Oral History Transcript - Jerome Cates - April 29, 1986
Interview with Jerome C. Cates
Interviewer: Jill S. Dahnert
Transcriber: Jill S. Dahnert
Date of Interview: April 29, 1986
Location: Mr. Cates’s Home, 614 Franklin Drive, San Marcos, TX
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Begin Tape 1, Side 1
Jill S. Dahnert: This is Jill Dahnert speaking. The date is April 29, 1986. I’m interviewing Mr. Jack Cates in his home on Franklin Drive in San Marcos, Texas. I’ve explained to him, and he has signed a release stating that this interview can be deposited in the Southwest Texas State Library. Mr. Cates, did you understand everything I explained to you?
Jerome C. Cates: Oh, I think so.
Dahnert: Mr. Cates, you were born in Menard, Texas. How long did you live there?
Cates: Not very long. I moved to Van Zandt County when I was still a baby. I was there nine years in Van Zandt County. In the little town of Ben Wheeler—that’s in Texas. Then my family moved to Robstown in south Texas. I really grew up there—went to public schools in that area, finished high school there.
Dahnert: What was it like going to school at that time?
Cates: Well, I guess it was a whole lot different from schools now, in that schools then didn’t have anything like the facilities that we have now to aid the teacher in getting over her program to those that she’d teach. The fundamentals were stressed more than they are now perhaps. We didn’t have so many extra class activities. Most of the day was spent in actual study of the fundamentals. But it was fun. Some of that time I went to small rural schools, but most of the time I went to the Robstown public schools. That’s where I had some of my grade work as well as the last three years of high school. I played football, and they had a very strong football team there at that time. We played teams such as Laredo, Brownsville, Harlingen, McAllen—even Austin in the Memorial Stadium in the fall of 1929. At that time, Corpus Christi had only one high school, and we played them every year—played them on Thanksgiving afternoon. That was before we had football games on radio at that time—no television, of course. Out of the two—three years that I played, we beat Corpus Christi High School two out of the three years. School was a lot of fun—again, I want to say that I think that there was more of the teaching of the fundamentals—the basics. I notice now that President Hardesty is emphasizing getting back to basic education on the university level. I think we had more of that then.
Dahnert: What did you do after you graduated from high school?
Cates: I went into partnership with an older brother into a service station. For two years, I ran and managed the service station. I actually worked fourteen hours a day, six days a week. Then on Sunday, I worked twelve hours. For two years. I knew that I wanted to go to college—I wanted a college education. I also knew that somewhere down the line, I wanted to get married. I had in mind my high school girlfriend to marry. In the meantime, she had gone away to what is now Texas Woman’s University for a year in the summer and had come back and was teaching in the area now where the Flour Bluff School is, south of Corpus Christi, near the Naval Air Training Station. So that’s what I did for two years, then I quit that and went to school. I went to A&I University in September of 1933, and started—I take that back. I went in ’32, September of ’32, and started my worked there. It so happened that the president of the university at A&I—was in the college—had been a superintendent of schools in Robstown when I graduated from high school. I had some part-time work on the campus, and my wife taught for one year after we were married. We were just together on the three days of each weekend. Then she quit teaching, and we both went to school full-time at A&I. I then had a full-time job in a service station. I worked eight hours a day, six days a week, and every other Sunday all day. I had my classwork then so arranged that I could finish my class work in the time that I was not working. I did that and graduated in August of 1935 with a Bachelors of Business Administration degree with the honor of—cum laude honor.
Following that I went to Beeville, Texas, where I taught commercial subjects in the high school for one year. After that, I was made a high school principal, and I served for seven years then as a high school principal. At the same time, I did continue to teach what was called “secretarial training.” In that capacity, we started a program of training students who wanted to be secretaries. We had usually about thirty students in the class, and half of their time during their senior year was devoted to that course, which consisted of shorthand, typewriting, and office practice. They must have had one year of typing prior to coming in the class. Then the last six week of each spring semester, arrangements were made with various businesses in town to take these students into their office a half day each—half a day for six weeks in training. Many of them followed up after that—going to college, others took full-time jobs, sometimes with the places where they had had their training. Following that, I became a superintendent there in Beeville for a little over six years. Then I came to Southwest Texas. It was called Southwest Texas State Teachers College when I came here in 1950. Since that time, of course, it has gone through several name changes, and it’s now Southwest Texas State University.
Dahnert: What kind of courses did you teach here at Southwest?
Cates: I came as the Chief Financial Officer for the university with the title of Associate Professor of Accounting. Well, it really was business administration rather than just accounting. I taught accounting. I just taught one course each fall because the other duties—the administrative duties were a full-time job. And so I taught one course each fall for a number of years. Later, I became a professor of accounting. Then some years later, the president we then had felt that it was too difficult for the administrators to teach. And so he discontinued the policy of having the administrators teach at all.
Dahnert: Which president was that?
Cates: Dr. James McCrocklin. It was during his tenure that the change was made. So I gave full time to the administrative duties. I also during that time—although I was doing the same type of work [that] I did all along as chief financial and business officer—I got the title of Vice President for Business Affairs. I worked in that then for—well, from that time I came until I retired was twenty-five years. The last nine months I had moved out of the Business Management office. I’ll tell that in a minute why. Because in 1973–74, when Dr. Billy Mac Jones left as president of this university to go to Memphis State University as president, I was named unanimously by the Board of Regents as the interim president. I served for eleven months then until they secured the services of a new president, Dr. Smith. So I continued to handle the job of Chief Financial Officer and do that work too. After he came, he brought with him, with my agreement, a young man who would become—because I was going to retire soon—the Vice President for Business Affairs. I trained him from the time he came in August until the next January the 31, when the reins of the last president’s office was turned over to him. I had planned to retire because my wife was ill, and I knew that I needed to be with her and take care of her. So the board did not want me to retire. And I said, “But I need to spend some time with my wife.” And they said, Well, whatever time you want, we want you to stay on in some capacity. And so I was given the title of Senior Vice President, and I stayed on until August of that year—the end of August, when I retired completely and devoted my time to—the next three years—with my wife before I finally lost her due to cancer illness.
Dahnert: What were your duties as Head of Business Affairs?
Cates: Well, of course, all of the handling of finances was handled through that office—still is today. Today, Mr. T.J. Merrick is the Vice President for that office. It’s called, I think his duties is maybe Finance and Management. It’s the same duties, but the title is Finance and Management. It’s all of the budgeting, the making of the budget, all of the requests to the legislature for the operating funds, the legislative budget board requests it was prepared, had to be prepared by our office, all of this subject, of course, to final approval by the president. But all of the work had to be done in our office—all of the accounting, all of the handling of the fees, the collecting of all monies in the university were handled through that office. All of the property management, all of the maintenance department was under my supervision—all of the property management, the entire grounds, the building program, which was a great deal. When I came to the university in 1950, there were fifteen permanent-type structures—I’m talking masonry-type structures—that’s all there were on the campus. There were a number of frame and lumber-type buildings—temporary buildings—on the campus. When I left the system, [stops to look through some notes he has prepared] I thought I had it right here—well, I’m sorry I’m not putting my hands on information as fast as I wanted to. Yes, when I left the system, there were seventy type permanent-type buildings. So in the meantime, all of these buildings had been—well, in most cases, the land had been acquired because there was a limited space.
The campus has always been crowded. When I arrived there, we had thirty-five acres of land on the entire campus. And when I left we had 135 acres. That’s on the main campus—now, I’m not counting the farms and ranches and things like that. The expansion we had during that period of time—what they call the Urban Renewal Program—which was a federal program—it was operative in many cities. It became operative in many cities. It became operative in San Marcos due to the activities of some of the businessmen and the university president, and so forth. In which a lot of old property that was not a desirable place to live was acquired by the agency, the old buildings cleared off, and the bare land sold back to various governmental agencies. Through that process, the university acquires a great deal of additional land. For instance, right now where the LBJ house is on the campus, that’s an area we acquired about five-and-a-half blocks right in that area, including that building which was moved from its then-location, which was about three-fourths of a block up that street, back down to the corner. And then the building renovated so forth. And that was a big—the acquisition of land was very difficult because people had built up homes all around there. And as I say, we acquired a number of different tracts of land. I think that probably there were over eighty different transactions just acquiring the land. That was a process of, you know, people always thought the property was worth more than the university thought it was worth. Sometime we could agree that it could be bought; sometimes it would end up with a hearing by what you call special commissioners, who were people not associated with the university or with the property owners, but were independent and unbiased. They would set a price on it. There was always the possibility of a lawsuit growing out of it, and we did have a few, but in most cases we were able to settle it. Even the acquisition of land; because this is a state university, we say this is university and this belongs to it. But it all belongs to the state of Texas, see. So all of the land that we bought would have to be approved, insofar as the accurate title to it was concerned, by the State Attorney General’s Office. As a matter of fact, during the time that I was at the university, we did not have and were not permitted to have in our employment a lawyer to help with the administrative affairs. And so all of the legal advice came from the Attorney General’s office. Now, they were very helpful, but sometimes they were very busy, and it was hard to get to them. We had to depend on them for legal advice.
Dahnert: Why weren’t you allowed a lawyer right on campus?
Cates: I beg your pardon?
Dahnert: Why weren’t you allowed that legal service?
Cates: I do not know—I think it was a matter of money. Let me say that in 1950, and for several years thereafter, the state was in somewhat of financial stress for money. It was very difficult to get the money needed to operate the university—very, very difficult. I would say that in the late, very late fifties, and then in 1960, I suppose that the revenue of the state began to build up—particularly the oil revenue. The state had a little more money to operate with, and therefore it was a little easier for the university to get money to operate and to build some buildings and do some things that needed to be done badly. When I came here, the university was suffering badly for lack of funds. A lot of the facilities—the buildings and the grounds had run down and so forth. Not anyone’s fault, except they just couldn’t get the money from the legislature. Later on, well, we were able to get more money. Now they’re having a stressful time again, as you know, due to the shortage of the oil revenue in the state treasury. And I understand that they are now trying to reduce the cost—it’d be about 13%, something like that. So, we did have a period of time from the sixties on until recently that it was pretty—pretty easy to get money. Then there had been times before that it was next to impossible. Actually, many of the facilities on the university campus, as far back as 1950, were not the facilities that one would expect to find on a campus of that type, and in many cases most high school—high school students came from high schools that had better facilities than Southwest Texas had at the time. But over the years, we were able to make the improvements.
Dahnert: What was SWT like in the sixties?
Cates: (Laughs) Well, the sixties were hard years, as far as the funds and the operation was concerned, but those were years when—when you know the students had different ideas about things. And those were the days when they wouldn’t mind resenting and holding sit-in strikes and first one thing then another. Those were—I have to admit that they didn’t affect me personally as much as they did some of the other people in administration, because the deans primarily and the president had to deal with them in the sixties. But they were difficult years, it’s true. And the students were well, just different. They had different opinions, and they would resent a lot of changes, and they wanted—well, those were the times when we had a lot of strikes and things like that and so forth. We survived it all right.
Dahnert: I’ve heard Southwest was a much less radical campus—I’ve heard some—
Cates: Much less radical—
Dahnert: Yes. A lot less protests—
Cates: Probably so, yes. Probably so, probably so. I’m sure more so than the North and the East, maybe. Although we did have some protests all right, we did. Some students were suspended from school for a semester or a period of time, and then later came back. Those who wanted to, came back later, and so forth. We had our share of radicals, but not as many as they had in some places.
Dahnert: What about during integration? Was there any protest?
Cates: No, not really. Any—any protests that were outward that I can recall. There was a great stress, of course, put on by the federal government to require the universities to try to find students and help students—minority groups—get into colleges and so forth. Also, for building up your staff—including minority groups on the staff. There was a great stress on that, and we had visitation from the office—federal office—a number of times to work with us in doing that. And a great deal of emphasis was placed on that. As a result of it, I think that Southwest Texas State University, and I think other schools also were able to create more interest among students and to draw some of the minority groups in. And I know that it; at times, they’ve had quite a number of minority staff members with it. Some of them have stayed, and some they’ve lost, and so forth. It wasn’t—it wasn’t a serious problem. A need was being fulfilled, all right, because we needed to do that. We needed to get minority people, more of them, in the colleges. A lot of them just weren’t going, you know. And now, well, I think you’ll see on the campus quite a few minorities, and particularly a lot of blacks—a lot more blacks than we did. We had some Latinos. We had very few blacks then, but it has grown now until we have, I think, a pretty good group up there.
Dahnert: Do you think the college has had a positive effect on San Marcos?
Cates: Oh, very definitely. I think so, yes, I—San Marcos was a pretty slow, easy-going town, I think. Of course, during the—during the World War II, now, they did have the air base out here. That helped to generate a great deal of business and brought a lot of people into San Marcos. But after the war and that closed down, and then from time to time it opened on a temporary basis for a smaller training—a smaller amount of training then. But I think the university has been a big factor in the growth of San Marcos and in the attraction of people here. I don’t think you’ll find a—prettier campus on many—many places than you find here at Southwest Texas State. The river has been a big factor in all of this. You see, during the time that Lyndon Johnson was President of the United States—he having been a former graduate here—and having to work his way through like many others did, and knowing the problems of the schools, and so forth—it was through his efforts that the university was able to obtain what they call the Fish Hatchery property. That’s where the Kellam Building, the Speech and Drama Building, and the Aquatic Building, and all of those lakes down there—all that property would belong to the federal government, and the university was able to acquire that though the efforts primarily of President Lyndon Johnson for expansion purposes. And that has added to the beauty of the campus a whole lot, too.
One thing that I recall very well—talking about housing on the campus—was that during the war years, the federal government leased some land from the university down by Sewell Park by the river to build 150 apartments for military personnel and their families. Then when the war was over and they were no longer being used, the university was able to acquire those. And for many years, we had 150 units there that were occupied by married couples—a lot of them were veterans from the war who had families and came back to school, and so forth. And the cost was very cheap—I remember that some of the costs were as low as $22.50 a month to rent one of those apartments. And I guess about the highest cost was $37.50. They were used a lot, and they were a big boost to a lot of people getting through school. They’ve all been cleared away now, and we—they do have some apartment buildings that as masonry. Those were built during the time I was with the university. But the others have all been torn away, and they were in the area now where the Jowers Center and the Strahan Coliseum, in that area, and where you have the practice football fields, and so forth.
Dahnert: You were here when Lyndon Johnson was elected president. How did the university react?
Cates: Well, we were pleased, of course—this being Lyndon Johnson’s university. He came back here many times before he was president. Actually, I believe that he started his campaign for his office in Congress as representative here in San Marcos. He had a lot of backers from this area. He came back; well, later when he was senator, he came back many times, and as vice president and then as president. He came many times and would speak to our students or make a commencement address. It was not unusual for him to do that.
Then in 1965, when there was the Higher Education Bill—it was signed right down here in what is now the Music Building, was then called Strahan Gymnasium. That’s—preparations went on for a long time to have the president come in. We didn’t know he was going to sign that bill at that time. He did—he came in, and he made an address. There was a great deal of preparation [that] went on in advance of that because it’s very difficult to get all of the safety that you need to bring the president on a campus like this. And the advance people with the FBI and Secret Service came in here months and weeks ahead of time and worked with our staff and so forth to get everything set up. I remember a funny thing happened—I worked with them very closely myself in that capacity and was in and out working with them in the facility down there for several weeks. Then the day that he came to make the speech, for some reason I had not received the little pin that would go on the lapel to identify me and went down to get in that day, and I couldn’t get in because I didn’t have the pin on and they didn’t know me. So I had to go back and get my pin and get in there, and of course, I got in. I have one of the pens that he used to sign the Higher Education Bill. He signed a little bit, you know, and used a pen, then signed a little bit more and used a pen. It was real nice. But he was—he has been a big boost to Southwest Texas. I think it’s, a lot of its growth has been attributed to his contribution and to his help here, I think. I wouldn’t take away from what he’s done for the University of Texas and other places, but he has meant a lot to this school. He did appreciate the hardship that a lot of students had to go through to get an education because he had to go through it. And so he always tried to make it better. Of course, he was the one who was instrumental in getting available student loans, which we now enjoy. In the meantime, there have been some grants and loans and so forth, but there’s still some effort on the part of certain people in Congress to reduce there because of the big deficit that we’ve got in the government. They’re still coming through pretty well. A lot of students up there now are up there because they’re getting these student loans at favorable interest rates and have a number of years to pay them back after they get out of college.
Dahnert: How has the college changed? You’ve been here quite a few years—just—other than getting bigger—
Cates: Well, certainly because it has grown and it has gotten so many more facilities, it has expanded its program. That’s the greatest change I see is an expansion of program to provide training in many areas that it could not before. When I came here, as I said earlier, it was called a teachers college—Southwest Texas State Teachers College. Because from its very beginning, its main purpose was to train teachers, because it started out as what they call a normal school. Most of the teachers came here in the summer, and then they taught during the long term and came back. They didn’t have a degree then, most of them didn’t teach in a public school. They gradually worked towards a degree through the summer programs. Of course, then later in about 1949 or ‘50, they began to require teachers to have degrees—many of them had them before that time, you understand. And then so gradually, the university has grown, and instead of being a normal college, it’s grown into a university and offering studies in various fields other than education. Up until recently, most of the graduates here were prepared to teach. Now that’s not true. The teaching graduates are not the largest number of graduates that they have any more—they’re in other fields. Right now, I think probably business administration has grown rapidly in the last several years. We have one of the largest undergraduate schools of business anywhere in the nation. Even our graduate is growing but—so, I would say that the main changes then I see is that—an expansion of programs and the offering of a choice to students to go into so many different fields that they didn’t have an opportunity to go into before. Again, I want to say that it has changed from being a college to being a university with a broad offering. And we have therefore attracted a lot of faculty members who are specialists in their field that we could not have attracted otherwise.
Dahnert: What about the students? I mean, are students when you started teaching basically still the same today—the same attitudes, or—
Cates: Well, I think so, as far as desire to get a university education, about the same attitudes. Of course, we’ll have to speak about the period in the sixties when there were those who were more concerned about some sort of trouble than anything else. Seemed like they weren’t—nothing was pleasing to them you know. But that was a period that they went through everywhere. It can’t be attributed to this school only; it was nationwide. I think most of them wanted an education and most of them were willing to study, and I think they have the opportunity now to study, and the only thing I see is many of them can pursue fields of study that weren’t even available back then in 1950. So many new fields have been opened up and so forth. I think the students—I will say this: that in 1950, San Marcos and Hays County was a dry county. There wasn’t any problem to speak of at all of alcohol, and no problems with drugs then that we were aware of at all. As they gradually voted in beer, and then later voted in whiskey and the opportunity to buy by the drink, this got to be quite a party school, I think, and still is quite a party school. I don’t know if it’s any worse than others. It probably had the name for a while as being worse than others, but it’s probably not any worse than others. For instance, that was one serious problem that the year that I was interim president that I would’ve been confronted with had we not gotten a president when we did because there was a great desire on the part of students to be able to have alcohol on the campus. I finally told them that if we did not have a new president by the opening of the fall term in September that I would make the decision, but I wasn’t going to make it until that time because I felt like it would be the responsibility of the new president for the next year. Well, it so happens that the new president came in late July, and they had to make a decision. And they did at first have, in a limited way, drink in dormitory rooms, maybe, and that’s probably about all, and at some parties they could have them by making arrangements with the Dean’s office. Now, I guess it’s pretty open about it.
Another thing was the visitation of—back in the fifties, you didn’t dare think about having visitation of boys and girls in each other’s rooms in the dormitories. That was not permitted under any circumstances. There was a certain time at night when all the men had to be out of the women’s dorms, of course. Then that gradually came in, and now I think they have visitation—well, they have some limits on it, but it’s quite a number of hours they can visit each other’s rooms and so forth. It’s changed that way, but society has changed. I mean, we’re more liberal now in our reaction and in the way that boys and girls get along, and so forth. Of course, we’ve gone through the great sex change attitude and a liberalization of it, and so forth. That’s a part of the reason for permitting the visitation in the dormitories and so forth. It’s just a change of attitude. The university has just gone along with what’s happening in the nation—happening worldwide as far as—well, I wouldn’t say worldwide, but at least in the democratic world.
Dahnert: We’ve been talking about dating. What was it like when you were marrying your first wife and dating at that time?
Cates: Well, probably different from this in that, again, prohibition was in, and you just didn’t date and have alcoholic drinks. I mean, that was—in fact, you couldn’t—you know at a younger age, you couldn’t until you were twenty-one, then you couldn’t buy a drink as far as that’s concerned. There was such thing as bootlegging, so-called, but alcohol was never involved in—among the group that I ran with and dated in high school. We just didn’t have it, that’s all. I know a few people that did—I mean, they would get it and have it, but it wasn’t a problem. Most of our dating consisted of social[s], such as parties given in the home by one of the boys or girls given in the home. Dancing—we were dancing and so forth, and having parties and so forth, or going to the theatre. Actually, sound came in my high school days, sound theatre came into effect. I lived in Robstown, which is only sixteen miles from Corpus Christi, and we mostly went to the theatre in Corpus Christi because they had several theatres there that had good sound systems and good shows, and so forth. Most of our dating would be to go there, or as I said, to have parties. That was about the extent of it. There were a few school parties—not a whole lot, but most of them were individual parties given in the home by people. I recall in my senior year in high school, the students, with the parents’ help and permission, got together and rented a dance hall over a hardware store there, and nearly every weekend we would have a dance—high school students there. And it’d always be chaperoned by some of our parents. We had cars—not everybody had cars—we didn’t have cars then as much as they have now, but in most cases there were family cars, and for dating purposes, we used our family cars for dating purposes and so forth. We didn’t—they didn’t have nearly as many school—extra-curricular activities to which we would go and participate as they do now. This takes up a lot of time of the present-day students. I know my wife’s two grandchildren here are still in high school, and they’re busy half the time, it seems like, in school, extra class activities.
Dahnert: What kind of courses did you have to take in high school and college?
Cates: Well, in high school I took almost the courses you take now, except they didn’t have as broad of offerings. Of course, we always—there was math. It was two years of algebra and a year of plane geometry, and after that there was an option of trigonometry or solid geometry. And there were three or four years of history. There were four years—definitely four years of English—no question about that. Then you had some choices like science—some of them would take the sciences. I took business courses, primarily. Then we, of course, we had our Texas history and our Texas government to study, and some could major in agriculture, those who wanted to could major in agriculture, or the girls could take a lot of homemaking. And foreign language—the only foreign language taught in the high school where I was was Spanish. Later, when I went to Beeville as a teacher, they were offering Spanish and Latin in the high school, but Latin finally—the demand for Latin finally played out, and it just finally dropped out, and they didn’t offer it. I do not know if schools are offering it now—maybe some of the larger schools are offering it now. At that time, we had about three hundred, a little over three hundred in the high school, and the demand for it just played out. Those were the main courses that we took. For the boys, there was the athletic events and so forth, and well, they had music, and a lot of the girls were taking a choir course or so. And they had band. But now, they have such broader offerings now than they did then. That’s about the way it was, and dating was somewhat simple then, but I never knew of any problems. We did have, by that time we had radios, and sometimes it, you know, might end up at your—at the house of a friend or somebody just listening to a radio—some good music and so forth. And we had a few dances, but other than the ones I spoke of on the weekend, not a whole lot, but occasionally, there’d be a dance at some—person would have a dance and invite friends to come and dance. And like I say, some parties where we’d play games and so forth. Most of the dating was going to the theatre, and there Corpus Christi was the place to go.
Dahnert: Was there a big difference when you were in high school between what the girls did and what the boys did? I mean, now, obviously girls can do just about everything boys can do.
Cates: Well, girls did—the only athletic event that girls participated in then that I recall was tennis. Some schools may have had girls’ basketball teams, but we didn’t in our school. We didn’t have, but we did have girls’ tennis teams. And, of course, we had boys’ tennis teams and so forth, but that was the only athletic event. Now, they participate in nearly any athletic event that a boy does, and that’s fine, I think. It should be that I think, I really do.
End of Tape 1 Side 1, begin Side 2
Cates: In colleges, of course, they had a little more opportunity for athletic participation and [unintelligible]. Some of them took golf and tennis, and some swimming then. But even, well in high school, we didn’t have the opportunity to swim—didn’t have any place for them to swim there then. But in the colleges, of course they did. Anyways, girls were just not as athletically inclined as boys then.
Dahnert: You’ve been in San Marcos for quite some years. How has the town itself changed—other than the university?
Cates: Well, it was a much smaller town when I came here. I’m sorry, I don’t remember the population exactly, but it was pretty small, and we didn’t have these outlying subdivisions—houses all around San Marcos. We didn’t have any of that. In fact, this area right here on Franklin Drive was not developed then. This was not developed until about twenty years ago. It wasn’t—this was all just in the brush and trees and so forth. Houses were not—modern houses were pretty difficult to come by then unless you could build your own, and most faculty members were not able to build right off—they had to be here a few years to accumulate the money to build in most cases. Finding a place to live was rather difficult. I first leased a place for a year, was able—it was very difficult. It took some doing to get a place for my family. Then I bought a place, and then after a few years there was able to buy what I thought was a better place in which to rear my family and reared them there. The streets were very bad—they’re still bad, but they’re much better than they were then. There wasn’t—a lot of them that are paved now were not paved then. It was just—well, it was just a small town then and a small-town atmosphere like any other small town in the 1950s. Now it’s grown so much, and the students, of course, increased so vast.
Incidentally, when I came to Southwest Texas State University, we were called the State Teachers College System, and there were six colleges in that system with one board of regents. It included this one here, Sam Houston State University at Huntsville, Stephen F. Austin State University—well, they were called colleges, teachers colleges, then—at Nacogdoches, West Texas State at Canyon, East Texas State at Commerce, and Sul Ross at Alpine—six in there. Now there are only four in the system. In the meantime, the one at San Angelo, which was a junior college earlier, developed into a four-year institution, and it has joined the system, so there’s the one at San Angelo—San Angelo State University, the one at Alpine—Sul Ross and Sam Houston State and Southwest Texas. Only those four are in the system. All the rest have gone out, and they have their independent board of regents and so forth. So there are four left in the system. Back in the fifties, and even into the early sixties, Southwest Texas State, Sam Houston State, East Texas State, and West Texas State were pretty close in enrollment. Sometimes, one would be a little higher and one would be a little lower. Then in the late sixties, and particularly in the seventies for some reason, Southwest Texas State began to grow faster than the others. And now we have enrollment of approximately twenty thousand. Those schools are much smaller, varying from eight–five thousand. But for a long time, we were all together about the same size. It has just grown so much more now here. When I retired, we were about thirteen thousand. I tell this amusing story about President Flowers, who care here in 1942 as the president and stayed until ‘64 or ‘65, I’ve forgotten which it was. I think 1964, perhaps, when he retired. He was a—one of the best educators I’ve ever seen because he literally lived and breathed education. Teacher training was his strong field. He would say to me or to others when we were about 2,500, “I don’t want to get too big. I don’t want us to be a big school—about 3,000 is as big as we want to be.” And then as we grew a little more and approached 3,000, he’d say, “You know, I just don’t want us to be too big. We don’t want to be over 3,500.” And he’d up it a little bit. He was a great fellow, and he was a fine fellow, and he really was an educator. We’ve had other presidents who were wonderful administrators, I guess, but he was an educator of the old school. He really was. We grow—we’ve grown, whether we wanted to or not, we’ve grown. You started to ask a question?
Dahnert: Who would you consider the best president while you were here—who did the best job all around?
Cates: Well, I was fortunate to have good presidents all the way through. I didn’t work with President Smith long enough to get to know much about him because I stayed only a year after he came here. Dr. Flowers, like I say, he was of the old school—he was an educator. He wasn’t necessarily an outstanding businessman or anything like that. As a matter of fact, all the presidents left the business primarily up to me. I would keep them informed and talk with them, but they didn’t interfere. They were good about leaving it up to me and I ran the business end of it, always with their approval. I think that—then Dr. McCrocklin came. He is, in my estimation, the most outstanding administrator that I know. He had the ability to get things done and get them done in a good way. For instance, he would come to his office early in the morning and do his dictation and get out—handle his correspondence, and by nine o’clock or ten o’clock he had all that taken care of, and he was out visiting on the campus in various departments and so forth. He moved fast and he was very good, I think. Then he was followed by Dr. Billy Mac Jones, who had not served as a president before and who was a little bit reluctant to get into the presidency office but developed in the four years that he was here into a good president, I think. Like I say—Dr. Smith, I was only here for a year with him, and I don’t know much about him to say. I have nothing but good word for the three presidents that I served with [for] a number of years. Each had his own strong points and then maybe some weaker points, but they were all outstanding men and helped the institution to grow and develop, and particularly to develop a program that would attract students.
Dahnert: How did you feel about being interim president? What did you have to do?
Cates: Well I didn’t—I didn’t ask for the job. At the board meeting, when President Jones announced his leaving and going to another school, the—one of the board members—the president of the board asked me if I would serve if named as interim president, and I said, “Well, yes, I guess I will if I’m asked to.” So I was told that—I wasn’t in the room—but I was told that I was unanimously elected by the board to serve as interim president. We had, at that time, Mr. Lee Drain, who incidentally is still on the Board of Regents, from Dallas, was the board member who had as his special assignment Southwest Texas State University. Each of the board members had one university that they had to be close to and know what’s going on. I had worked with Mr. Drain many times because he was in the bank—in one of the larger banks in Dallas, and he worked with all the business offices on business matters. So I knew him very well, and we worked together very well.
It was a hard job because I still served as Vice President for Business Affairs. Now, I moved my office into the president’s office and occupied that for a year and had a secretarial staff over there but also maintained the same staff back in the other offices, and I’d have to go in there at times. It was difficult—it was a double load, but it was pleasant. I—even though it was difficult, I never had a more pleasant year because everyone was so cooperative. I didn’t have any seriously problems from any source at all—the faculty and the administration that I had, and then the people back in the business office and all of its environs were helpful. I have to give a lot of credit to my personal secretary in the business office, Miss Jane Tylee, then who carried on so well in my absence—now, she had assistance. And to Mr. Ed Jordan, who was next to me—he had the title of Comptroller, next to me. Those two carried on so well even though I wasn’t in that office—I was available, and of course, I did go back there from time to time. I have to give them a lot of credit for taking care of that end of it. It was quite a change, although I’ve been in administration work in public education all my life. As a superintendent, I had similar responsibilities. In other words, I was the chief administrator in that particular school system. Therefore, the buck stopped with me. So again, as the president here, the buck stopped with me. I had some decisions to make, and some of them I’m sure that weren’t pleasing to everybody, but we did the best we could. I am glad that we had a lot of help from the other administrators and faculty members. I enjoyed that year very much. Well, I was asked several times if I would consider being president, and I said “No, Mr. Drain. I thank you but I—my wife is ill, and I’m going to need to retire.” I’m sure from what he said I could have been the president. In fact, he—I was called several times and asked if I would be. I needed to retire—my wife was sick, and my place was with her side. I did retire soon after that. I would’ve retired January 31, as indicated, but at the insistence of the board I stayed on, and the last several months were not too difficult ones because I didn’t have a lot of work to do. I did special assignments and the advisory to the presidents and others. The year was difficult in that I was carrying a double load. It was helpful in that it was—well, it was good in that I had the help of faculty and administration and so forth. It was good.
The only bad point of that whole year was the streaking. We did have a period of streaking. It happened in my administration. It was handled, so they say, in an efficient way, and it was terminated. We didn’t just pin down—the first day we kind of let it go just a little bit, and then when we thought the time was right we pinned down and stopped.
Dahnert: How did you handle the streaking?
Cates: I talked to the leaders of the students and to our deans of students and to our university police force. I tried to discourage it all I could without ever saying out—coming out and saying, “You just can’t do this.” We didn’t want them to, and we didn’t have a little bit of streaking. I had everything—if it got bad, everything planned. I was in contact with the Austin office that handled the Department of Public Safety. “In thirty minutes,” he said, “I can have one hundred men down any time.” The people don’t know it but even during—I think it was three—it was either two or three nights that they streaked. During those times, there were some men from Austin down here, but they weren’t made public. If they needed to be, they would be. If we had a real problem, well, we could have broken it up. It wasn’t that serious. The main problem that arose the very first night that it happened, before I ever know anything about it, was that some of the police—I think the university police, maybe in cooperation with city police, took one boy to jail who was not breaking it up like he was supposed to, you know, at all, and was abusive with it and so forth. They took him to jail, and that I think kind of created a problem with the students. They thought that they were a little rough with him. We didn’t jail anybody else after that. It was one of those unpleasant things—no one wanted it to happen. It did happen, and I guess there weren’t over a half a dozen streakers all total, but then—as many townspeople came out to watch as did the college people. I think they kind of encouraged it. I don’t mean they encouraged it really, but they came out to watch it. That was really the only unpleasant thing during my tenure that I know of. My years have been good years. I’ve been retired now since ’75. I would not have retired so early. I was still young—I was sixty-three when I retired. I would have probably gone on until seventy if there had not been sickness in my family.
Dahnert: Is there anything else you want to add?
Cates: No, other than to say that after I had lost my wife then—oh by the way, I will add this that they were—the faculty was nice enough to have my portrait made, which hangs there in the Kellum Building. They gave me one—I’ve got a smaller one in there of it. And had a big celebration for us, a dinner and celebration for us, in which at that time the best place we had to have in was in Jones Cafeteria. So one night we had that and had about four hundred people there. Then they have us a substantial gift—money gift for travel. As a result of that gift, my wife and I, before she got too sick, were able to visit the Holy Land. That’s one thing we’d wanted to do—visit the Holy Land as a result of that. That was fine. So after I lost her, then I lived by myself. I have two children. They’re both married and have families—live away from here, but, you know, they came in from time to time. And I have my friends here. Then after three-and-one-half years of living by myself, then I met my present wife whose husband had also been at the university and had passed away. He was in the teacher placement office. I met her—she was a teacher here in the public school—an English teacher in the high school at the time. And so we were married in August of 1981.
End of interview