members were, and they tortured Jacques de Molay to get the information out, and he would not give any of the information. He burnt at the stake for his lack of wanting to participate in the church's inquisitions. Then because of the Masonic, he's in the Masonic history. The founder of DeMolay, Frank Land, he was a Mason back in Kansas City, Missouri, wanted to create an organization for boys that were city boys. You know, scouting was great for those that were out in the rural areas, but scouting really didn't have a lot in Frank—we call him Dad Lamb—thought that was applicable for city kids. So, he created this organization and had the boys go through the history books of the Masons and pick out a martyr or 18 someone they could exemplify, and that's when they picked Jacques de Molay. LR: Okay, that's pretty cool. So, you were doing that and—? DW: Going to school. Because I wasn’t LDS at the time—so, because all my LDS friends had mutual and all that, this gave me a group of boys I could hang out with when they were gone for their mutual and I wasn't allowed to go. This was before the church opened it up to where you can have nonmembers come. We did lots of different things in DeMolay, it was a really fun time. Jim Neil was a DeMolay, and his brother, and I had a whole bunch of other friends. I met some of my friends. In fact, my best friend I met in DeMolay, but he lives in Salt Lake, works as a lawyer down there, criminal defense lawyer, Edwin Stanton Wall. But at the time we were in Greeley, Colorado, where we met. We were at a DeMolay leadership conference, and we were housed at the university there in Greeley, using student housing for the conference. Then, of course, we used a portion of the food service and other amenities there at university. Ed and I were in the same building together, just dorms down from each other in the same group. So, we met each other and we got to know each other, really enjoyed our company, and so we exchanged information so when we got back to Utah that we could still visit. That's how our friendship started. He was 14 and I was 13. LR: So, you did DeMolay till you were 21? DW: Yep. LR: Okay. Where would you meet for your meetings? DW: At the Masonic Temple in 20th Street and Harrison. 19 LR: That's still there? DW: Yep. It's just the white building that sits there. It really doesn't do a whole lot. They used to have three different Blue Lodges there, now they've consolidated down to one Blue Lodge. They still do have Job’s Daughters there. They have Ogden chapter of Job’s Daughters, which is the girls’ side. That's who we could hang out with was the Job’s Daughters. LR: Okay. Where did you go after you graduated? Where did you go to college? DW: I started going to Weber State. I was at first thinking about business, so I started taking some business classes. I got into macroeconomics and it blew my mind. It was like, I don't understand this stuff. You know, the supply and demand curve and how this—it was like, okay, this is beyond me. So, I quit doing business, and I decided maybe I could go into political science, because I loved—still do love—politics. I got into that, and all of a sudden, they had essay exams. I suck at essay exams. Oh, my gosh, you know, 20 questions, you got 50 minutes, you got to have at least a paragraph and a half to two paragraphs of an answer that is basically regurgitated from the book and from lecture. I’m not that guy. Sorry. No matter how much I love politics, I am not a regurgitate or I'm not a photographic memory person. So, then I decided that philosophy would be good. Of course, I love to tell the joke about the gal that comes home after getting her master's degree in philosophy. Her dad asks her, “What is a practical application of having a master's degree in philosophy?” She goes, “Well, Dad, I can now in depth discuss the meaning of life and the existence of all things, and I can also ask, would you like fries with that?” [laughing] 20 LR: Okay. How is philosophy different from political science? DW: Because I can sit down and write. I have the time to make my paper. Because we don't have essay exams, we have papers that needs turning in. So, now I have a chance to develop my argument and I can edit. I have the time to take my thoughts, put them down on paper, read, organize, go through, get all the punctuation correct. I'm not relying on my handwriting because I can type everything up on the computer and I can get it right. So, that pace for me was the perfect pace. LR: Okay, that makes more sense now. So, it was still Weber College. DW: Yeah. I went there for about three years and I joined, my mistake, I joined Tau Kappa Epsilon fraternity there. We nicknamed it “Tap a keg every day,” and we tried to make it come true. Then I got introduced into drugs. Oh, boy. Near the end of my experience with Tau Kappa Epsilon and Weber State, there was one semester that I remember registering for it. I remember going to the few classes, and then next thing I know, my fraternity brothers says, “Hey, you ready for finals?” “Finals? Finals?” I had missed a whole semester being completely drugged out, so I had a 0.0 grade point average. Tau Kappa Epsilon was the animal house of Weber State. We literally rented a house that was two story, and we had a guy ride a motorcycle up the stairs in the house during a party. We also had flasher barriers and orange cones and rolls of plastic. We’d roll the plastic out, put the four cones on the corners of the plastic, put the passed-out individual on the plastic, and put the barrier with the flashing yellow thing on top of it. 21 That way if you puked, didn't get the carpet all dirty, and nobody would step on it. LR: So, it was Tau—? DW: Tau Kappa Epsilon TKE. So, you're using Greek letters. It was fun, but it didn't do anything for my grade point average. LR: Right. Is it still a fraternity or is it—? DW: The fraternity is nationwide, yeah. But Weber State has never really been a quote-unquote “fraternal” college. We don't have a fraternity or sorority row. It's a community college. Most people live at home, they go and go back. So, the fraternities and sororities had to rent houses, and then we’d kind of get together and do things together. So, it was kind of, I don't know how to say it, bastardized fraternity and sorority in comparison to what I saw like at Utah State or University of Utah, where they actually had a complete street that was all fraternity and sorority on both sides. LR: Okay. We are not like that. DW: No [laughing]. Which is kind of sad in a way, because fraternities and sororities kind of do, if they're managed properly, they do help the student. But this one was not managed properly. LR: Right. So, after that semester that you have no memory of, what helped you get clean? DW: Just the realization that I had wasted a complete semester; that I didn't know what I was doing and it scared me. It really scared me. I was like, “Woah, am I going down a really bad path all of a sudden?” My dad was, of course, pissed because he was helping to pay tuition and was not happy. So, I decided that I 22 better just clean my thing up. I needed to refocus what I wanted to do. This college stuff right now just wasn't for me. So, I decided that—and this is back in, you know, ‘83/’84, and the economy isn't that great here in Utah at that time. It really sucks. It’s hard to find a job, the jobs that you have really don't pay much, so I decided that maybe a career path would be better. I decided the Army. But I was kind of skeptical if I could handle the Army or not, so I joined the Reserves. I remember coming home and I was all proud that I had done it. I came up to my dad and said, “I just joined the Army.” He goes, “Why did you choose the Army?” I was trying to think of a good answer, and so I came up with a really quick one. I said, “Well Dad, I've had over 18 years’ experience in the Navy. I gotta have a change.” He didn't like the answer, but he kinda chuckled at it and said “Okay.” So, I joined the Army Reserve in June of ‘85. I was sent off to basic training, which was actually One Station Unit Training, what they called OSUT, at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, where I became a combat engineer, 12 Bravo. I loved it. I mean, basic training itself sucked, but it built me up. I got stronger. I mean, I had already been a cross-country track runner, but I got more physically in shape. Then I got to play with explosives, and that was like a dream come true. I can remember the first range we went to was one-pound TNT blocks that we got to prime, then we took them out to the demo range and then lit the non-electric fuse using the igniter, and then walked off and watched it blow up. As we progressed in our education, then we started using cratering 23 charges and shape charges, 40-pound cratering charges and shape charges, and watch those go off. Wow. LR: So, you do your basic at Fort Leonard Wood. Where did you do your—? DW: My AIT was the same company. That's why it's called One Station Unit Training, ‘cause we're in the same unit as we were in basic training. The only difference is some of the people that did basic training only at Fort Leonard Wood would take off. But there was people that came in that were changing their Military Occupation Skill, MOS, to 12 Bravo. So, then we had a bunch of specialists come in, and we're going to get trained as a 12 Bravo. A lot of ‘em were 11 Bravo infantry that wanted to do something different. LR: Gotcha. Then how long were you at Fort Leonard Wood? DW: Total of 13 weeks. Eight weeks of basic and then the rest for AIT. LR: Then you come back to Ogden? DW: Came back to Ogden. LR: Okay. I don't know how the Reserves work as well as I know National Guard. DW: Okay, well, Reserve and National Guard are very, very similar. The only difference is, Reserve, our commander in chief is the president of United States, not the governor. That's the difference. LR: Okay. Then I understand the Reserves. DW: That's why I wanted—I didn't want to have the governor have say over me, because at the time it was a governor I didn't like. LR: Okay. You’d grown up in the Navy, and now you're doing the Army. What was the difference that you noticed? DW: Well, I think I got influenced by Stuttgart, because the European Command is commanded by the Army, and then the Navy, Air Force, and all that are just 24 part of the staffing. My dad was part of J6, which was the communication, so Navy was in charge of communication on European Command. Air Force would have other duties like supply or whatever. But the command structure for European Command was always Army. So, seeing the Army, seeing the tanks, seeing the, at that point in time, it was Dodge pickup trucks instead of—and Jeeps, they also had Jeeps too—that influenced me a lot. I really loved the look of the Army, where the Navy was different to me. Not like the Air Force, the Air force, to me, was civilian in a uniform. At least Navy had a little more structure. But the Army, to me, was the most structured, and I liked it. I think that's where I got the influence from the Army, was from Stuttgart. LR: Okay. So, this is 1985, right? DW: Yeah. LR: We're still kind of towards the end of the Cold War, but still tensions are really high. Are you worried at all about where you might go? DW: No. At this point in time, I'm still Reserve. I'm pretty much still in quoteunquote “training” mode. When I get back, the next year in the summer of ‘86, our unit goes up to Coeur d'Alene, Idaho to do our annual two-weekend training up there. We're to build a six-mile road up the side of a mountain for the Forest Service so they have firefighting access. We're running into the huge amount of rock that we have to blast so we can make the platform for the road, so we're doing a lot of pneumatic drilling, and then we're putting dynamite down in and blowing the rock, and then dozers come and clear. Then we do that again, make the holes, put the dynamite in, blow it so we could make a platform for the road. 25 We also had lots of trees we had cut, so we were up there [with] chainsaws and axes and stuff like that, and this is the first time I found out what a widow maker was. I had a snag that I was working on with an axe, and the officers weren't doing—their job is safety. They weren't trained properly. Next thing I know, bam, I'm on the ground. Of course, you know, the birdies are flying and everyone's running over. “You okay? You okay?” I was like [tilting head in circle], “Uh…” Medic comes over, checks me out. “Yeah, he'll be okay. Give him an hour.” I take off my steel pot—this is before we had Kevlar—and there's a dent where the top of the tree came down and popped me on top of the head and knocked me down. That was my first experience of what a widow maker was. Luckily it wasn't very large, but it was enough to knock me down on my butt. So, after that, the next day I had my sergeant, and he was working with the chainsaw cutting a tree, and it had rained that night, so it was kind of slippery. He stepped on this branch that was laying down, and his foot slipped, and the chainsaw went right into his patella. I freaked out. I didn't know what to do, so a specialist— because I was still a private E-3 at the time—he comes running over, grabs my first aid field dressing and starts wrapping the sergeant’s knee with my field dressing. I just froze. I didn't know what to do. But then I helped carry the sergeant down off the hill. Two days later, another company of the battalion was up doing the blasting, and all of a sudden, we heard over the radio, “Cease fire, cease fire, cease fire. We have a casualty.” So, we made our way up to see if we could 26 help and found out that an E-6 sergeant had been killed. He was the safety NCO, and one of the new privates wanted to take a picture of the blast and went up to his knees. The sergeant saw him and dove on him, and as he was diving and the blast went off, a rock hit the sergeant in the temple and killed him instantly. So, I had to help carry his body down off the mountain because it was so steep they couldn't get Humvees or anything up there. In fact, we had a compressor we had to have the D7 dozer drag up the hill. Couldn't even get a vehicle that didn't have tracks up the hill. So, we had to literally carry him all the way down to the ambulance. That was the first time I ever saw a dead body. LR: Welcome to the Reserves. DW: Welcome to being a combat engineer. LR: Okay. So, was that your first two-week training? DW: Well, I had gone with the Army Reserve before. I was going through basic training. Now I had to bring all my civilian gear to camp out, and then they gave you some camouflage to put over my tent because it was a purple and silver tent. But I went out there in civilian clothes, ran around. I wasn’t given a weapon because I wasn't qualified for weaponry. But I was out there and we were playing force against force, half of the company against the other half of the company, so I got a little bit of experience. Didn't know exactly what I was doing, just running around playing Army. LR: Right. How long were you in the Reserves? DW: I was there from my basic training June of ‘85 to August of ‘86. Then I decided at that—January of ‘86, I got married to my first wife. I'd been trying to work different jobs. I worked colored tile as a colored tile salesman, failed at that. I 27 worked for a solar panel company that the solar panels were a closed loop system with propylene glycol, and then the solar panel would concentrate the sun onto that pipe, heat the propylene glycol, and put it through a water heater, and then they would give hot water for the house. I was trying to sell these systems and then failed at selling those too. So, I decided they needed somebody over at the installation, so I went on to installation side. Now I was making half decent money and learning a little bit of the trade. I learned how to sweat copper tubing, learned some basic carpentry skills, and we actually did passive solar rooms onto houses and stuff. I got to learn drywall and tile work. It was a pretty good job for joining the Army. Some really good practical skills. LR: You had mentioned that there really wasn't any jobs in Utah, so was that a Utah based job that you were working at? DW: Yeah. But the hours were horrible. I mean, you started at six in the morning and you worked until like nine at night every single day, and I was only getting paid I think at that point in time it was something like eight bucks an hour. So, it was good money, but it's just, you know, it was horrible hours. I mean, I didn't have a life. My work was my life, and my wife never saw me. It was like, “I don't know what to do.” She says, “You need to do a job change.” The only job I could think of was going active-duty Army, so I asked her, “Do you want to go active duty?” She said, “Sounds good to me.” So, I went to down to the recruiter and said, “I want to go on active duty.” 28 Said, “Okay, sign here. You already been to basic, AIT, hasn’t been long enough for you to have to go back. Here's your list of where you want to go.” Fort Lewis was at the top. I got my first pick, so I got stationed at Fort Lewis Washington. I was there from August of ’86 to August of ’89, part of the Alpha Company, 15th Engineer Battalion, 19th Division motorized. This was a new concept. We're going to go against Russian motorized division, so we were wheeled. Our main transportation was a brand new M998 Humvee. We were told to push them to their limits, and we did. It's a one and a quarter ton vehicle, and with all the pioneer equipment as an engineer, we maxed it out at one and a quarter ton. LR: Impressive. Okay, so you said you got married in January of 1986 to your first wife? What was her name? DW: Terisa, T-E-R-I-S-A, Lee King Smith. Smith was an unofficial name. That was her step-dad's name that her mom had married after she had divorced Terisa's dad Verrall King. LR: Okay. How did you meet Terisa? DW: She was Job's Daughter, and she was dating my friend James Gunderson at the time. James had been kind of playing around with different women. He worked at IRS, and he got caught with a married woman. He decided to escape, so he joined the Air Force, became a weatherman. LR: So, you got married as you were doing your Reserve stuff? DW: Yeah, we were engaged when I went off to basic training, then came back and got married. I asked James, “Do you have an issue with me dating Terisa after you've dated?” “Nope. No problem.” 29 But she had a problem. I didn't know about it; she didn't tell me until later. But she always wanted James more than wanted me. I was second string. Later that became complications. LR: Well, I'm kind of thinking this might be a really good place to stop for today. Day Two: 6 February, 2024 LR: Today is February 6, 2024 and we are again in the home of David Walling, talking about his memories of Ogden and Weber State University. I am here with Raegan Baird as well on the camera. I am Lorrie Rands conducting. Okay, when we left off last time, we kind of jumped ahead a little bit, but I want to go back and talk a little bit about your memories of Ogden as you would come and visit. What were some of your favorite times coming back and visiting your grandparents here in Ogden? DW: Since my grandfather died when I was five, I don't have a lot of memories with him. But I do remember on the east side of the house here, north end of the backyard, he had two apricot trees, because he had grown up in North Ogden with the Hall Brothers Fruit Farm. He had grown up on the farm up there in North Ogden, so he had a lot of knowledge about fruit trees. So, he had these two apricot trees. He had a pear tree, an apple tree and a peach tree. The first memory I can remember is I was young—I think I was past toddler, but it's a very vague memory—but I can remember him taking me up to those trees, and he explained to me why he had these ditches around the trees, and that was his irrigation system to water the trees. He asked me not to disturb those trenches that he had dug. I can remember that distinctly because he was serious about that. Before that, I had been playing and with my matchbox toys in the dirt. From then on, those trenches never got 30 touched. I didn’t even step over them as a little kid, just to make sure I didn't disturb them. But there was other times where he would just take me up and walk me around and talk to me. I can't remember what the subject matter was at the time, but I can remember him doing that: hand in hand, walking me around the backyard, and just talking about plants, I think, and maybe trying to give me some wisdom at that young age. The most enduring memory that I have was he was on his deathbed. Of course, at that time I didn't know it, but I wanted to have a tea party with my grandpa. My grandmother had this doll China set that you could actually put hot water in and tea and stuff. So, my grandfather and I had a small little tea party at the bedside that my grandmother and my mother helped set up for us. That was really a special memory for me. Now, I remember the day that he had passed away. He had passed away early in the morning, and I’d slept through the whole thing. I'd slept through the mortuary coming to get his body and the whole bit. I woke up, and my mom was very upset, and I didn't know why. For a little while, she couldn't even tell me, she was so upset. I was worried, and then I was asking, “Where's grandpa?” She just burst out in tears. So, finally I found out what was going on, and I had questions of course. You know, a little kid, you don't know. “Where did he go?” and “Is he up in heaven?” and all these questions. After it really settled into me, I can remember I was in his room and there was a small little closet. You could walk into it, but it wasn’t huge. I can remember going into that closet and getting on my knees and just bawling my eyes out because I missed him so much. That was kind of a hard moment for me in my 31 life. But I learned to accept death at that point, with my mom and my grandmother helping me talk about death. I was allowed to go to the funeral. I can remember as a kid, people were feeling sad as well, and I was trying to tell jokes to make them feel happier. As even just a little kid, corny little jokes, you know? Similar to, like, “What's big and gray and is always ready to travel? An elephant, because he always has his trunk with him.” [Laughing] Something corny like that, but it was that type of the joke that I would tell. People thought that was kind of unusual that a child of my age, five years old, had the ability to be able to look beyond death and be able to enjoy life. LR: Out of curiosity, how has this area changed? I'm sure when your grandfather built this, or your— DW: He bought this already built. LR: Okay. But then he added on to it? DW: My dad added onto it. LR: Your dad, yeah, I couldn't remember exactly who. DW: Yeah, my dad added. My grandpa had left the house as he had bought it. It was a rectangular ranchette home, so there was no kick outs like we have now. It was a two-car garage, not a three-car garage, and where the dining room is right over here, half of it was the dining room, half it was the outside patio, then there was a door that went into the garage. I can remember there was the two big shrubs, and they had a little walkway that went between those two shrubs. In the summertime, when they sat out on the patio, Grandpa would have me grab hold of the hose and water down those bushes. Then the air would come through, and it'd be like air conditioning. 32 LR: Okay. Was there a lot of other homes here? DW: The majority of the homes at that point in time were finally up, but when he bought the house, this house and the Williams' house was the only two houses on the block. There was no houses down here, there was no houses above us, because he bought it, I think was ‘49 or ‘50. So, they were the first two homes in this area. The rest of it was still orchards or just grass. LR: Okay. As you got older and would come back to Ogden, what are some of your favorite places to visit? DW: ‘Course, I always loved Lagoon. All kids love Lagoon. Lagoon had changed quite a bit since then. It was much smaller. We didn't have the Pioneer Park. Even the rides were totally different at that point in time, but the old roller coaster has always been there. LR: The white one? DW: Yeah, the wood one. Ever since I was a little kid, the roller coaster’s always been there. My mom told me stories about how they used to have the Bamberger Railroad come through, and you could ride that down to Lagoon. She would tell me stories about that, how they would ride the train down to go to Lagoon. LR: Okay. Would you visit there often when you would come back? DW: We'd go at least once a year. If we were back, we’d go in the summertime. If it was wintertime it was closed. LR: Right, of course. At the time, what was your favorite ride when you were a kid? DW: When I was a kid, I really liked the cars. They had the cars that you’d get in and honk the horn and play with the steering and just go around and around 33 and around. But I loved those, because that was just like Europe. Europe had the same thing, so I loved that. LR: That's interesting. So, not the bumper cars. DW: No. I mean, bumper cars were fun, and they have the smaller ones for the smaller kids, but no, for some reason, because of Europe, it connected me with Europe. So, I really liked the one that just went around. LR: As you would come back, how did that change? As you went year to year, how did Lagoon change? DW: The rides got changed out. I can remember they had the whale ride; it went away for a while, then it came back. They had some other rides, like the boat rides. The boats would float, but they're all connected and they’d go around. That had disappeared for a while, then it came back. So, there were certain rides. Then, of course, they added all these other more adult rides. Of course, as a young kid, I couldn't go on the roller coaster, because I wasn't tall enough. Then there was also the car, the one that you could drive that had the rail but you can still drive from left to right a bit. Again, I had to go with an adult, or somebody that was older and taller, so I could go with them and ride that. But I was not allowed to drive it by myself for many a year. That was one of the rides I really liked too. You know, you went around, had a bridge, went over and the whole bit. It was fun because you got to actually play with the throttle, but at the same time you were limited on how fast so you couldn't crash onto the side or whatever. LR: Do you remember when the Pioneer Village was actually put in? DW: Yeah, I do. ‘Course, by then I think I was a teenager. It was brand spanking new. They had shows throughout the day with the guys doing a gun shoot, 34 and one guy would fall off the roof into what looked like a fenced area, which of course was the airbag, so you couldn't see him fall into an airbag. Then they had the log ride, and then they had all the buildings that were historical buildings, and then the ice cream shop, and then of course the photo shoot where you get dressed up in the costume, so we did a lot of that as kids. Then they had a horse and wagon ride, so you could get in a wagon and ride around. LR: Does that make going to Lagoon more enjoyable, or was it something else to do? DW: Yeah, it was more enjoyable. Then there was the swimming pool, but the swimming pool was kind of old. Until they revamped that, it wasn't really that fun to go to the pool, so we usually didn't. Now, once they revamped it and they had the water slides and they had the lazy river and the whole bit, then it became more fun to go to that. I remember that being under construction, that whole area. For many a year the pool was not usable because they were reconstructing it. LR: Okay. Do you remember what year that opened? DW: I’d have to look it up on Google. LR: I don't remember either. DW: Yeah, I don't remember. LR: For me that was just curiosity. DW: Yeah. I can remember that I was a teenager at that point in time, and it seemed like it took three or four years for them to develop it from the tear down to the rebuild to the opening. 35 LR: Okay. Besides Lagoon, was there any other place you'd like to visit when you were visiting? DW: Well, of course, my friends. Then we had the foothills. This was before they had the golf course over at Mount Ogden Park, so we had all these foothills that we could ride our bikes in. There was dirt hills that we could go jump, and trails that we could ride down. Some of my friends had the brand-new motocross bicycles. I had an older one, but mine was lighter and theirs were heavier. So, it was easier for me to ride up and down the hills, because my bike wasn't as heavy as theirs. But I was still jealous. You know, it was a Schwinn bike, the motocross bikes that they had come out with. Man, I was so jealous of those. They were like $500 apiece for one of those bikes at that time. So, they were expensive. Of course, my friends, Mike and Jim Neil, their dad was a doctor, so he had some good money. My mom and their mom were in PEO together, and that was a women's organization that promoted women's education. LR: Do you know what it stood for? DW: Well, they have a secret name of PEO, but the name that they give everyone is Philanthropic Education Organization. They actually have a college back east called Cottey College that they can send gals to, but they also give money for a gal to go to whatever college she wants to. Oh, what's that…? LR: Like a scholarship? DW: Scholarship, there you go, thank you. I was thinking stipend, but it’s not stipend, it’s scholarship. So, you know, they will scholarship women. They'll interview them and see if they fit the criteria, and it's not based on education. It's based on your life experiences and your needs. So, if you're a mother with 36 two children and couldn't afford to go to college, they would help pay for some college. They would do a full-ride scholarship, but a partial scholarship. LR: Oh, okay. So, I'm just curious about this PEO that your mother did. Was it a large—? DW: It's an international organization. LR: Oh, is it? Okay. DW: Yeah, and there's quite a few chapters in Ogden and Salt Lake and around. My mother was part of chapter P. But they also have chapter AA and all the way up double letters. So, when my mom passed away, the organization of Weber Davis, has had their annual meeting over at Davis Convention Center, and they—Well, actually, my mom, before she died, they had her come because she had 60 years of membership. So, they honored her with her 60year pin and her certificate. Then after she passed, they did a memorial service with her, so I attended that. LR: Wow. That's pretty cool. I'm racking my brain because I've never heard of it. DW: Well, after we're done here, I'll show you a magazine that they send out on a monthly basis and you can kind of get familiarized with PEO. But it's a really neat organization. It supports women, it's women supporting women, and I love that. LR: So, she was a member of it for 60 years? DW: Yeah, and her mother was a member before that. LR: Okay, so it's been around for a really long time? DW: Yeah. I think it started in the 1890s, 1880s. There was a gal back east that wanted to support women when they didn't have a lot of financial support for education. 37 LR: Interesting. So, when you came back to finish high school at Ogden High, I know you were really familiar with the area and whatnot. I think I kind of touched on this already and asked you this, but I'm gonna repeat myself a little bit. When you came and started going to Ogden High, how is that different from the other schools—other than the like, you had mentioned that the junior high you went to was really scary and— DW: Oh, it was my freshman year of high school that was really scary. LR: Okay. I couldn't remember. DW: At Sandia High. LR: Right. So, coming here, finishing your high school in Ogden. DW: Yeah, at Ogden High. LR: Do you feel like your education was somehow different? DW: The high school experience was different because it wasn't as scary. I mean, they still had Hispanics in our school, plus Blacks, but I was able to be friends with them, because there wasn't the mentality of Chicano like it was in Albuquerque. Chicano was a huge thing back then. Like my one friend—I'm going to use a little bit of language here—but he said, “If you ain't Chicano, you ain't shit.” That's exactly how he put it to me. So, unfortunately, because of his attitude, and he wanted to hang out with these guys that hated whites, I lost my friend because of that. Because he went to the Chicano side in Albuquerque. LR: Okay. So, here you were able to actually be friends? DW: Yeah. LR: Have those friendships? DW: Yeah. 38 LR: Okay, I have this vision in my head, because this house is not far from Ogden High, but also a hop, skip, and a jump away is Weber State. So, I know you had mentioned that you were encouraged to pursue an education; it was something that was always there, that you were going to college. DW: Yeah, my dad and mom always wanted me to get my college degree. LR: Okay, I'm getting ahead of myself. I'm going to ask this and then I'll go back. So, with Weber State right there, was there any question on where you were going to go to college, or was Weber kind of your “That's where I am going?” DW: Well, it made sense to go to Weber State at first, because it's so close. I could live at home, didn’t have to go somewhere and pay rent and, you know, the whole bit. I really didn't have to work, because Mom and Dad were willing to pay tuition as long as my grades were up. That was the condition: as soon as my grades failed then the money stopped. I didn't know what I wanted to do. I had no clue, so I was trying different things. I tried business, didn't like business. I tried political science, was not good at taking essay tests, so that wasn't good. So, then I looked at philosophy, and philosophy I just fell in love with. The one teacher—and we've already mentioned this—LC Evans was the one that really brought me into the focus of philosophy. Just really enjoyed all of his classes. The other professors were okay. Then, of course, once I got out of the active-duty Army I went to Utah State, and I continued on with the philosophy. LR: Okay. So, the other thing I wanted to talk about is, while you're in high school, what are some of the activities you and your friends would do? Like after class, extracurricular. Would you run around? 39 DW: Well. I mentioned that I joined DeMolay, because my LDS friends had mutual. At that point in time, the LDS church, if you were not LDS, you were not allowed to go to the mutual events. So, I found this DeMolay organization that was up at the Masonic Temple in Ogden, Ogden chapter, and they had the Job’s Daughters, which was the girls’ side. So, it was kind of like mutual for me. I was able to go and hang out with boys and girls and be able to do things. We did all types of stuff. Not only Ogden, but we also incorporated all of the chapters in Salt Lake City, and we all got together and did all these different things. Conclaves together, sport events. We would have all these chapters that would go against each other in sports events like tennis, swimming, softball. I mean, we did all of this type of stuff, and the Job’s Daughters and the DeMolay would all compete. Women would compete in their sports; guys compete in their sports. Then sometimes, like tennis, we'd do mixed. So, we'd have a man and a woman on a team. So, we'd have fun like that. Then of course, there was times where we’d do services for people. One time we were up at Parleys Canyon and we were serving donuts, coffee, and hot chocolate to passer-byers that was on a rest area. There used to be a rest area up Parleys Canyon. So, we set this whole thing up, tables, one guy had a generator so we could have electricity so we could keep the coffee and the hot chocolate hot. As people would come in, we would serve them free coffee, hot chocolate, and donuts. So, social helping out. Then we had things that we did, money makers. We would rent an aerator and then we'd advertise and we'd go around and aerate people's 40 lawns with an aerator. That was our money maker. Then we had a friend, my friend Mike Burton, and his dad owned Burton's Woodshop that did the handcraft furniture. In fact, the dining room table was extended by Mike Burton Senior and his sons. So, anyway, Mike was working over at Tony's Pizza, and he said, “Hey, why don't we talk to the owner of Tony's and see if we can come up with a deal?” So, we did. We got a whole bunch of pizzas, and Tony's would get a percentage, we’d get a percentage, and we would sell these uncooked frozen pizzas. Just like Girl Scout cookies, we'd get preorders and then we'd have Tony's make these, and then we'd go and deliver, and we made some really good money off of that. LR: So, the Tony's Pizza, is that the one that's down—? DW: Washington and 40th Street. Or, 39, 50? It's down near 40th and Washington Boulevard on the northeast side of that intersection. There's like a little what used to be a—on the corner—used to be a dry-cleaning company. Then there was that little theater, and the next street up is Tony's. Next street north, on the east side is Tony's. It's really good pizza. I would suggest you go to it if you've never been. LR: I have heard it from my partner. That's a whole other story. DW: Yeah. You just need to go. But anyway, with Mike and his connection with Tony working there, we were able to get this whole deal up, and we sold, I would say a thousand pizzas. I mean, it was huge. We had people with vans coming to deliver, you know? So, we packed the van full of pizzas and they’d go and deliver ‘em. Another money maker that my dad was helping with is he was catering a dinner for Hiram Williams, and Hiram Williams was the CEO of Browning 41 Arms Armory at the time. He was having a dinner for all of the workers, you know, executives and everyone from Browning Arms and other connections. So, my dad was doing the catering, and my DeMolay buddies were going to be the servers. We're going to do the serving. We also helped with food prep and the whole bit. So, the day of the event, they were having tables and chairs from a rent place, and dishes and cups, delivered. This one gal had brought her big white van and had a whole—I think she had all of the dishes and plates and stuff, and her, I think it was a 4- or 5-year-old kid was in the van. This upper portion at that time was my dad's garden, so it was all dirt, tilled, and some of the plants were starting to grow. He had a rototiller in the dirt up there that was kind of dug in because he hadn’t finished rototilling. This little kid hit the shifter and put it in neutral, so the van starts coming down the hill, hopped over the curb, and was coming right for the kitchen. My dad sees this, and he starts running and he hits the sliding glass door and literally bounces about four feet onto the ground, and now he's taken the door off the track. So, he takes this and he pushes the door to the side and runs out. As the van is coming towards the kitchen, I don't know what he's going to do, because it’s a pretty big van. It hits the rototiller and it stops. [Laughing] That was the first of the issues that day. The second issue was the big round thing on the power pole, because we had the air conditioning going, we had both ovens upstairs going, we had the downstairs ovens going, we had a whole bunch of slow cookers cooking at the same time. So, that thing [claps] blows. No power. We took out power for the whole area. So, we emergency call to get the power company to come 42 out and replace that element, because you could see it go boom and the lid on top went [makes whooshing sound while spinning finger in air]. So, my dad put an emergency in, and we need power. We need it right now. He had a small generator, which helped to keep the ovens going, because they were electric, they weren't gas at the time. If he had had gas he would have been fine, I think, but they were electric. So, he got the upstairs ovens to be able to go, but they didn't have the downstairs ovens. So, my cousin, which was also DeMolay—Mickey Madison, and he was a little bit older than me—he ran home and got his charcoal grills that he had. Then the Williams had charcoal grills. We brought those down, and some of the other neighbors had some charcoal grills we brought, and we got all those going. We started cooking the chicken in those. So, we have that going on, and then we still have to do preps of other things. We had potatoes we're having to cook. Luckily, we had torn lettuce, but my dad had figured out a quarter head a lettuce per person. Tons of lettuce that we tore. [Laughing] It’s a lot of lettuce. We had bags of lettuce left afterwards, and so my dad took all of that down to the food bank and gave it to them so they could utilize it for the homeless and stuff like that. LR: So, the dinner was held here? DW: It was in the Williams’ back backyard. They had a huge backyard. LR: Okay. So, he was the CEO of—was it the one in Morgan? DW: Yeah. The Browning Rifles. LR: Yeah, I just wanted to make sure. 43 DW: But actually, the headquarters were here in Ogden. It used to be—when the Brownings first created it, they were up in Morgan. But they had created a office down in Ogden, so he actually worked in Ogden. LR: Okay. Then was that the one on Kiesel? DW: I believe so. LR: Okay. Just curious. DW: Yeah. I didn't know exactly where his office was at, I just knew that he was the CEO and president of Browning Arms. So anyway, we can go on with the story of that one, because there was more to go from that. So, my DeMolay friends were quite conniving, and they had an open bar over there. They'd go over to the bar and say, “My cousin Mickey needs a drink,” or “My dad needs a drink,” or “My mom needs a drink,” and of course the drink never made it to any of them. So, my friends are getting drunk along the way. Then after the dinner is all over, we're also to clean up. Well, I saw some of my friends. They would see a portion of a glass of wine or whatever. They'd down it. So, by the time everything was said and done, all my DeMolay friends, for the most part, were drunk, and my dad could not return the sons to the parents drunk. So, he had this huge pot of coffee going, and started pouring it down their throats to get them to be more sober before he sent them home [laughing]. So, it was a day of fiascos, really. But we made it through it. There was a couple of the chickens that we had to replace because they weren't quite cooked through. Luckily, we quickly changed that out for the people, because that gave us time to cook the rest of them. My dad had over-purchased on 44 everything to include the lettuce. But anyway, we had plenty of food to take down to the food bank once we were done. LR: Okay. How old were you? DW: I think at that point in time I was 17. I think I was a junior in high school at the time. LR: So, it kept you busy, DeMolay? DW: Oh, yeah. Because at one point in time I was the chapter president, or what they call master counselor. I had a year term as master counselor. Before that, I worked my way up to the ranks, and had learned the three degrees of DeMolay. We even had a talk called the Mother's Talk that I had memorized. Now I couldn't repeat it, but at that point in time. It was a really, really neat speech about—and you had red carnations and white carnations on a table. As you would talk about it, the ones that have their mothers still living will take a red carnation. If your mother's passed away, you'll take a white carnation. Then each DeMolay would take that—if their mother was alive, take the flower to them. They were there. So, it was a really neat talk. But when I first joined DeMolay, I was 13 years old. That's the minimum age that you can join. So, I joined, but we still weren't living here full time. I wasn't going to DeMolay a lot, but at least establishing myself with DeMolay. Then in times I came back, I would go to meetings. There was one time in the summertime where there was a national conclave up at Greeley, Colorado. That's where my best friend Ed Wall and I met, and I think I’ve talked about this before. That's continued on since I was 13 and he was 14, and now I'm 60 and he is 61. Long time. In fact, he's the trustee of the trust. My dad had put his trust into Ed to be able to manage the trust. 45 LR: Remind me how long you were able to be in DeMolay? DW: Up till the age of 21, so 13 to 21. LR: Did you stay in it until you were 21? DW: I did, yeah. In fact, I was given the honor of being become a chevalier. That's a honor in which you have to be picked by leaders they have. Also, in Salt Lake they had the DeMolay priory, so I was knighted a knight of DeMolay. LR: That’s interesting. Now I am gonna skip over to Weber. I'm just curious, because when you start going to Weber, you're still part of DeMolay? DW: Yeah. LR: Were you able to still be as involved with DeMolay when you were going to Weber? DW: Oh, yeah, because 1980 is when I was a master counselor. So, in 81, you know, I graduated from high school, and because I hadn't hit 21 yet I was still very active. I was a senior DeMolay at that point in time, past master counselor. So, now my responsibility was to help train the junior DeMolay and assist the present master counselor on things that needed to be done. Because you had certain requirements that the international DeMolay organization has for the master counselor to do on a on a yearly basis, certain requirements that have to be done. So, that's what we were doing as senior DeMolay was to assist them to be able to make their requirements. Keep them on track. LR: So, was there a specific night that you would meet? DW: Yeah. We would meet twice a week. Usually, it was a Tuesday and Thursday. Of course, if there's holidays or whatever we would skip. There were certain 46 times of the year in which we would, because of people going on vacation and stuff, that we wouldn't always have meetings. LR: That makes sense. Okay, so your first time on campus at Weber Campus— DW: Well, my first time on campus was when I was a kid. We'd ride our bikes over there and ride on the sidewalks and go over to the Student Union and go bowling and play billiards. They had a few arcade games, and that one helicopter game the engineering student had built, and you could play that. They had a snack bar over there which you could go and buy food, and then we’d just hang out with the college students, you know, and kind of get to know some of the college students that worked over there. LR: So, it was open to the public? DW: Yeah. LR: Oh, that's interesting. You didn’t have to have a Wildcard? DW: No, you could just go right in the door. LR: Interesting. DW: Yeah. So, anyone could go to the Weber State and go play. There was a couple of times where I talked to some professors that were over there and asked them what they were doing and kind of trying to figure out, I guess, in my own way, which direction I wanted to go. Then there was one night where my buddy and I, we were out late, and we heard this music. It was up farther east on campus, up on the hill. There was this building up there, and there was this door cracked, and you could hear music playing. So, we kind of snuck into the building, and these two guys were sitting there playing records. It was the Weber State radio, and they were playing music. We went up in there, and they saw us and said, “Hey, come on in here,” and they're sitting 47 there smoking weed. Now, they didn't let us smoke weed, but of course, secondhand smoke. We were feeling good when we left. But we sure loved the music they were playing. It was rock and roll music, 60s, 70s, and these guys were all long hair. Almost like hippies. We just absolutely loved it. So, there was a couple other times where we'd go up there and just hang out with those guys, you know, college students, hanging out with them. LR: How old were you at this time? DW: At that point in time, I think I was around 12, 13. LR: Okay, so just a young, not quite teenager. Do you remember what building that was? DW: I don't now, but if I had a map I could kind of show you where it was at. It was south of the majority of the buildings up on the hill. Kind of where now they have the football practice area. Up in that direction. LR: Oh, okay. Not the stadium, but the—? DW: Farther south and a little bit more west. LR: Okay. Yeah, I think I know that field. DW: Yeah. Then, of course, there was the towers, the student housing that was the towers before they tore them down. We'd go hang out with them. Sometimes some of the students would be there and we’d hang out with them, talking with them. LR: Okay. So, campus was a lot smaller then? DW: Oh, yeah. LR: There were still those four long buildings? DW: Yeah, and the stadium was even smaller at that point in time. The stadium wasn't as tall as it was, and it didn't go up the hill as far. It was much smaller 48 and still had the track and the football field, and if I remember right the football field was grass at the time. LR: Interesting. So, when you decided to go to college there, you were really familiar with campus? DW: Oh, yeah. I felt comfortable because I had been on campus for a lot of the time there, whether I’d just ride my bicycle or walk or whatever, by myself or with friends. LR: Why did you decide to join a fraternity? DW: Well, I had always heard about fraternities, and of course the movie Animal House was very intriguing. I seem to have found the Animal House fraternity at Weber State. LR: What were some of the things you had to do to become—? DW: Join? LR: Yeah, to join. Thank you. DW: Well, of course you have to go through initiation. One of the things of initiation was downstairs they had a room that had—almost looked like wrestling mat material on the floor, and a whole bunch of really big, what looked like handmade pillows. They had you down on your hands and knees blindfolded, and next thing you know, you're getting whacked on the butt with these paddles [laughing]. After you're done getting your paddling, then—still blindfolded—they take you out into a van, throw you in the back of the van, and they drove us up to Causey Dam, just below the Causey Dam. It was wintertime, and they got us out of the van, took the blindfolds off, handed us a bottle of Mad Dog 20/20 and a case of beer and said, “All of this alcohol’s gotta be gone before you make it back to the fraternity house.” 49 So, we start walking down the road from Causey, and we walk all the way down to the south side of Pineview, where there's a bar, and luckily the bar is still open. One of my initiate friends has a brother, and he calls him, and he brings his van up to get us. Well, at this time, half my case of beer is gone. The whole bottle of Mad Dog 20/20 is gone. As we're walking down the road to get to that bar, we find this porcupine, and we all start chasing the porcupine into the deep snow [laughing]. Yeah, Tau Kappa Epsilon fraternity. Now, I have a cousin that went to Kansas State University, and they have a chapter there. He graduated from K State, and he was at Tau Kappa Epsilon fraternity as well. But his fraternity was a lot more regimented than ours was. Ours was OZ chapter, and as we like to say, because we're in Utah, we're in the land of Oz. So, we thought it was very apropos that we were the OZ chapter, because we were in the land of Oz [laughing]. LR: Do you remember where the house was for this fraternity? DW: We had two different houses. One was closer to the southern portion at Weber State, where they had rented a house. But then soon after that we got kicked out of that one, because the owners didn't like how we were not taking care of the house. So, the next house we had was about four houses up from Harrison Boulevard on, I want to say, 25th or 26th Street. So, it was east of Harrison Boulevard and about four houses on the north side of that street. That was the last house that I remember before I quit going, after I'd lost that whole semester and got a 0.0 grade point average, and pretty much that was the end of my career at Weber State cause my dad stopped paying. LR: So, the house wasn't even close to Weber? 50 DW: No, I had to drive. LR: Okay. How many initiates were there on the trip to Causey? DW: There was eight of us. LR: Did you all make it in? DW: We all did, yeah. After we had we been initiated and got pinned, we had our fraternity names given to us, which is always the case. I can't remember mine now. I forgot what my name was. LR: Okay. What were some of the activities you’d do as a fraternity? DW: Well, we hung out with the sorority and other fraternity members on campus. We'd have meetings. One time we had a kind of like a national convention at Lake Tahoe, so we drove. There was five of us that drove to that convention. We never went to a meeting. We were kind of like, on Mash, they would go to a doctors convention, but never go to any of the meetings, they’d just play around. That's kind of what we did; we played around. We did a little bit of gambling because by this time, you know, I’d finally hit 21, so I could gamble, I could go drink. So, we'd go to conventions like that at Tahoe and mess around and have fun. Other times we would just do whatever organizational things that the fraternities and sororities would do. Sometimes we'd go around the neighborhood and rake up people's lawns that were elderly. There was other times where we do a walk around the campus and clean up trash, and different things that that help society out besides just drinking and getting high. LR: So, you mentioned last time that the last semester you were at Weber, you don't really remember that semester very well, if at all. I'm just curious, did you start into that after you turned 21, so you no longer had DeMolay? 51 DW: Yeah. LR: So, do you think DeMolay kind of kept you grounded, in a way? DW: It did. LR: So, now you don't have that anymore— DW: —and so I was looking for another organization to be able to fill in the gap. Unfortunately, it wasn't the organization I really should have joined. LR: Is that where you would—and you don't have to answer any of these questions if you're not comfortable—but is that where you were first introduced to drugs? DW: Oh, no. No, I had friends in DeMolay that would do marijuana. So, we had already experimented with that, but the fraternity got into other things like peyote and hashish, so it got more serious. Never did cocaine, though, because I saw what happened to people that did cocaine, and I wasn't willing to do that. But, yeah, I did mushrooms, peyote, and hashish, besides the marijuana and, of course, all the alcohol and the beer, because we nicknamed our Tau Kappa Epsilon as “Tap a keg every day,” and we tried to make it come true. We’d have our beer runs that we'd go up to just on the other side of Idaho, up in Cache Valley area, and we'd go up to there and get kegs and bring them back down. We’d take the empty ones up, get the new ones, and we'd come back down. Of course, part of our dues went to buying beer. LR: Okay. Was there not a requirement to maintain a certain GPA to be in the fraternity at the time? DW: No. LR: Oh, okay. So, you could just—it didn't matter. DW: Right. Long as you're paying your dues, your beer money [laughing]. 52 LR: Pay your dues and you’re fine? DW: Yep. Exactly. LR: So, you kind of described it a little bit the last time, kind of the wake up of, “What the hell am I doing?” DW: Yeah. That was when I missed finals because I hadn't gone to any class all semester long. Actually, it was quarter at that time still, hadn't turned over to semester yet. It woke me up. I was like, okay, where's my focus at? Am I just going to be a party animal and do nothing else? So, that's when I basically cut my ties with the fraternity. I still held on to my big brother, Bruce Finch. In fact, I was going to mention this. One of the requirements after you had got pinned is you had to make a paddle for your big brother, and most guys made a paddle about this long, right? Well, I decided I was going to go big. So, I went down to Smith and Edwards and found a wooden oar, and I created his paddle from this oar. So, when we had a ceremony in which we were supposed to present our paddles to our big brothers, here I come, walk in this big oar. Bruce Finch was the envy of every big brother in the fraternity. So, I kind of honored him that way. He was a really good wrestler at Weber State. I think he had gone to regionals in wrestling. I had gone one year of wrestling at Ogden High School, so he was trying to teach me some moves. Of course, he could just take me down [claps] like that. Comparison, I mean, his moves were quick, and so I just told him, “Okay, I'm done with wrestling, Bruce. I’m not gonna do any more wrestling. Let's just stop that, because it hurts when you hit me.” But one time, he decided he wanted to take me down to his favorite bar, which was down west of Washington Boulevard. I think it was like 24th or 53 23rd Street. It was a rough bar. So, he has a VW bug that we're driving down in, and we get there and we're at the parking lot, and he says, “Do you want the knife or do you want the .38 Special?” I go, “What?” He says, “Yeah, we've got to have a weapon when we go into this bar.” LR: Do you remember the name of the bar? DW: I don't remember. I just remember it was a real rough bar. A lot of rough characters, bikers and stuff like that, went to this bar. So anyway, I chose the knife, and I put it in the small of my back and had my coat on. It was wintertime, so I hid it, and he had .38 Special in his boot. We went into the bar, and I was so nervous I didn't even enjoy myself there [laughing]. I was just on edge the whole time, thinking that we were going to get into some kind of fight, or a gunfight, or a knife fight, or I don't know. There's only one other time I've been that nervous, and I just didn't enjoy myself, so I was like, okay. Soon as we were able to leave, I was happy. I handed him back the knife, and we never went back there again. I told him that I didn't have fun. It just wasn't my environment. It was his environment, not mine. LR: That's interesting. Okay, so when all was said and done and you decided to clean up your act, there's no more money coming in to go to Weber. DW: Right, so I was working. LR: Did you go to Utah State soon thereafter? DW: No, I went active-duty Army, my three years on active duty at Fort Lewis. Then once I end of term of service, ETSed, out of the active-duty Army, then I was at that point in time with my first wife, Terisa Lee King Smith, now Walling, and our one son that we had had in 1988. So, he was one year old 54 when we moved up to Logan. North Logan, actually. That's when I started going to Utah State. LR: How was that environment there at Utah State different from Weber? DW: Older university. The Quad kind of made you feel like you were in an actual university. Had the older buildings, had the Quad, had Old Main. Then, of course, you had the more modern buildings as well that were surrounding that were being developed: the new library, the expansion of the Taggart Student Center, all of that that was newer architect. But the Quad for me was the quintessential university, almost like going to Harvard or Yale type of environment. So, that was the difference. Weber State was a modern school, modern buildings. There wasn't really anything antiquity about it. Kind of like UVU, which was UVSC at the time. It's brand-new buildings. I mean, I can remember in high school, when I was going to Ogden High, we went down for a cross-country meet, and there was only two buildings on the campus at that time, and they were brand new, concrete-built buildings. It wasn't even UVSC at the time. It was some other name, some kind of technical college. So, that was back in ‘79, ’80, when I visited down there for cross-country meet. But yeah, just seeing the different campuses that we got run around, it was unique. In fact, we even went up to Brigham City and ran against the Indian school, which was still there. That was a really unique experience too. LR: How so? DW: Because they were all Native Americans, but they spoke English, and they were kind of tough. They kind of reminded me of the Hispanics in Albuquerque, with their street smarts and their toughness there. But boy, were 55 they fast. I mean, we thought we were fast; that whole team took off and left us. [Laughing] So, you know. We had one kid that was Navajo that had been taken off the reservation and was put into foster care, and he was on our team, and even he wasn't as fast as those kids were. We were just amazed on how well they could run. We got to know some of them. They're really nice kids, but they had that street-smart aura about them. They were tough. They were tough kids, and they had to be, in that environment, because the Indian school was not nice to them. So—besides my great uncle, being a full-blooded Choctaw that married my grandmother’s sister, my great aunt—that gave me another view of the Native American that impressed me. I've always felt like the Native Americans have gotten the raw deal on the end, and so any time something goes their way, I feel supportive of that. I don't want to say that I know what they feel like, but at the same time I feel like, in my heart, I support their efforts. LR: Okay. So, did you finish your degree at Utah State in philosophy? DW: No. LR: Okay, I didn't think so. DW: No, I had 60 credit hours, which gave me the ability in the Army to join in as a PFC in E-3, instead of joining as E-1. So, I got more pay, and a little bit more respect. As well as I was older than most of the other recruits in basic training, because I was 21, I could go drink. They couldn't [laughing]. LR: So, we're going to skip over a whole time. After you finish your career and eventually move back here, how had Ogden changed when you came back? 56 DW: Oh, greatly. I mean, there used to be the McKay Dee Hospital that was right across the street west of Weber State, and now all of those buildings are doctor offices and stuff like that. That was a whole campus, and they moved McKay Dee down south of 40th Street, west of Harrison. That was a huge change right there, because I remember having to go to McKay Dee, and it was there. Then also Saint Benedict's Hospital used to be a hospital. That was a Catholic hospital. Now they turned that into a nursing home. I can remember as a young kid that Weber High School was on Harrison Boulevard, north of 2nd Street. Then they tore that one down and built the one that was farther north in North Ogden. I can remember that Weber High School being built, but I can remember the old high school, as a little kid, seeing the old Weber High School that was on Washington Boulevard. I remember that. Of course, there was restaurants and hamburger joints that no longer exist that existed back then. One of the best ones was Dee’s Hamburgers. They had the Dee hamburger clown, and you’d go and get a hamburger for, like, $0.59 for a small single patty Then, you know, I think it was $0.40 for a bag of small fries. My dad would go down and buy 30 of them for my friends and I, and we would sit there and just eat hamburgers and fries and drink sodas, and it was relatively inexpensive for my dad to go buy us hamburgers and French fries. I loved going to Dee’s Hamburgers, but they're no longer there. There also used to be the Dee’s family restaurant. It's no longer there. The only Dee restaurant now is in Salt Lake City. The only one that still exists. So, that era had gone. 57 Riverdale road was still developing. I can remember there was a place down on Riverdale that sold rack stereo systems, and I bought my rack stereo system from them. It was a fun stereo place and electronics place to go that was just off of Riverdale, south of Riverdale Road. In fact, in the area now, I think the Walmart or the Sam's Club is where it used to be. One of my DeMolay brothers, his father had a car dealership down there; it was a Mazda dealership. One time, he had this pit that was part of his showroom, and he had us come down, and we had a meeting down in his showroom floor at nighttime. That was a really fun thing. He was such a fun guy to be with, the father, because he would talk about all of the experiences he had had growing up, and having to develop the business, and kind of give us some business sense. Just really, really neat guy. Of course, his sons and his daughters were in DeMolay and Job’s Daughters, so that's how we got to know each other. He was a Shriner, a Masonic Shriner, so we got to interact with them. We did assist Shriners in certain things. When I became 21 they had a Shrine convention in Ogden, and I helped to drive the van so the drunk Shriners wouldn't have to drive [laughing]. LR: Do you remember the name of the car dealership? DW: I’d have to look it up on my phone. But they also had a dealership in Layton too, which was a Dodge Chrysler dealership. The name escapes me right now. But the family came from Europe. I think they were Italian. They came over part of the Italian invasion of Utah. If I can remember what their name is… LR: We can always add that in when we’re editing, not a big deal. DW: Cutrubus! Homer Cutrubus. 58 LR: Oh, yeah. DW: The Cutrubus Motors. Yeah, Homer Cutrubus was the father. One time, Homer—I had been working out and weight training, and he said, “Okay, I'll do arm wrestling,” and he was kind of a skinny guy. So, I went like this [puts elbow down with fist up as if arm wrestling], and he goes, “Okay.” I'm pushing as hard as I can, and he says, “Any time now, any time now.” Boom! [moves fist sideways and down as if losing an arm wrestle] “Two out of three?” “No.” He taught me that just because you're skinny doesn't mean that you're not powerful, and he was powerful. I mean, he could lift things that I couldn't lift, and I was twice his size. LR: As you as you've wandered and been back on campus, the Weber State Campus, how has that changed? DW: Well, of course, trees have grown up. Before that, they were little… LR: Nubs? DW: Yeah, they were twigs growing up. Now, you know, you're talking, what, some 50 years later, 40 years later? They're much bigger. A lot more grass. A lot more buildings. I can remember there was the brand-new building that was the lecture halls just west and kind of a little bit north of the stadium. That was brand new. We'd go in there for lectures. LR: Oh, the Lind Lecture Hall? DW: Yeah, Lind Lecture Hall. I couldn't remember the name of it. That was brand new. We got to go in there and have some lectures. That was quite, you know, they had some really big lecture halls there. So, you had quite a few 59 students go in for your undergraduate classes. Then of course, there was a business building, and then there was this other building that was closer to the pond. Before that, it was all grass around the ponds. There was no large parking lots and stuff. The main parking was down near the student center. The theater, now that they have a theater there, that wasn't there at the time. The library was somewhat new. I remember the library; you’d go there and hang out and sometimes go read books, because that library was a lot better than Ogden High School library. So, that's where a lot of my buddies and I were trying to research rockets and figure out if we could make a liquid rocket. LR: You shared that story. DW: Yeah. So, we used Weber State library, because they had so much more expanse than Ogden High's library was. We would go there for those type of things. We’d also go and see if we could find a college girl to hang out with [laughing]. LR: As you look at the campus now, do you think it has more of that old feel that Utah State had? DW: No. LR: No? DW: It's still modern in comparison. LR: Okay. DW: Yeah, it's to me, it's still modern, but I still love, and I always have loved, the bell tower, the clock tower. Love that. You used to be able to hear the bell tower a lot clearer then than now, because now you got trees and stuff that muffle the sound. But back then, when it was basically out in the open, the sound would carry a lot farther, and you could hear the bells. Of course, they 60 had the music bells that would go on, and they changed the music from time to time, and then at one point in time they had colored lights that light it up differently during the season. LR: I haven't seen that. DW: Yeah, it was really cool. Then of course they had the W on the side of the hill that they would light up for homecoming. RB: I think they still do that. LR: Oh, do they? Okay. DW: Yeah. Kind of like the Y for BYU, or the U for University of Utah, or the A for Utah State. Ogden High used to have an O on the side of the mountain, and we'd light that up for our homecoming. Then Ben Lomond had the BL on the side of the hill, and we'd try, Ogden High School, try to go and change the BL to BS. Take big white sheets up there and try to make the L into an S [lauging]. Then one time somebody took our O and made it into a P. LR: I don't think I understand that. DW: You're just making fun of the other school. LR: Yes. [To Raegan] Do you have any questions? RB: No. I had one, but it was answered. LR: Okay, awesome. DW: Of course, we had different schools that we went up against: Ben Lomond, Weber High School, we went against Davis. So, we had all of these—I think I talked about running behind Ed Eyestone from Bonneville in cross-country and track. But we just had some really fun things that went on. That was part of what made high school, for me, so much fun, is because of the interaction with my cross-country and track friends. Then I was the offset press operator 61 at Ogden High School, and so I’d print things off, whatever the teacher or the principal's office needed. There were certain classes that I had told the principal's office that if you call me out, I'm fine with, because I'm doing well in that class. So, I’d get an announcement, “David Walling, come to the principal's office.” All the kids, “Woo, you are in trouble now.” The type teacher was in charge of me on the offset press. She, because of the many hours that I spent doing the offset press operation, she felt that I needed to have some kind of compensation for that. So, she gave me straight As in typing, and I hardly even touched the typewriter. That helped for me to graduate, ‘cause that gave me the grade point average to graduate. I was a C-average student. LR: So, just kind of as a final little question—let me word this right. How do you hope Ogden will maintain the character that you've come to appreciate? DW: Well, one of the things they really did that proved how dedicated they are was when Ogden High School had to have the refit, and how many millions of dollars they came up with for the auditorium to be rebuilt, to have the stucco and all that to be redone. That showed me how dedicated the people are of Ogden to their heritage. Just like I'm hoping that we'll be able to maintain the Union building, the Union Pacific Railroad building, and not have that revamped, redone, modernized, but keep it in its historical venue. I would love to see a Utah Transit Authority train stop and use it as a train station. I don't know what the plan is there, but I would hope that they would. I've always said that UTA should have had the Frontrunner stop there, but at the time it wasn't owned by the city. It was still owned by the railroad, 62 and there was conflicts of the railroad wanted lease, and it was very expensive to lease. So, now that Ogden City owns it, hopefully UTA and Ogden City can come up with something where they could utilize it as a train station, turn it back into a train station, at least a portion of it. Maintain the Browning Arms Museum, the car museum, the HO train display. I would love to see a high-class restaurant go into there, kind of like what Salt Lake has in their train station. That way it would draw people to come to the building, as well as maybe a better gift shop with more historical stuff that would draw you in to want to buy historical books and other artifacts that you could purchase. Whether they're replicas or whatever, I don't care, but something that you can say, “I've been to Ogden and here's my proof.” I would love to be able to see them even come back and have a, kind of like what California has, when you go through the vineyards. Have a train in which you can get on, pay and ride, and then come back, and create some kind of attraction to bring people down to that portion of Ogden. So, that's kind of my hope. Weber State, they're kind of landlocked till they can buy property to be able to expand. What they’d have to do there is they’d have to buy houses, which is quite expensive, and then tear the houses down to expand their campus. So, they're kind of landlocked right now until they can get donations of people to donate house or whatever, and it has to be enough houses that they would have area to be able to build. I can remember when Dee Event Center was being built. When they finally got it done, we looked at it and said it looks like a hamburger on the hills [laughing]. Of course, the Dee family was not very happy about their Dee 63 Events Center being called the hamburger on the hill, but we still call it that. Because they had the light brown and then had the dark brown that bulged out, which looked like the hamburger patty [laughing]. LR: I had never thought of it, and now I can see it. I don't know if I'll ever get that visual out of my head now. DW: My mom actually was over there during 2002 Olympics when they had the curling event. She was helping out with the curling event, volunteer to take tickets and check tickets. At one point in time, they handed her a box that she was supposed to take money, so people could purchase tickets, but they didn't give her any way of getting change. So, it became a big issue, and they finally took that away from her and gave it to someone else. But she really enjoyed working over at the Dee Event Center and helping out during the Olympics. My dad, he helped out by being a van driver up in… They had the cross-country skiing up in that little valley. LR: Like Nordic Valley? DW: No, no, no, it was south of Park City, on that canyon. Midway. LR: Oh, okay. DW: So, he’d drive from here early, early in the morning, because he had to be up there in Midway at six in the morning. LR: Oh, good lord. DW: So, then he'd be a van driver taking the coaches and the participants to that cross-country meet and then back to their hotel, then he would drive home at nighttime. He had got himself a Subaru to be able to go back and forth, and I inherited the Subaru until this guy with a Mexican driver's license T-boned me. 64 I was so mad, ‘cause that was such a good car. Anyway, my dad, that was how he participated in 2002 Olympics. LR: That's really cool. DW: So, that's kind of how my parents—and downstairs they have all of these Olympic pins that my dad had purchased and traded and stuff like that. So, we've got a huge collection of pins. Some of them he bought, because they were a whole set together that you could buy. Then of course, I still have their uniforms, their 2002 Olympic uniforms, and I'm never going to get rid of those. Now, someone else does after I am gone, that's up to them. I'm hoping that once the next one comes to Salt Lake that I can volunteer. I'll have the time to volunteer and help out. LR: That's really cool. No more questions? Okay. I just want to thank you for your willingness to share your memories and stories of Ogden and Weber State. DW: I'm glad we got on track. LR: So, just again, thank you for that. I really appreciate it. 65