Oral History Program Orson Whitney Young Richard Sadler 23 July 1981 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Orson Whitney Young Richard Sadler 23 July 1981 Copyright © 1981 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: Young, Orson Whitney, an oral history by Richard Sadler, 23 July 1981, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. Orson Whitney Young 1904-1990 1 Abstract: The following is an oral history interview with Orson Whitney Young, conducted by Richard Sadler on July 23, 1981. Young discusses his family history and some of his experiences working at Weber. RS: This is an interview conducted on Thursday July the 23, 1981 in the Social Science Building at Weber State College. Dr. Orson Whitney Young is being interviewed by Richard Sadler. Professor Young, why don't you tell me a little bit about your early life? Where you were born and when you were born and some of the things you remember about your early life please. OY: Alright I'm glad to do that because I've lived a very interesting life and I had a wonderful father and mother. I was born in Canada. My father was troubled with cold feet all his life, his circulation must have been very poor and all places to go he moved his family up to Raymond, Alberta, Canada were I was born and there he literally froze his feet all the time. Why he chose Canada instead of Mexico I'll never know except he was just drawn there. I wish he had gone to Mexico I could have learned another language. [Laughs]. We came back on the night that King George V declared war on the Kaiser. It was August 4, 1914, and after having been unsuccessful in Canada, my father decided to go back to where his friends were in Salt Lake City. So I was raised from 1914 on up to the time my father went on his mission to become President of the North Western States Mission and there I was in Portland, Oregon. Graduated there from high school and then went into Reed College in Portland and then stayed there two years before I went on a mission. Which was to a Germany. At that time, there were only two 2 missions--the Swiss German and the German Austrian. I was in the Swiss German mission and it was a very interesting experience. I had many interesting experiences there and enjoyed it immensely. Then returned, came back to Salt Lake City went to the University of Utah after two years at Reed College, I was admitted as a junior and got my Bachelor’s and then my Master’s at the University of Utah. And almost immediately was hired by President Tracy to come here to Weber College and spent forty years, 1933-1973. So, that in brief is about it… Except of course that I married Lucille Blair and she is originally from Logan. The Blairs of Logan, very fine family and we were blessed with four children--three boys and a girl. That in brief is one of the simple annals of the poor. [Laughs] RS: [Laughs] Now what day were you born in Canada? OY: 1904. RS: 1904 and the day? OY: October 9. My, you’re a genealogist, aren’t you? RS: Well I'm just kind of putting this together. OY: Oh I see. RS: Tell me a little bit about your father? His name… What kind of things did he do? OY: He was a most remarkable man. And you know, you historians ought to have been able to interview him. He was full of the most remarkable stories of pioneer life. He was born in 1857 in the Beehive House, the southwest corner bedroom 3 upstairs and his mother was Katherine Curtis Spencer, a daughter of Orson Spencer. Very fine women, a noble woman, a lovely person. I knew her when she was, of course, quite old. But a most remarkable woman and she was the first wife of Brigham Young Jr. And my father was named Brigham Young and, of course, Brigham Young III, really. And on his on his um citizenship papers, which he had to take out in Canada he put down Brigham Young III and on the citizenship papers when he returned. There are many Brigham Youngs and more than one other Brigham Young III claiming Brigham Young III, but actually my father was Brigham Young III. But in a conference with Brigham Young himself and Brigham Young Jr., Brigham Young complained that the mail was getting quite mixed up because there was three Brigham's so he suggested that my father take the S from his mother’s last name, was Spencer, so he was known all of his life as Brigham S. Young. But, actually, technically, he was Brigham Young III. Very remarkable man and most of his stories were about pioneer conditions and nearly all of them were just about the best humorous stories I ever have listened to. He was quiet an actor. He participated in the home dramatic club in the old Salt Lake Theater for many years. His first wife also, Laudie Clarridge was her name, and she died and then he was a widower for about six years and married my mother. And took my mother, whose only experience was clerking at ZCMI in the glove department, up to Canada which was just in the pioneer stages of ol’ Salt Lake about fifty years before. [Laughs] And it was a very interesting experience up there that we had. I'm glad that I was born there and went to school and in the great school in Lethbridge. We moved to Lethbridge, 4 Canada and then in 1914, the night of August 5, we spent in the hotel in Lethbridge Preparatory, taking the train South to Salt Lake City and I remember right well the miners of Lethbridge, you see Lethbridge is underlayed by a great mine, coal mine, and they paraded through the street drunk as lorrds and shouting, “We'll lick the Kaiser!” Etcetera, etcetera. It was quite an exciting time. And I got down to Salt Lake and went to grade school there and then father was appointed mission President up in Portland, Oregon. Which was another very interesting phase of my life. And I went to Germany, was in the western part of the German Mission, and there I had an interesting and profitable mission. RS: Let me ask you a question about Katherine Curtis Spencer Young. OY: Yeah. RS: Tell me what you recall about her. OY: She was a beautiful woman. I knew her when she was in her seventies, when I was just a boy and she was a very dignified, lovely lady. And she had walked across the plains when the pioneers came in 1848 and her father was on a mission, so he didn't take his family and their mother died in route, as I recall. And so the family was under the direction of her elder sister… Let's see I have forgotten her name for the moment. RS: Aurelia? OY: Aurelia, that's it! Aurelia Spencer and she became Mrs…. I have forgotten I meet her… 5 RS: Rodgers? OY: Rodgers, that's it. Aurelia Rodgers, of primary fame wasn't that it? I met her a couple of times. I was very impressed with her nobility and she was the one that really took care of that family as they went across the plains. RS: Did Katherine Spencer Young tell you any stories about her father or do you recall any of those stories? OY: No, I'm sorry that didn't occur. She lived at the home of my Aunt Corah whose last name was Rodgers by the way. I don't know whether there is any relationship or not. But we didn’t go often to visit with her because she lived in an upstairs bedroom and her health wasn't too good and father would go and visit her by himself, but he didn't take the family and kids, you know, they were small kids. RS: That's interesting. What do you remember? Did you meet your grandfather at all? OY: No he died in 1903 and I was born in 1904. He died before we went up to Canada. RS: What was your father like physically? OY: He was much like the Spencers, rather… He wasn't short, exactly, he was, I suppose, about 5’8” or 9.” I was 5’10” when I was young and I would look down into his eyes just slightly. He was slight of build. His wrists were narrow like my own. His bones were rather small. His hands were not large, but rather delicate. He was much like the Spencers and he was, as I said, a very very interesting 6 man, but a man who didn't make much money. He was too interested in church work, he was too interested in dramatics, he was too interested in politics, and this and that and the other, to really get down to the nitty-gritty of making a good living, but a very interesting man. One of the most friendly, interesting men that I have ever have known. And he had friends everywhere. Wherever you went he collected friends like some people collect old China. [Sadler laughs] That's right. He was that kind. Strike up an acquaintance with people. He had friends in every walk of life, from the drifters and so on along the streets, to the millionaires of Salt Lake City. RS: Tell me about… Now he was appointed mission President? OY: Right. RS: In? OY: In 1922. RS: In 1922 and he was President for? OY: For five years. RS: For five years in the Northwestern States Mission. Tell me a little bit about the mission and his involvement in it and things you remember about the size of the mission? OY: He liked the mission very very much. He just loved it. And his control over the missionaries and the cooperation they showed him was excellent. He was kind. He was a very friendly man and could persuade them to just about do anything 7 that he wanted them to do. And so, he had good results. I remember one or two that he didn't have much success with, and he called into his office and he went to their place of lodging and so on. And I know those things, because I was the one who chauffeured him around while he was in Portland. And he didn't drive the car. He was kind of afraid of automobiles, having been used to horses all of his life. [Laughs] RS: That's interesting OY: Uh huh. Very interesting man RS: How big was the mission do you recall? OY: They had about forty missionaries at that time, and it included Vancouver. So on more than one occasions we went up to Vancouver and it extended south as far, as I recall, Eugene. It didn't go beyond the mountains, in western Oregon. Well it went over to Wolf Point, Montana in the northern part of the mission and it included Victoria B.C. and Vancouver B.C. So it was quite a large mission RS: The state of Washington then? OY: The state of Washington, not the Southern part around the Columbia that was in another mission. RS: I see. That's very interesting circumstance. While he was there you went to Reed College. OY: Reed College, yeah. RS: What kind of an experience was that? What size school was it? 8 OY: It was limited to 320 students when I was there. It now has been expanded to have close to 1,000 or 1,200, something like that. But it's whole objective was to improve scholarship, and to promote scholarship. Independent study was encouraged. We were given projects in biology, for example, and comparative anatomy to work on. The effort there was to encourage a person’s original thinking and sometimes the results were rather bizarre, as you well may imagine, because some of those students had gotten off the beaten track by this freedom which was allowed to them. And they indulged in all kinds of philosophical speculations and things like that. Kind of undisciplined in my opinion. I never was a part of that sort of thing. It appeared to me that they rather flaunted their disrespect, or their apparent freedom from restraint and authority and so on and enjoy the pettiness of indulging their own flights of fancy and their own ideas. Which, of course, based on the experience of 18, 20, 22 years was not really productive in my opinion. RS: Did you become interested in that time in following some scientific field or had you gained that interest earlier?. OY: Yes I was very interested in the sciences and at that time I had made up my mind to follow that end. Before then I was much interested in the sciences, even back in the Salt Lake period which was during World War I. I had my experiments down in the basement and mixed up powders and had explosions and things like that. At school, we made gun powder, I mean gun cotton, excuse me, gun cotton. And gun cotton in the bullet is a compressed substance in little brown granules that had been cut from a sheet--that's the way they looked. And they were brown 9 in color. But we made gun cotton out of regular cotton batting, you know, which was white and we’d amaze our friends by putting a wad of this cotton about the size double your fist and then striking a match in the hallway and touching it to that and foof! There was a soft explosion while that cotton disappeared in a flash of flame. Very interesting to see the reactions of the other students. So, my ideas were almost entirely linked to the sciences right from an early period. RS: What do you remember about Salt Lake in that four or that period of World War I and just after World War I? OY: Well Salt Lake was then just beginning to become a city, in a true sense of the word. I don't remember the population at the time but it couldn't have been very close to 100,000. I'm sure it was no more than possibly a little bit larger than Ogden at that time. That was back in 1914 and it was very much a home place and people were much more leisurely in their attitudes. Of course with old time cars that traveled only a few miles per hour they didn't see many accidents and if there were accidents, they were disasters, but at the same time they didn't necessarily hurt very many people. Street cars were the main mode of transportation. I went to East Side High School later on and there I caught the street car at the base of B Street and South Temple and traveled up to East Side High. East Side High I took physiology and biology and chemistry and physics and there you see my bent was in the direction of the sciences. For which I’m very grateful, because we live in the age of science and the sciences have literally exploded from the time of the Revolutionary War up until the present and it is continuing its explosion. So we are a different generation, we’re a different 10 kind of people because of this knowledge, this new knowledge, which has dawn upon the world in just that short time. RS: You lived up on the Avenues? OY: Yes I lived on 5th Avenue and B Street right near were the tower used to be, the old tower which was across the Canyon, east from the Capital Building. The Capital Building had just been completed at the time we moved there. RS: What do you recall about South Temple Street? That’s often been called Brigham Street? OY: Yes it was called Brigham Street at the time I was there, but at that time or shortly thereafter they began calling it South Temple. I think there was a certain resentment by certain people toward that name of Brigham in the first place. In the second place, it was a lot easier for people to locate addresses and things like that being South Temple. RS: A lot of the wealthy miners built homes along there. Do you recall any of those or seeing any of those? OY: Well I never came in contact with any of them but I remember right well from the very start knowing the Kerns Mansion and then the Walker Mansion and others I can recall I knew at the time. We walked by them on the way to school and we'd walk and take the street car. RS: Did the street car go up to South Temple to 13th East? OY: Oh we took the 1st South street car 11 RS: Oh I see. OY: That was the one that turned south on 13th East and passed by the East Side High School. [Coughs] I'm sorry I got hoarseness. RS: Oh, you’re doing great, you’re doing just great. Do you recall your first experience with automobiles in Salt Lake City? What were they like, what kind were they? OY: Yes I remember right well the first time I rode in an automobile in Salt Lake. I'd ridden in an automobile in Canada, because we had friends. I remember right well one of the old high wheelers that came along the street right in front of our house in Raymond, Alberta. And in crossing kind of a ditch which came across the street in a diagonal fashion, this high wheeled buggy-like vehicle, with the engine under the front seat and a steering wheel which was just like a rod of wood I guess, and that was how you steered you see, and these high wheels. Well it broke the axle and I remember looking at that broken piece and that grey appearance of the broken the broken axle and peering at these high wheels and the engine under the seat and things like that. Very interesting. I think that was one of the most interesting things I’ve ever seen and I was entranced with it, just fascinated. I’m glad that I had the experience because it was truly an old first vintage automobile, the first one in that area. Then of course later on when we when we got to Salt Lake, by then pneumatic tires and the engine out in front you see took the place of the old style. But of course, the tires along the side and the and the buggy tops that were on top of these automobiles. And one of the first ones that I rode in was a big Packard which was owned by my cousin, who was a Godfrey and he lived up the street of us and he was a high school kid and he 12 was driving this automobile. Another one of my high school friends drove an old Winston automobile and he drove it down A Street. Of course A Street wasn't paved at that time. And he stood on the wide running board, which was about 14, 15 inches wide and steered the car and retrieved his hat from the road way. [Laughs] I wasn't in the car and I'm grateful that I wasn't. But to see that boy do all that, that was quite a sight. And a Winston, you know, was a big heavy car. Big high wheels, they must have been easily three feet high with the tires on, you know. Huge tires and this long hood which had a six-cylinder engine underneath and big, big cylinders in to guide that thing down which weighed maybe three tons or so while he was outside the car. [Laughs] RS: That's amazing. OY: That was not only was that amazing, but it was foolhardy in the extreme. RS: What was the first automobile that you remember driving yourself? OY: That was up in the mission field. We bought a Buick. A four cylinder Buick 1923 model and it was new and I remember arguing with my about father whether it should have pneumatic tires or not. Now it had pneumatic tires when we bought it. But he insisted on putting in a solid core of rubber-like material to take the place of the air. He thought that we shouldn't have air because he thought the tires might go flat and things like that. And as a result the vibration of these solid rubber tires caused the brake rods to break and I had to replace a good many of the brake rods. But I was quite handy with fixing the car and taking care of it because I had had a course in automobile mechanics as a high school kid up at 13 the University of Utah. It was very interesting at the time to have automobile mechanics taught at that institution. RS: Kind of a technical school OY: Yeah. Oh yes it was a technical… RS: What are your first recollections about the University of Utah? What was it like and what space did it occupy? OY: Well it occupied… I've always know it up on there on the hill and the Park Building was there and by the way my mother was a student of John R. Park. And my father was well acquainted with him and my father’s experience and education was strictly on the high school level, although he attended the University of Deseret when he was a young man. And my mother did and she taught school down in Granger for a time. Then she went to ZCMI and became a clerk there in the glove department. Ran that department for many years. She was well acquainted with George Albert Smith and others who were working at ZCMI at that time. She encouraged me to go to school and my father did also, and I’m very sorry that he didn't take additional work and become a teacher he would have made a corking good teacher. It was born in him. He was very interested in dramatics and knew Shakespeare had and had participated in Shakespearean plays and his speech and his grammar and his use of words was impeccable. Very fine speaker. And one that loved the English language and honored it in every way. He passed that on to us kids. RS: Tell me about your mother. What was her name and where was she born? 14 OY: Her name was Marie Katherine Jonasson, J-o-n-a-s-s-o-n Jonasson. Which means sons of Jonas. Her father was an immigrant from Sweden who had been on a mission in Denmark and had met my Danish grandmother there. He spoke with an accent, but he had as a boy he had lain in between the tailor shop were his uncle was employed, his uncle adopted him. And raised him. He became apprenticed to his uncle and was a very fine tailor, but he left that field because he had lain, noon munching on his sandwich between the bakeshop and the courthouse. The windows of the courthouse opened up on this tiny alley between the bakery shop and the courthouse building and it was warm there right next to the ovens. And he could stand or sit or lie and listen to the lawyers arguing their cases and it made a great impression upon him which he kept the rest of his life. When he got to Salt Lake City as an immigrant into this country with his young wife of Denmark, whom he had met on his mission. He decided to become apprenticed to a lawyer and he chose Ashby Snow. Ashby Snow is quite a prominent lawyer and a prominent man in Salt Lake of the late seventies and the early eighties. And his home was on North State Street, just below the Capital about a block and a half or two blocks. Ashby Snow residences, if it's still there its right above where that parking lot is, opposite that new high rise apartment building on Canyon Road. Well anyway, Ashby Snow taught him a good deal of what he needed to know to become a lawyer. He passed his examinations for the bar, became a lawyer and then later a judge in Salt Lake City. And for a time spent about two years down in San Francisco, also in law. He was an intelligent man. My grandmother used to tell me and my aunt, that he knew nine languages. 15 Well that wasn't uncommon up there around Sweden and Denmark to know nine languages, because there are quite a few languages and near languages. German you see, and Dutch, and so on. He was one who got around quite a bit, and he picked up the elements, I suppose, of a good many languages. He knew Latin and I don't know where he studied that to get it. But he must have been an intelligent man. My grandmother, after his dead, had to take in boarders. And that's how she made her living and raised her family, because my grandfather died rather an early age. RS: Your mother went to the University of Deseret and became? OY: I don't think that you'd call it Deseret RS: I guess the University of Utah? OY: I think so, because she must have gone there. Well she was born... When was she born? I’m sorry I can't remember just exactly when she was born but she was must have been about 1870. So she went to the University of Utah in the late ‘80s or 1890 and then she married my father in 1903, so there wasn't a great deal of time in between there. RS: She taught at Granger just west of Salt Lake? OY: Yes, she taught for only one year and then she got a better job at the at the ZCMI. RS: I wonder what that tells us about salaries for school teachers. 16 OY: That tells us plenty [laughs] and it tells you the truth too because school teaching was a very unrewarding business at that time. RS: Now when you went to the University of Utah, you were telling me that there was the Park Building. What else was there? Were there other buildings on the campus? OY: Yes, there was what is now called the biology building, which is immediately southwest of the Park Building and that is where I spent my time. I was at under Dawn M. Reese directly as I got my Master’s degree, but I was very well acquainted with Chamberlain. His name was… RS: Ralph OY: Ralph! Ralph Vary Chamberlain and he was very proud of the name Vary because it came from back in around Vermont and New York there. An old, well established family. Very intelligent man and he was a very learned man one of the most learned of any men that I have ever met. He knew languages, he knew music, he was a broadly educated man. RS: What eventually turned you to a specific area in science? How did you move that direction? OY: I moved there in that direction because of the philosophy back of it. The idea of studying the science of life, of life itself, which is the most remarkable thing about our world, are the living things. The living, growing, reproducing things that furnish us the food and that are the basis of our increase on this world. This world would just be a lump of clay and rock were it not for life and the life 17 occupies just the barest, thinnest layer on top of all this rock and lifeless material. So, that appealed to me, that philosophical reason, so I was determined to go into the science of life. And I am grateful and still grateful for that decision. RS: Now for your bachelor’s degree what did you major in? OY: I majored in zoology RS: And for your Master’s. OY: Same thing. RS: What did you write your thesis on? OY: I wrote it on the anatomy of Stenopelmatus fuscus haldiman, which is the common sand cricket that you find in sandy places around throughout the west. There are three species throughout the west and it occupies an area from the Mississippi River to California. These three species differ mostly in size. But the one I studied was Stenopelmatus fuscus. The specific name is fuscus, meaning brown. It is a cricket belongs to the family tettigonia that is to say it isn't the grasshopper family. That's the Acrididae in the Orthoptera, the order Orthoptera of the insects. A very interesting little animal but it doesn't have much economic significance, but it's a very fearsome looking creature and when children see it why it evokes a very marked response. Anybody who sees it. [Laughs] RS: When you came to Weber in 1933 President Tracy was the president. OY: Right. RS: What kind of man was he? 18 OY: President Tracy was kind of a dreamer and a philosopher and he was always pointing out the broad vistas of education and was a politician and man who was determined to see Weber established. Which it was and he gave it a very good basis, but as a person who…. To be the president or to be in the educational fraternity, he lacked certain qualities that I think were necessary. That is to say he wasn't man that was broadly educated. Number one--he knew practically nothing about the sciences. He always talking to the students about the broad outlines of education, the end result, the great objectives of education and so on. But at the same time, he didn't run the institution the way it needed to be run with respect to details and things like that. The Moench Building, the old Moench Building was left open. Doors wide open, all day and all night during the summer. Kids came in and played with the microscopes during the summer when the teachers were gone, you know? He lacked certain things like that, but yet at the same time, he was a very personable, likable, and energetic man and his influence was exercised mostly along the line of politics. RS: What size was the faculty when you first joined? OY: About twenty-five as I recall. We had a Watermelon Bust just prior to going into classes that September of 1933 and we had it up on hill side over here at the top of about 27th or 26th Street or maybe 25th Street or something like that in the oak brush there. I remember Buss Croft and Thatcher Allred and various others. They it made a very interesting and very lively bunch of rather young people. There weren't very many elderly in the bunch. I don't think John Benson or and 19 C.H. Anderson were much over fifty. But they were the older parts and President Tracy himself was not actually an old man at all. RS: Now he was replaced by President Creer? OY: Creer, yeah. RS: What kind of a president was Leeland Creer? OY: I think he was an efficient and interested man, but his heart wasn't in it. He wanted to be in history and at the end of two years he became a professor of history at the University of Utah. He said, he made a statement at the end of his administration he said the low points in his administration at Weber College were number one: The Kissable Lips Contest and Whitney Young and his cats. And at the time, I had to supply specimens for my students to work on in comparative anatomy why the cats of price of cats was practically prohibitive, so we would range about and find out were the cats were you know and the students would pick out cats from various places and I'm not sure they were too choosy when they got their cats. [Laughs] So that reached the newspapers and there were articles and so on and there was a particularly obnoxious reporter I've forgotten his name, who a took up that theme repeatedly. How we needed cats. [Laughs] And so that bothered President Creer very much. I don't blame him. At any rate. RS: What was the Kissable Lips Contest? OY: The Kissable Lips Contest was a very interesting thing. They had across the front of the old Moench Building Auditorium, they had a big paper curtain that was only about six and-a-half feet high and it had a series of round holes in it. 20 And Mayor Perry and myself and one or two others were the judges and we'd go along and look through the round hole, which was three inches in diameter, and the girl would put her mouth including a little bit of her nose, up to this three inch hole. [Laughs] And we'd judge from that which ones were the most kissable in our opinions and I'll never forget Mayor Perry as he peered through these holes at these interesting lips and I suppose he was very attracted by those lips I’m sure. I thought the whole thing was just a ludicrous exhibition and I didn't pay much attention to it, but got through with my judging as quickly as I possibly could. But that was the Kissable Lips Contest and it reached the of course the newspapers and was highlighted and that was a source of embarrassment to poor President Creer. [Laughs] The other thing was the trouble over the cats because people would immediately would assume that their cat had been stolen by my students, if their cat disappeared at all. Actually their cat might have gone feral, F-E-R-A-L, gone up unto the hills and started killing field mice up there you know. But… RS: Did they hold the Kissable Lips Contest more than just one year? OY: As I recall only one year. I don't think they had that any more than just once. I hope not. RS: Oh heavens. OY: It was not a thing to build our reputation. RS: What was the size of the student body those early years, do you remember? 21 OY: I think one year we fell down to below 300, I think. But it was about 300 to 400 and it gradually built up. And with faculty and with the advent of President Dixon it really went to town. He was really the one that put Weber College where it should be. A splendid administrator and a very likable man. I certainly admired him. And every year he'd organize the health curriculum, he called it the health curriculum, and a lot of the faculty members would go with him. And I never went with him to these fishing expeditions up in West Yellowstone. I got my PhD in Limnology, which is the science of lakes and it’s Freshwater ecology actually or Freshwater biology, you can call it that. And I wrote my thesis on the changes in the animals and plants that form a kind of a covering on bull rushes in a lake over northern Michigan. You know how Michigan is shaped like your hand? We were up here at the tip of the mitten right next to Cheboygan, Michigan. That's where the biological station of the University of Michigan is. And Ann Arbor is down here at the thumb, you know, near Detroit, about 22 miles from Detroit and I'm sure glad I went to Michigan, very fine school. It was starred in almost as many fields as Harvard. RS: Now when did you go there? OY: I went there the first time the summer of 1934 and went back to this University of Michigan biological station. And went there for eight summers in succession after having gone to the University of Utah for three years in succession. See my Junior year, Senior year, and Graduate year. Three years and so that made a total of eight summers in succession without a break. And up at the close of those eight summers I got my PhD from the University of Michigan and one year 22 I spent the summer, the entire year in Ann Arbor and then the following summer with my wife and family back there. And then the rest of the time most of the time I went back alone for the two months of the summer session up there in Northern Michigan. Called the tip of the mitten. Is what many people referred to it as. RS: That must have been still pretty wild country? OY: Yes it was. It was mostly cut over, burned over land. It had been logged, you know, and that was a place where those magnificent fir trees and pine trees came from that a built hundred and thousands of home throughout the Mississippi Valley. RS: When you a got you doctorate, that was the summer of? OY: 1940. Let’s see… I went to summer school there 1934, ’35, ’36, ’37, ’38, ’39, ’40. I guess ’41. Nope there was just eight years and I got my PHD through the mail that winter. RS: Were there very many people on the faculty who had a Doctorate then? OY: Yes. Oh no, at Weber State? RS: At Weber State? OY: No, I think that Dean Anderson had a doctorate from Ames, Iowa when he first came and he came the same year that I did, which was 1933-34 and I don't think there was anyone at that time that had a Doctor’s degree except from Dean Anderson. And he was the least paid in the faculty [laughs]. RS: What was he teaching? 23 OY: Bacteriology. Very fine man. Oh, he was splendid and he quit here at Weber College I think about, I think it was three years after we joined, we joined in 1933- 34. I think he stayed only three years. And when I was on leave of absence, I was gone back to Michigan in 1935-36, I think that was it. I came back and he was gone. And then he died shortly after that. He taught down in the University of Southern Cal, I think that was it, and didn't last too long. RS: When President Dixon left, President Miller came then school began to look up to the east bench for… OY: Oh yeah, that’s right. RS: What did you think about that move and what did you think? OY: I was happy about that because down there where we were in Weber, in the Moench Building, we were definitely constrained in that situation. You see, there was, we took over the old junior high school and we had the mechanics building over on Adams. But we were only about three quarters of that block. The Institute was on 24th Street, as it is now, but there were homes and we couldn't very well have expanded beyond that block, if we'd been able to expand even as far as that block. So President Dixon got interested in this tract of land up here and it was in the hands and I’ve forgotten his name and he was a former super intendent of schools for Weber County and a very fine man. He had several of his children located here in Ogden and they were fine people. One of them was a high school teacher at Ogden High for many years. And I’ve forgotten the name and I can't remember it, but anyways President Dixon talked with this man and 24 he would talk to his family and his family were opposed to the sale, but finally President Dixon convinced this man that he ought to sell it and he told us often how he had taken this man up on the roads where he could overlook the whole campus and he would point out to this man what a lovely location that would be and what a great value it would be to Ogden to have an institution that would have a lovely campus like this. He finally convinced the man, against the objections of his children, to sell his tract of land. He signed the papers, the transfer was made, and three days later he was dead. And you couldn’t convince President Dixon that that wasn't the intervention of divinity of heaven and I think he was right too. His children, of course, didn't get nearly as much money out of it as they would have had they sold it piece meal to developers or home buyers. You know with such a beautiful piece of property as this. And then President Miller went right on acquiring more property, which was a very wise thing to do because look at what lovely campus we have today. And President Dixon used to point out every once in a while, looking at me, that we would have a lake down here where the limnologist would come down and take observations and so on. I’d hate to do it with all the mud that is stirred up by those ducks and geese. [Laughs] But any rate it was a nice thing to look forward too, but my what a magnificent place this is now. Just lovely.