Oral History Transcript - John Garland Flowers - March 16 1964

Interview with John Garland Flowers

 

INTERVIEWER: Bruce Roche

TRANSCRIBER: Tommy Ruth Ball and Gaye Woods

DATE OF INTERVIEW: March 16, 1964

LOCATION: Southwest Texas State College, San Marcos, TX

___________________

 

Summary: This is the transcript from the first of three interviews that Bruce Roche conducted with Dr. Flowers just prior to his retirement.  Dr. Flowers (Class of 1913) was President of Southwest Texas State College from 1942-1964. In this interview, Dr. Flowers talks about the history of education in Texas, his educational philosophy, and the need for vocational schools to provide practical skills to their students.  He also talks about growing up in a family that had books in their home, and how he was encouraged to get his master’s degree at the age of 30.

Interviewer Bruce Roche was director of the College News Service.  This interview was the source material for his article “Goal: Excellence – Dr. Flowers’ Lifelong Watchword,” published in the Austin American-Statesman on August 30, 1964. 

NOTE: This recording was originally made on 7” reel-to-reel tape.  Sometime after the college became a university in 1969, the audio was re-recorded onto cassette by the SWT recording service. 

Begin tape – March 16, 1964

BRUCE ROCHE: I wonder, Dr. Flowers, if you would sketch for us the status of education, public and private, in the United State, and particularly in this part of the nation, in Texas, as you were growing up, and how it has evolved to where it is today?

JOHN GARLAND FLOWERS: Well, that’s a most interesting subject, and the typical youth of this age doesn’t really understand what really happened.  In America, in 1890, there were a quarter of a million boys and girls in private academies and secondary schools.  In that year, 1890, there were 250,000 boys and girls in public high schools.  Now remember that the public secondary school had its origin in the thirties of the last century, and this means that the high school as we know it is only about 130 or 140 years old.

Now, when I was growing up in this southwest part of Texas, we only had high schools in the larger county seat towns and the cities and this meant that only a very small percent of the high school (age) population had access to a high school as we have it now.  Which is, of course as we know, within reach of every boy and girl of high school age.

So, I came through a village school, and then the only way I could get a high school education was either to go away to a state institution which had a sub-collegiate division, or to a private academy, usually maintained by a church group.  The Baptist Academy in San Marcos, the Coronal Institute in San Marcos were mainly a high school program and the college itself maintained a high school division and most of the students who were enrolled when I was a student here in 1912 were doing high school work. Now, we need to remember and think about this that this progress in education in Texas has been made in roughly 50 years – in my lifetime. In other words, I have seen this tremendous transformation where it was the exception boy and girl that went on beyond the village school; he was the exception. Now it’s the exceptional boy and girl that doesn’t go on to high school; it’s just the reverse. Now that’s quite a change.

[3:47]

ROCHE: It’s a dramatic change, Dr. Flowers and I wonder what part of your own educational philosophy – which I would hope that we could sort of sketch this out in this interview or in the several interviews that I would hope we can put together to put this story together – I wonder what part of your educational philosophy has come out of education as it was in Texas during your youth?

FLOWERS: Well, that’s a hard thing to say because it took me many years to finish all of my education.  I was on my own.  For instance, I was 30 years old before I took my degree.  I was 31 years old before I took by Master’s Degree.  And World War I came and intervened; that of course delayed my education.  I was married fairly young and family responsibilities, the war, all of these different things came along. And that, of course, delayed my education. Looking back on it now I’m not too sorry because I think the philosophy of education that I hold has been hammered out in the fiery furnace of experience; sometimes very harsh, and sometimes very difficult. I have few regrets to be frank with you; although I realize that here are great gaps in my education that my grandchildren now for instance are getting that I never experienced. But I’ve had to make for it in induvial study and in my own efforts of self-education, And maybe that’s not so bad after all. 

Is this the sort of thing you think is of particular interest?

ROCHE: Yes, Dr. Flowers, it sure is.  This, I think, the great think that we ought to be interested in.  And may I pursue that point the I suggested a moment ago – and I know the size of the question or I can suspect the size of the question that I’m asking because you have in every contact, I know that I’ve had with you, you’ve exposed parts of it to me here and there so I can suspect how great is the answer to this question… What is your educational philosophy?

[7:13]

FLOWERS: Well… it’s a little difficult to answer that question.  I believe that in a democracy such as this, that every boy and girl and every young man and every young woman should have education appropriate to his interests and abilities and that he should be permitted to go as far as he possibly can in procuring and attaining an education.  I believe it’s the duty of the school and the college and the university to do everything in its power to motivate him and to make the learning process not only interesting but exciting.  I believe for instance it’s the job of a teacher to lead the child and lead the young youths out from darkness into light. In other words, to help young people to understand themselves in relation to all of humanity and to civilization. 

I think for instance that in our kind of society that we’ve got to have many kinds of schools; indeed, I think we have to have some kinds of schools that are not even now in existence. For instance, if this college, our senior colleges, are to do what they should do its utterly impossible for them to become the colleges of quality that they ought to become if they are to be given the responsibility of trying to provide an education for, or perhaps I should say the kind of education for great masses of people who cannot appreciate and understand and indeed have no interest in what we might think of as a liberal arts tradition.  I have a feeling that we need to organize in America what we might call institutes; some people would say they should be a part of Junior Colleges, but I’m not so sure that that is the answer.  I’m not so sure but what these kinds of schools ought to be very close to industry and vocations and to agriculture and to all aspects of the workaday world.  I saw something in Germany, for instance, that interested me very much. Now these were schools for what they call the Volksschulen, for the folks – for the common people. They were schools that were organized mainly for boys – some for girls – but mainly for boys who were not destined for the university.  Well industry joined in with the states in setting up a kind of preparation that these boys needed in order to make themselves useful workers in industry.  And I was amazed at the quality of work that I saw accomplished in these schools. Marvelous work in what we think of as mechanical drawing, engineering and drafting, work in foundry and machine shops, and business schools and that sort of thing.  Now, these were very closely geared to life and to industry. But whether or not this sort of thing will suit America, I can’t say.

Incidentally, I’m often asked the question why I believe that we should tighten our admission requirements.  May I say that if we did not have Junior Colleges; if we did not have facilities for vocational training, I don’t think we could justify our argument that we need to be more selective.  But so long as we have institutions where boys and girls can go to get training in which they have aptitude and have an interest, then I think we are completely justified in tightening our admission requirements even more that we have already done.

ROCHE: You have suggested, have said that education is far broader that what perhaps many think – if I understand correctly Dr. Flowers, as being purely academic or the college type of education. But you spoke a few minutes ago of obtaining self-education and more recently about training areas such as industrial type of training.

[13:40]

FLOWERS: Well, the thing of it is if we don’t recognize the fact that this is an industrial age in which we are living and that we are going to become more so; we are going to need the kinds of workers that don’t even exist today. And the program of arts and sciences as we now know it; to assume that it’s going to fit everybody for a position in industry or in agriculture or whatever it is, is simply a wrong assumption.  And also, to assume that everybody is qualified from the standpoint of ability and interest to successfully pursue courses in abstract thinking and philosophical thinking is absolutely not true.  That’s not the way people are made; they’re not made that way. So, we increasingly in this country have got to think in terms of what can we do to help all of the children of all the people attain their maximum with what gifts that they have and with what abilities they have and indeed I think that the country can’t afford to not make use of these talents. 

This problem of unemployment that we’ve got right now will be one of the great issues of the national campaign and will be for years and years to come in this country.  The vast amount of money that’s being spent experimentally right now in building new kinds of schools and trying to see what can be done about this matter; this re-education of people, in a sense it’s been the failure of the schools to meet this need that’s brought this on. But that isn’t saying that the school needs to change to take care it. But it means, I think, we’re going to have to build, we’re going to have establish probably another school system.

ROCHE: Another school system? Along the lines that you suggested of encompassing a broader area Dr. Flowers?

[16:23]

FLOWERS: Well, I hadn’t thought far enough to say what is should consist of; I think elements of arts and sciences could be taught. But the main emphasis would be upon technology and upon a much higher level that just normal vocational education.  It’s going to be a higher level than that. I am told, for instance, that for every engineer in construction that he needs at least 8 or 10 people who’ve had some engineering training to carry on a big construction job.  Now, where are these junior engineers coming from? Well, they are technologist and they need training for this type.

ROCHE: For the person, the engineer who has a broader grasp and greater responsibilities, he needs people, then are you saying, who have exposure to this area but who are more interested in the details of the operation?

FLOWERS: That’s right. That’s right.  I heard one Dean of the school of engineering say not long ago that for every senior engineer that was turned out the we need to turn out ten junior engineers.  That is to say people who have a least two years of technological training that could carry out the designs of the master builder or the master engineer.  It’s a very interesting development and I think it’s going to have come in the next quarter of a century. I think that’s one of the areas that we’re going to see talked about and I think something ought to be done about.

ROCHE: And do you see this happening in many fields Dr. Flowers?

[18:30]

FLOWERS: Oh yes, oh yes, oh yes.  You’d be interested to know that right now there are some fields in teacher education where they are trying out some experiments where teachers are taking as many as sixty children, twice the number of children in the class,  but they give the teacher one or two assistants that are less trained and that can do clerical work and can do a lot of the things that the teacher is busy doing and can be taught certain of the skills that the teacher can impart to them, and that the children actually learn more under this plan than, let’s say, in a classroom of twenty-five children and one classroom teacher.  In other words, already we have some experiment being tried out under a grant from some of the foundations that are taking place that seem to offer some possibilities. I have no doubt at all that in colleges and universities that within the next decade or more that we’re going to be trying out some very interesting developments by the use of machines, television, and other devices, and more audio-visual things where teachers will be having, some teaching a 125 to 150 students; then they may be teaching as many as 500 as their responsibility, with probably two or three assistants who will be less paid and this master will be paid a very substantial competence for his work.  And I wouldn’t be surprised if we don’t come to that. We do it to a certain extent now in certain larger universities.

ROCHE: Well in a sense, education may have gone full cycle then.  We recall the school that I’m sure was the type school in which you possibly received your first schooling, that was one teacher teaching many students perhaps in many grades and of course this…

FLOWERS: The high school I went to had two teachers who taught all the high school subjects.  Well, you can imagine how limited it was in scope and how, uh…

ROCHE: Yes sir.

[21:04]

FLOWERS: And I’m grateful to my parents, that they recognized that fact, and one of the fondest memories I have of my parents and of my home life is the fact that were taught to read – all the members of our family – and for entertainment and for diversion we read and we read extensively.  And I recall that when I came here to college, to this school, in 1912 we were asked one day in a class in English to list all the books that we could remember that we had read. So, I worked out my list of books that I had read and turned it in and never thought anything about it.  I just assumed that everybody had read extensively as I had.  And so, the teacher wanted to conference me the next time I came to class. “I want to talk to you about this list of books that you read.” She didn’t believe that was possible that a person, I was then 16 years old, could possibly have come in contact with these books. For instance, I had read several volumes by Victor Hugo; I read Gibbon’s Holy Roman Empire [The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire]; I had read numerous biographies; I had read a great many books of poetry; and so, I listed these – two or three pages of them.

ROCHE: How was it that you came into contact with all those books Dr. Flowers? Wasn’t it rather difficult to obtain books like these?

[23:11]

FLOWERS: Well, it was indeed. It happened that I had an uncle who was bachelor who himself was not a scholar in the sense we think of a scholar now, but a man who liked to read.  And this bachelor uncle lived in our home.  So, he would go away and he would pick up books and bring them home to his nephews.  There were six brothers in my family – no sisters – and so he encouraged us to read and we all did; we all read and I’ve been forever grateful to him.  Now I give this illustration simply because I think that we in education need to do more and more in encouraging self-education.  There are so many things around us where we could get our own education if we were a mind to do it.  So, I learned to read early and learned to read very difficult material even in the grades.  And so I say that even though I came from a very poor school there were some compensatory elements in my home life that were really, I look upon it now, it was really quite wonderful.  And you understand, in those days we didn’t have television; we didn’t have radio; we didn’t have motion pictures; we had none of the diversions now that you’ve had you see.

[24:50]

ROCHE: Well reading was one of the principles means of education or entertainment.

FLOWERS: It was one of the main means of, for me it was the chief means of entertainment.

ROCHE: Well, you know, I have heard it said that two institutions, if I may call them that, have suffered so greatly because of the blessings mixed with the art of radio and television.  And those two institutions are that of reading and that of conversation, the art of good conversation.  As far as a college is concerned, these seem to be pretty vital things.  Do you think this is true, this statement that is so often made?

FLOWERS:  Well, I think so. We take so much for granted now and in an affluent society like this, one where youth has so much, we don’t teach our youth enough self-reliance.  Of course, there are a lot of other things that compensate for it. But in the age in which I came up this was an absolute necessity.

One of the fondest memories I have of my childhood days is we would be reading in the family room by the kerosene light, because this was before the days of electricity, and somebody would find something “Oh, here’s something” and we would all stop reading. “What have you found, what are you interested in…” and so this person would read it.  I remember many times because I enjoyed poetry, and liked to read it aloud, why, I was called on very often by other members of the family to read poems to them.  Well now, my parents, even though they were products of the Civil War period and had very little formal education, were extremely sympathetic and extremely wise in this and I owe them a tremendous debt because they sponsored, they encouraged, they were people who saw the importance of education. 

And of the six brothers in the family, five of them went to college. Not all of them took degrees, but the five of them did; one of them was a minister, one was a lawyer, two of them business men, one went into religious work, and I went into education.  And I attribute the fact that these brothers had this, well, I would call it an intellectual atmosphere, and the encouragement of our father and mother as well as this uncle, that we were known in the community where we were as bookworms by some of the neighbors, neighboring children.

ROCHE: Now if the Flowers family spent its recreational hours and its hours with itself by reading and sharing these reading experiences with each other, what did the other families do, Dr. Flowers, if they weren’t so fortunate in the area of having reading material?

[28:28]

FLOWERS: Well, that’s hard to say. I don’t know. I’m sure that they had their own interests and their own diversions and what have you.  But certainly, reading wasn’t one of their interests.  But I’m merely speaking about one family and about how these influences affected my own immediate family.  I know that it was a very potent influence.

ROCHE: This was the framework then in which you began you interest perhaps in teaching.  And in becoming an administrator of a college.

FLOWERS: Well, yes, I think so.  I think that the very fact that I loved books, that I loved to read and enjoyed that sort of thing and enjoyed people – it was somewhat of a natural consequence to go into teaching.  And I thought it exciting from the first day and I still find it just as exciting now as I did 50 years ago.  To me it’s one of the truly great professions.  And I think it’s the intellectual side of it that has its appeal.  But it’s also this human, this contact with human beings which makes teaching so exciting and so alluring and so wonderful.

[30:12]

ROCHE: Well Dr. Flowers, a moment ago you pointed out that it may well be that in the not-too-distant future some of our great teachers may be teaching say 500 students using several assistants and one wonders if the human will be de-emphasized.  I say not lost, because I wouldn’t see this happening as you set it up there, but I wonder if the human element – the distance between the student and the teacher – their contact, which has always meant so much in the past, might be de-emphasized.

[30:55]

FLOWERS: That’s one of my greatest concerns, Mr. Roche, is the fact that that could happen.  I think it is happening to a certain extent.  There isn’t any substitute for the contact between the teacher; the master and his pupil, or the teacher and his pupil.  There isn’t any substitute for that; no machine can take the place of that.  I have put it this way in some things I have written and said that I have long since forgotten most of what I studied in elementary and high school, and most of what I studied on the undergraduate level.  But I have never forgotten the teachers that I had in the elementary school, secondary school, and college and university.  In other words, it’s the individual that I remember most.  And of course, that is the thing that is my great concern.  I think, however, there is a middle ground here, administratively, that is I think maybe there some subjects that could be taught en masse and then we compensate for that by making sure that every student comes in very close contact with the teacher in classes of not more than ten to fifteen, or eighteen to twenty, so that he has the two contacts.  In other words, there are some types of subject matter that can be learned probably on the mass basis.  What would probably happen in our system is this that we will differentiate in use of machines and the use of mass media; we will teach certain areas using en masse programs, but then we will make certain that the same students will come in contact through seminars and through various other means, come in contact the brilliant minds and brilliant persons so that one will compensate for the other.  I think to reduce all of it to machine operations would be a very great tragedy, and I don’t think we are going to make that mistake.   All I am saying is that I think there are a lot of things that we could do that we are not doing to make better use of the teachers’ skill and scholarship and I think we’ve got to learn how to do it.  I expect to see a great many changes and a lot on experimentation in the next twenty-five years in this particular area.

[34:30]

ROCHE: Well, sketching as you have your approach to education, or your educational philosophy Dr. Flowers, this has sort of been the background for another question I would like to ask you.  I wonder if I might ask you now on another matter though, if perhaps we could arrange to meet together several more times for about an hour of so at your convenience under circumstances similar to these, Dr. Flowers, and perhaps put some things down on tape, or I could make some notes, and I think that out of all of this if it’s acceptable to you, I can come up with something that I think you would be very pleased with.

FLOWERS: All right, fine.

ROCHE: How have you attempted to put in action now Dr. Flowers, this philosophy and I’m sure that it has undergone perhaps many changes since you first came to Southwest Texas State, but here at Southwest Texas State and even before your experience as President of San Marcos, when you were Lockhaven, Pennsylvania, had you attempted to put into action these approaches to education as you have stated them?

[36:01]

FLOWERS: Well, when you say “have you”, let’s put it this way – “Has the college,” because after all I’m merely one person in the college.  There are a great many things that we’ve done here that has been an effort to put some these ideas into use. For instance, our counseling program.  I think that our peer group counseling program which Dr. Brown and his associates are doing is one of the most exciting developments that I have ever seen.  This college has gained a great deal of notoriety and a great deal of interest all over the nation in it.  Now that carries out the very point that I made initially in our conference that we’d have to find ways of not only providing opportunities for children to develop to their maximum, but we’ve got to find ways to facilitate that. 

Now the guidance program is a way of facilitating; this very complex thing that we call a college, this complex thing we call a university.  How can we be sure that this student really understands what it is that we are about?  Well now counselling is one way to get across to that student what the main goal is and how he’s to reach it, and how he’s to reach it in terms of his own abilities and his own interests.  And what they’re trying to do in this program is to help the person to discover himself and where he fits in this whole scheme of things.  And that’s why the work that’s going on there is so very significant.  And I have encouraged it all I could and I’ve done everything I could to give Dr. Brown every bit of help and so has the Hogg Foundation.  And now then we’ve seen what’s happened.  We have testimony of faculty members that we’re having the best work done that we’ve ever experienced on the campus. Number 2, we know that our attrition rate is lowered; we’re saving a lot of people for productive work that we once lost.  And thirdly, we’re demanding far more than we ever demanded before and the students like it.  Now all this bears out what’s been my philosophy for many years: the students really want to work; they really want to be challenged.  So long as the teacher is just and fair in his dealings with them, you rarely will find much complaint from students of being given too much work to do.  Now if a student knows why all this is required and why these demands are made upon him and he understands the goals that the school has set for itself and for him, then the student himself sets for himself certain goals you can see at once that this is a tremendous advance. And then of course other areas of teacher education.  Maybe that ought to be a separate discussion because that’s…

ROCHE: That’s a rather large area.

FLOWERS: another area that is quite extensive, and maybe we ought not get into that today.

ROCHE: But that does play a rather important role, does it not, in your approach to education

[40:15]

FLOWERS: Absolutely, absolutely.  May I just suggest – you may want to cut that off now – I don’t know, or that’s all right if you want to leave it on.  I might suggest two or three or four lines of discussion that we might follow in the future if you want some more.

ROCHE: Yes sir, by all means.

FLOWERS:

One, a discussion of our general education program here and the philosophy back of it.  Two, our philosophy of what we mean by depth and breadth, depth and breadth of scholarship in the areas of concentration. And thirdly, what we mean by professionally prepared teachers.  And fourth, some of the elements that ought to go into a strong teacher education program. These are four areas that I think we might well expand on.

ROCHE: And Dr. Flowers, since the story for the [Austin] American is – they do want to focus on you – I am going to ask you to move through these though, if we could come back of course, these will be your thoughts and ideas and so in that sense, we are never getting away from you, but perhaps tie them as directly to you as we can. And one other area, I’m thinking that there may be several others that we might want to introduce in the conversation, that I would like to explore if you wouldn’t mind, would be the people who have really made an impact in your life.  People who have really been important in your own life and what role, perhaps, that they played in your life.

FLOWERS: Well, I think that is – that’s a long, long story. You want to do it now?

ROCHE: Well sir, we’ve taken up about an hour here and I didn’t know but what you might want to… if you would want to go ahead, that would be fine with me, sir.

[42:35]

FLOWERS: Well, I have a committee coming in another ten minutes.  We won’t have time for it.  I have the architects coming down here with Dr. Bowers to work on some things and…

No, I recently, I had an occasion to think about this a good deal because of a certain circumstance and I got to thinking about the people in my life who had had most influence, individuals, and I’ll have something to say about that because it’s been very important.  The man that gave me my first college job, for instance.  I was principal of the elementary school in Cooper, Texas. He saw something in me that he liked and he invited me down to Commerce to be principal of the laboratory school.  It didn’t pay much of a salary, getting $1,800.00 maybe, but we bought us a house – had it built – we were paying it out; my wife taught a little in the sub-college in the college; we were paying this little house out.  At the end of two years, President Binion, a wonderful man, a very great man; he was ill, had an operation on his nose, and he had his nose filled with cotton, you know; He had just come from the hospital; it was a hot July day, this was in nineteen hundred and twenty-four, 1924…

ROCHE: And you were almost 30 years old by that time, I guess…

[44:37]

FLOWERS: I was born in ninety-five, you can see I was 29. 

He called me in; he a great big bass voice, you know; talked way down in his diaphragm, and he said, “I guess you’re surprised that I would want to see you.”  He was lying up in bed and it was hot as it could be – and in those days we didn’t have air-conditioning. He was fanning himself; had great big old eyes, and he said, “Sit down now I want to talk with you.”  He had a kind of gruff voice. He said, “Mr. Flowers, I want you to go to Columbia University next year and get your Master’s degree.”  I said, “Why, Mr. Binion I don’t think I can do that. I don’t know how in the world I would go.” I said, “You know I’m not making much money.” I think maybe I was making maybe $2,000 then – and I said, “We’ve built a home out here and we owe on that.”  He said, “I know all about that; I know all about that.”  He said “I know you hadn’t got the money, (laughed) but that doesn’t keep me from telling you that I want you to go to Columbia next year.”  He said, “I want you to go down to the bank and talk to Hugh Winn, the cashier,” he said, “I’ve talked to him about this; he can tell you how you can do it.”

ROCHE: He had set it up for you, then; he had made all the arrangements. (Laugh.)

FLOWERS: He knew what I was going to say. He said, “I’ve got a big job waiting for you when you get back” and he said, “I want you to go.”  “Now” he said, “I want to tell you something.  You know the colleges in Texas have not been accepted; Columbia has not accepted then yet.” He had written up there you know, I didn’t know this.  “Now they’re going to put you though a lot of ifs and ands and buts, and they are going to say that they can’t accept you,” but he said, “you go there and you make a good first semester and they have said that if you make good that they would allow you to be, give and pull.”  I was the first person from any of the teachers’ colleges that went to Columbia University.  Number one.  And I went in with this understanding: We cannot accept you; your schools are not, you are not on our list.  But we say this, if you can do our work, if you can prove it, the second semester we’ll tell you what we’ll do.  Well to make a long story short, they called me in the second semester before I registered.  Well, your record is so good that you are a full-fledged graduate student.  And if you complete you work this year with the present level of achievement, you’ll pass it.  Then within a month I was called in by my major professors and they said we think you ought to take the preliminaries for the doctorate.  Out of 120 people who took the preliminaries, I was one of 60 that passed it.

[48:27]

ROCHE: So, while you were there working on your masters, you were also laying the groundwork for your doctorate.

FLOWERS: For my doctorate.

ROCHE: Is this perhaps…

FLOWERS: One of the greatest things that ever happened in my life is that fact that Binion had the gumption to call me in and say now you get out of here and get your degree and you get on the way.  And I borrowed money at 10 per cent interest to make that trip.  Now, what if he hadn’t of done that?

ROCHE: What if he had just accepted the fact that you didn’t have the financial resources to go.

FLOWERS: Not only that, he said, “I want you to take you to take your wife and I want you to put her in school too.  She ought to get her Master’s when you get yours.”  Well, we went up there and we both entered teachers’ college in Columbia.   I borrowed $2,500 from the bank signed notes and used my little house as a subterfuge(?) and the bank too it.  I didn’t have over I supposed a $1,000 paid out in it, $1,500 anyway, and the bank said I’ll take that as security and that’s all you need.  So, she went up the first semester, but the going was so tough that she dropped out the second semester and got her a job at Macy’s, a big department store.  We had a boy then in the first grade.  I got him in school in a private school at Columbia, Horace Mann School.  Well now what if he hadn’t of said to me. “Well, I won’t take no; this you must do.”  I’ve thought of it many times, so I am eternally grateful to Randolph Binion for seeing something in me first of all; secondly for having the gumption and the backbone and the guts to say now get out of here; get out of this here environment and take a new look at things.

ROCHE: And take advantage of what you’ve had, whatever it was he saw in you.

[50:45]

FLOWERS: You bet your life.  I came in contact with some of the greatest minds I’ve ever know at Columbia.  They were simply marvelous.  Now I think that was one of the most, when I think of that, one of the most dramatic and one of the most valuable things that ever happened to me in my lifetime.  Well, I could go on with the story, but...

ROCHE: Well, I would like to pick up perhaps in another conversation, Dr. Flowers. And I wonder though one thought does come to mind – and I see the gentlemen coming – this has influenced your own attitude toward faculty.

FLOWERS:  Well, not question about it.

ROCHE: Well sir, I’m going to cut this off here.

[51:32]

FLOWERS TO THE GENTLEMEN:  Well, come on in…

End of tape

 

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