Oral History Program Reed K. Swenson Interviewed by Al Watrin 9 March 1971 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Reed K. Swenson Interviewed by Al Watrin 9 March 1971 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: Swenson, Reed K., an oral history by Al Watrin, 9 March 1971, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. Reed K. Swenson 1 Abstract: The following is an oral history interview with Reed K. Swenson (born 1903). Dr. Swenson served as Weber College Athletic Director from 1933 to 1971. The interview was conducted on March 9, 1971 by Al Watrin in order to gather Dr. Swenson’s recollections and experiences with Weber College. AW: My name is Al Watrin and I am interviewing Dr. Reed K. Swenson, member of Weber State College Physical Education Department. Dr. Swenson, I understand you have been here thirty-eight years. When did you come to Weber? RS: I came in the summer of 1933, at the same time the school had just been taken by the state from the LDS Church. That was the first year in operation as a state department of public instruction. AW: What was the name of the college then? RS: Then it was Weber College. As a junior college we had approximately 450 students. We were down on the old campus and all our school work was carried on in the old Moench Building and in the gym. AW: Where was the campus located? RS: Between Adams and Jefferson, between 24th and 25th Streets. Just last spring they tore down the old Moench, which was one of our first historical buildings. I recall when I first came that I had a call for football. We had a game in Hawaii in two weeks. I had nine candidates show up for the practice the first night and that's kind of a funny feeling to have. In those days no scholarships were given. You would call for candidates and they came out. The year before, they made a trip to Hawaii and most that played that year graduated. 2 Needless to say, we went out and tried to get more players. We finally got about eighteen. When we came together we had some very fine players, Cluff Snow and Harm Williams and others. But there weren't very many of them. We didn't do very well in football as you can guess. We started basketball after football was over and again we didn't have anyone who was very good show up. In those days, anyone who played junior college ball couldn't play MN ball. At that time MN ball was very popular in this area, so I had three or four intramural teams that could beat varsity. But we did have some and some had never played before. One was Len Froley, Len Wilcox, and Cluff Snow. We didn't do too well, but the next year we were a little better. That year Stan Watts came and played with us. We at least won from every school in the league at least once. The scoring was different, if I recall, about this time. I read an article in an eastern magazine that Ott Romney with his racehorse type ball had just got the scoring up to forty points a game, or a point minute. Up to that time, scores were in the twenties. It was unheard of to get scores in the forties so the type of play has changed a great deal. We had some very good ball clubs. We won the league twice and the AAU for the intermountain area and went to Denver to compete in the nationals where we made some very good showings. In those days, we had little money. Al Warden, in his column one night, wondered why Weber shouldn't go to the nationals. He asked me if we could go. I said, “Yes, if we had the money.” So, in about half an hour he got on the phone and raised enough money from Ogden businessmen that we could go. We used to plan on $1.50 a day for our team. We would get our rooms for $.50 and meals for $1.00. 3 Everyone got along all right. No one starved to death and we had good beds and so on. Then the war came and our programs stopped. We had the Navy flight training program here. We had about sixty cadets each month, and we attempted to have some kind of athletic program, but not very much. After the war, most every one wanted to go to college and colleges were bulging. At that time we had pretty good ball clubs. In those days we used to play Utah, BYU, and Utah State and give pretty good ball games. As a matter of fact, we beat Utah State twice and then they changed the regulations so that they cut off competition with the junior colleges in all sports, basketball, swimming, and so on. AW: Would you say that after the war, this was the turning point for the junior colleges in America? RS: They started a very active movement in 1921, but after the war, there is no question that they made some rapid gains. I was involved in the junior college movement and in the National Association of Junior Colleges. The majority of junior colleges were in the West. Most in the East were very small and most were private. California and Texas and Illinois and some others had quite a few junior colleges. There was a rapid growth in junior college athletics and of junior colleges in the 1950's. AW: Can you tell me something about your football program and how it's come along since that first team? RS: Weber College has always been a top notch junior college. As a matter of fact, it was rated as one of ten outstanding ones in the United States. So it's always 4 been a very fine institution. All of its programs have been outstanding, like debate. I think you'll find that any of our programs have been of high quality. We're nationally known in debate, football, basketball, and we've competed in track many times. But our football has been one we've had ups and downs about. We seem to be able to win from everybody except Boise. We tie them, but there has been a long standing rivalry between Boise College and Weber College and we are continuing it now. If you look over the years, you'll find that it has a very fine record, particularly under Merlon Stevenson under the church. But the difficulty was that there was no recruiting or scholarships at any time. We took who came and who we could sell the school to. So some of the others who recruited, we naturally didn't compete with them. AW: Can you tell me how competition has progressed and how you have changed your type of teams you play and who you play? RS: When I first came here, we were playing primarily the inter-mountain junior colleges, which inculded Albion, Idaho, Ricks, Snow, Dixie, and Branch Aggies down at Cedar City. This is where we stayed until after the war. After the war, Compton College had an invitational basketball tournament, where almost all of the schools had good teams because of the big influx of returning soldiers. They had fairly good budgets because of increased enrollment. So they invited a great number of colleges. As they met, there was a great variation of eligibility rules. So they decided that they would organize into a National Junior College Association which had been formed before but had been out of existence pretty largely during the war. They divided the U.S. into eight regions in an attempt to 5 set up a program where they had a tournament in Springfield, Missouri. This didn't turn out so well financially, so it was shifted on a bid to Hutchinson, Kansas in 1949, which was the first one there and from then on the basketball program had been largely in the NJCAA. As soon as they got financially stable they went into track, tennis, golf, swimming, and football. In this length of time the shift has been from local competition entirely toward regional competition as far as the season's play is concerned, but it was a qualifying round for national competition. Needless to say, Weber has taken its place in this many times. We hosted the National Boxing Championships here at the Weber gym. We had some of our boxers who placed very well in the finals. We also had, under Ray Rhead, the track coach, a second place in the national competition. We won baseball many times, but in all cases it was almost entirely local fellows. There was no spring practice because at the end of each season you would start a new one, football until Thanksgiving, then basketball until March, then baseball. In that length of time, we've had a great number of great personalities go through this institution. We had at the beginning a coaching staff of two, Carl Bellison and I. We handled all sports, taught all classes, and ran the gymnasium program for the community. Carl left and we hired Bob Davis and Faron Lossee, so we grew to three. A little later Bob Davis hired a former dorm supervisor in the National Youth Administration, Milt Mecham, as his football assistant. After the war, Milt came back as head coach and Bob moved on to Colorado. 6 Mecham, who had been in the artillery during the war, came back and Bob Davis left and Milt was given the job as coach. At that time you had just one man primarily in charge of football. In those days too, that individual was usually equipment man, trainer, coach, and also taught a full load. As time went on Milt began to ask for additional help, he brought in some of his former players, Dick Williams and Ray Rhead assisted him. A little bit later we added Clair Anderson, so it was a gradual increase. At no time however did we have more than three men in our P.E. department, which was also our coaching staff and we carried on not only all of the gym classes but the athletic program and all the other assignments we had. A little bit later on we had a student body president, Laurence Burton, who we gave a few extra dollars. He became our first business manager as he carried on. Later on as the program grew he was given a full time assignment. So this was the development of a program. Very slowly, but very consistently over a period of about ten years the shift came from a two year to a four year school. This made a great deal of difference. I recall that one of our major concerns was how to make this change. I was convinced without any question that Ogden wanted competition in a higher class, primarily Utah, Utah State, and BYU and so on. I recall when we first won from Utah State this was the beginning of the town people wanting to have a four year school, primarily because they could compete with these others. Most all the athletic competition is not entirely between schools. It's more a question of competition between localities and cities and so on. But for some unknown reason and I suppose understandably, Ogden wasn't 7 particularly interested in competing with Ephraim or some small towns and there is nothing wrong with that. Weber wanted to be more like the coast schools. It isn't a competition between Southern Cal and the University of Washington. It's a competition between Los Angeles and Seattle. When you get that way you get a great deal more interest, so this is what motivated this. We had an opportunity to assist in forming a new conference. The old Skyline Conference had broken up and the WAC had formed. In that particular case the Montana schools were out and quite a number of the schools in this western part were without affiliation. So after a number of meetings and so on, in which most of the schools were opposed to Weber being considered at all, we finally reached the point where in order to form a conference they had to have six schools. They had five and couldn't get the sixth. So as a result Weber came in. The major concern was would Weber become competitive? We assured them we would, and anytime you find a school that has had a heritage of winning and pride in their programs, they're going to continue doing that, even with the change from a junior to senior college. Well, it didn't take long and our first year of competition we won it in football, which we weren't supposed to do. AW: Was this the Big Sky Conference now? RS: This was the Big Sky. AW: What year was that formed? RS: I've forgotten the date, but we got in the minute that we were accredited. We had to be an accredited school to become a member of the NCAA. We'd put in an application before, so they formed it officially at that time. We also have done 8 well and competed very strongly in basketball, track, swimming, wrestling, and so on. As a matter of fact, there have been two years out of the years we've been in, and I think it's been only about six years we've been in we've won the all around, having the most points in types of competition. So this was a great experience to pick up and join a staff. We were fortunate to have Dick Motta already here. He was an exceptional coach in junior college, he was an exceptional coach in senior college, and he is still a good coach in professional basketball. We were fortunate in having a very fine publicity man in Don Spainhower, and we had a group of people that worked together very well, and enthusiastically. So this was the athletic program. At the same time we also had a very interesting assignment, and that was to change from a two year into a four year curriculum. So our other problem came in developing a professional course in physical education. So with the group of people we had, we set our objectives and the types of courses that we needed to fulfill our objectives. In the first class we had about twenty-five graduates. Fortunately all of them were exceptionally fine students. There were many that had been here before, and had wanted to come back and since that time we have grown from about fifty majors to well over 300 at the present time. We also had minors in health and recreation. These are interesting things in the development of this and it was done at the beginning with two women instructors, Carol Westmorland and Margaret Waterfall, and with Walley Nalder, Ray Rhead, myself, and Dick Williams, this was about the size of the P.E. staff. As athletics grew, we added more to this and so this had been a consistent growth. 9 AW: Are you looking forward to the new sports center complex that they are contemplating building? RS: Well, this is one of the things that I think you certainly need. The question here is a question of priority of need, not a question of not needing it. I am definately sure that we need it. Whether or not it's this type of a sports center or a combination of an athletic, physical education center is a question that I have in my mind. The sports center is very effective for the type of things that can be conducted in it, which is primarily basketball and big events of various kinds. It doesn't provide for student participation, it doesn't provide for track. So here's where the question lies, and it's a question of most importance. Take for example the mini dome at Pocatello. It is an exceptionally fine activities center. It isn't as good for spectators as some of the others, but it is for football, it is for indoor track, it is for all types of competition with the seats a little further away. I am certainly convinced that there should be additional buildings for physical education and activities. I haven't been in close enough with the planning of it to see just exactly what their thoughts are on that. AW: Do you see in the future Weber State College becoming a university and offering graduate programs? RS: Well, of course. I think that without any question we will offer a graduate program in fields where it is needed. The only thing I see here is this, you're dealing with costs, and costs are tremendous, and the costs of higher education are a great deal more expensive for graduate school than undergraduate school. Now the question of duplication—if we develop into a school that has a special mission 10 that isn't supplied by any of the others then we'll go and I'm sure this is in the cards. We will not duplicate Utah State in what it has in forestry, the agriculture industry and so on, of that type. We wouldn't duplicate the professional schools of the University of Utah. I think in education, it is in business, and some of our technical trades. These are probably more important at the present time than some of the professions, as far as numbers are concerned. So there is no question about Weber growing. What it will turn into, I think, will be a school that would fulfill the needs of the state and community. What direction that would take is hard to say because the jobs that we had ten years ago, many of them are out. We have, I don't know the exact amount, but there are hundreds of new jobs every year that have never been before. So I don't think there is any question about the future of Weber. It's bright. It's going to be pretty largely determined by the changes in society and so on. AW: What about this new rivalry between Utah State, BYU, and the University of Utah? Do you think in the near future we'll be able to engage in games on a regular basis? RS: Oh, I don't think there is any question, but we will for several reasons. First of all, it costs a lot to engage in athletic competition. When you have built in rivalry, this rivalry is fostered by the participants of both schools coming together. So it's forty-five miles from here to Logan. It doesn't take us any longer to go to Logan than it takes us to get up on the U campus. It takes us only forty minutes to get to the U campus. It doesn't take much longer than that, an hour and a half, to get to BYU. So we could have 10,000 or more of our people go to these other schools 11 with no particular cost. So there is no question about rivalry. This is where rivalry is made, when two opposing groups of spectators show their enthusiasm. AW: Thank you very much, Dr. Swenson.