Oral History Program Richard and Margaret Molumby Interviewed by Sharice Stagler 22 July 2010 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Richard and Margaret Molumby Interviewed by Sharice Stagler 22 July 2010 Copyright © 2025 by Weber State University, Stewart Library 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. 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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: Molumby, Richard and Margaret, an oral history by Sharice Stagler, 22 July 2010, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. Abstract: The following is an interview with Richard and Margaret Molumby conducted by Sharice Stagler on July 22, 2010. Richard and Margaret discuss their involvement with St. Joseph’s High School as parents and continuing members of the Booster Club, as well as other people they know that have been influential at the school. SS: So, did you guys go to Catholic school yourselves? RM: I did, back in South Dakota. We’re from South Dakota. MM: No, I didn’t, I went to public school. SS: So, how many kids did you have? MM: Six. SS: And did they all go through? MM: Yes, all the way through. The first one graduated in ‘79, and the last one was ‘94. SS: Wow, so that’s a big span. Why did you decide to send them there versus other options? MM: When we moved here, the public school system was one of the lowest in the country in Utah. That’s what we read. So, we decided no matter what we were going to try to them in Catholic school. RM: They were the lowest, because we did put two of them in the grade school up on the northeast bench when we first moved here. They spent more time polishing rocks for the teacher to sell than they did—I’m serious. That’s when we looked around and found St. Joe and decided that’s what we’re gonna do. MM: Well, they also wouldn’t—they were in a Catholic school in Missouri and South Dakota, and the public school here wouldn’t accept their records. “Well, they read 1 different books, so we’re not gonna accept ‘em.” I mean, they were excellent students. They wouldn’t take that. SS: That’s interesting. MM: So, that’s why we decided. SS: Then did you guys involved immediately with the school, as far as, you know, Booster clubs and things like that? MM: Almost immediately. RM: Got immediately involved with the parent-teacher groups. MM: Parent-teacher and then Booster club. RM: That’s when the grade school was down on… MM: Lincoln. RM: Lincoln Avenue. Do you know where that was? SS: On 28th and Lincoln about, I think. RM: Yeah, about. It’s torn down now, but that’s where it was. That was our first experience, and it was a good one. The nuns were around at that time. They were pretty strict. Real strict. SS: So, with having that many kids going through the private school system, was it hard for you to afford it? Because it seems like that’s what pushes a lot of people away is the financial burden of it. RM: It was a financial burden. However, I had two jobs. That’s how you do it. A lot of people do. SS: Wow. RM: You can do whatever you want to do once your priorities are set. 2 MM: And I stayed home and volunteered at the school. SS: So, when the school was rumored that it was going to close and the Sisters left, what kind of things did you guys help with to keep it open? RM: Well, no, that’s the high school, okay. We had a Booster meeting, and it was probably… MM: Father Hurlock. RM: Father Hurlock who was here, had started the school as a Jesuit priest. It was a Jesuit high school taught by Jesuit priests. So, it was Father Hurlock, it was Bob Evans, Evans Elevator and Grain, who has since passed on, but he was the biggest booster. Then we had Paul Willard and… MM: Joe. RM: Joe Schwartz, and others. We got together and decided that we would set up a pledge system and get everybody involved and raise money. That group, I think it was Joe Schwartz and Bob Evans and Paul Willard, [unintelligible] went down to the bishop’s office in Salt Lake, cause that’s who runs the parochial school, and told him we could keep the school, we didn’t need the nuns. The nuns were leaving, and basically they told us if we could figure out a way to afford it they wouldn’t close it. So, we raised the money and kept it going. That’s how many years ago. MM: Then we decided instead of a lot of small fund raisers, we needed one big one that would involve the community. That’s when we started SPREE, the dinner… RM: Have you heard of SPREE? SS: Paul talked about it a little. 3 RM: It’s the biggest fundraiser— MM: Dinner auction. RM: —We ever raised. MM: We sent Paul and Dr. Janeway and Al McDonald with Thiokol. They went up to Montana to look at another school that had a similar program, and we started that in 19—the first one was 1976. RM: Thirty-one years ago. MM: No, ‘79. 1979 is the first one. RM: We’ve been to every one since. Never missed a SPREE. MM: Never missed one. We worked on that. RM: We went from raising $9,000 a year on small fundraisers to raising between 90 and 115 thousand on that one event. SS: Does it still raise that much? RM: It has gone down the last few years, but I still think it’s making it in the 65 range. SS: That’s quite a bit. MM: Before, you know, we had big companies like Thiokol and the medical community and big companies, and then the university people would come. We had 350 to 400 people at this, and that was our goal was to involve the community so they knew what we were doing. It worked. RM: See I was on the school board for several years, probably about 12 or 15 I guess, a long time. So were Schwartz and all those people too. We tried at that time to keep the tuition low by having fundraisers so that ordinary people could 4 afford it. We didn’t want a rich man school. Tuition has gotten pretty high now. I’m not exactly sure what it is, but I think it’s over 6,000. SS: Yeah, it’s quite a bit. Norm told me it was about eight, so it’s a lot. RM: It’s gotten up there. Now, there are programs, however, where people can get assistance. We kind of don’t know that much about that anymore because we haven’t had anybody in school for—well, we did have two grandkids that graduated. MM: Like, yeah, we’ve instilled that in our kids to help—you know, our oldest daughter just finished being president of the Boosters. Her kids graduated— RM: And on the school board. MM: —And the school board. So yeah, she was president of the financial board, too, of the school. SS: So, the school board, what does the school board do? RM: You know, it basically does finances, because that’s probably the biggest issue is to try to keep funding to keep the doors open. It’s very expensive, and the problem is the last several years, enrollment is down. Now, this is hearsay, but my understanding enrollment is down a lot because of these charter schools that have started up. It’s basically state-funded private schools, which I personally think is wrong. That is drawing a lot of people away from paying tuition in a parochial school. We can see here in the paper that the Lutheran school is closing. What’s the name of it? MM: They used to go to eighth grade and then they would send ‘em to St. Joseph’s for high school. 5 RM: They’ve been in business as many years as St. Joseph. St. Paul’s Lutheran, that’s what it is. That’s closing this year, I understand. I think they think the same thing, the charter schools have really taken a bite out of private schooling, and that’s totally state funded by your taxes. It’s totally wrong in my opinion. SS: It seems like that’s just been the past few years, too. The charter school thing. RM: It’s been coming on strong for about five to six years, maybe longer than that. MM: And there’s a lot of them. RM: There’s a lot of them, yeah. In fact, this little school in Riverdale was just taken over by them. MM: The Christian Heritage. RM: The Christian Heritage, that’s now a charter school. SS: So, your grandkids, your children sent your grandkids to that school as well? MM: Yes. RM: Some of them that are here. MM: We had two of them graduate here. SS: So, it’s becoming a tradition to go? RM: Oh, it has been for years for families, yeah. MM: Yeah, Joe’s grandkids went, a lot of the Boosters’ grandkids have gone. I guess that’s another reason we keep— RM: Some are still in there. MM: Yeah. RM: Course, the Boosters is not only a great organization, but we have a lot of fun. MM: The money goes strictly to sports, the athletic program. 6 RM: Yeah, but it keeps parents involved. SS: So, after your own kids graduated, why did you decide to stay involved in the Boosters club and things like that and going to the SPREEs after your own kids weren’t there? MM: We believe in the school. It should be here. RM: It’s a good social event for us also, and it’s a worthwhile cause. We’re not the only people that do that. There’s tons of people that are involved in this. MM: We have friends that are non-Catholic [that] go to it every year and enjoy it and support it. RM: But there’s a lot of parents that don’t have kids in school right now that still support the Booster club. SS: Yeah, it seems that way. RM: Oh, yeah. Obviously. SS: It seems like there’s a lot more parental support in that school than there is in public schools. RM: Oh, I would say so. There’s a couple reasons for that. One is once you’re spending that money, you better get involved, really. I think you’re more involved because in a small school, each of your kids has an opportunity to participate in speech and all the sports, which they probably couldn’t do. They wouldn’t have the same chance in a larger school. You know, if you only have 185 students versus, I don’t know what the public school has there, several thousand, I don’t know how many. How many is in Ogden High? I don’t even know. 7 SS: I went to West Jordan, and I think there was probably eight or nine hundred, at least. RM: Oh, easy. SS: Yeah, at least. RM: One of our grandkids goes to West Jordan right now. They live in Salt Lake. SS: Yeah, I grew up in West Jordan and then I moved up here to go to Weber. RM: Our son lives in West Jordan right now. MM: We believed in keeping ‘em busy with sports, too. In those days, parents drove them to all the games and everything. So, we had a Suburban that had over 120,000 miles. RM: Most of it going to ball games. MM: Yeah, going to ball games, taking cheerleaders, volleyball, basketball, whatever, track. SS: So, did you guys drive for sports that your kids weren’t playing in? RM: Sure. MM: Whenever they needed, they could call us and we’d— RM: We used to drive the cheerleaders a lot of times. Even when we didn’t have anybody cheerleading. SS: That’s so fun. What else was I thinking about? What do you think that your kids got out of their education there that they wouldn’t have got in public school? MM: They made good friends that they have for life, and those friends, we knew their parents, so it was close knit, you know. If they said they were going over to soand-so’s house, we knew that parent. 8 RM: I think you have the same opportunity to learn in public school, but it’s just that it’s so much smaller scale in the private school. When you go back in history to the time when we were there, when there was five or six Jesuit priests teaching—I don’t know if you’re familiar with the Jesuit priests, but that’s the teaching order you have in the church, and most of those fellows have anywhere from eight to 20 years of college. MM: And seven or eight languages, some of them. RM: Yeah, so the math teacher up there was so good that in the summertime he taught the professors up at Weber State College. He was just that good, Father Susott. He was a mathematic genius, and a good teacher to boot. So, they had an extremely— MM: More one-on-one teaching. RM: More one-on-one, and they had an extremely well-rounded group of teachers. I don’t know for sure how that is at the moment, I don’t know. I do know in the grade school, I was on the board there for several years—the grade school of course, the feeder to the high school—you had a pretty good array of teachers, ‘cause a lot of times you’d have military people like the captains and [unintelligible] and colonels who would move in here for a stay and their wives would be teachers. So, you picked up a well-rounded group of people who had experiences from all over the world who were in there teaching. I don’t know if that’s true today. MM: They learned how to study and were well prepared for college, and to this day— like one year, there was three academy Air Force and Navy appointees from the 9 students. I think, percentage-wise, this little school puts out more of those academy students. RM: Naval Academy. MM: Yeah, Air Force, Naval, and Army. It’s a small school, but we have a bigger percentage of students that go. SS: Did your kids get scholarships when they left? MM: Yes. One went to Portland and got a scholarship at the university and Weber. RM: One of our granddaughters just graduated from St. Joe. She’s on a scholarship at Northern Arizona, happens to be for soccer. St. Joe takes State A many years in a row in their league, 1A. But to play sports and that, you have to have, what, at least a 3.5? MM: You have to have above a C average, yeah. You can’t play unless you have that. RM: So, kids that are playing sports have to do their studies or if they don’t, they’re off, they’re out. Again, we’re pretty strong players in sports. Good kids, not in trouble. It’s true. SS: Yeah, I think it works for the most part. When the sisters left, did you feel like the school changed at all? MM: When the sisters left I think Father Hurlock and Father Susott were still there. RM: Still had the priests. MM: Yeah, still had the priests. RM: I don’t think it changed all that much, ‘cause I considered the Jesuits to be the real teachers there. I’m not putting the nuns down, I’m just saying that the 10 Jesuits, they’re hard to beat. They were at some of the best colleges in the United States. SS: What about when they left? RM: Well, that’s where we kind of fall down. We’re not as familiar with it as we were. SS: When did they leave? RM: You know, when did they leave the school? I don’t know. It’s probably ten years ago now. I don’t know exactly. SS: Oh, so it hasn’t been really too long. RM: Not all that long. There [are] still Jesuits here, they’re still out at St. Mary’s in west Ogden. MM: Yeah, Father Devlin was the last one, and Mary had him. I think Shawna didn’t have any. They had a diocesan priest, but not a Jesuit, she did, so it was probably in the late 80s that they left, probably 20 years ago. RM: But you know, they have some teachers up there yet. What is it, Mr. Hartley? He’d been there way back when the Jesuits were still here. Other than that, we don’t know that many of them. But you know, when teachers used to retire from public school systems, sometimes they’d come over and work for us, so we picked up kind of the cream of the crop a lot of the time. I was still on the school board even after we didn’t have any kids in school, so I was pretty familiar at that time with the teachers. Mostly cause I worked the salaries, which was blown. MM: They’d come mostly because of the discipline. The discipline is good at St. Joe. Teachers like that. RM: I’d suspect you should talk to somebody who’s had kids there the last… 11 MM: Ten years maybe. RM: Ten years, because that’s—Schwartz and Willard and ourselves, we have grandkids there as early as two years ago, but other than that we haven’t had any kids for 15 years, 20 years, in school. Well, Schwartz is what, 85 years old? SS: Yeah, he’s up there. RM: He’s a goer of the day. SS: He’s a nice guy. RM: He’s a neat guy. SS: Yeah, he’s really nice. RM: That Paul Willard’s a good guy. SS: Yeah, I met with him, gosh, I want to say Monday. I met with him on Monday and I met with Joe on Wednesday, or maybe, yeah, I think it was Wednesday, so that would have been yesterday. RM: You met some of the best, they’re good. SS: Yeah, I went to the Alumni Association barbeque and met a lot of people. RM: You know Eric McConaughey, did you meet him there? He runs the Alumni Association. Now, he’s a strong supporter. He’s a worker, that kid. MM: Oh yeah, he would be good to interview. SS: Yeah, he’s the one that actually invited me to the barbeque. So yeah, I’m going to interview him too. RM: I would do that, he’s very good. MM: Yeah, he’d be more—he’s still on board. RM: And he has kids in school. Does he still have kids in school? 12 MM: No kids, but he’s still on the board and works with the Boosters too. RM: [You could get] one of the more recent graduates that’s part of the… SS: Yeah, I’m also interviewing a guy, his name is Lee Forsgren, he graduated in ‘79. MM: [Speaking at same time] 1979. He was in our daughter’s class, Lee Forsgren. SS: Yeah, he’s out in DC now, so I’m going to do an interview with too. RM: Really? I’m trying to remember him. I do remember the name. MM: Yeah, I think he went to Academy, the Coast Guard Academy, if I remember right. SS: Something like that. MM: Got a scholarship to the Coast Guard Academy. SS: I think he’s a lawyer or something now, in DC. MM: And the Kennys. RM: Kenny boys, yes. MM: There was a lot of Kenny boys. I think Mike Kenny is here. I don’t know if he came to that banquet or not. SS: I don’t know. MM: See, our grandson was married Saturday, and I think that’s when—was Friday the banquet or…? SS: Yeah. RM: We didn’t make any of that because of that. MM: Yeah, we didn’t make any of that. RM: We have… Who’s that sharp kid that graduated with Cathleen that’s a hotshot lawyer in Salt Lake now? 13 MM: Oh. RM: He lives out there with a scholarship, what’s his name? Sharper than a tack. MM: I can’t think right now. RM: Anyhow, McConaughey will be a very good one because he’s more recent experience. SS: Yeah. MM: There’s a big percentage of St. Joe graduates that do go on to college, a big percentage, a lot. You read the graduation and it’s so many scholarships that they get. SS: Yeah, it’s amazing how much money flows into that school in scholarships, how much those kids get. RM: Yeah, it’s been— MM: Oh, you know who’d be good is Javier Chavez, to interview. He has students that all four or five kids have graduated. Well, one is a senior this year. He has Javier’s restaurants. SS: Oh, okay. MM: He coaches track. Besides having his five restaurants, he coaches track. RM: In fact, we just went to—they had a reception for his son who graduated from St. Joe, who now just graduated with a master’s from… MM: Harvard. RM: Harvard. MM: Yep, two sons from Harvard. 14 RM: He had two graduated from Harvard that are graduates of St. Joe. Javier’s probably [unintelligible]. MM: He would be good to interview. SS: Well, I’ll try and contact him too. RM: He’s good. That’s a good one right there. SS: Did he go to St. Joe’s also, or just send his kids through? MM: No, he is from Mexico. He got a scholarship to Weber for track, and that’s all his history that I know, but eventually his kids went through the school. RM: He runs five restaurants here in town. He is a go-getter. MM: He’s so nice. RM: He volunteers all his time for track at St. Joe, doesn’t charge anybody a penny. MM: He comes to the Booster functions. RM: In fact, he feeds them all. MM: Yeah. He would be excellent. I mean, to me, that’s a story. You come as an immigrant— RM: It’s a true success story, yeah. MM: Yeah, and then graduated from Weber State as track star and then starts restaurants— RM: And then sends all of his kids through St. Joe. MM: Yeah, through college. I’m sure they got scholarships too. RM: One of them’s still in school. MM: Yeah, senior, she’s a senior. RM: One of his kids. 15 MM: She’s a track star. SS: Well, he would be an interesting person to talk to too. MM: He would be very good, yeah. RM: He would be interesting. SS: I’m trying to get a broad range of people, you know, from the people that graduated in the 50s, then on to the 70s and more recent, and kind of go over it all. RM: He’s one of the sharpest guys in Ogden. He and his wife are unique people, and he has kids in school right now, or one, I think, [in] school. MM: One of the first graduates was Art Aragon, who worked with Dick at the Boeing Company. He’s passed away, but he was one of the first graduates. RM: 1955, the first class. MM: But he kept up with the Boosters in school too, he supported it. I think all the graduates do, if they’re here, or even if they’re not. RM: A lot of ‘em do. MM: There’s one friend of Bob Evans, what’s his name, that still gives money? He’s in Florida. RM: He’s in Jacksonville, Florida, but we bug him for money all the time, big money. SS: Is there a lot of people that donate a lot of money? RM: There’s Bob Evans that we talked about has donated, over the years, in the millions. SS: Oh, wow. MM: He believes strongly in that school, very strongly. 16 RM: He wouldn’t ever tell anybody that. MM: No, anonymously. RM: When I was running the school board, if we needed a roof on the school, he’d ask me how much, and I’d tell him $15,000, he’ll say, “We’ll get it for you.” Next thing you know, I can pay for it. SS: Wow. Did his kids go there? MM: Seven of them. RM: He sent his grandkids there too. Unfortunately, he died last year. His wife was still involved. In fact, we do our Booster parties at their house again for steak fries. MM: Booster meetings, not parties [laughs]. RM: [Laughs] I call ‘em parties. SS: Yeah, Joe described them a little bit more as parties too. He said, “Well, we used to have them at our house because I have a bar in the basement.” I said, “Oh!” RM: We had some great meetings at Joe’s house. MM: Yeah, we had fun. You did something good for the school and you still had fun. RM: See, the SPREE is a fundraiser, for instance, and that’s where you get—I don’t know if you know the people who run the Budweiser distributing here? Well, one of them is a Morgan who runs Morgan’s Jewelers, and the other one is a Peterson who runs the Budweiser distribution. So, they come to the SPREE, and they buy a dinner that we the Boosters cook at their house. It could be like a fish dinner or a Dutch wagon dinner. Well, they’ll pay like $1800 just for the dinner. 17 Then we all come and do it and they supply all the… Well, I’ll just tell you. I was talking to Peterson one day and I said, “How much do you pay for that dinner this year?” He says, “Oh, I stole it this year; I got it for $1500,” but he says, “You Boosters drank about $1,000 worth of my booze when you served it.” [Laughs] Now, that’s kidding, okay, but the Boosters do it. MM: Yeah, so we got the community involved. SS: So, it’s a lot of the same people at the SPREE every year? RM: Well, it’s changing now. MM: Changing a little bit. RM: It was a lot of the same people. MM: You don’t have Thiokol people there that there used to be, and other companies. RM: We’ve never missed one and we had 32 years. But I think it’s because we’ve had companionship and friendship through the Boosters that we’ve all come together and kept things going over the years. Like I say, when the school was about to close there, at one time, we’d all made pledges and we all made good on ‘em. You know, maybe it was only $200, $300 a person, but it was done by a lot of people. That’s when Paul Willard took over and said, “I’ll be the coach, the principal, the teacher.” MM: Yeah, coach, principal, and teacher. RM: And he was damn good at all of it. SS: That’s a big commitment. 18 RM: That’s a commitment, and he did it. Did it for several years. He also drove the bus. We had a van; he drove that too, take the kids to the ball games. You know, he coached the basketball team, he took ‘em to the game. We’d chip in together and buy a big four-door Dodge van, you know, a used one, run it until the wheels run off then get another one. They don’t do that anymore. They have busses now. MM: Well, things have changed a little bit because now both parents work. They’re not as free to do some of that, you know, like I stayed at home and I could do more of the volunteering. So, it’s changed. SS: Does the elementary school, now, does it require parents to volunteer? Has it ever? MM: I think so. SS: My little brother went to Juan Diego for a couple years. It was pre-kindergarten and kindergarten and then they moved, but they required a certain number of volunteer hours from the parents, so my stepmom, she was in there all the time. MM: They do that now. RM: They do here. MM: They didn’t have to do that when we were there. RM: What’s it called? MM: PIP points. Parental involvement. We didn’t have to do that, we just volunteered. RM: We didn’t have to do it, we did it. There’s a difference. MM: Like I said, both parents work now, so they almost have to require them to do it. RM: They have that kind of a program. 19 MM: Yeah, both schools do. RM: Now, Juan Diego’s really doing well I think. SS: You know, we moved. Well, they moved back up here, oh gosh, I want to say it was at least like eight years ago, but it was a nice school then, so it was big and nice. My aunt taught there. I don’t know if she still does. RM: ‘Course, Skaggs put up all the money to build it. He put up $62 million to start with. SS: Oh, wow. Then did he also give money to the high school? ‘Cause I think something up there’s named after him, the… MM: Yeah, the black box. Evans and Skaggs. RM: [Speaking at same time] The black box here is named off Skaggs and… MM: And Evans. RM: Bob Evans. Oh yeah, he’s given—I don’t know the amounts, a lot of money, I don’t know. Skaggs, he has donated, in fact he donated his mansion to the bishop. SS: That’s what I think Paul said. Then did he move? Was he moving? RM: Yeah, I think he did. MM: Maybe he went down south. RM: I didn’t personally know him, except that he was a car bird, other than that. The only reason I knew a little bit about him is our boy went to college and worked for Skaggs in Salt Lake, and actually still does, only it’s been sold—who the hell owns it now? Super [unintelligible]? MM: Yes. 20 RM: I never know. MM: Speaking of Juan Diego, Bob Evans, one of his daughters teaches at Juan Diego, and another daughter taught at St. Joe. So, you know, all families have just kept going like that, instilled in their kids to give back to St. Joe. SS: That’s really neat. Okay, well, I can’t think of anything else. MM: But you might want to see if Javier would talk to you. SS: You know, everyone that I’ve talked to has been very, very helpful and very welcoming. MM: His story is unique, I think, and he’s such—you never see anything but a smile on his face. RM: Might need his interpreter though, he talks so fast [laughs]. SS: Well, I’ll have to try and get with him then too. MM: He’s great. RM: He would be better to talk to I’d say, ‘cause he’s still involved with it as a parent and with the sports. MM: Now, Paul Willard was a student. I can’t think of anybody else that was a student and parent. RM: Yeah, student, parent, teacher, principal, and coach. You know where to get the highlights there. Maybe he didn’t toot his horn, I don’t know. MM: He was great, instrumental in saving it. RM: Wouldn’t want you to think that we partied all the time, but we did party. But you know what, that’s what kept the group together. SS: Having fun and being friends? 21 RM: See, we also still go to Lake Powell every year on a big houseboat, the Boosters, we always have. SS: Oh, I didn’t hear about that part. RM: Oh, it’s kind of a fun affair. MM: Not all Boosters, but past presidents. RM: Past presidents, we go down to Lake Powell for a week with houseboats. SS: Does someone have a houseboat down there? RM: Evans does. Evans has everything. SS: What did he do when he was alive? RM: Elevator and Grain, grain dealer. SS: Oh, I didn’t know there was that much money in grain. RM: Oh yeah. SS: I guess if you have enough. RM: He was a big trader of grain, lots of money in grain. Oh, it wasn’t this year he had ‘em in Portland, he had ‘em in Nebraska, he had ‘em… MM: Idaho, Portland. RM: Idaho. A headquarters here. In fact, they’re still around ‘em in Great Falls, Montana. They do mustard seed. It’s a big business. SS: So, did he farm the grain, or just collect it from farmers? MM: Dealt the futures and sold it. RM: Grain dealing. Had his own market right down the old section in town. The elevator’s still down there right off 28th below Wall Avenue. You know where the Attaboy dog food thing is? 22 SS: Yeah. RM: Okay, if you go back in those elevators, that’s all Evans’ elevators. SS: Is it empty now, or is someone else in there? RM: Oh no, it’s going [strong]. SS: Oh, did one of his kids take it over, or did he sell it? RM: He sold it and then bought it back. He did pretty well at that. MM: The one son they had and a son-in-law are in business, yeah. RM: Yeah. He was probably the biggest money supporter. MM: But anonymously. Didn’t ever make a fuss about it, he just believed in the school that much. SS: I don’t think I know of anything up on the school that’s named after him, probably cause he’s— MM: Yeah, the black box theater is the Evans— RM: Robert Evans Theater, yeah, it is. MM: Evans Theater. The whole facility was probably, money was donated by Skaggs, but the black box itself was Evans, I think. Isn’t that the way it is? RM: Yeah, and then they named the gymnasium after Father Hurlock. In fact, it says Father Neil Hurlock right on it. SS: Yeah, I saw that. MM: He was the first principal. RM: He was a sharp guy. We even took him to Lake Powell. SS: It seems like, in that school, students have a closer relationship with the teachers and the Fathers than happens in normal schools. 23 RM: That’s because of the size. SS: It’s just a different, it’s a whole different feeling it seems like, in the school. I can’t imagine one of my teachers from junior high or high school even remembering me, let alone being friends with them, you know? But it seems like [unintelligible] McConaughey is friends with Paul. It seems like people are closer. MM: Yeah. RM: Lot of respect. MM: They took an interest. Say if a student really didn’t get the math, Father Susott would help them along and still give ‘em a C if they tried, you know. The opposite would be true, if the student was smart and was lazy, he’d give ‘em a D. The thing there was, he knew his students and what they could do. RM: He wanted you to work to your ability. MM: I don’t think he ever failed anybody but, yeah. Some kids just can’t do math, so he would tutor ‘em and help ‘em and never fail them if they really tried, so yeah, they—it was great with the priests. RM: Yeah. I think the Jesuits is really what made the school, is my opinion, but not knowing who’s up there now I can’t… SS: Yeah, it’s a lot. Seems different than it would have been. RM: Well, that’s the world. You know, I still go back to Mitchell, South Dakota. I graduated from a little school called Notre Dame Academy, and after 50 years, we still get together and go golfing, partying, it’s crazy. MM: When you went back, the principal, that was about the 40th reunion, she was still alive and she still remembered him. 24 SS: How big was that school? RM: About the same size—well, I think there was 28 in my class, so it was probably about the same size. MM: About the same size, probably. RM: We still communicate at Christmas time with everybody, we still see each other every three, four, five years. In fact— MM: You just had your 50th. RM: —In 50 years we all met in Las Vegas, had a three-day party. So, we’re used to that kind of thing, that’s the way it was back home. MM: Well, I hope we helped you. SS: Yeah, really helpful. I’m trying to show long-standing support and things like that in the paper, so it’s coming right along. 25