Oral History Program Joel E. Ricks Interviewed by Dello G. Dayton 22 December 1970 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Joel E. Ricks Interviewed by Dello G. Dayton Dean of the School of Arts, Letters and Sciences 22 December 1970 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 State College Oral History Program was created in the early 1970s to “record and document, through personal reminiscences, the history, growth and development of Weber State College.” Through interviews with administrators, faculty and students, the program’s goal was to expand the documentary holdings on Weber State College and its predecessor entities. From 1970 to 1976, the program conducted some fifteen interviews, under the direction of, and generally conducted by Harold C. Bateman, an emeritus professor of history. In 1979, under the direction of archivist John Sillito, the program was reestablished and six interviews were conducted between 1979 and 1983. Additional interviews were conducted by members of the Weber State community. ____________________________________ 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: Ricks, Joel E., an oral history by Dello G. Dayton, 22 December 1970, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. Joel E. Ricks 1 Abstract: The following is an oral history interview with Joel E. Ricks (born 1889). Mr. Ricks served as president of Weber Normal College from 1920 to 1922. The interview was conducted on December 22, 1970 by Dello G. Dayton in order to gather President Ricks’ recollections and experiences with Weber Normal College. DD: You became a teacher at Weber in 1917 is that right? JR: That's right. DD: Was it called Weber Academy then? JR: It was called Weber Normal College. DD: About how many people were at Weber when you first came. Do you remember approximately the size of the student body in 1917? JR: I am not sure, but your catalog might give that. DD: We can get that. Do you have any idea how many faculty members there were at that particular time? JR: I could name most of them but it'd take a few minutes to name them. I know the year I became president, we had a considerable improvement. Taylor for example, you know about Harvey Taylor. DD: I should say. Who were some of the others? JR: Harvey Taylor, and Stevenson. DD: Was this Merlon Stevenson? JR: Merlon Stevenson. We brought him to teach mathematics and he taught football on the side. 2 DD: Leland Monson wasn't there yet was he? JR: No. DD: At the particular time that you were at the college as president, Dr. Ricks, what were the primary functions? Was it primarily training teachers? JR: When I first came, as a teacher in 1917, it was Weber Normal College. While I was there, they changed presidents. President Owen F. Beal came the year after I did, as I remember, and then Aldous Dixon came back. DD: This was all before you became president? JR: All before I became president. Aldous came back and was president until 1922, that's when he left to go down to his family banking business in Provo. It was Weber Normal College then. Now I disagreed with Aldous somewhat on what kind of institution Weber ought to be. I thought in Ogden we ought to have a general college, not a normal college, but a general college, without increasing the faculty very much. For example, I taught history at Weber, a year of it. You see, my presidency occurred at the time when the church policy changed entirely. They were getting out of the high school business and getting into college. DD: The point you're making is that you encouraged the general college program? JR: I think that your catalog will make you clear on this. I believe I was responsible for changing the name from Weber Normal College to Weber College. I had that in mind for this reason: Ogden was not a town of teachers; Ogden was a town of business people. And the ones who would come to our college, the ones we wanted, the Wright's and Eccles’, would come because they were interested in 3 business. So I conceived the idea that a general, broad, college education was needed. Now Aldous' position was perfectly natural and normal and I don't have a word of complaint against it. Aldous was a teacher's man, Aldous was an educator. DD: That's right. JR: He wanted to train people for teaching; you can see that. Now my point of view was different on that. Now, to establish a college when it had been a high school was almost an impossible task. For example, Ogden High ought to have been one of the principle drawing areas for Weber College, but the big emphasis at Weber at that time was in the high school. And the most bitter high school rivalry I've known anywhere was between Weber and Ogden High. They called it normal college, but Weber was really a high school. So to expect those people after a senior year at Ogden High to come down to Weber, that was going into the enemy's camp! That wasn't a normal circumstance at all. So you couldn't have both of them as I saw it. In college, it seemed to me, the idea of a normal college was limiting the functions too much of a new school. What they ought to do was seek a general college education. DD: Well now, at the time you were there, was it a two year program? JR: A two year program, yes. In fact, that had a hard time surviving. DD: Dr. Ricks, what did you have in the way of administrative assistants when you were president? Who did you have assisting you as officials? 4 JR: Well, about the only one we had there was William Terry as registrar. In addition to his mathematics, he took over the duties as registrar. Otherwise, it was simply a president and faculty, just about as it would be at that time almost anywhere. DD: Sure. JR: Even [Utah State] University didn't have all the vice-presidents they have now. DD: Not quite. I know what you mean. Mr. Terry was still there up until a few years ago on a part-time basis, fine gentleman, we really thought highly of him. Did you teach while you were President? JR: Yes, I taught a class. In fact, that's really the story, I suppose about how I left Weber and came up here. I didn't want the administrative work. I wasn't particularly interested in it. But, I knew that it carried compensation that was not possible elsewhere. When Aldous Dixon resigned in the spring of 1920, I was back at the University of Chicago getting my master's degree, so I readily applied. I had several very good friends on the Board. John Watson, the dear old soul, one of Ogden's outstanding citizens— DD: What was the nature of the board at that time? JR: It was the board chosen from the stakes, made up of the stake presidencies, that's practically what it was. The stake presidency of Weber and Ogden Stake at first, and then it increased, of course, as the stakes were divided. DD: Who was the president of the board did you say? JR: David O. McKay. DD: David O. McKay. Who were the other members of the board? 5 JR: From Weber Stake, there was Shurtliff and Watson, Chris Flygare was not a member of the board but he was in the Presidency about that time, and John Bluth. From the Ogden Stake was President Evans, Thomas E. McKay was his first counselor, and his second counselor who was in the banking business there, [Samuel G.] Dye. DD: Were there only two stakes there at that time? JR: Weber and Ogden. I think, as I remember, the stake presidency were the members of the board, those two stakes—about six men. Lewis W. Shurtliff, I want to be sure you get him. DD: He was the vice-president of the board? JR: He was the vice-president. He was the president at that time of Weber Stake. President Evans was President of Ogden Stake. The first counselor was Thomas E. McKay. DD: In your move toward the general curriculum, Dr. Ricks, you still maintained, I presume, the Normal aspects—in other words, you still trained teachers, but began to broaden the curriculum? Was this the idea? JR: The idea was that this was a long leap ahead over a long period of time. I knew two things: I knew that in the first place, Ogden would be interested in something more than maintaining a normal school, they were sold on business. Business was the principal interest. That meant a regular general college education. So I could see that the future of Weber College rested on that. I think Aldous Dixon would have agreed with me. DD: Oh sure. 6 JR: At the time. DD: Well, as a matter of fact, later on, he did you see, because that's the way they expanded. JR: In the second place, I knew that we would have to emphasize Normal for a while because the only ones who came to us were the people who couldn't afford to go to the University of Utah, Brigham Young University or Utah State University. DD: In terms of financial support, was it all tuition essentially? JR: Church appropriations too. DD: The Church gave appropriations? I guess there were individual student fees, at that time? JR: Yes, that's right. DD: Where did most of your faculty come from? I know there was a small faculty, Dr. Ricks, but did they come directly from college or did they come from other teaching positions? Who's the gentleman that you mentioned here, Harvey Taylor, for example? Where did he come from? JR: He'd been busy in scout work. In fact, when I was in the history department, when I came the first year, they wanted me to teach some English and history. They said there wouldn't be enough students to justify classes in history and I said this, "You give me one year, if you aren't satisfied at that time, I don't want to come back." When I left, there were five men in history and social science. DD: In a five year period? JR: Yeah in that five year period. John Q. Blaylock, I forgot to mention him. He lasted a long time after I left. 7 DD: Yes, I've heard them talk about Mr. Blaylock. In terms of your extracurricular activities, you had an athletic program. Did this consist both of football and basketball? JR: We took up football and that's how we came for Stevenson. DD: I see. JR: I went down to the University of Utah to see the man that taught agriculture; strangely enough they had one man in agriculture down at the University of Utah. He told me, "I know the man you want, but he won't be interested and you can't interest him at all. It's Stevenson." I said, "Well now, do you object to my talking to him?" He said, "No." I talked to him and he was immediately interested. But, I didn't leave it there. I had an idea that part of Stevenson's reaction would depend upon the athletes. So I got the athletes together and got Steve to meet and talk to them and they sold Weber College to Steve. DD: Oh yes. JR: Because Malc Watson, in addition to his manual training, did all the teaching that we had in athletics, and he was the basketball coach. Of course, when Steve came, there was a rather delicate situation as you can see. So I got Steve and Malc together and I said, "Now Malc, you don't want football, do you? You want your basketball." Well that suited Malc fine. I said, "Why not do this? Why not let Malc have charge of the basketball, and Steve have charge of the football?" That was fine with Malc. Malc was as loyal a supporter of Stevenson as there was down there. His attitude was fine. But that's how we got the first football coach. 8 Stevenson was the first football coach at Weber. I don't believe they had football before I was there. DD: Did you have any social clubs at the time that you recall? Again we can probably find it in the catalogs, but I wondered if you remembered? JR: The catalogs would be much better than my memory on that. There were dramatic organizations and debating. The sorority and fraternity idea never developed on the campus while I was there. I don't know when that came in. I think quite a bit later. DD: It was there when I was there, and it apparently had been there for some time, but it probably didn't come in this early. Weber's had debate and drama for a long, long time. In these kinds of activities, do you remember, Dr. Ricks and again we could check this, did they give any credit for dramatic classes or debate classes at that time, or was it strictly an extracurricular? JR: I think it was extracurricular, I wouldn't be positive, but I think it was extracurricular. See Ernest Wilkinson was one of our early debaters. DD: Yes, I know. JR: Wilkinson was a student when I was there at this time in the early period. DD: Was there a student organization, in other words, did you have student government? JR: Yes, a very fine student organization. And some of those men have done pretty well. One of our student body officers was John [unintelligible.] He's now with the mail back in Minnesota. John was a wonderful boy. Stanley Reese, later became 9 a doctor, was one of the student body presidents at that time. Llewellyn McKay was a student body president, in that period too. DD: About Ernest Wilkinson, was he ever a student officer there? I know he was very active in debate as you indicated. JR: I believe he was student body president in there sometime. Then he stayed on as an instructor. DD: His family was from the Ogden area, I know that. Did you have anything like testing and counseling at that particular time? You had of course, advising and counseling, but did you have any form of testing program that you remember? JR: No. We didn't have any. DD: I presume because of the relatively small size of the student body, and the local nature of the student body, that there was a very close faculty-student relationship. JR: Very close. DD: It was still there when I was there. JR: At the time we're talking about the faculty and student body were, as you suggest, very, very close. But it was a relationship, for example, that when you'd have problems you'd bring them here. The President’s office became more of a disciplinary headquarters. In fact, I went with the Ogden chief of police down in the pool halls of Ogden and found some of our boys. One of whom has a national reputation now; I can't think of his name, as a physician, he was one of those I found down there on one visit that I made. We were good friends and we got along and I took it up with his father. See, President McKay emphasized the 10 moral side of education and he could never be president of a board and not have a dominant place. No question. He dominated Weber before those years and he dominated Weber after those years. And, he was particularly interested in the moral side of education, and of course Weber was his school. He was very fond of it. He concerned himself with affairs of Weber more than the ordinary president of the Board of Trustees does. No doubt about that. And of course, since it was a church school, the church expected him to more or less look after it. Also, he was very important in determining policy for the whole church school system as well as for initiating policy at Weber. But, he was especially concerned with Weber. And, of course, the members of the board all deferred to him; I think they'd all agree with me on that, if they were alive to say it today. DD: Of course, this was evident in the subsequent history of the college and our relations with President McKay. He was vitally interested in our school long after it became part of the state system in 1933, I think there was no question about it. In relation to the physical plant, Dr. Ricks, were there any additions during those years? What did the physical plant of the school consist of at that time? JR: It consisted of the Moench building, and then there was a residence there, was it Dr. Rich's residence? DD: Dr. Dixon later lived there in that home. Did you live in that residence? JR: No, I lived in my own home. DD: I see. I guess the Central Building wasn't built was it? JR: No. While I was there, we were building the gymnasium. 11 DD: Oh, the gymnasium was being built. JR: This was a church school, and the church's idea of a place for a school is a place in the center, in the heart of town. The LDS High School in Salt Lake is one example. I suggested that they change that one of these days. I said, "Why not start the gymnasium up on the hill?" Well, of course they had the gymnasium in mind to serve the stakes as well as to serve the college, as a meeting place for the stakes, and of course that wouldn't suit them at all. That's one idea that never got to first base, but they had it just the same. I thought the future of Weber rested in getting a campus up on the hill. DD: Well, that idea never died, of course, because eventually it did materialize. But, you know they converted the Deseret Gym into a public facility. The gym that was being built when you were there now is the Deseret Gym, it's a public facility. JR: It has nothing to do with the campus. DD: You know they've torn down the Moench building now. That was torn down just a few weeks ago. JR: Of course the Board loved that old block of campus, but I could see that we couldn't go on that way. We had to change. DD: Apart from the support that came from the church, appropriations and of course the tuitions, did you feel that you had community support as far as Weber was concerned? Was there public support? JR: Public support was largely in the county. DD: I see. 12 JR: There were some LDS families in Ogden that were as fond of Weber as anybody else. But see, Ogden was the city high school, that's a good thing not to overlook. Weber was not a little school. It never was, not while I remember it. It was a big school in terms of high schools of that time. Now, that doesn't mean in terms of today that it was a big deal. In regard to that time, however, it was a first class growing high school and would have continued so if the church hadn't gotten out of the high school business. You see one of the hardest things for me was to sit in my office with mothers and fathers coming in, and mothers with tears running down their cheeks, and saying, "Now just let my child into Weber. Just make this exception." Well there were over a thousand exceptions. The first step was elimination of the high school. And they did it this way: Weber County High School wasn't ready to take over fully at that time, so they proposed to have the Ogden High School students who would normally go to Weber eliminated. David O.'s daughter would have been a freshman at Weber that year but she had to go to Ogden High. He said, "No, we won't make any exceptions in my case." DD: In terms of the development of public education in Utah, as public high schools came in, then the church academies and the other schools, church schools, tended to fade out, didn't they? JR: See, there were three phases of a church academy. Your first academies were grade schools; that's all they were. And then the church academies became high schools, and then finally, some of the church academies emerged as colleges. BYU was one. It was Brigham Young Academy back in the 1870's and 1980's. 13 DD: We had a Brigham Young College here too, in Logan. JR: Yes. And Weber College, in Ogden, was an academy. That's the way it came. But here's where they went out of it. I tell you, that was really uphill business. I was about the most unpopular person around when those mothers came in and found a stony-hearted man sitting here when they wanted their children to go to Weber. They said, "All my children have been to Weber. All of them have been at Weber." I don't want to go through that experience ever again. DD: Well, it's certainly difficult when you have to make those kinds of decisions. JR: Well, of course, if the church hadn't done it right then, they'd have had to do it soon after the depression came because the church didn't have the money to continue it. DD: Did you notice any particular growth from the time you came in 1917 till you left in 1922? Was Weber growing all the time during that period? You started really during the war didn't you? JR: Yes. DD: You left just at the end of the war. I wonder what the effect of the war was on attendance at the school. JR: I think you find if you go to your statistics that your biggest fall in attendance came at the time that these Ogden people were denied entrance into Weber. And, the only place you had high school students coming was from the county where the county hadn't facilities for high school purposes. So I think if you look over your statistics that would show up. It was the building of the college that caused problems. You had this strange thing, where a majority of the faculty was 14 interested in the building up of the college, but you only had a handful, twenty or thirty, college students. Yet, there were hundreds of high school students, and building up the college didn't sit very well with those high school students. They thought, "Well, this is the Weber High School." They didn't call it Weber High School but that's what they thought it was. Here, they're paying all their attention to these people coming down from Ogden High, just a handful of them. The college, when I was first there, was under John M. Mills. John Mills had a theory, he couldn't give full time. That's how we brought Leon Winsor in. Leon Winsor came and taught most of the college subjects and all I could hope to do, was to add such courses to the college as English and History, and Theory with a little Math. DD: Did you have college level laboratory courses at all when you were there, Chemistry and Physics? JR: No, I don't think we did on the college level while I was there, but certainly afterwards. We wouldn't have had any history if I hadn't been there. That is, there was no one else that wanted it. DD: I see. JR: That's something I fought for personally for reasons which you can understand better than anybody else. DD: Tell us about the college library at that time. JR: Well, one of the problems of the period was the library. There was a serious shortage of books. There hadn't been enough money to hire teachers and build a library and so we used every available device we could to try to improve the 15 library. I recall for example in the history courses given, we used four volumes of the American Nation series, and I got the students to give them to the library when they were over. That was one of the big additions, which was very small in itself, to the library that year. The library was a serious problem and we were very seriously working on it. DD: In other words, building the collection. JR: Building the collection. DD: Did you have any public drives? At that particular time as you recall. Or was this an appeal made to students? JR: This was made to students. DD: I see. It's interesting that this problem of the library would be a continuing problem because it's the thing that we face right now at Weber. JR: Well, for the same reason that we faced it. There's not enough money to do both. DD: That's right. JR: You've got to give money to teachers in order to teach. DD: Of course, I think, there are some advantages now, Dr. Ricks that you didn't have, and that is that at the present time, at least, the competition among book companies does get more books into teachers hands and eventually some of these copies do end up in the library. JR: That happened of course with us. I never taught a class that a book salesman didn't send me copies of his book. But the problem of the libraries was serious. Then again of course, the idea of research wasn't at all instilled the way it is now. 16 That is the secondary source was considered almost primary in those days. Fiske's History of the United States, would be the last word. DD: Philosophically. JR: Yes. I can remember in my own case, in grade school days, the teacher had a copy of Gordy's History of the United States on the desk, and the text we used was Fiske. I used to go to the teacher's desk when she was out of the room and get Gordy. In grade school is where I first found out that there's more than one point of view in history. It is not all in one book. But you get a variation. I learned that myself. Nobody ever taught me that. Well, Gordy taught it to me. Here was Fiske's history, from the conservative point of view, and here was Gordy with a quite more liberal point of view. So I would play upon that in class; the teacher didn't like it at all. DD: But at the time, as you've intimated, essentially, the instruction was pretty much in the textbook wasn't it? JR: Yes. DD: I don't mean only in history, but this was pretty true generally. JR: Yes. Very often, of course in chemistry, the teacher would carry on the experiment before the class. Now days, every member of the class, with his test tubes would do it himself. DD: It was a demonstration more than a laboratory experience really. Of course, one of the best courses I ever had in my life was a lecture demonstration course at Utah State, Leon Linford taught. He later went over I think and became the chairman of the physics department at the University of Utah. 17 JR: See, I had an unusual chance to see education in operation, because down at Sanpete district, I was acquainted with Snow College, well acquainted and I saw what they did. I went to the LDS for a year and a half and I knew what they did. I taught at Weber and I knew what they did. When you measure them all up, one beside the other, the quality of teaching at Weber at that time was very, very high. DD: This is something that struck me when I first came to Weber, on a temporary basis; in the spring of 1946, I never even dreamed that I'd be staying at Weber College. But I was impressed from the beginning, that Weber carried, through the years a tremendous concern for youth and tremendous concern for people. I think that continues. JR: You know, I think of all the schools that I knew, and I've had a little experience, I would say the moral standards as taught at Weber, are higher than any other school. Of course you've got to go to David O. McKay for that. DD: What would you consider, Dr. Ricks, the greatest kind of satisfaction that you derived from your professional experience, either while you were at Weber as a teacher or as a president or elsewhere? JR: Teaching history.