i Oral History Program Diane Call Interviewed by Rebecca Ory Hernandez 7 November 2011 ii Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Diane Call Interviewed by Rebecca Ory Hernandez 7 November 2011 Copyright © 2012 by Weber State University, Stewart Library iii 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 Communities Oral History Collection includes interviews of citizens from several different walks of life. These interviews were conducted by Stewart Library personnel, Weber State University faculty and students, and other members of the community. The histories cover various topics and chronicle the 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: Diane Call, an oral history by Rebecca Ory Hernandez, 7 November 2011, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. Diane Call ca. 2010 1 Abstract: The following is an oral history interview with Diane Call (b. 1931.) This interview was conducted on November 7, 2011 by Rebecca Ory Hernandez at the Call residence in St. George, Utah. The interview covers Diane’s life and her experiences with Weber State University. Diane graduated from Weber State University in 1983 and spent time working in the Women’s Career Center on campus. Diane is retired from Weber State University and lives with her husband, Dr. Howard C. Call in St. George, Utah. ROH: We’re speaking with Mrs. Diane Call in her home in Washington, Utah on November 7, 2011. We’re going to talk about your time at Weber State University. Tell us about your interviews with prospective nursing students DC: Here’s a little background, first. I graduated from Weber in 1983 with a Bachelor of Integrated Studies. A few years later I was hired by the Career Center after working with Tony Wait as a secretary while she was dean. I worked as a secretary in the Women’s Center, as well. Then I was hired as a career coordinator in the Career Center with Dr. Steven Eichmeier. My duties included interview perspective teachers and doing mock interviews for them. I also met with school districts. We had a career fair with the school districts every year with the University of Utah, BYU, USU and Weber. One of the things I enjoyed the most was a seminar that I held in the Nursing Department with the Radiology Department and other health departments and the Education Department to tell people about what we would expect when they were going in for interviews and 2 how to write resumes and what things were necessary on a resume and how to present themselves as well as possible. It was my feeling that you always dressed better than the job you were seeking. Working with Weber State was a fun experience for me because I had raised my family—I think I had one child left at home—and everything just fell into place. I thoroughly enjoyed the years I was there. We used to give forms to all of the graduating seniors when they would come to pick up their caps and gowns. They were told they had to fill out the form before they could walk away with the cap and gown. The form was to tell us whether they were working and if they were working in their field. We may have asked for information on salary, but we wanted to know how the employment situation was affecting students in our university. Not only was I in charge of getting those to the seniors, but I also had to make a chart that went into our annual report that showed all of those things. Math is my least comfortable subject, so it was a challenge. It showed what school they were graduating in, what their major was, how old they were, how long they’d been in school, if they’d come to the Career Center. ROH: When did you start at Weber State? DC: 1985. I retired in 1996. ROH: What made you decide to retire then? DC: I was old enough. [Laughter] ROH: Did you ever work with your husband’s dental practice? DC: A little bit. I filled in when he needed a receptionist once in a while, but not very often. 3 ROH: What were the areas of emphasis in your Bachelor of Integrated Studies? DC: Education, psychology, and history. ROH: Do you have any fun stories from the time when you were advising students? DC: One girl was very pleasant to look at and dressed well, but she had a habit of giggling—the uncomfortable, self conscious kind of giggling that people do. I always felt nervous about criticizing anyone, so I was trying to make it a suggestion and I said to her, “You’re doing a fine job, but I would like to point out that you have this nervous laugh. I think you might want to work on that.” She told me her family background and it was good to know why she had this habit. She did not grow up in a happy home and she was really nervous about herself. Years later I opened the newspaper and she had a by-line in the newspaper. I like that because success comes even to people who don’t graduate in their field. That was one of the things I talked about when I did classes in the Career Center. We would have classes of sophomores or freshmen who either had a desire to be something in the future and weren’t sure, or other students who had no idea what they wanted to do. It was rewarding because if we didn’t pinpoint something that was really going to work for them, quite often they found out in the courses or classes that they weren’t cut out to do that particular thing. They had to interview people in the field. We had guests come and talk about those particular fields, and that was another gratifying part of the program. Some people would come into the Career Center and talk to me about their plans and they would have some reservations about something or they were enthusiastic about something and they wanted to share. I started having them do portfolios, 4 which wasn’t something that was done when I first started. They put together pictures of themselves maybe doing their student teaching or projects that they had put together for their student teaching. One young man who came in quite often had an offer from Moab to teach school down there. He was very nervous about it and I said, “Just go. It will give you experience and put your foot in the door.” A couple years later we were on a trip with some friends in Moab and there was a flea market going on. We were walking around and someone said, “Mrs. Call, is that you?” It was that young man. He said, “If it wasn’t for you, I wouldn’t have come and I absolutely love it here.” I think I did a pretty good job and in some ways I’m sorry I left as soon as I did, but there were other things I wanted to do. Did Howard ever tell you anything about the I.C.L. program down here? ROH: No. What is it? DC: I.C.L. is the Institute for Continued Learning. It’s associated with Dixie State College. We use their classroom and we have forty to fifty classes every semester that are taught mostly by retired professors on a volunteer basis. We have 650 members who are mostly retired. It costs them forty dollars a year to attend any number of these classes that they want to. There are no requirements for grades, homework, no tests. These people are just so enthusiastic. We have computer classes, geology classes, psychology, art, history, dance, yoga. There is no one I know who doesn’t think these are the greatest thing. I think it works so well down here because there are so many retired people with time on their 5 hands. I think Weber did something similar when they had that campus down in the mall. ROH: Weber does have a Continuing Education Department, but the community classes that were offered were cut during the last budget cuts. DC: I think Weber’s professors were paid, too. We have a professor who teaches folklore and mythology and digital photography. We’re getting a real bargain. ROH: Have you heard of anyone in Ogden who is interested in these types of classes? DC: The friends we have in Ogden always go to classes with us when they come down to visit. I think the distance is a problem in Ogden. I know the University of Utah had a program like this but it costs a lot more. The school gave us an office in the old alumni building to use. They take good care of us. We painted and redecorated. ROH: The retired persons run it yourselves? DC: Yes. ROH: Do you go out and find the instructors? DC: We don’t have to. They submit a proposal and we have a council that selects from those. ROH: Where were you born? DC: In Ogden in 1931. ROH: How did you and Howard meet? DC: I lived in North Ogden until I was eighteen. We moved back to Ogden and went to Weber for two years. I wasn’t very aware of my neighbors because I was busy with school and I was going to church up at school. I didn’t meet Howard for a 6 while. When I graduated from Weber, I worked for a year and then I went to the University of Utah. Low and behold, we lived in the same building. He also lived five houses from me in Ogden. Our paths just hadn’t crossed before. ROH: What year did you get married? DC: In 1953. ROH: What kind of things did you do together? Did you go to campus events? DC: Yes, and he took me skiing. At that time, Snow Basin didn’t have a chair lift on the bunny hill. You had to take a hold of a J-bar to get up the hill and when I did, I fell off. Howard held out his ski pole to drag me up. I thought it was very gallant. ROH: What made you decide to do a B.I.S. degree? DC: My main reason was because I loved to learn and when I worked in the Women’s Center, I dealt a lot with returning women. Someone gave me a paper that talked about a woman who had gone back to college. She said, “I didn’t know anything. I didn’t know history or people or countries. I was hungry to learn.” That was the way I have always been. To go back to college meant I was learning for a reason. I wasn’t really thinking about a career at all, I just wanted a degree. When I found out about the B.I.S. degree, I thought it was perfect. I already had an Associate’s degree because I had been taking classes off and on over the years. ROH: What was your Associate’s in? DC: An Associate of Arts degree required basic classes in academic fields. I went to the University of Utah for a year after that because Weber was only a two year school. The B.I.S is good for people who have eclectic interests and aren’t 7 looking to stick to one thing that they majored in. With the B.I.S. they can come in and learn about things that interest them and maybe it will lead to a job. I found out in the course of my schooling that a large percentage of people who were successful in their working lives are not necessarily working in the field they have a degree in. I also think the B.I.S. is great for a woman who has a husband and feels like she wants to learn and progress in her life. When I was teaching the career development classes, quite often I had young ladies who I could tell were there to find a husband and couldn’t care less about getting a degree. It became a desire of mine to inspire these girls that they may need to get a job someday and have something to say to an interviewer about their education. When you get an education, you are generally the next in line over someone who doesn’t have a degree. I have seen many times, women whose husbands have left them, or their husbands died, or they divorced. My daughter has a friend who is fifty-two years old and her husband’s business has fallen. She has no college at all and she wants to go into the nursing program. ROH: Would you talk a little about Weber State and your time there as a student? Are there any professors who stick out in your mind? DC: Oh yes—Gene Sessions and Dr. Sadler, some of the psychology professors. and everybody in the Education Department. Most of them I worked with in the capacity of my job. When I started doing seminars for the graduating seniors, I would invite the directors or the teachers of the senior classes to come in and see what I was doing. I really had some excellent teachers and advisors. Tony Waite was a friend of my brothers. She called and asked if I would work for her 8 while her secretary was taking a maternity leave. Another dean had a secretary who was pregnant and I substituted for her for another three months. By then, I was very comfortable on campus. There is no place in the world that an old person can go and feel as comfortable as on a college campus. You get more smiles on a college campus than you do in church. I love the feeling of the young people who are growing up gracious and enthusiastic. ROH: Who was president when you were there? DC: Dr. Nadauld. He’s the president here now. ROH: Did you teach classes? DC: Only at the Career Center. They were called Career Development. It was a three-hour elective course. They came to class three days a week. I think the most important part was that we invited people from the community to talk about the expectations that student would be facing if they went out into that career field. ROH: You would have experienced some of the recession while you were at Weber in the late 1980s. Did you see it affect Ogden? DC: My feeling is that the women who were coming back were not coming because their husbands had been laid off. I think we’re seeing a lot of that now—that’s why Dixie has had such an increase in their attendance. When I was working in the Women’s Center, I don’t remember talking to a lot of women who were there because they had to be the breadwinner. I think they wanted to work and it was important to them to get a job, but it wasn’t the desperation that we’re seeing now. ROH: Thank you. It’s been a pleasure talking with you.