Oral History Program Malcolm Watson Interviewed by Merlon L. Stevenson 30 October 1970 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Malcolm Watson Interviewed by Merlon L. Stevenson Professor of Mathematics and Athletic Coach 30 October 1970 James F. Cartwright, Editor Assistant Archives March 1986 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: Watson, Malcolm, an oral history by Merlon L. Stevenson, edited by James F. Cartwright, 30 October 1970, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. Malcom Watson 1 Abstract: The following is an oral history interview with Malcolm Watson (born 1892). Mr. Watson served as Director of Physical Education for Boys at Weber College from 1913 to 1933. The interview was conducted on October 30, 1970 by Merlon L. Stevenson in order to gather Mr. Watson’s recollections as a student at Weber Stake Academy and his experiences as a faculty member at Weber Academy. Included in this Oral History are insertions by Harold C. Bateman. MS: I have always had a tremendous respect for you and for the wonderful things you did for me when I first started here at Weber College to coach under your jurisdiction and to work in the mathematics department under Dr. Terry. I think it would be of considerable value to the history of Weber College if you could tell us some of your experiences. You might start out first telling about your experiences as a student at Weber College and then go on from there, on to when you were a faculty member. MW: Well, you might say, Merlon, the school we had in Ogden had no place to play; we had no gymnasium. As I remember, across the road in Lester Park they had a big pavilion where the early basketball at the school took place. The city owned the building, and I don't know what rent they paid or anything like that, but I remember that was where they played ball. If you remember the old-time uniforms they used to wear, the baseball pants and long-sleeved shirts, and I could see why they probably did because there was no heat in the building. Later they built the addition onto the Moench Building, and we played in what was then the assembly hall; that was really what it was built for, it wasn't 2 built as a gymnasium, but we utilized the space. It wasn't a full-sized court because there was a balcony in there that cut the court way down. We played that way for a couple of years when Ben Harker was the coach. He was really the first paid man in athletics, and came to Weber as a coach and a teacher of language. It was under him that I played. We might say this about the schools that we played. There was really no high school association or anything like that. We played LDS, Granite High School, BYC,1 and of course we would take on BYU. And we also played the old YMCA in Salt Lake, and they had some wonderful stars. I don't know if we ever beat them or not, but we got a lot of good experience from it the last year we played, and then I graduated and went down to the U for a couple of years. Then Ben Harker left to be the director of the Deseret Gym. One year William M. McKay coached the ball team, and in 1913 they won the state championship at BYU in Provo. The game has changed a lot—in those days, one man pitched all the fouls, and he could win the game if he was a good one. Arius Belnap was a good one, and I think he made thirty-one out of thirty-two foul [shots] in one game there in the championship and that helped a lot. I went back to Weber in 1913 to coach and also to teach woodwork and manual training. We had a fine man who worked on our files there and was cooperative with us in the woodwork department, W. 0. Ridges. And he helped us a lot with things needed for athletics, was very congenial and had a good sense of humor. It was shortly after that, through his efforts, that we decided to 3 tear the balcony out of the assembly hall, and that gave us a fairly good-sized room to play basketball in. That's where we played our games from then until we moved into the Weber Gymnasium. At that time the high school part of it had started to increase a little bit. Box Elder came into the picture, Ogden High didn't come until later, but there were two or three others down in the other part of the state that came in: Tooele, Grantsville, and of course Provo and some of the Utah County schools.2 So we did have a pretty good association in the high schools. James E. Moss, principal of the Granite High School, was head of the athletic association for years, and he was probably one of the founders of the high school athletic association. Dr. Adam S. Bennion became head of the church schools, and [as] there were a number of those in our vicinity . . . they formed a league one year. It included BYC in Logan, Oneida Stake Academy in Preston, Weber in Ogden, LDS in Salt Lake, and we played out a schedule on top of the few high schools that were playing.3 That only went for a year or so, and then more high schools came into the picture, so we had a pretty full high school schedule. I think that was when Ogden High came in so there was a rivalry. Ogden High was a good deal the same as we were—they had no gymnasium and they used their assembly hall to play their games in. I might say something on the equipment that they used to have. We never had these good shoes that would stick to the floor; you wore the same old shoes, and you soaked them in rosin and coal oil and sometimes during the game you 4 lost a couple of soles off the regular tennis shoes. [Laughter.] We did have a lot of good boys come to the schools, and it was a pleasure to work with them. I think that the school was highly thought of. As time went on, Weber was taking the place of the county school. The majority of our students came from the county, and a lot of the city students went to Ogden High. There was a funny incident or two that happened during that time between Weber and Ogden High, as kids played their pranks. One time they put a hayrack up in the assembly, and we had a custodian who was a crackerjack, old Gus Glisser; you remember him. MS: Oh, I say I do. MW: Well, they had this hayrack up there waiting for the assembly; at that time we had an assembly every day about eleven o'clock. A bunch of kids from high school came piling into the back of the assembly expecting to see this hayrack up there, but Gus had got there early and had found it and pitched it out the back door before they had time to do anything. The rivalry between Ogden and Weber was quite high and strong. The high school kids would say, "We raise sugar beets, we raise hay, we're the rubes from the WA." The city kids would come back from our school and say, "We smoke cigarettes, we play pool, we're the boys of the Ogden High School." MS: Good poetry! MW: So we had a lot of fun that way. Along about 1919, they told us we could play football, and that was through the efforts of Dr. Bennion that they allowed the church schools to play football. But the time to play [i.e., permission] didn't come 5 until late summer. So then we had a problem finding equipment and getting ready to play and scheduling games. We didn't have a full schedule because it was so late in the season; [so] we had to play the schools that had an open date. That's why it wasn't until the following year that we got into the full schedule of playing. We used to play with the American Legion team -- they had a team in Ogden -- and we played them several times during the year for practices. And it was pretty good practice too. We had some good help at that time: Lon Romney was in Ogden, and he volunteered to come and help us, and Ed Peterson, a brother of Vadal, came over and helped us; and it was a help to me. MS: Then in 1919 you won the basketball championship in the state. MW: Yes, we had a good group of boys in 1919; we won the Northern Division and then went on to the state tournament which consisted of six teams throughout the state; we were fortunate in winning it. MS: You played that final game up at the University of Utah. MW: The whole tournament that year was played at the university— [in] the old university gym. MS: I was there at that game, so I saw that. That's the first time I learned very much about Weber. MW: Yes, and again the next year, we went to the tournament, but we didn't win; and the next year we went. Both times we finished up near the top. There were some good teams. I think they started to make a change in the schools because they were then building Weber County High School. If Weber would have kept on with the high school, that would have been doubling up.4 6 That was in 1921, I think, [when] they started to build the high school. MW: When did you come, Merlon? MS: I came in 1921. MW: Well, that's when they started Weber Normal College. MS: It was Weber Normal when I came. MW: And finally Weber quit as a high school and became a normal college. MS: So Weber operated as a high school and a normal college for the last year [in] 1922/23 and in the spring of '23 discontinued the high school and became a college. MW: There's one thing here that is quite interesting. I went down to Provo one time and talked to Gene Roberts. And I said, "Gene, can you give me a recommendation? I'll probably be out of a job." He says, "What do you think you will do?" "Well," I says, "I'm going to make an application at the Weber Gym." He wrote me a very fine letter of recommendation. When it came to staffing the Weber Gym, he had been chosen as the director of the gym ... and up comes my name and along with my name his letter of recommendation. So I got the job. My duties were as director of the men's department of the gym. When school started we were given the classes for the college which, at that time, included some floor work, boxing and wrestling. I taught swimming too. We were very fortunate at that time in having a lot of good wrestlers at the gym who practically took over the wrestling part of the gym, such fellows as Pete Visser, George Nelson and Ed Ferguson. Then from time to time champions would come in and train, [such as] Reuben Moss and also Jim Longess. So we had a good 7 setup there. Then we had several good boxers in the gym. Jess Hobson was one and a little fellow named Young. They were pretty good kids, and they enjoyed helping with that part of it. MS: Now the gymnasium was under a different board than the college, wasn't it? MW: Yes, we were under the board made up of the presidents of the four stakes in the county, but they worked close with the college. In fact, the presidents were members of the board of the college too. We used to use the members of the college, and some members of the gym made our swimming team, so we used to compete with BYU and the Deseret Gym in Salt Lake. MS: Now Gene Roberts was the director of the gym when you first came in? MW: Gene was there for just a little over a year, and then they brought in a man by the name of Fred Van Buren who had been at BYU. He came in, and I worked with him until the gym closed in 1933. Fred Van Buren was a very good man. I might say this about the gymnasium. We took over the training of the Ogden High girl’s gym classes. They used to come over every morning and have their classes; they took swimming. I also went over from the Weber Gym to the junior high next door and taught gym classes over there for a while. MS: That was for the Central Junior High? MW: Yes, the Central Junior High. We did work into the community pretty well. MS: The gymnasium was constructed through the contributions from the businessmen from the town as well as the church, and so you handled a full businessmen's program. 8 MW: Yes, we had businessmen's classes at noon and in the evening. Also classes for women, and boys and girls throughout the time. MS: When Weber College discontinued as a church institution in the spring of 1933, the college was turned over to the state, and they also turned the gymnasium over to the state didn't they? MW: Yes, that's right. MS: So that was when the gymnasium discontinued to be operated by the church. HB: Weren't you a student under President McKay? MW: Yes, when I first went. President McKay was the [principal] of the school, and then he was made an apostle and so he had to give up being principal, and a man by the name of McKendrick… MS: Would you care to say anything about David O. McKay, what you remember about him. Did you have any classes with him? MW: Well, yes, I had theology under President McKay. Along that line, five or six years later, I taught two of his sons in manual training, Lewellyn and Lawrence. They were good kids, in fact Lewellyn played ball for me. MS: He played football too, didn't he? MW: Yes. He wasn't a very big fellow; they used to call him "Winks." MS: He was there when I came. MW: President McKay was a dynamic man. When we were building the addition to the school, President McKay [went] to Salt Lake, and Sam Newhouse gave him $5,000. He told a story about Joseph F. Smith who was church president then. He went to see him about money and said, "I don't know, I think we've reached 9 the bottom of it, President." President Smith said, "Brother McKay, do you know how to get all the molasses out of the bottom of the can?" And he said, "No, how do you?" He said, "Heat it." So back [came] Brother McKay, and all the students were assessed five dollars to help finish the building. But the four stakes and different wards and businessmen gave money--the Brownings, the Eccles, and the Kiesels. HB: Well, what do you remember about McKendrick? MW: McKendrick was a math teacher, Merlon. He was pretty well liked, but he later left, and they appointed Dr. Henderson as the president. After Dr. Henderson then came James L. Barker, and after a while President Barker went down to the University of Utah. Barker was a great French linguist. HB: Now did Henderson then leave Weber and go to BYC as president at that time? MW: I don't know; I think he did. HB: He became the president of BYC I know, then he left and went to Utah State. MW: When he left, Barker came. HB: Barker was there for three years. MW: Then after Barker a man by the name of Owen F. Beal. Then he went to the university, and Dixon came. HB: Aldous Dixon was made president and then he went back to BYU or to Provo in the banking business or something. And after Dixon, Joel E. Ricks came. His term was 1920-1922 and he had taught there since 1917 until he became president. What do you remember about him? 10 MW: Well, Joel was all right; I got along fine with him. He was a great historian; he taught history there. MS: Joel Ricks was the one that came down to the University of Utah in the summer after I had graduated, in the summer of 1921, and asked me if I would be interested in coming up to Weber; he wanted me to come up and assist Malc Watson here in the coaching and to assist in the mathematics department under Dr. William Z. Terry. And when he first asked me, I told him, "No, I don't want the job." He asked me why, and I said, "I will be perfectly frank with you. All you principals and presidents want are winning teams at any cost, and I just would not be interested in that." If I would have looked up the early history of Weber College, I would have known better than that. I found that wasn't what he wanted. He assured me that he was more interested in the development of young people than in winning. I wasn't sure whether he actually meant it or not. But after I finally came to Weber, I'm telling you, working under a man like Wid Ashton and then Joel Ricks who lived up to every promise that he made, I just thrilled at it. It was a pleasure to work under men such as Malc Watson, William Z. Terry and Joel Ricks. HB: Let's talk about Aaron Tracy. MW: Well, I wasn't there too long under Aaron, I think one year, the last that I was there, that was when the school was in transition. HB: Weren't you there until 1933? MW: [From 1923-1933, I] was working in the gymnasium, so I wasn't under him. … 11 I should tell you about football. We didn't do too much as far as winning, but we did develop a lot of good boys and it was fun anyway. MS: You had the first team in 1919, didn't you? MW: Yes, of course we had been very fortunate in the boys that we had. I might say one thing right here: in those days you had no pressure about winning or losing, but what you taught the kids. If you taught them good sportsmanship, no one was trying to scalp you. And we never had to fire any players. MS: You know, Malc, that was one thing that I enjoyed the most about my working at Weber College. I told them first I wouldn't come up there. Then when I got there and found your good attitude and your sportsmanship, I just admired you. And Wid Ashton was another just like you. MW: Well we did have a good ball club in 1919, and we won the Northern Division in basketball and went on to win the state championship that year. We had some good boys—we had Bones [Theron] Jones, Phil Jeppson, Claude Lindsay and Rosy [Rosel Stanton] Belnap. I'll tell you they were good boys. MS: I bet they were good boys, you had a good team. Now in addition to your coaching you taught manual training. MW: I taught manual training with W. O. Ridges who was a prince of a fellow. He had some humor which helped a lot. In 1908 we won the award at the intermountain fair for the best display of woodwork. MS: I think it's a good idea to know that the physical education class work was being carried on by the gymnasium staff. 12 MW: Well they started the gymnasium in 1921 and early in '24 they had the gymnasium about ready. The board had met and they appointed Gene Roberts— or borrowed Gene Roberts from BYU—to come up as director. At the board meeting I was appointed the director of the men's department and the duties I had were the men's classes and supervising the men's work and swimming. MS: Now was that for the community? MW: That was for the community, and the businessmen paid a fee. It was taken on the same plan as the Deseret Gym. MS: The only difference between the Weber Gym and the Deseret Gym was that Phys Ed classes at the LDSU were taught by the LDSU staff and not by the gymnasium staff. MW: In this case we took over the gym classes of the college. That was under the agreement. And I had the swimming classes for the boys. MS: And you also handled the coaching of the swimming team, too. MW: Yes. We had quite a number of the boys there. The wrestling and boxing we worked down on the very end. We had quite a number of amateur boxers; it was quite popular at that time and so was wrestling. MS: Now how long were you there? MW: I was at the gym from 1924 until they closed in 1932. MS: The end of the 1932/33 school year wasn't it? MW: That was the year that the college went over to the state. And so I was there till they closed. ... I don't know, I must have taught 5,000 kids to swim. We had some good leagues. 13 MS: Gene [Roberts returned] to BYU, [didn't] he? MW: He was the former BYU coach. One year we had the high school girls, the Ogden High girls. They used to come down every morning and we used to have them in the gym. We had some big classes of kids. Dil Young had his scout headquarters in the gym, and we used to give all the merit tests in the gym. So the gym was used. Plus we had a lot of good boys there from Weber who helped us a lot. MS: You did a lot of athletic officiating. MW: I started officiating in 1913. I officiated in both college and high school for a long while. One year I officiated every college game that was played in Utah; that was the AC, BYC, BY and the U. And on one occasion, I don't know why they did it, but they postponed one game between BYU and Utah a day because I was officiating at the AC and BYC at Logan on that day. [Laughter.] They had postponed it for me, so I went to Provo the next day. MS: Malc, [you] officiated all the basketball games I played in when I was playing for the University of Utah. MW: And so I quite enjoyed it. I had two or three funny experiences. Once while I was officiating one at the BYC, they were playing the AC; it was a close game, and at half time, we went downstairs for a minute, but when we came back the darn kids had kicked the windows out of the balcony. It was all over the gym. They had to sweep the glass off the floor before they could resume playing. 14 MS: One of the games, I believe, when I was playing at the U, they told us don't bother the teams too much; toss it up and get out of the way. And you just about had to. You officiated a lot of these Mutual games, didn't you? MW: Yes, we did a lot of those. In fact, one year we had the all-church tournament at the gym in Ogden. MS: We had a number of the intermountain junior college tournaments there too. Well, Malc's done a tremendous job for our community up there; he's a man that I will never forget. MW: Remember when we went to the board and asked them if we could practice football on the tabernacle square? They wouldn't let us practice on the park, and [though] we had a field up on Quincy and 28th Street, it was just a vacant lot. We got a fellow to run his horse-drawn grader and clean the weeds off, and we used that for our athletic field. Then we went to the board and they finally gave us permission to go down to the tabernacle square. We used to go down there every night to practice. That was shortly before you came. HB: When did you attend Weber as a student? MW: 1906-1910.5 HB: You graduated in the college or in the high school? MW: It was the high school then; we didn't build the college until 1921. MS: They started the two-year Normal College in 1916, but we still had high school up until 1922/23. HB: You started on the faculty in 1913. Were you a member of the faculty continuously until 1933? 15 MW: No, not in 1923.6 Then I was away for a while waiting for the gym to be completed; then I went back in 1924. HB: Then you were there until 1933? MW: Until the spring of 1933; then [the gym] went over to the state [with the college]. HB: Then where did you go? MW: After that, I worked for the Federal Works Agency in Ogden. 16 Notes 1 Latter Day Saint University in Salt Lake City (begun in 1886) and Brigham Young College in Logan (begun in 1877) functioned primarily as high schools. As the church ceased high school operations in the 1920s and early 1930s, LDSU, or LDS, eventually became a business college. Trying to survive, BYC continued both high school and college level instruction but could not successfully compete for students against Logan, South Cache and North Cache high schools nor, for college students, against Utah Agricultural College; BYC closed in the spring of 1926. 2 Almost from the beginning of athletic competition when Weber Academy participated in high school league competition, the schools in the same division with Weber were in northern Utah. Some nonleague games between Weber and schools from Salt Lake City area and further south, west or east also occurred. Definitely, association among coaches would have included those from all the high schools participating in the various divisions of the state league. A separate report on Weber's athletic competition on the high school level is being prepared and will soon be available in the Weber State College Archives. 3 The Acorns and Acorn Souvenirs for 1913 through 1917 indicate that Weber Academy was participating in a church league by the academic year 1913/14. Though Weber Academy usually played one game each year in Provo against BYU, whose teams played on the college level, BYU was not part of this league. Surprisingly, neither was LDSU which played high school level basketball. This church league apparently consisted only of BYC and Oneida Stake Academy in addition to Weber Academy. During some of these years, BYC's team may have been college level since it did not 17 participate in the high school league, while in other years BYC did join the high school league. Academic year 1915/16 marked the last year that this church league definitely functioned. 4 Several reasons led the L.D.S. church to discontinue its high school operations throughout the Intermountain West. First of all, the conditions behind the creation of stake academies had changed with Utah's statehood and the church's accommodation to the American mainstream. Secondly, as local high schools began operating in areas outside the larger cities in Utah and Idaho, the need for high school level instruction provided by the stake academies disappeared. Thirdly, as some twenty L.D.S. church academies existed in the Intermountain West, the operations drained church financial resources. Finally, since early in the academies' existence their forte had become high school level normal training, the increase in the requirements for teacher training to include two years of college level work diminished the importance of the academies. This in turn stimulated some local church leaders to seek church approval to expand the academies into college level instruction. This new role allowed a few academies to survive. In 1911 BYC began college level normal training; St. George Stake Academy (now Dixie), Snow, Ricks and Weber offered at least one year of college level normal training by September 1916. In the spring of 1923, the Church Board of Education asked Snow and Weber to limit high school operations to the last two years with the intent to discontinue all high school instruction within two years; Weber responded by totally discontinuing high school instruction. 18 Although undoubtedly a movement to build a county high school in Weber County had begun, the beginning of Weber County High School postdates the discontinuation of high school classes at Weber College by some four years, so the establishing of a county high school did not directly affect the ending of high school instruction at Weber College. 5 The Weber Stake Academy Annual Record, 1893/94-1922/23, Book B, held in the college archives (WA / 90 / 15), indicates that Malcolm Watson registered in September 1907 at age sixteen. The record, though possibly incomplete, indicates that Watson attended a total of ten semesters. Eight of these semesters are recorded in the high school column during which he took a full load. Two semesters are at the bottom of the next column which has no printed heading; his load during these two semesters consists of fewer classes. In the case of some students this column has "preparatory" penned at the top, but it is blank in Watson's record. Only the first semester of the high school column has a date, September 1907. The Acorn Souvenirs indicate that he played on the Weber Academy basketball teams in 1909, 1910, 1911 and 1912, the last year as captain. The archives have lists of graduates for some years but not for all. The annual catalogues usually listed the previous year's graduates, and the archives also holds some graduation programs. The archives does not hold the catalogue for 1912/13 nor the graduation program for 1912. 6 Watson was on the Weber Gym staff from 1924 to 1933, not on the Weber College faculty, although as Stevenson indicates earlier in the interview, the gymnasium staff taught the physical education classes for the college.