Oral history: David Seamans

A major project of WSU’s Emeritus Society, these oral histories provide absorbing recollections of WSU history from the early 1950s on. Conducted and transcribed by history graduate student, now instructor, Katy Fry ’06, ’11, the histories deliver unfiltered memories of WSU through five presidencies and rich insight into how we came to be where we are now.

In this history, David Seamans, who joined the electrical engineering faculty in 1954 (and retired in 1992), remembers a campus that had one computer, an IBM punch-card machine in Thompson Hall, the administration building at the time. He taught the first computer hardware course on campus, in 1956 or 1957 and, with William Grant in music, built an analog music synthesizer.

F - Its March 24, 2010 and we’re in the Emeritus Society Lounge, Owen Library on the WSU campus. Why don’t we start with your name

DS - My name is David Seamans

F - And if you don’t mind telling us when you were born and where

DS - I was born June 13, 1927 in Lawrence, Kansas

F - And can you tell us a little bit about your family background, what your parents did

DS - Yeah, my father worked for the Lawrence Paper Company in Lawrence, Kansas. They made Jayhawk boxes which are corrugated boxes for shipping canned goods, chickens, just about anything. My mother was a nurse before she was married and then after she was married, she was a housewife, but continued to take care of the neighbors or whoever needed help

F - And what were your early educational influences, how did you get to college and even beyond

DS - well we lived on a small farm about 2 miles out of town, so I went to a one room country school. One room, 8 grades, one teacher

F - How many kids

DS - Oh about 30, so you can imagine it was more than I would wanta do, a teacher in such a place, but it all worked out and actually the school was within sight of the University of Kansas, which was up on a hill and the little one room school house at that time, was separated from town by about 2 miles. Now the town has grown out beyond. The little one room school house is still there, but its on the university campus now. So anyway, I could look out the window and see the university and think well maybe I’ll go to school there some time

F - Were your; your parents were obviously supportive of that

DS - Oh yeah, but they moved to town in 1941 about the time of the beginning of World War II because it was difficult to commute and my father worked in town all the time, so it was difficult to have tires and gasoline and so on, so we moved to town, so I went to high school in town 4 years and then went into the Navy for a year and then when I got out, I had the GI bill, so just went right into the university

F - So when you were in the Navy for your, that; you would have been; it would have been right at the end of World War II

DS - Yes, I went in 1945. I was in boot camp at Great Lakes, didn’t even have my uniform yet when they dropped the bomb on Hiroshima, so I realized at that time probably I wasn’t gonna be shot at, which didn’t bother me at all

F - Yeah, so when you; so you decided to go to college on the GI bill and what was it that you wanted to pursue

DS - Well in the Navy, I spent most of my time in electronic school, so when I got out, I thought there probably wasn’t much point in changing the direction, so I went into electrical engineering which I had, you know, always been interested in anyway, so, which I guess is the reason they put me in that in the Navy. Well I’m sure that it was, because when I was a senior in high school, the Navy came around and gave an examination, trying to locate people who would be appropriate to go to electronic school and I guess I passed that, so that’s where I went.

F - And then once you graduated from college, you decided to continue on with grad school

DS - Well not right away. I worked for 2 years in a consulting engineering company in Kansas City. Black and Beach was the name of the company, its still a big engineering firm, consulting engineers. We designed power plants, water plants, sewage disposal plants, and all kinds of public works and that sort of thing. I was involved in power system work of various kinds

F - And that sounds like a pretty good job

DS - Well it was, except in those days there were no computers, so there was no computer aided design, anything of that sort, so all the drawing was done by hand, which is what I did most of the time for the 2 years and I decided that was enough of that for me, so I went back to school which just seemed the most elegant way to get out of one job and into another one

F - Back at the University of Kansas

DS - Yes, yeah, so I went back there for 2 years and got my master’s degree and then the Department Chair I guess knew Dean Sloan here at WSU or at least he found out some way that they were looking for faculty member here and I guess he recommended me, I don’t know; he must have because the university sent me an application that I filled out and sent back and pretty soon I got a telegram from Dr. French offering me the job.

F - What year was that

DS - 1954, so the telegram said I’m authorized to offer you $4,000 a year, do you wanta come and I didn’t have any other job, so I came. Never having been in the State of Washington of course

F - Let alone the Palouse

DS - Right, so I packed up all my stuff and drove out here and here I am. At the time I thought well I’ll stay until I find a place I like better but I never did, so I’m still here.

F - So when you started grad school, did you know that teaching was what it was you wanted to do

DS - No, not really

F - Yeah, but you grew to like it

DS - Yes

F - Yeah, so you just had your master’s degree then and you were able, that’s great

DS - Yeah, so I came out and then after a few years I guess 1962, I decided I needed a Ph.D. if I was gonna keep doing this all my life, so I went down to Oregon State for 2 years and worked on a Ph.D. and then came back up here and taught full time and did the dissertation and eventually

F - Did you have a family when you were doing all this

DS - Yes, yeah, yeah, by the time I had, time I went down there, I had 3 kids, so

F - And did they go down with you

DS - Yes

F - And they came back

DS - Yeah, we rented our house here. We had a house of course and so we rented the house here and rented a house down there and I got an assistantship down there for one year and then I got a National Science Foundation support for another year, so that was enough to get me through the classwork

F - Uh huh, did the university put any pressure on you to get the Ph.D. or did, was it something you wanted to do on your own

DS - Well they didn’t come right out and say it, but I could see I wasn’t gonna get much in the way of promotions and salary if I didn’t

F - Right. What was your impression of the campus when you came or Pullman or your department

DS - It was all much smaller than it is now, of course. When I came, there were 5 faculty in the electrical engineering department and that included the Dean of the College, so Dean Sloan was the person who actually hired me and of course there is a building named after him now, Sloan Hall, and but after I’d been here one semester then they hired a new Department Chair, A. L. Betz and from then on they hired maybe 1 or 2 people per year and now I have no idea how many they have now, I suppose since its been merged with Computer Science, they must have at least 50 faculty

F - Back then was it a newer department. I really don’t know about the engineering department

DS - Well electrical engineering was one of the original engineering departments. I suppose it dates back, probably back into the 1890s

F - Oh ok

DS - Uh, I think the first Electrical Engineering Department Chair was um, named Carpenter and then of course there’s a building named after him also; H. V. Carpenter. I always thought H. V. must stand for high voltage, but it didn’t. And I didn’t know him, he had died before I got here, but I did meet his wife once, uh, actually when they dedicated Sloan Hall my wife and I picked up Mrs. Carpenter and took her to the dedication ceremony. That was the first and last time I ever saw her and she was quite elderly at that time.

F - Uh huh

DS - Then I knew Homer Dana who was another electrical engineer; Dana Hall is named after him of course.

F - What was your; when you came, what were the expectations for your teaching versus your professional activities

DS - Well at that time, the teaching function and the research function were pretty well separated, but they had what they called the Division of Industrial Research and most of the research activity was there and I was never part of that, actually, and uh, so actually my job was teaching lots of classes. Yeah the university; at that time, they had what they called a institute, Washington State Institute of Technology which included the College of Engineering and the Division of Industrial Research and the two were pretty much separate, but over the years they combined the two and the Institute of Technology disappeared. It was; I always thought sort of a 5th wheel because they had a director who was between the President and the Dean and I; it didn’t appear to me that he ever, he really didn’t have much to do but I guess he did. But anyway that job was, disappeared eventually

F - And what was, um, in the ‘50s when you came, you said the college, the campus was much smaller, so I’m guessing that people between departments knew each other maybe better than they do now

DS - Oh yes, yes

F - Was there a collegial feeling among the departments or a social life among the departments

DS - Pretty much, yeah, and well at that time, as I remember there were 5500 students here, which is roughly a third or quarter of what they have now, but Dr. French always had a faculty meeting at the beginning of the year and all the new faculty in all of the university were introduced to everybody, so at that time, we knew pretty much everybody on the university campus, which of course with so many faculty now that nobody knows anybody except in their own department and maybe not even all of them. Like I say, there were 5 of us in the department at that time and which we were very; saw everybody every day and had a lunch meeting every week, faculty meeting around lunch

F - Would there be socializing outside of with families

DS - Oh yeah, yeah, our families were all very close, yes

F - Now where did you meet your wife, was it here in Pullman

DS - Here in Pullman

F - So she’s a Pullmanite

DS - Well actually no, she was a social and activities advisor in the CUB and actually she was here one year before I arrived

F - Ok

DS - But at that time, they had the; they offered to let the bachelor faculty live in the graduate student’s dorms and the unmarried women lived in the graduate student’s dorms and we had parties, so that’s how we got acquainted

F - I had never heard that they did that, that’s kind of neat

DS - Yeah, there was a, that of course nowadays the graduate students dorm is, McEachern Hall

F - I think so

DS - We didn’t have anything really that fancy, we had; there was a place called South House which is a World War II surplus dormitory which was located across the street from French Administration Building in that big parking, where the big parking lot is now between French Ad and the Vet School. So that was where I lived and then a lot of the graduate women lived in the old Commons Building which is still there, of course its not used as a dorm now. I don’t even know what they’re using it for now, it’s a brick Commons there, uh, across the street from the Education Building

F - So when; to jump forward a little bit, when did you retire

DS - Well I retired from full time teaching in 1992 and I taught 5 years more part time, 40%

F - Wow, so over 40 years

DS - Yeah, 43 years altogether

F - So you’ve seen a lot of change and one of the changes I’m interested in is um, the faculty’s relationship with administration over all those decades

DS - Well the administration has grown I would say more rapidly than the faculty. When I came, there were no Vice Presidents, uh, we had a Dean of the Faculty who was Dean S. Town Stevenson who was the dorm named after and we had; well Dr. French, of course, and Lawrence Shelton was the Business Manager and Dean Stevenson and then there was a Dean of the Graduate School who was, who’s name I don’t remember right off hand, but that was about it as far as administration above the Deans and then of course the secretaries. We always thought that Dr. French’s secretary, Jen DeVleming, probably had as much to do with running the university as anybody else

F - Is she part of the family that owns the, um, optometry office

DS - Yeah that’s her son, yes, and she’s still around. She’s quite active in the community. Anyway, we got along very nicely without any Vice Presidents and Associate Vice Presidents and the Associate Vice Presidents and all that. If you wanted to get something done, why you went to see Jen DeVleming or Dr. French and

F - And they were very approachable

DS - Oh yes, so; so he was a good friend. So the whole thing was much, uh, less stratified than it is now. I remember one case I was involved in an engineering conference of some sort and the people who came to the conference was, I guess I was the Treasurer or something; the people who came to the conference were supposed to write a check to the conference and one person wrote the check to Washington State University, so I couldn’t cash the check so I went up and talked to Lawrence Shelton and he signed off on it, endorsed it so I could cash it and put it in the conference treasury, so. Nowadays I don’t think you’d probably go see the Financial Vice President to get a check endorsed

F - You’d probably go through 5 other people before it

DS - Yeah at least.

F - Um, let me see, now why did; I can’t remember, was French fired or was he, did he retire

DS - No he retired, he retired. He came I forget just when it was, a year or two before I did, maybe ’52 and I think Wilson Compton was President before he was, I think, and the story was that Mrs. Compton had a lot to do with the decoration of the buildings around campus and a lot of the planning of the bushes and trees and so on. A lot of the interiors of the buildings were painted green and everybody said well that was Compton green because she got a good deal on a lot of green paint and had painted everything green until the paint was all gone

F - Huh, hadn’t heard that story before. And so then after French was Terrell

DS - Yes, uh huh

F - And I’ve only ever heard good, pretty good things about Terrell, was that your impression

DS - Oh yeah, he was a good guy. He had lots of problems during the ‘60s of course with the student protests and everything

F - How did that affect your, I mean every department is a little bit different the way they responded to that, the student movement demonstrations. How did your department; if at all, handle that

DS - Well it didn’t affect us a whole lot, but during the height of the unrest there was a few days when we said well we probably better have somebody up around the department overnight to make sure that nothing bad happened, so I spent a night or two in the building.

F - This is, was this during the what they called the student strike or right before it or

DS - Well it wasn’t exactly a strike, it was just a lot of demonstrations and nothing very exciting really ever happened. I guess they marched on Dr. Terrell’s office when he got them settled down somehow or other

F - I heard they locked him in his office

DS - Maybe so, I don’t really know

F - None of your students did that

DS - Oh of course not, no somebody came around and squirted glue on all of our office locks one night

F - Around that same time

DS - Yeah, and that was about the extent of it as far as our involvement

F - So were the faculty in any department particularly concerned or just figured we’ll let that ride out and

DS - Oh I guess the social sciences people were more involved in it than we were. Our students were pretty cool, actually, for the most part.

F - Now did you have graduate students at this time, too

DS - Yes

F - Was there, when you came there was a graduate student, a graduate program

DS - Um, yeah, there was. It was fairly small compared to what it is now, but I’m sure we had some but not very many, but then in later years of course we had a lot more, but we always had a few graduate assistants for our classes, but not nearly as many as now. The faculty did a lot more of the everyday paper grading and stuff that the graduate assistants do now.

F - Did they complain about that, or is it just what you were used to

DS - Oh that’s just what we did and like I said, there was not nearly as much pressure to publish at that point, so we had time to spend with the students. Nowadays an assistant professor will spend as much time with the students as we did would be out in a year or two.

F - And what do you think about that shift; what was your tenure, um, experience like. You said you had to get your Ph.D.

DS - Well I didn’t have to, I did, uh, actually I think I had tenure before I got the Ph.D., I can’t remember for sure. As I remember, I really didn’t think too much about it; probably didn’t even know what it was until after I had it. It wasn’t a big deal that it is now.

F - Uh huh, do you think all the pressure that professors face now trying to achieve tenure obviously takes away from their teaching and do you consider that a negative, a more negative thing

DS - Yes, they do. I think that the students won’t have near the, uh, as much interaction with faculty now that they used to. Of course there are a lot more students, too. They, uh, the pressure to bring in outside money is much higher. I think that interferes with the undergraduates. Faculty spend a lot more time with graduate students now than they did.

F - Speaking of undergrads and maybe what we were just talking about kind of feeds into this question, but did you see any; in your 40 years here, did you see any significant changes in student body or the way students responded to their classes and their professors

DS - Oh not a whole lot, actually. There was a lot; I would say that the change in the students is that they came in with a lot less experience in things that we deal with in electrical engineering, especially, I mean when I first came, a large fraction of the students that come from the farm, you know, and they had experience with working with tools and machinery and all sorts of things that students now just don’t have and in those days of course you could actually work on electrical equipment, you know, radios and stuff. All the parts were out where you could see them. Now you buy a radio and its all in a little black box and you can’t open it up to see what’s inside because its all integrated circuit and if you take it apart, it doesn’t work any more, so from that standpoint it’s a little harder I think to get across how things work and what you have to do to make them work.

F - Well that technology would have been, I mean the growth of technology in your field is more significant than say my field and so did you feel like you were always one step ahead and having to always keep up and

DS - Oh yeah. When I; like I say, when I first came there were no computers. All the electronics was vacuum tube based, so I taught courses in vacuum tubed electronics and then pretty soon vacuum tubes faded away and they were replaced by transistors, so I had to quick learn as much as I could about transistors and teach courses about transistors and then pretty soon the transistors, individual transistors disappeared maybe, oh, integrated circuits well then I had to learn all about the integrated circuits and then the integrated circuits got larger and larger and pretty soon they were microprocessors, so then I was teaching courses in microprocessors and so by the time I retired, I was teaching digital electronics and microprocessor systems and all sorts of things which had not even been heard of when I started. So it was a hurry up and try to keep ahead of the students because sometimes they came in knowing more about a particular thing than I did, so

F - That’s probably still true, they’re very computer savvy

DS - Oh yes, so we taught, well like I say, when I first came there were no computers, but then after a couple of years, the Chairman said well you’d better, we’d better start teaching a course in computer engineering so you teach a course in computer engineering, so we; and at that point there were no books particularly, so we just kind of go to the Journals and figure out what we needed to teach and start doing it.

F - Did your department have a computer that

DS - Not to begin with, no, so

F - Even when you started teaching that course, there was no computer

DS - No, well the university; well when I first started, of course, uh, there was a single IBM card punch type computer up in what is now Thompson Hall which was the administration building, that they used for I guess mostly accounting and it was a box about the size of a desk and was mostly electrical, electro-mechanical, mostly relays and wheels and the cards went through, it read the cards and then it did some calculations and punched some more cards and you had to run through a printer to get the output. So at that time we started teaching some computer logic and some vacuum tube based computer circuits and we; this was a graduate course now, and we actually; the telephone company gave us some old telephone relays and we actually built a small piece of a small computer with relays, just to see how it worked. That was the class project. Then in a year or so the university got an IBM 650 computer which was oh about the size of 2 or 3 refrigerators placed side by side and that was in Todd Hall. That; you still had to write your program and punch it on the punch cards, take the punch cards up there and they’d run it through the machine and if the program ran, it would print out the results. If it didn’t, you’d get a printout that said it didn’t work and try again, so you take your cards back and try to figure out what was wrong. So anyway, that was fun to go through all of the preliminary growth of the computer age.

F - Yeah, I can’t even imagine a computer that big. I’m used to my laptop.

DS - Oh yes, well they got bigger. After the 650 came the 704 and it filled up a whole room. It was still vacuum tubes. Then they had it over in Johnson Hall or Johnson Hall Annex I guess it is and of course they had to have huge air-conditioning system to keep it cool and still you had to punch up your program on punch cards. We had a card punch in the hallway in Carpenter Hall where all the students punched their programs and faculty did, too, and you’d take your box of cards and the next day you’d go back and get your printout, which you either had your results or statement saying didn’t work, try again next time, better luck next time

F - So the; but the bigger they got, the more functions they could perform

DS - Uh no I wouldn’t say more functions, but just faster and still there was only the one central computer on campus, there were no desktop computers yet at that point. So everything had to go up to the central computer and then after that was I think the 709 which was transistorized, so it was a bit smaller, but still you had to take all your things up there and eventually they got computer terminals around the campus and I don’t remember exactly when that happened. I suppose late ‘60 or ‘70s, I don’t remember. Once we got the computer terminals, then you could type in your program, you didn’t have to do the punch cards any more and that was a big step. But we still didn’t have desktop computers. I suppose it was in the ‘80s when we got those first and then of course the; in our student labs always several years behind the central computer. I think our first local computer probably was a Radio Shack TRS-80 or something of that sort and then eventually of course we got computer labs with many desktop computers for the students to use. Now they all have their own.

F - Uh huh, pretty much. Lets see; going back to administration and so after Terrell was Smith, I believe

DS - Um, yeah I think so, yeah. Smith and then

F - Was Rawlins after

DS - Rawlins

F - was after him and you’re one of the rare ones that I’ve interviewed; most retired during Smith’s administration and so they; I haven’t heard anyone talk about Lane Rawlins. I know some people have talked about Smith, um, not always very positively. Do you remember anything

DS - Well actually I think I retired about the time that he came, actually, I don’t remember exactly when it was

F - I thought he came in the mid-’80s, no

DS - Maybe he did, I didn’t have nearly the interaction with him that I did with Dr. French, of course. I knew Dr. French, saw him quite frequently and Dr. Terrell of course was always around campus and you’d run into him walking around on the sidewalk, talk to him. I never saw Dr. Smith on the sidewalk nor Rawlins nor anybody else, but; so I would say as the university got bigger, the probability of actually talking to the President got lower and lower.

F - Uh huh, so you don’t remember any; even if you had never talked to him, you don’t remember any like; I mean I’ve just heard negative things about Smith’s administration and wondered if faculty. You probably weren’t as interested in those types of issues at that time.

DS - Well not so much, uh, actually once the, once they started having a Provost, the President really spent more of his time off-campus than he did on and most of the day to day operations by the Provosts and the one I remember particularly was Al Yates who you probably may or may not heard much about, but he was the one who got all the blame for all the budget cutting which of course was the legislature’s fault. It was up to him to implement it

F - Uh huh, and when was this, do you remember

DS - Uh, well I suppose this was during Smith’s administration. Um, in fact I’m sure that it was because I remember hearing a talk by Dr. Terrell one time. He says well I think the university is so big that you’ve got to decentralize things and put more of the day to day operation in the Dean’s offices and so on and that happened for a little while and then after Dr. Terrell retired, then Dr. Smith came on board and I guess he’s the one who hired Al Yates, I don’t remember for sure, but anyway, I happened to be on the Faculty Senate steering committee and a few met with Dr. Yates and he was talking about all the things he was gonna do and I said, uh, well Dr. Terrell was saying that he was gonna decentralize the university, how’s that going. He said well some things have to be done centrally, so I got the impression he wasn’t much in favor of that idea at all. In fact it appeared to me that a lot of the things that the Deans had been doing, that he decided he needed to do himself. Really the Deans didn’t have as much to do or as much authority as they used to have, which I thought was a bad idea myself

F - And is that; would you say that’s still true now

DS - I would say so, yeah. Oh they gotta have something for all these Vice Presidents to do.

F - And now we’re still facing a budget crisis

DS - Well yeah, but that’s the legislature, have no control over them.

F - Huh uh. It was interesting doing research for this project, though, and reading about the budget crisis in the ‘80s and how familiar it sounded to what’s happening now and its really, you know, obviously people are worried but people have been through this before and

DS - Oh yeah, I can’t remember a time when there really wasn’t a budget crunch. Most years it wasn’t as bad as it is now, at least it didn’t seem so. Maybe you just didn’t hear about it so much.

F - Uh huh.

DS - Anyway it didn’t seem to affect us so much because we were; at the beginning anyway, we were a small department, so we had, like I say, 5 faculty and 1 secretary and then it gradually grew and by the time I retired I suppose we had maybe 25 or 30 faculty and 2 or 3 secretaries.

F - What was the, um, gender division like in your department. I imagine when you came it was all men; students and faculty

DS - Pretty much. We had a few women students, but not very many, uh, as time went on, we got a few more, but never as many as we would have liked

F - For faculty or students

DS - Both, actually. Although we did have a female Department Chair over quite a long period of time and again I don’t remember the years but Harriett (name) was our Department Chair for quite a few years, I don’t know, 8 or 10 years I think. Then she moved on to the Navy post-graduate school in Monterey and then she went from there I think to Michigan State as Department Chair. But she was very good and as time went on, we got more women on the faculty. One of them was Teri (name) who went on to, down to Oregon State as a Department Chair down there, still is as far as I know.

F - Lets see. Is there anything that you would consider your, the best thing you did in your time, anything really significant

DS - Well I don’t know how significant. Like I say, I taught the first computer hardware course on the campus, I believe, in ’56 or ’57, but then; now one other interesting thing I guess. I taught the course in analog computing for quite a number of years and of course that’s all been, become completely obsolete now because its all done with computers, digital computers, so most of the students and faculty probably don’t even know what an analog computer does

F - I don’t

DS - Well you probably don’t wanta hear it now

F - no, go ahead

DS - anyway, the analog computer was a way of solving equations using voltage levels to represent the variables in an equation and it would integrate and subtract, multiply, divide; everything that you can do on a digital computer except that digital computers look much faster and a lot more of it and more accurately, so; but anyway, a friend of mine in the music department, Dr. William Grant, and I got to talking about music synthesizers which were a new idea which had I guess proposed by Robert (name), you’ve heard of the (name?) synthesizers, they produced several very popular LP records, phonograph records, one called Switched On Bach, did you ever hear of that

F - Huh uh

DS - it’s a very interesting thing, it was all done with music synthesizers and anyway, he said well we oughta have a music synthesizer on campus for the music department, so I thought well probably the analog computer could do that, so he and I and a couple of graduate students actually built a analog computer based music synthesizer which existed up in the music department for several years until it was completely obsolete, made obsolete by much more sophisticated commercial varieties which came along shortly afterwards, but for a while it was the latest thing for about 6 months. I’ve still got pieces of it in my garage if you wanta see it.

F - What do you do with just leave them there, just tinker with

DS - Well its mostly taken apart now. Anyway, we got two or three audio engineering society papers out of it and one of the graduate students and I and went to Los Angeles to a conference and gave, presented a paper. So that was a lot of fun. Uh, I suppose most of the rest of the time was just teaching classes. The original computer engineering graduate course is now of course is a sophomore course

F Really; sophomore undergrad level

DS - yeah, yeah, and so the technology just kept filtering down from the upper levels to the lower levels. So once I retired and wasn’t forced to keep up with everything anymore, its all gone way beyond so I don’t even know what goes on inside by desktop now as far as technology and software and so forth, it’s all a big mystery.

F - I’d like, I prefer to keep it that way.

DS - Oh well, but its all moved so fast that its just unless you’re at it every day, which I didn’t really wanta do, it just goes, passes you by very quickly.

F - Yes.

DS - But at the time, I just learned right along with everybody else. Like I say, I taught vacuum tubes and transistors and integrated circuits and microprocessors and assembly language to go with the microprocessors and certain amount of higher level language stuff, but not a lot. Then one of the things that Albert Yates did, he merged electrical engineering and computer science as I; he was hired as I think President of Morehead State or something, university back in Colorado and then; but before he left, he said well we’re gonna save money and merge these two departments because they do a lot of the same things and they should be together, so he said all right, you’re merged and then he left and left us to do it, which worked out eventually, but I think computer science wasn’t entirely happy with the idea. I think they are probably now.

F - Uh huh

DS - They had to move across campus over to our end of campus. Originally of course they were over around the main computer over in the Computer Science Building which was part of the football stadium, I think

F - And where were you when you first came, what building

DS - I was in Carpenter Hall

F - And was that the same, did it stay there the whole time

DS - Well no, we moved across the street to the new EEME tower which was built between Sloan and Dana Hall, that’s where the bridge across the street is. So my original office was on the ground floor of Carpenter Hall. Where my desk was is now a coke, pop machine (can’t hear, laughing). The architecture department has all of Carpenter Hall and our; the suite of offices where my desk was and several other people was, when they remodeled Carpenter Hall, that all became a student lounge area, so where my desk was is now a pop machine.

F - That’s a nice tribute.

DS - Yeah, right. I don’t think they put my name on it, though.

F - Is there any other interesting stories that you remember or particular history that you wanta tell

DS - Oh no I don’t think of anything in particular. We always thought that uh, they should have let us keep Carpenter Hall and build a new building for the architects because really all they need are some great big empty rooms full of round tables and we had all of our wiring and everything in Carpenter Hall and thought well gonna be a lot more expensive to replace all that in a new building, but they did and

F - And when was that, when did they make that move

DS - Oh sometime in the late ‘80s I think, I don’t remember exactly when it was. They of course had; Dana Hall was there when I first came and Carpenter Hall, but Sloan Hall was not there and the new Engineering Lab Building back behind was not there. So when I first came, we shared Carpenter Hall with mechanical engineering department, the math department and civil engineering department and the architecture department. The architects had the upper floors and math, ME, EE and CE all had their offices on the lower 2 floors of Carpenter Hall. But then after a few years, they built Sloan Hall and then mechanical engineering and civil engineering moved over there and then they moved the math department over to where it is now, and I don’t remember the name of the building, but it had been a dormitory, it was up near the Science Library, can’t remember the name of the building.

F - Yeah I don’t know

DS - But anyway, we were all there together. But then after a few years, electrical engineering had the lower 2 floors and the architects had the upper 2 floors. And they built the new, uh, electrical, mechanical engineering building across the street, which is the tower between Sloan and Dana. So we moved over there and the architects had the whole of Carpenter Hall, which they also remodeled and made a lot nicer than it was when we were, um, see what else, then well I was still working, they built the engineering laboratory building back behind Dana Hall and I watched them build that and I can remember during a snow storm, watching them bring the structural steel people out there putting up this building framework during a snow storm. That’s crazy. I would not be doing something like that.

F - Hope they got paid well.

DS - I hope so.

F - Well is there anything else

DS - Um

F - I’m not trying to force you to think of anything else. What was the, your retirement like. Was it bittersweet or; you stuck around for a while

DS - Oh well, yeah, well when I; well like I say, when I was 65, I decided well I should retire and at least partly, but several other people had stuck around for 40% and I thought well that’s not a bad life. I still enjoy the students and being around and things are going well, so I signed on for 40%

F - And that would be about 1 or 2 classes a year

DS - Uh, well actually about 1 class a semester and then I think basically I had a class in the lab but then the work force expands the ability of available time. After 5 years I finally figured out that it was probably 40% pay for 80% work, so maybe its time to quit entirely, but there’s so many other things going on in Pullman that I was never, didn’t ever feel like I didn’t have anything to do.

F - What were some of those things

DS - Oh well there’s lots of courses, a lot of activities on campus that one likes to do. There's lots of concerts and so on, lectures and then as far as hobby type things, I like, I’ve always been interested in music and I always play an instrument of some kind, so I played in the City Community Band

F - What do you play

DS - French horn

F - Did you ever; did you do that when you were young, too

DS - Yeah I started well started in high school

F - Did you ever think about going into music instead of

DS - I knew I was not good enough to make a living doing it, but its something fun to do, no I actually started when I was in grade school and even in the country one room school, there was a county grade school band that I got started playing in, that was the project I guess of a university graduate student started this band, but it was a lot of fun. Then when I got into high school, of course, I played in the band. Then when I went in the Navy, I discovered when I was in boot camp that they had a band and if I had my horn set up and played in that band, then I didn’t have to spend my week or two working in the mess hall, so I thought that probably was a plus. In the exchange of course we had to get out and play for the morning marching around the parade ground, but I escaped working in the mess hall which I guess was not a real pleasant

F - Doesn’t seem like it would be

DS - scrubbing all the pots and pans and stuff. So anyway, that was fun. Then when I got out of the Navy and went to the university, then I joined the university band and played there all 4 years. That was my social connection to the university and got to go to the Orange Bowl football game in 1948; Jayhawks played Georgia Tech and of course they lost, but it was fun going down there anyway.

F - Do you still play in the band here

DS - yeah, well in the city band, yeah, yeah we play for the 4th of July celebration, a local festival and a lot of other times we

F - Well I’ll have to look for you from now on

DS - Oh yeah. Well lets see, we probably won’t do much until the 4th of July. We always play in the Sunnyside Park probably 5:30 4th of July. Oh and then there’s the Johnson Parade, too, have you ever gone to that

F - I haven’t gone to that yet

DS - Oh well you should

F - Yeah, that’s what I’ve been told

DS - Some of us march in that, too. My, uh, my daughter plays also, plays a trumpet. She always comes back and we march with the Johnson band on the 4th of July. Then we go out to Albion and play in the parade there

F - Uh huh, I’ve been to that, I’ve been to that one

DS - Oh you saw me there on the truck playing in the band

F - Ok. That was a while ago

DS - but the Johnson parade is much more elaborate than that

F - That’s what I’ve heard

DS - it goes on. I mean the parade is twice as long as the town, so the parade starts, marches from one end of Johnson to the other end and turns around and comes back and by the time we get back, there’s still people starting the parade

F - Wow, I’ll definitely have to go this year

DS - Yeah, you definitely should go down

F - My kids would like that, well I think we’re about done

DS - Ok, well (can’t hear)

F - Now where is, um,