Oral History Transcript - Martha Brunson - November 21, 1991
Interview with Luan Brunson
Interviewer: Mary A. Allen
Transcriber: Mary A. Allen
Date of Interview: November 21, 1991
Location: Dr. Brunson’s Office, Flowers Hall
Ms. Mary A. Allen: We are in Doctor Brunson’s office [Flowers Hall, third floor]. It is November 21, 1991. Dr. Brunson would you reflect on the university when you first came here?
Dr. Luan Brunson: It was in September [1965] and the university of course, was much smaller than it is now. I would imagine somewhere in the vicinity of four- to six thousand. I may be off a bit. At that time the History and English departments as well as modern languages and the library were all in Flowers Hall. Really the History Department had just broken off from the Social Science division, and I believe Political Science was in this building and Geography. As a matter of fact, my husband, his office was a cubicle not much bigger than this, perhaps a little bigger. We are in a room about 10 x 12, and he and three other people shared that office. There were four desks and chairs and filing cases in there, and it was on the second floor of this building. The outer office of what is now part of the international Studies suite downstairs. I think his colleagues were from geography and history and sociology in that office.
Ms. Allen: So not just history professors occupied that one office?
Dr. Brunson: Right. And there were four different people in there. Isn’t that wild? Of course, I was up at the university a good bit because I was working on my PhD and was doing research and also studying French. We had brought a housekeeper with us from Corpus Christi where we had both been teaching at Del Mar because I was working on my PhD. I would come to campus and work downstairs in the first-floor part of the library in the reference room here in Flowers Hall. I was in the same building where his office was actually.
Ms. Allen: Where you teaching here at that time?
Dr. Brunson: No, I didn’t teach at the university until 1967, until after I finished my PhD.
Ms. Allen: Were couples allowed to teach?
Dr. Brunson: Not in 1965 although it was quite clear that there would eventually be an opportunity possibly for me to teach here if I finished my PhD. Although, I was also set to interview in the region as soon as I finished my degree. But I knew I was going to be working on my dissertation and in the language, the French language requirement. I’d already finished all my course work, and I think I’d even finished my comprehensive examination.
Ms. Allen: Someone said that your undergraduate degree was in history, is that true?
Dr. Brunson: My undergraduate was in history, English, and business. It was a teaching degree from Northwestern University, and I did student teaching in all three of those fields at Evanston Township High School up in Illinois. So yes, my master’s degree is in history. It’s an MA in history with a minor in English. I worked on a project, confederate activities, and spy activities from Canada. It was a fascinating subject. At any rate, I used to come over to campus. We had three children when we came up here. The boys, James and John, were in elementary school and Elizabeth was still a toddler. We lived up, well it’s a parking lot now. It’s close to Summit Oaks apartments and was on Matthews Street. It was one of those houses that the university had bought, and it was convenient.
Ms. Allen: How did you manage to juggle small children?
Dr. Brunson: As I say, we brought our housekeeper with us from Corpus Christi because I had worked down there, so she very magnanimously agreed to come up and she saw me through the time of my writing my dissertation and having one more child. She moved with us to Wimberley in 1967 when we found property and bought a house out in Wimberley. Mrs. Martinez was a godsend in many ways because I knew I needed help to get my work done. We lived for two years on Matthews Street, what is now a parking lot. The Bill Pools had lived next door right before we moved in. They had bought a house on Ridgeway when the university bought the property. Jeanette and Bill had had the house next door and a dentist here in town, Louis Gilcrease, and his wife, Linda, and their two boys who were about the age of our two boys lived next door.
Ms. Allen: Were the houses actually owned by the university?
Dr. Brunson: Yes.
Ms. Allen: So you rented from the university? Was that a standard arrangement? Did they own several?
Dr. Brunson: No, this was sort of unusual arrangement. We wanted to find property in Wimberley, and we had difficulty finding it. President McCrocklin offered us this opportunity until the house had to be torn down, so we accepted. It was wonderful because it was so close to the university. Bill could easily get to work. We were very impressed with President McCrocklin. We had interviewed here the year before when Bill was offered the job. He said there were three places he wouldn’t mind teaching if we had to leave Corpus Christi. We loved Del Mar but the boys had allergies and mildews and molds which are bad enough here were much worse on the coast. So we just really had to get away from the problem. So he interviews at North Texas, and here and never got to the third place that he had said he might be interested in. That was in El Paso, at the time the Texas School of Mines. It’s now of course, University of Texas at El Paso. But he never got out there because he was offered this job almost immediately, and we were very efficiently hired, almost immediately after he was interviewed.
Ms. Allen: The history department would have been still under the Social Sciences division. It had not separated.
Dr. Brunson: It was just being divided. The chair of the History Department was Cecil Hahn. That was the year of the division [1965].
Ms. Allen: Do you have any special memories of the faculty?
Dr. Brunson: We were immediately asked to parties and so on. I remember probably the first one was in the back yard of Emmie and Anne Craddock’s house out on Belvin. Clarence Schulz, who is in Sociology, was just coming back to the campus, after having been away to work on a degree. He and his wife, Margie, were there, being welcomed back. Bill and I were made to feel welcome and I remember Merry FitzPatrick was there and Betty Kissler and I don’t know who all. I do remember then there was a welcome at the first of school kind of party that Cecil and ____(??) Hahn had at their home. I remember well meeting Jim Pohl and rumors were afloat that Jim Pohl had found the woman he was going to marry, and everybody was so excited and she was beautiful and of course that was Pat whom he did marry. This was tight as they were planning their marriage. Jim had been here some time actually. He was working on a degree at UT and I think he came down here and taught on an interim basis as I recall. I don’t remember what year he came.
Ms. Allen: You and Dr. Craddock are neighbors now.
Dr. Brunson: Dr. Craddock already had property in Wimberley and actually I remember going out to parties at her house also those years. We saw the property we bought from the front of her river home. We looked up at it, it’s about forty feet up on a bluff and we could see a house up there. As I recall, Emmie may have said to us, “that house up there is for sale.” I thought, “oh my goodness, my children will fall off that cliff,” but it wasn’t very long before we looked at the house, and we discovered there was a nice strong fence in front and no one would fall off the cliff and we liked it very much.
Ms. Allen: Do you think there has been any change in the History Department in the time you and your husband taught over there from when you came. Either in the focus, curriculum, the personality as a whole.
Dr. Brunson: I’m going to have to say yes and no to the question. Let’s sort out the yes and no. Let’s start with the no first. No, there hasn’t been a change first. The people who were the foundation of that department, many of them who we got to know at that time and who are still there, people like Everett Swinney, Betty Kissler, Merry FitzPatrick who has just retired, Emmie who is retired but still very much a living force in the department, those people were among the first we knew. Their influence and the stability that they gave the department. You’ll notice that two of them chaired after Cecil Hahn, Everette Swinney and then Betty Kissler and of course the new kid on the block, who is chairing now, Tug Wilson. He came early on in the Bill Jones era after McCrocklin left. But that had been very stable and has been built on that foundation, I suspect many people would say because we heard his name in those first years too, that could be attributed to Jimmy Taylor and his leadership. I would imagine if you looked at it, I would have to say that that department and its character and vigor and its stability and its philosophy of dealing with students really was shaped in that era, the Jimmy Taylor era. It seems to me that it had a character that is still very evident. I think they hire people who are compatible with their attitude toward students and their very high standards, the rigor, the curriculum. The curriculum is very traditional, but I think it is a very solid one. It’s traditional and yet it allows itself to be invaded by new ideas, but those new ideas bump up against the tradition. They are measured by the tradition. It is a very solid combination of the old and the new. You don’t throw out the baby with the bath water type thing. You keep the traditional, the best of what has been thought and said, and you build on that. Now you find Environmental History, Women’s Studies, ethnic studies, how does the historian use the computer. But all those things have to be looked at in the context of the high standards of their roots and I think it is still very much evident, the good ghosts of Jimmy Taylor and some of those early folk are still very much present.
Ms. Allen: What about changes?
Dr. Brunson: Again, yes there have been changes. In a sense I have mentioning some of them, the curricular changes. Of course, many new faces, although the department is very stable. Once a person is hired on you have people who become committed to the department and stay, the ones who are hired on in tenure track positions. They’ve also had a very healthy rotation, however, of people who fill three-year instructorships and then had to go on. Many of them were working on PhDs and hadn’t finished. They knew very well that ultimately their turn would be over. They too, many of them, have gone on to do significant things in history. Bill Malone is one who was here at the time we came or very shortly thereafter. He went ahead to write a history of country music that has been a staple of the Oxford University Press. The man who wrote the LBJ book with Bill Pool left. Bill Pool was among that early group, solid Texas history, an individual well known in Texas State Historical Association, good reputation in the state as a good regional historian. He and Emmie and I can’t recall the man’s name who left. He was leaving just as – I think his last name is Conrad. He went on to make some significant contributions to the field of history. There are others through the years who’ve left like that who were on those rotational instructorships.
Ms. Allen: Do you think the focus of the faculty is more on teaching or more on making a contribution.
Dr. Brunson: It is a combination, but I would say teaching is their major focus. I think the history department along with the English department has always been very interested, for instance, in a very heavy commitment to the public schools and as a result we have kept even the student teaching for our public school teachers in the discipline which I think has been a very strong component. I think that is just a counter part of the emphasis that the university faculty itself placed on teaching students and being available to students and trying to help students become better historians or at least engender in themselves a love of pursuing history if not as a vocation certainly as an avocation. History is really something that many people enjoy. You’ll find a history buff who is a Civil War or Viet Nam War buff who has just had the general history courses. There us something about wanting to know.
Ms. Allen: I think everyone likes history. They may not realize it but there is one particular something they have an interest in.
Dr. Brunson: I think this department probably has helped work with that love of history, helped students gain a perspective.
Ms. Allen: I thin k the emphasis of working with students is a university wide thing, at least in Liberal Arts.
Dr. Brunson: The university has a reputation for being interested in its students. That doesn’t mean that they we are not delighted when people pursue things that they share with their professional colleagues across the country or internationally and we do encourage research and that emphasis has grown over the years as we’ve grown from Southwest Texas State Normal to SWT College to SWTSU to now we are thinking about becoming the University of Southwest Texas which would take the state out and probable be the last vestige of our thinking of ourselves mainly as a teachers college, which we are not anymore. We are a very complex, multipurpose, comprehensive university. Speaking of education, I mentioned it a moment ago, thanks to people like Betty Kissler and Merry FitzPatrick and Charles Clayton and Bill [Brunson] (who did also did some supervision earlier on of the teachers out in the field in the public schools).
Ms. Allen: Dr. Kissler said that she would go all over the area, not just here but down around Victoria.
Dr. Brunson: Bill went as far as Gonzales and Victoria and as far north as Jarrell, beyond Waco. Many students in San Antonio and in between. It’s still being done. They have a young vigorous group of history people who do it still.
Ms. Allen: Do you envision any changes in the history department in the future?
Dr. Brunson: That will certainly be up to them. I do see with Jim Sherow that they are looking at the environmental history a good bit more and with our center for the studies of Southwest, I’m pretty sure they are going to be interested in focusing on some regional history.
Ms. Allen: I understand there is something in the works to create a minor in the Southwest Studies?
Dr. Brunson: yes, that’s right. Beyond their very solid American history base, they are developing a specialization in world history, especially with Dennis Dunn’s efforts in Russia, Eastern bloc history. I’ve noticed that they’ve been very interested in multicultural, especially Hispanic and Mexican history. On and off I believe they’ve had Middle Eastern specialization. I’m not quite sure, it seems like Mr. Gomolak has looked some into that area.
Ms. Allen: I think he taught a course, Middle East since 1945, but to my knowledge that was just one semester.
Dr. Brunson: I do know they stay abreast of issues and work things in as they are needed. I think President Supple’s emphasis on internationalism, we’re going to find the area of international studies and history’s role in that area will certainly give them the opportunity to look beyond even the Eastern Block and Russia and the Far East. They already have a good solid British history and a fairly good European base with Dr. Josserand and Dr. Margerison with his expertise in French history. I think they will build on this for more international focus, but I think they will keep that good solid American history core.
Ms. Allen: This next decade I think will probably be a transitional period. There are so many faculty members that have been there that will be retiring and the new kids on the block are coming up to carry the baton forward. It will be interesting to see which ones here now will be here in the year 2000.
Dr. Brunson: It will be. I don’t know what the retirement lineup is. I’m sure Dr. Wilson could tell you but there is going to be a big change. A good many people became faculty about the same time Bill did. Frank Josserand, Ron Jager, are two in that area. In the next decade Ron Brown and Ken Margerison and now we have Sherow and Bynum. They’ve hired well and they have been very thoughtful about how they have evolved.
Ms. Allen: I see they have a committee reviewing the applicants and are about to interview that is made up of Dr. Kissler, Margerison, Bynum. A generational thing. This serves more than one purpose. You get different points of view; you are training the younger ones.
Dr. Brunson: Jim Pohl would come in maybe 3-4 years before Bill. I think of him in that older group but in a sense he was much younger, he came down here before he finished his degree from UT, a good transitional figure.
Ms. Allen: there seems to be some from the fifties and sixties, then seventies and then eighties.
Dr. Brunson: Bill was the middle of the 1960s group. One of the contributions Bill made to the department was to start the autobiography archives. To help encourage students to write their histories and with their permission to put them into the [History Department] archives. To help encourage students to write their histories and with their permission to put them into the [departmental] archives. He became the librarian for that effort, and I know he cataloged many of those biographies. That will be a real treasure trove. He served on committees over the years. I remember that he was analyzing the student evaluations, even up to the last semester he taught. He had just finished doing that and conducting a masters oral when he decided he needed to be in the hospital with his heart problem. I suspect you might say he should have been there sooner but he was going to give Bill Pike his oral exam and he was going to finish evaluating those student evaluations and making comments to turn into the chair about his colleagues which was his job so you might say he worked up to the moment he just couldn’t. He needed to be the hospital.
Ms. Allen: He must have loved his profession.
Dr. Brunson: He did. He loved his job.
Ms. Allen: It was remarkable that he speaks so fondly, unsolicited, about teaching.
Dr. Brunson: When I met him, he taught in Plainview Junior High School. I had come back from a job in Chicago in the fall as an executive secretary for a mortgage and finance corporation thinking I might go on into the business world and found that jungle was not the jungle I wanted to live in. I had my certification, my teacher’ certificate, so I decided I’d come back to Plainview and sort of recover from discovering what the business world was like and I don’t know whether I gave it a good enough chance but it was certainly not what I was going to live with the rest of my life, so I came back to teach at mid-semester in January, 1953. Bill was teaching in the junior high where I taught, and we had the same conference period along with 2-3 others and often visited over coffee during the conference period and got to know one another. Before we knew it, we were seeing one another, and we married about a year and a half after we met.
Ms. Allen: Were you both from Plainview?
Dr. Brunson: Neither of us. I grew up there from the eighth grade. Bill was from O’Donnell, Texas. He was born actually in Wise County, near Chico but his family moved first up to Oklahoma Territory and then back to Muleshoe and finally to O’Donnell. He had most of his schooling in this little town. It’s now almost a ghost town. I guess it’s mainly famous for Dan Blocker, “Hoss Cartwright” [his character in the long running TV show, Bonanza]. As a matter of fact, his dad worked for the Blockers. The Blockers had a grocery store there. At any rate, Bill grew up in O’Donnell, went to McMurray for his first year of school. Then 1941 came along, Pearl Harbor and a few other things and he went in the service. He was stationed along ALCAN (Alaska/Canada Highway)
Ms. Allen: Did you read the article in the National Geographic about the highway and how it was built during the war?
Dr. Brunson: Yes, I saw that. That’s what he was doing. He would take leave into Edmonton and really had a wonderful experience. He met a good many people in Edmonton and got to know several of the families there who took service men in. He enjoyed that very much. Then he came back to Texas Tech. His mother had moved to Lubbock and as the war came on, she and Bill’s dad separated, and she took her daughter who was six years younger than Bill to Lubbock and raised her in Lubbock. When Bill came back then, he came back to his mother’s home. He went to Texas Tech picking up his first degree and then finally his second one in political science with a history minor and his third one in history with a political science minor with a very brief interim before he started the PhD in law school up at the University of Oklahoma and found out very quickly he was not cut out for the law and came on back for his PhD in history at Tech.
Ms. Allen: What do you think motivates someone to go on for a doctorate?
Dr. Brunson: Very tough question. I did it, he did it. I think it’s – well there are 2-3 things. There’s the ‘I don’t want to grow up’ theory or the ‘perennial student’ theory. As a matter of fact, one of my colleagues tells me that he’s being paid to do something he loves to do. Always wants to be a student, always wants to be a learner and this is one way he can perpetuate that forever. There is probably a little bit of that in all of us because we want to know more and more about the special field that we become interested in. I think that has got to be one of the reasons we go on, always wanting to be student, discovering knowledge, the sheer excitement, plunging into this vast thing called knowledge. Sometimes I think it is just simply wanting to persevere and see something to the end, something completed. Not that anything is ever fully completed but you reach hallmarks like finishing a thesis for your masters or finishing your dissertation, gaining at least in a small area some kind of expertise and feeling the sense of accomplishment at that. And then of course as you begin to realize that this is a commitment to research and teaching you have to measure just what your feel is for dealing with students and helping them learn. Some people do it more gracefully than others. Some probably come from the university really more interested in the research aspect than in the teaching aspect. SWT seems to hire good teachers. That’s one reason Bill was so attracted to SWT, one reason why I’ve enjoyed being here too.
Ms.: Allen: The English department has more women than the history department where women are underrepresented. Statistically that might mean something, but I don’t think with Dr. Kissler’s chairmanship and the great respect that’s been shown to her and Dr. Craddock, Retta Murphy that anyone could get away with saying there has been intentional prejudice. I’d welcome your comments on that.
Dr. Brunson: They certainly have hired some very strong women, very good scholars who have contributed heavily to the department in various ways. They’ve contributed in research, teaching, or administering. I don’t know, I don’t think it is conscious omission on their part.
Ms. Allen: Is it a lack a numbers to choose from?
Dr. Brunson: There are a good many women historians, more than there used to be. I think they have been very conscious of that, and they’ve tried very hard to hire for that. I know Leah Shopkow and another that is now at UTSA, who they did hire and would liked to have kept. Perhaps there are more opportunities for women in history, perhaps there are not as many. I don’t think it is conscious. Maybe it is an unconscious exclusion. If you take these men individually who are in the history department, I think they are more interested in recruiting well qualified, highly motivated individuals. They are probably not looking at color or gender or any of those things. I think credentials is what they are after. It may be that the pool is not as strong. I am inclined to believe it might be. The professoriate is still pretty much dominated by men. Our profession has been sooner coming to equality, and yet we don’t have as many women as full professors. It is probably one-third to two-thirds [men]. An even with sort of a conscious effort, I chaired the English department for eleven years and we didn’t have quotas but we certainly tried to hire carefully. And we kept in mind, sort of the back of our mind, balance.
Ms. Allen: But that was not the overriding –
Dr. Brunson: Credentials would be overriding, always.
Ms. Allen: It would almost have to be to maintain continuity for the department.
Dr. Brunson: We’re going to have a job shortage here soon. We lost about a generation of English and History, most of the humanities, university professors because there were too many and not enough jobs. So many of them left and went to other professions and when this big vast group of the Sixties and Seventies retires, about 1995 we’re going to have a shortage. I would think this would be a perfect time to be working on a PhD in History or English because I think there will be many jobs out there for good solid folk. I think if you want to stay in Texas, I would advise you to think about an out-of-state PhD. That might be tough.
Ms. Allen: Well, it’s tougher on women especially when they have families.
Dr. Brunson: I know one of our young lecturers is finishing her degree at the University of Colorado, so her son and husband stay here, and she goes to Colorado for the summers. Sometimes you have to have commuting marriages and all kinds of accommodations. I notice that a good many of the historians are moving either to Tech or some to UT or some to A&M and some to TCU. Rana Williamson for instance went up to TCU. She’s very much in the middle of things, taking her course work and enjoying it. She and Bill Pike, who is another fascinating subject because he has gone over to Aberdeen and is not only working sort of free-lance for two different oil companies, traveling all over Europe. He eventually will bring some prestige to SWT because of his degree.
Ms. Allen: When you first came here the university would not hire both man and wife, but that changed. [Hired in] different departments I assume.
Dr. Brunson: Yes, at that time Bill and I were sort of the test case.
Ms. Allen: What about Dr. Bynum and Dr. Andrews?
Dr. Brunson: Well now it has evolved differently. They were both on faculty before they married which makes a difference.
Ms. Allen: But there are no restrictions now of that kind?
Dr. Brunson: Not really, as long as the person is qualified. I don’t think one person can be the supervisor of the other in that discipline. For instance, I very much wanted Sandra Gravitt to become a TA in English. At the time Dr. Gravitt was chairing the department and there was just no way that could happen and then of course as he became dean that meant she couldn’t be in any liberal arts area because he would be the supervisor. She is working on a PhD at Baylor now in English and will be out and looking for a job as long as Jack is in a supervisory position it won’t be possible for here to come here. Which is too bad because we’ll lose some good talent there. I was very fortunate as I was having my last child, Ann, finishing my PhD Ralph Houston who was then the Dean of Liberal and Fine Arts, he said, “you need to go see Dr. Waltz the chair of English,” and I said “well, I didn’t think I could be hired” and he said he thought things were loosening up a bit and I would have all the criteria, PhD, a different field [husband in history]. I was hired. I was lucky; otherwise, I would have been sort of floating around in the area, probably TLC maybe as far afield as San Antonio or Austin looking for a position. I felt very fortunate.
Ms. Allen: Do you have any good stories you want to share?
Dr. Brunson: Right now I can’t think of any. The other day as I was walking down the hill to J. C. Kellam I was thinking that when I first came here the library was here [in Flowers Hall] and then it moved on down to Kellam, and I used to park there. Of course you can’t park there unless you have a PFM permit [food employees] now. There used to be sort of wild area there. In the springtime the birds and the butterflies and the trees, it was just absolutely gorgeous through there. All of that little nature belt is almost all gone now. I remember how peaceful I felt walking from my car up to Flowers Hall to the library and back again. Although I don’t have any observations on any individuals here I was thinking that the difference in the atmosphere of the campus as this beautiful natural stone has been bricked. It’s been more institutionalized in some sense of the word. Some of that has been good but I miss some of the little touches that were on the campus when I first came here. I remember the first place I saw. The drama building was not here at all so on the top floor of Old Main was the theater and Vernon Lynch who had been a colleague of mine at Del Mar College invited Bill and me during the first year we were here to see Antigone up there. Rod Vaughn who has just dies this past year was the one in charge of sets. Just kind of remembering all those early days when you could go into different buildings and the functions of them were different. It’s kind of interesting as we’re renovating Flowers Hall which is what we are doing right now. We’re in the blueprint phase.
Ms. Allen: Where will you be while they are renovating?
Dr. Brunson: We’ll be in the old science building. The biology and physics people just moved to their new building. We’ll be over there among the radiation places for maybe a couple of years. They don’t project that but when they say maybe a year and a half, I always say maybe a couple of years. But I hope we’re back soon. This building will be really nice. We are things like the green tile. We’ll keep this wonderful curved window configuration and as you leave, look at the picture. You’ll see the addition is going to have the red tile roof and it’s going to echo that window configuration. It’s going to have better lighting, lighter colors. The halls won’t be as dark. As a member of the renovation committee, I may have to get my hard hat on and come over here and fuss if it’s not done right.
Ms. Allen: Dr. Wilson was telling me that they renovated Taylor/Murphy that they had a committee that oversaw that and that they were very fortunate ending up with about ninety percent of what they wanted. Because they worked so closely with them [architects/builders] t’s wonderful that you will have the opportunity. From the flack over the new Science Building evidently they didn’t work closely.
Dr. Brunson: They somehow didn’t get as connected with the planning. I don’t know whose fault it was, but it certainly did not get to the roots and branches of the department. It’s unfortunate because I think you need to be as happy as you can be. When you are redoing an institution’s building obviously, you’re going to go for the low bids on certain things and you’re going to get the best you can for whatever money is going to be put into it and you want what you want. I hope we will all have the stick-to-it-tiveness enough to get what we want.
Ms. Allen: Do you have anything else you would like to add for posterity?
Dr. Brunson: Probably will after you leave.
Ms. Allen: If you have something you'd like to add you can get me and I may as I go through this have another question or two that I might stop back by for a follow up.
Dr. Brunson: I know that many an afternoon Bill and Frank Josserand and Ron Jager had coffee together. They were sort of a trio of that generation. I think they considered themselves pretty good friends. Shared confidences with one another that I don't even know but they were a good group.
Ms. Allen: I've not talked with Dr. Josserand or Jager yet but I hope to.
Dr. Brunson: I think they enjoyed one another's company a good bit, often came over to the lounge after things had closed down and had coffee. You know the lounge downstairs used to be the hub, the political hub of this campus. Yes, rumor has it there is a thesis written on it as the hub. I don't know if it’s true or not. Somebody in political science is supposed to have written a thesis on how things were negotiated from that room. You know, President McCrocklin's office was up in Old Main, so when I came I remember very well he would sweep in there with many of the administrators, into the lounge about 10 in the morning. Of course, it was just full of people from all over, and we all knew one another in the mid to late sixties. The faculty was small enough that we all knew one another. A good bit of business was conducted in that lounge.
Ms. Allen: What about the McCrocklin incident?
Dr. Brunson: Unfortunate. I've always described Dr. McCrocklin – or Mr. McCrocklin which ever you choose to call him – as a person who was in too big a hurry. Very bright and very efficient man and he evidently just got too involved with where he wanted to go faster than he should have. There is no question that the dissertation was not all his. People took sides. I was too new to the faculty really to be involved in much of the politics as was Bill but certainly it became rather clear that what he did in his dissertation was not on the up-and-up. I don't think it would have ever become the issue it was if he had not had aspirations beyond the campus. You know he had been appointed a deputy director of Health, Education, and Welfare. Then when he came back, there began to be rumors that perhaps he was in line to become the chancellor or the president of the University of Texas at Austin. Probably before he came up here from A&I at Kingsville it was already an open secret that there was something amiss with his research but as long as he stayed in a smaller political pond evidently it did not become an issue. When people saw that he might aspire to something even grander I think that is when it was clear it was going to be exposed and become not just an open secret but open.
Ms. Allen: Did that affect the growth of the university?
Dr. Brunson: I don't think so. I think it was a good bit of strife at the time, but I don't think it affected us as far as growth is concerned. Others may disagree but we had a steady growth even through that period. It was an unfortunate interlude.
Ms. Allen: Dr. Swinney describes SWT as having more than its fair share of those.
Dr. Brunson: Yes. We've also been a training ground for people who go ahead to do other things. For instance when Bill [Billy Mac] Jones was here as president, he was a novice at it. He learned how to be a president here and I think that is unfortunate. The same in some sense was true of President Hardesty. He had had some experience in the chancellors’ office, but I think he didn't know the full scope of the job when he came.
Ms. Allen: How did PhDs here on faculty feel about a president of the university holding only a bachelor’s degree?
Dr. Brunson: You heard various comments about it. I think people tried to keep open about it, trying to judge the merit of President Hardesty's work. It was kind of a surprise. I think we prefer that our president come from the academic ranks as President Supple is a person that we work with a little bit better because he understands us better in that respect. Of course, Bill Jones also came from the professoriate. He was a history professor.
Ms. Allen: I was curious to see the number of new history people that came when he came.
Dr. Brunson: Yes. As a matter of fact, Tug [Wilson] came with him. He was with him at Angelo State and his dean Ralph Randolph was also a history professor. Jerry Dawson, the graduate dean also. Bill and Billy Mac Jones had the same professor from Texas Tech University, Ike Conner. They knew each other at Tech. Certainly, I think Bill admired him as a scholar and as person. I think he and I both recognized that Bill was having a learning experience here.
Ms. Allen: Do you have anything else to add?
Dr. Brunson: I think not.
Ms. Allen: Thank you for talking with me. I appreciate it.
---End of Interview---
TO THE READER:
I have taken the liberty of editing in order to make the transcript more readable but taking care not to change the context or meaning. In doing so I have deleted false starts, “uhs”, misstatements, and rephrased statements. The process has been difficult; however, I have endeavored to render a transcription as true as possible. Laughter, smiles, facial expressions and other such body language cannot be faithfully portrayed in this form and thus the document can be labeled as “fallible” (51, Oral History for Texans). Words added for clarification of the reader are placed inside [ ].
This project began as a term paper for Dr. Swinney’s graduate Historiography class. It seemed like a clever idea to learn more about the department from which I had received an undergraduate degree and hoped to earn another. The original plan called for interviewing a few of the older faculty in hopes of tracing the evolution and changes occurring within department over the discernible past. From here the project I initially perceived as simple enough to manage became more detailed and involved. After my interview with Dr. Brown, he explained his interest in oral history and asked if I would be interested in transcribing the tapes and placing them in the SWT archives. Already desirous of hard copy from which to take notes for my original paper, I agreed. Thus, the Taylor/Murphy History Department Collection began along with my own interest in the methodology of oral history. I would have liked to interview all current faculty members and I would have liked to have had more of them become comfortable enough with me to share anecdotes and memories of their days here. Regretfully, practical time restraints did not permit this, and I found myself constantly needing to “stick to the history” of the department. Personal glimpses of someone's world are often the most interesting and the most telling. Hopefully others will add to this collection in order to leave a record of this outstanding department
Mary A. Allen