Oral History Program Peggy Grimm Pierce Interviewed by Ruby Licona 11 November 2011 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Peggy Grimm Pierce Interviewed by Ruby Licona 11 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 State University Oral History Project began conducting interviews with key Weber State University faculty, administrators, staff and students, in Fall 2007. The program focuses primarily on obtaining a historical record of the school along with important developments since the school gained university status in 1990. The interviews explore the process of achieving university status, as well as major issues including accreditation, diversity, faculty governance, changes in leadership, curricular developments, etc. ____________________________________ Oral history is a method of collecting historical information through recorded interviews between a narrator with firsthand knowledge of historically significant events and a well-informed interviewer, with the goal of preserving substantive additions to the historical record. Because it is primary material, oral history is not intended to present the final, verified, or complete narrative of events. It is a spoken account. It reflects personal opinion offered by the interviewee in response to questioning, and as such it is partisan, deeply involved, and irreplaceable. ____________________________________ Rights Management This work is the property of the Weber State University, Stewart Library Oral History Program. It may be used freely by individuals for research, teaching and personal use as long as this statement of availability is included in the text. It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: Peggy Grimm Pierce, an oral history by Ruby Licona, 11 November 2011, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. Peggy Grimm LaDianaeda Sorority 1956 Peggy Grimm Pierce & Don Pierce 50th Wedding Anniversary 2008 Peggy Grimm Pierce ca. 1977 1 Abstract: This is an oral history interview with Peggy Grimm Pierce. It was conducted on November 11, 2011 and concerns her recollections and experiences with Weber State University and specifically the Stewart Library. The interviewer is Ruby Licona. RL: I’m Ruby Licona from the Stewart Library at Weber State University. Today is November 11, 2011. I’m speaking today with Peggy Grimm Pierce, who worked at the Stewart Library from 1977 to 2000. She retired as the Coordinator of the Interlibrary Loan Department. We are speaking at her home in Santa Clara, Utah. Peggy, why don’t we start with some general background information? Tell me about your family background, where you were born, and how you ended up at Weber State. PP: I was born and raised in Grand River, Iowa. My father was a truck driver so we moved all over. When I was fifteen, he decided to move to Ogden and we stayed put. That was wonderful for me. I didn’t want to leave Iowa because I was dating Don, who is now my husband. My mother caught me in my room crying a few times, but I loved Weber High School. Dr. Rowley, who is also a professor at Weber State, was the drama coach at the high school at the time. I’d never done anything like that before, but I signed up for the class and he took me under his wing. So while I was in high school, I was in a few plays. I came from a hillbilly background in Iowa and I blossomed under Dr. Rowley’s care. I was also the homecoming queen, junior prom queen and vice president of the student body. My world had changed immensely from where I came from. Don would come to 2 visit Utah on occasion to see my brother. While I was at Weber State, he came to visit and we got back together again. Before that, I had signed up for a scholarship at Weber under the directions of the girls’ advisor. She found out that I didn’t intend to go to college because we were too poor. She insisted that I sign up for this scholarship and I got it. I attended Weber State for four quarters, intending to become an elementary school teacher—that was the desire of my heart—but then Don and I decided to get married. I transferred from the telephone company, where I was working even though I was a student at Weber State, and I transferred to Des Moines. We got married in 1958 and Don went to school at the University of Iowa. I longed to complete my degree, but it wasn’t possible. We had three children very quickly and I was working. We eventually ended up moving out of state so Don could get his degree. I put him through his Bachelor’s and his Master’s at Texas A&M. The agreement was that he would then put me through school. But we ended up in Redmond, Oregon, and it was not possible to attend college there, I would have had to leave my family for extended periods of time, which I wasn’t willing to do. Don decided, after five years as an administrator in the Redmond School District, that we would come back to Utah. We came back for a summer vacation in the summer of 1977—my parents still lived here—and Don decided to look for work. He went to the Weber State campus to look and when he came back, he told me that there was a job for a Reserve librarian. I said, “I’m not going to interview for a job until you get one.” He said, “Just go ahead and interview, at least, and I’ll be interviewing in other places.” I interviewed with 3 Craige Hall and we then went home to Oregon because Don hadn’t found a job. When we got home, Craige called and told me that he’d like to offer the Reserve librarian job to me. I said, “Thank you, I appreciate the offer, but I will not be taking it because my husband did not get a job in Utah.” I hung up and took our three daughters and went shopping. While we were shopping, Don called Craige back and told him I’d take the job. [Laughter] Craige, then, was laboring under the false impression that I was this little lady who did everything her husband said. RL: He was in for a rude awakening. [Laughter] PP: When I did accept the position, I told Craige that I would be working for three years because I intended to get my degree and then become an elementary teacher. Well, seven years later I was still working in the library and I did, finally, graduate with an elementary education degree. RL: When was that? PP: That was in 1984. I then had to go to the hospital and have gall bladder surgery, but I had already interviewed for an Interlibrary Loan position. While I was in the hospital, Scott Burkenshaw peeked around the corner and said, “Peggy, you got the job.” I said, “Oh my goodness, you must be desperate.” That was the Interlibrary Loan coordinator position and I just loved it. RL: You did it for a long time. PP: There was so much that had to be learned. I had to learn the OCLC system. It was like getting another degree and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Working with all the faculty and staff was a real treat, as well. During that time, I was selected as the 4 Presidential Outstanding Staff Member. I think it must have been just because I had so many contacts with faculty and they had been so happy to get the materials that they needed for their research. Here’s a funny story from Interlibrary Loan: there was a student who was doing research on swine waste and methane gas. I did a lot of searching in order to get the materials that he needed for his research. He earned an award for his research. He came in and told me how happy he was and said, “I just wish there was something I could do for you.” Over the course of the conversation, we had talked about how he was gardening and I was gardening and he had a lot better tomatoes than his dad had and it was because of this swine waste. Then it was like a light bulb went on above his head and he said, “Oh! That’s what I can do for you—I can bring you swine manure!” [Laughter] A couple of weeks before that, I had been talking to Joan Hubbard because she had worked in Interlibrary Loan also. She said, “That’s the only job in the library that I know of where you get candy and flowers for your efforts.” I could hardly wait to tell her that there was one other thing that you could get as a reward for your efforts. RL: After forty years of working in libraries, I have to say that you’re the first person I’ve ever heard of that got swine waste as a thank you gift. I can imagine that it was very rewarding to be able to help people with their research. I know that in Interlibrary Loan you get to work with people all over the world. PP: You certainly do. Some of them were the students working in the library under my supervision. I started out with Kim Wynn working there as a student; she was from Vietnam. Her family was still in Vietnam, but she had been working for the 5 United States government. Without any warning, she was told that she needed to pack a sack of belongings and get on the plane because the Communists were coming and she would be killed because she was working for the United States government. So she did and ended up in a small apartment working at Weber. She was an excellent worker. She came to me one day and said, “I have two brothers that are in Communist prisons who are working for South Vietnam in the military.” A while later, she came back and said, “My brothers have escaped.” She got them to the United States—I don’t know how. She came to me one day and said, “Peggy, I need for my brothers to have jobs.” They could barely speak English. I told her I could employ one, but not both. So Tuan started working in the Reserve Department. He had a wonderful work ethic. When we had days that the campus was closed because of snow, the library wouldn’t be closed, but Tuan would get to work before I did and he was always there. Very dependable. Later on, Tuan asked me if his nephew, who had just arrived from Vietnam, could work in the library. They were a very fine family. I had a Japanese boy who worked for the library under my supervision and an Iranian man, too. It was just delightful. RL: It sounds like you had your own little Diversity Department right there in the library. PP: We really did. [Laughter] RL: Let’s back up a little bit. When you arrived and took the position as the Reserve librarian, how many people were employed by the library at that point? Do you have any idea? 6 PP: I do not, but it certainly did grow after that. RL: When you arrived, was the library already in both wings? PP: Yes. We had both—with the accompanying heat problems. RL: Do you remember some of the people that you worked with at the beginning? PP: Louise Larkin comes to mind. And the lady who worked with her—they were delightful. They were working in the back—classifying and cataloging books as they came in. One of my very best friends was Linda Heinze. It turns out that Linda went to Weber High School at the same time I did. RL: Did you know one another? PP: No. She joked about how she was in the parking lot crowd while I was in with the student counsel trying to decide what to do about the parking lot crowd. She was working on the keypunch. RL: Doing the cards for the checkout system? PP: Yes. I had done that when I was employed by Internal Revenue, so I was well aware of what kind of work she was doing there. I don’t want to digress, but I don’t want to miss telling you about this, too. The summer that Craige decided to become a part-time director of the library— RL: He became part-time director of the library and also the director over the computer center. PP: Yes. That was the most horrendous summer that I have spent on the campus. It was partly because of Craige having to leave, but mostly because we had this huge steel corrugated panel that was being pounded into the earth behind the library to prevent water from coming into the basement. They pounded that all 7 summer long. If that wasn’t enough, we also had a new online system come into the library that summer. RL: The online checkout and cataloging? PP: Yes. That had to all be learned from scratch. It was so demanding. But we got through it and what a wonderful library. RL: That was in the middle of the ‘80s? PP: Probably. When you talk to Craige, you’ll be able to figure it out. I’m sure he remembers it well. RL: So you essentially worked with Reserve and then went to Interlibrary Loan? PP: Yes. I also worked at the Reference desk while I was the coordinator of Interlibrary Loan. Boy, that was interesting. My favorite saying about working in the library was that I never had a day working there when I didn’t learn something. It was stimulating. I have worked for JC Penney, for the Bell Telephone Company, for the Army, and for the Air Force, and I have never found better people to work with than the people on that campus. I found the morals to be higher and the friendships to be long-lasting. The help, when you needed it, was there. RL: Now, I believe that the Presidential Distinguished Staff Award that you got was not only for your work in the library but you were also involved in things on campus outside of the library. PP: Yes. I was part of the Employee’s Association. It was state-wide and it was to negotiate for salaries and to try to get better benefits and so on. I became the president for that association on campus. One summer, some officials from 8 campus came to me and said that they had a Centennial Court that they had built on campus and that they were going to dedicate it and that it would have my name on it. I went to the dedication and found out that my sister’s name was also on the wall. RL: That would have been 1989? PP: Yes. My sister had been vice president of the student body when she was a student there. So it was fun to see that my name was there along with hers. RL: That puts you into the Weber State history. PP: Well, you know, I started as a student in the old campus before we had a dedicated library building. It was in what we called “the tub.” I attended classes on the lower campus. In fact, I was taking a swimming class and then I would have to rush to my photography class on the upper campus. They wanted me to do the modeling for their class even though I didn’t have a hairdryer and all the things that you have now in order to fix yourself up rapidly. That was interesting. [Laugher] I loved my classes when I finally got into the elementary education classes. We had the “Wilkits” at that point. If you weren’t organized, then you very well better get organized. You had things you had to do at a specified time. RL: Were these teaching kits? Kind of teaching you pedagogy? PP: Yes. Teaching all the kinds of things you had to know in order to teach elementary education. RL: Lesson plans and activities and so forth? PP: Yes, we also had formal classes, but those “Wilkits” were the primary part of that course work. A few years later, my daughter was in the same program. In fact, I 9 have three daughters that graduated from Weber State. My brother and my sister did, as well, and my husband and my niece attended there. RL: Other than the Employee’s Association, were there other associations or committees on campus that you were involved in? PP: Yes, but I’m sorry, I can’t recall the name of the committee. I spent a lot of time on it, too. It was for employees but it wasn’t with the Employee’s Association. RL: I seem to remember that when Paul and Carolyn Thompson came to campus, you had known them from when you were in school. PP: I had known them from high school. They were a little bit younger than I was. We weren’t super close because I was older than them. RL: So you were not on campus at Weber when they were students there? PP: I think I left just before they became active at Weber State. RL: And were you able to interact with them after you came back to the campus? PP: Yes, I think they’re really very fine people. I said to Paul one time, “Paul, I’m going to have to just start shaking hands with you when I meet you in a line of people because I think there’s some people who don’t like it when I get a big hug.” [Laughter] He said, “That’s ridiculous.” We’ve been friends for a long time and he knows my family. RL: Now, you mentioned some of the different places you’ve worked. When you worked for JC Penney, was that in Ogden? PP: Yes, it was in Ogden. Let me tell you how I started there. I was sixteen years old. We’d lived in Ogden for a year—I came from a background of wearing flannel shirts, jeans, moccasins and two pairs of socks—and I found out that that was 10 not the way you dressed in Ogden. When you went downtown in the ‘50s, you wore your best attire and gloves. So here I was, sixteen, by myself, downtown, and dressed up with my gloves. I was going through the JC Penney store and a very distinguished-looking gentleman came up to me and he said, “Miss, how would you like to work here?” I tipped my nose in the air and I walked off. I didn’t know him and I didn’t know what he was up to. It turned out that he was Ted Schmidt, the manager of JC Penney and Mayor of Ogden, as well. RL: Oh my goodness. PP: So one year later, I was walking through JC Penney with my aunt and we were both dressed up with our gloves. Ted Schmidt came up to me and made the same approach and I started to tip my nose up and Auntie said, “Just a minute, dear, let’s go talk to the gentleman.” So Ted took us upstairs to his office and offered me a job as a model. I’d never modeled before in my life! But I accepted the job and Ted taught me how to pivot, how to hold my hands, how to dress and how to walk. Then, there was a stand by the elevator where the models stood and wore the dresses that were on sale in the store. One day as I was turning, the elevator door opened and this little boy came out with his mom and he looked up and said, “Wow, look Mom, the dummy moved!” [Laughter] Another day, I caught a lady shoplifting while I was standing on that platform. Another time, it was approaching Easter and they had a lot of hats for sale. They set up a store window with all of these hats on the floor, a dressing table, a mirror, and me. I was sitting there and as people would walk by, they’d point to a hat and I’d model it for them. It was so much fun! 11 RL: You also mentioned that you worked for the military. What did you do there? PP: I was a keypunch operator for the Air Force. I also worked for Internal Revenue as a keypunch operator. I didn’t do well at typing. My worst class and lowest grade in high school was in typing. So when this job came up with Internal Revenue Service as a keypunch operator— RL: Was that in Ogden? PP: Yes, it was in Ogden. For the job, you needed to be able to do twenty-five words per minute typing. I rented a typewriter and practiced and practiced. I took the test three times and never got to twenty-five words per minute. Finally, the gentleman in the employment office took pity on me and said, “I’m going to put you through, anyway.” So I took the training and eventually, after I had worked there for a while, my accuracy and speed got so good that I received a monetary award. RL: In your time at Weber, are there particular incidents or movements that stand out? PP: The emphasis on diversity really changed all of us, I think. While we may have already believed in the premise, there wasn’t much said about diversity until that time. We even had contests where we decorated doors with the diversity theme. I did that for a few years in the library. RL: They also started making a lot more services available for the different groups. PP: Yes. They also installed the little island, if you will, in the back parking lot. That was during President Nadauld’s terms. At the time, it was suggested that the staff could use that for breaks and lunches and things. 12 RL: They took away the parking lot and put in that little plaza. PP: There was a lot of debate at the time. I didn’t agree with it, but it looks nice now. I don’t know how it’s used. I hope the fire trucks can get around it. RL: Yes, the fire trucks can get around there. This past year, they made that back area of the library the only spot where the shuttle buses from the Dee Events Center stop. We get a lot of traffic in the library because it drops the students right there. PP: Very good. There was quite a long time there where they weren’t able to be dropped off close to the library. It was quite a trip for them. RL: Anything in the library in terms of the organization of it? You mentioned the summer that Craige became part-time director of the library and was over the computing center. Did that affect the people in the library? He was a good administrator and he was organized. PP: He did and he had a lot of experience before that. I really didn’t notice huge problems as far as him being gone. He managed to keep us working smoothly in spite of all that was going on during that summer. RL: Were there things that happened that were less than perfect? I’m not asking for dirt or anything, but are there things that stand out in your mind from your time? PP: It was a time when most people in the library didn’t think that the evaluation form that we were using—and it was the same that they were using daily—was something that we should continue with. They were considering changing that, but it just happened to fall on me to be the first person that they evaluated. RL: Was this under Craige? 13 PP: Yes, but he wasn’t involved. Five faculty members evaluated me for one hour and the very first thing that one of them said was, “Your previous evaluation forms looks like you can walk on water and that’s just not possible.” They then decided to downgrade my evaluation. Not because I hadn’t performed adequately, but because they didn’t think that I—or anybody else—should be graded so highly. So after an hour of this grueling situation, we were closing and one of the faculty said, “Peggy, how do you feel about this?” I said, “I feel like I’ve been run over by a truck and you’ll be hearing from me again.” Then I went to Human Resources and told the director what had happened. RL: Was that Stan Greenhalgh? PP: Yes, it was. Stan said that should not have occurred because an evaluation is to make you feel better, not worse. You should not be evaluated by five people; it should be a one-on-one. RL: And it should be your direct supervisors. PP: They weren’t. The result was that I was evaluated again by Craige. I think, eventually, we got a different evaluation form. I remember going to Enable Industries, the firm where my husband was president. Every time I heard negative remarks in the library about the work and the jobs, I kept thinking off all of these disabled people at Enable Industries and everything they had to go through to get a job and keep a job. Joan suggested that we take a group of people over there and we decided to take a group from the library to tour Enable Industries. During that time, Joan was with us and she 14 was quite intrigued by the evaluation methods that they were using there. I think that some of those methods were initiated later on. RL: We can always learn from one another. I think the people on that tour benefited from seeing how bad they didn’t have it. PP: Absolutely. That was an eye-opener. RL: I remember that in addition to your responsibilities in working at the Reference desk, you acted as the bibliographer for the children’s books for a while. Was that because of your teaching experience and background? PP: When I was taking classes in elementary education, several times I would take an armload of books from the young people’s collection to class and tell them about them. They weren’t aware of having such a wonderful young people’s collection in the Stewart Library. Even the faculty was intrigued by the beautiful books that I was showing. When it became my opportunity to work directly with the young people’s collection, I loved it. RL: Did you buy the books? PP: I ordered a minimum amount of them. Our library budget, at that time, was very small. We would regularly get the Newberry Award books and so on. When we had a tour that was being scheduled to come through with children in it, the other faculty members would shy away from that group. Finally, they asked if I wanted to do it and so I got to conduct several tours with children’s groups. I got to read them stories in the library. 15 RL: We had a group just two weeks ago that came through. I think they were three and four years old. It is a great resource for the education students—knowing about that collection is important. PP: True. I took a class on children’s literature. What helped my interest to grow was that I had been the children’s librarian in several different schools in Oregon, so I was aware of the many books available. I had children of my own and I found it fun to give birthday gifts and Christmas gifts to my children and grandchildren in the form of books. I’ve always loved books. RL: It’s good for a librarian to love books. It’s a disappearing art. So, Peggy, any more memories that you’d like to share from the years of your tenure at the library? PP: There’s one disturbing situation involving a student worker and a student who used Interlibrary Loan heavily. Actually, let me backtrack a little bit. My sister-in-law works at the University of Iowa where they had a shooting incident. I think three people were killed because of a student being angry. After that, there was a lot of work in compiling information and finding out what could be done to avoid that sort of thing. I called Linda and asked her if she could send me some of this information. I gave the information to Joan and it wasn’t very long after that that we had a student from Vietnam or Thailand who was a student worker at the main desk and used Interlibrary Loan extensively. A brilliant young man. He got involved with a young woman whose husband was still in Asia. He loaned her a large amount of money and was very fond of her. When her husband came to 16 Ogden, everything kind of fell apart. We started having meetings about this trio of people and what could be done because it was very disruptive. RL: Disruptive in what way? PP: He was angry at her because she had gone back to her husband and had not paid him back his loan. He still cared for her and he was losing face, which is upsetting in the Asian culture. Well, a meeting was called. It was to be held in the Union Building with the campus attorney, the three individuals, and the head of the department where he worked in the library. RL: Circulation? PP: Yes, Circulation. So they all congregated for the meeting and this young man came in with a backpack. RL: It was a disciplinary hearing, wasn’t it? PP: Yes, it was. It just happened that the campus police officer was there, as well. That was unusual because he didn’t usually attend those meetings. Well, the student employee pulled a gun out of his backpack and started shooting. He shot the attorney in the arm. He was trying to shoot and kill the woman’s husband. He shot the police officer in the nose. Finally, the student was killed by the police officer. It was so very upsetting to all the library personnel who had known him and to the young woman, as well. RL: It created a lot of grief and consternation. It must have been about the lowest point in your library career. What was the highest point? 17 PP: It was very good to receive an award and be recognized for the hard work that I had done in Interlibrary Loan. I had a couple of people mention me on books that they had written. RL: Dedications? PP: That I had helped contribute. That was great. RL: In any work situation, there’s the good and there’s the bad and those are the incidents we remember. PP: And here I am now, retired. When I retired in 2000, it was in winter—January. I went home to cold, wintery days and I realized, “What have I done?” Then Joan offered me the opportunity to come back part-time at the Reference desk. I think it was about two years that I worked there so I could transition into being retired. RL: My memory of your time in the library was a time when we had had a horrible snow storm. I had a house that had a triple-wide driveway and I had spent an hour and a half clearing the snow off of it, then I went inside, showered, got dressed, got to work, and you were the only one in the building. You had this really nonplussed expression on your face and I said, “What’s going on?” You said, “They closed the university.” [Laughter] Essentially, we both laughed that someone had called off the party and didn’t bother to let us know. PP: Most of the time, the library stayed open. We maintained that there were still students on campus that needed to have a place to go to. I remember one time, the sky light on the third floor was blown off and there we were with Reference on the third floor. We were still working and all the buildings around the library had been closed because of the wind. And here we were, still working. 18 RL: At least you can laugh about it. I know that your time in the library was very much appreciated and the time that you’ve taken to talk with me today is appreciated. Thank you. PP: You’re sure welcome.