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Oral History Transcript - John Garland Flowers - June 10, 1964

Interview with John Garland Flowers

 

INTERVIEWER: Bruce Roche

TRANSCRIBER: Tommy Ruth Ball

DATE OF INTERVIEW: June 10, 1964

LOCATION: Southwest Texas State College, San Marcos, TX

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Summary: This is the transcript from the third 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 people who influenced his life and career, his relationship with his predecessor Dr. Evans, and various faculty, staff, and administrators at SWT who contributed to the success of the college.  He talks about meeting Lady Bird Johnson in Washington in 1942 and how she helped get a resolution passed in Congress to give a part of Riverside to the school.  Flowers also talks about his pride in the institution and being able to work with faculty even when they disagreed.

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. 

 

JOHN GARLAND FLOWERS: We talked about Dr. Binion last time.  Did you finish all that you wanted to say about that?

BRUCE ROCHE: Yes sir, unless you had any other recollections of Dr. Binion; he certainly appeared to be ….

FLOWERS: You said here, to be developed in a later conference.  My secretary typed this up, and I believe she heard us make a reference to that on the tape and then you went ahead and developed it at that time. 

ROCHE: Dr. Binion, was, obviously, from what you said a very important person in your life, Dr. Flowers, and my hope was that we might on this tape talk about some other important people in your life.

FLOWERS: Yes, whatever you say.  Well, of course there have been people in and members of my own family that have had enormous influence.  I suppose one wants always to begin at the beginning. 

My parents were interested in ideas and educational matters and trying to create an influence in a modest home that would be conducive to stimulating their children to become readers and people interested in achieving a good education.  And so, of course, I am greatly indebted to them, and I suppose that my own wife has had more influence on my life than any other human being.  She is a person of broad interests and a fine education and a person who has a tremendous intellectual curiosity and has always been very ambitious for me and is willing to make any kind of sacrifice to advance my education and my career, and so of course these people I can’t ignore.

Then, there are some professors at Columbia University who affected my life profoundly.  I’ll mention only three of them because I was not only influenced by their teaching, but I had personal contacts with some of them that remained for the next thirty-five years of my life; some of them of course have passed away now.  One man, W.C. (William chandler) Bagley, who was a man of national prominence under whom I took my Master’s Degree and was on the committee for my doctorate, and Dr. (Edward) Samuel Evenden who – both of these men are now gone – these men have done more to shape my philosophy of higher education than any other two men, I think. I was impressed tremendously by their lectures and what they had to say and what they believed and how they thought colleges and universities should be operated. 

And then I was impressed by another man in Columbia, Dr. Kilpatrick.  He was an interpreter of John Dewey and people who are opposed to John Dewey’s philosophy think of Kilpatrick as the chief proponent of what’s known as the Progressive Method in education.  Well, Kilpatrick was a towering personality, and he taught philosophy, and educational philosophy, and besides that he was a tremendous man, I mean he was a man of great intellectual statue and one of the truly great teachers in my whole life. 

And then I want to mention one other man who has been most influential and that’s Mr. H.H. (Harry) Sprague.  Harry Sprague was president of the State College at Mount Clair, New Jersey where I served for a period of years.  Now Harry Sprague was not a man of great prominence, nor was he regarded as a great administrator, but when I went East for the first time – I mean the last time – he offered me a place on his faculty which I kept for nine years, and I was director of an experimental program in teacher education on the secondary level, and he was the president.  His philosophy of college administration influenced me profoundly because he believed in sharing ideas and sharing in the administration.  He thought me he importance – and I learned the importance – of sharing decisions.  And I may say that when I became a president in Lockhaven, Pennsylvania and here, I haven’t made many major decisions on my own; I’ve usually made them in cooperation with those who were concerned and those who were involved in it.  I would say that I rarely make a quick decision where all of the faculty is involved without consulting with my deans and key personnel, and then after I weigh all of the evidence, all of the facts, then I make a decision. And so this idea of the shared decision came from Harry Sprague because he practiced it as one of the major tenents of his philosophy.  He is now living, retired, and lives on a lake in Maryland, new Jersey.  He administered a college in Mont Clair that was one o the top colleges of its kind in the country.  He brought together a group of scholars from all of the disciplines, and he was n excellent judge of men and an excellent judge of what men did, and I think, looking, thinking back over my life, I think he’s influenced me so very very much indeed.  Somehow or other when I think about all of this, them men who’ve have most influence in my life are the ones who I was close to, in what you might call the formative years in my career.  Later on when I got my on my own and became a president of my own, on my own, I somehow or other reverted back to what you were taught in philosophical values which these great teachers and personalities have given you, through a rather long period. 

Of course, I know that I’ve been influenced lately by individuals that I will look back on in years to come, and say well now, that person was influential, but these that I’ve mentioned to you, I think, stand out in my thinking.

ROCHE: Do you have any particular recollections, Dr. Flowers, that might illustrate how some of these people did influence you, perhaps, some that illustrate how they operated.

FLOWERS: Well, I mentioned in another interview the talk I had with R.B. Binion one hot July afternoon in 1925, as he called me up to his home and his sick bed, and said I want you to go to Columbia next month, in September. Now there was an incident that changed the course of my life.  I am thinking for instance of Dr. Bagley at Columbia University; after I was at Columbia, a student for only a few months, he called me in and said I think you ought to get ready to take the preliminaries for the dictate this year.  Those are the kind of incidents that are, that kinda shake you up and you recall because they were so unexpected, don’t you see the point?

Dr. Evenden, for instance, I recall working on my dissertation for the doctorate.  I had an obstreperous member of my committee for my dissertation who was on the minority; there were five members of the committee, and this woman would not accept one chapter of my dissertation; she wouldn’t accept the hypothesis upon which it was built, and didn’t accept the data and my conclusions and the other four members were contentious and believed in it, and I myself thought it was the best chapter of the book, of my whole study. And so I remember Dr. Evenden in a very quiet sort of way, after I had sweated it out for over a year, and part of the time I was quite stubborn, I refused to take it out, he just gently hinted one day, well, he said, why don’t you humor the woman and go ahead and publish the results of your study of this chapter, and he said you’ll have a better public[ation], in the long run, and you’ll get your dissertation approved and get your doctor’s degree.  And even though your pride may be hurt a little bit in not being able to leave it in.  And he said, I must confess that I’ve done all I could to get her to accept it but she won’t.  He said why not just leave the chapter out and do as I say, and so, well now that was just a mere incident, but it illustrates not only a person who was my friend, but proved to be wise counsel.  I actually go far more recognition professionally from the publication that I got out of this chapter that I took out than I would have if I had left it in.

ROCHE: It sounds as if Dr. Evenden was a very practical man.

FLOWERS: Very much so, very very practical.  Very fine common sense and he was a very dear friend, by the way.  He’s been on the campus; he was here in 1951, and was one of the persons that evaluated this college.

ROCHE: In the first evaluation?

FLOWERS: In the first evaluation of “A College Examines its Program” back in 1951.  He was one of the members of the team.  I ought to mention one other man in this because it’s important that I mention him since we’re talking about personalities, and that’s Charles W. Hunt.  Charles W. Hunt was the secretary-treasurer of the American Association of Teachers Colleges and later on of th American Association of Colleges for Techer Education.  Now that’s the most influential body in America in the field of Teacher Education, and he was executive secretary and I was president of it in 1950-1951.  Well, Charles was president of a college in Coney Island, New York, and he ran a fine institution; besides that, he was a very quaint grammarian (?) who had been transplanted into Columbia and Brown University and later on he was dean out at Western Reserve and had a very brilliant career as an educator, but finally settled down at this little college in (?Oneono?).  He is still living today and is about 86 years old and one of the most wonderful men that I’ve ever known.  I’ve worked with him on numerous committees nationally and he today is a person that anybody in America who’s had anything to do with the preparation of teachers and been connected with any of the national associations, know him as Mr. Teacher-Education.  He and I have been together on many many many projects and his philosophy is a very dynamic one; he has a very youthful spirit, as a matter of fact, he is, not only from experience as an educator, but a man who is good philosopher.  I mean he does a lot o deep thinking about almost any question that you might want to discuss in the field of education.   Well, I have absorbed a great deal of my philosophy of lie and of education from this great and good man.  I owe him far more than I could ever repay.  Here’s a man who, in the first place, is a scholar, and second place is a gentleman, and in the third place has the courage of his convictions and will express them and express them well.  Well, I think that pretty well covers that part of it. 

ROCHE: Dr. Flowers, you have spoken on many occasions of your association with Dr. Evans, and I …

FLOWERS: Oh yes, I ought to mention Dr. Evans because it’s important.  When I came here as a student in nineteen hundred and twelve, I was just 16 years old.  Of course the work that I took in those days was in what you might call the high school, but it was in preparation for a certificate to teach so he influenced me profoundly as a young – as a boy – what you might say a boy.  And after I came here as President, later on, of course I came to know him intimately as well, and of course I had a chance to study the quality of his mind and the type of administration that he had; in those intervening years, however, between 1913 and 1942, I was with him not at all.  I mean, I think I rarely saw the man over once or twice in those years, so you see there was a period of nearly forty years that I didn’t have any association with him.  Well, it isn’t quite that long, it was thirty years, but I was of course influenced by my associations with him and he had a very rich philosophy and a very rich background of experience.  I respected him profoundly because he came here to a college that was poor and poorly supported, and as a matter of fact here was a man that had to struggle for everything in the world the college ever got; in other words, the college was literally starved to death during the depression.  Then the war came on and the man didn’t have a chance, you see, then.  Then in the Twenties they tried to close the school down, you see, and turn it into a Junior College, and he had to fight for it, and he was a man who was greatly interested in politics and interested in the political processes that can take place in getting things done.  That always greatly interested him, and he was a frequent visitor around the legislature, a thing which I myself, never did much of; I didn’t work that way.  I didn’t believe in that, for myself, but he was, and he was a close student of it, but I suppose no an lived – no man in Texas – knew more about the legislative process and the political developments of Texas than Dr. Evans, of his lifetime.  He was a very close student, and he had a memory that was amazing. Now as to how he influenced me; I think that the important thing is that I had profound respect for the man and for his achievement and in view of the tremendous problems that he had to – that he encountered – and yet he was able to keep the college intact.  Now sofar as educational philosophy is concerned, I was not influenced by his philosophy of education.  I did not, I have a different philosophy, mine came from another source and through another experience.  In other words, my beliefs about a lot of things are not the same as Dr. Evans, that isn’t to say that I don’t respect him and he didn’t respect me.  As a matter of fact, he said to me one time before he died, he said, you know Dr. Flowers, you and I came from a different school and different background and different experience, and he said, I’ve watched your administration, and he said I want you to know that I have profound respect for what you’ve done and tremendous admiration.  In other words, he had no – because we didn’t believe alike on a lot of things, he was big enough to realize that he must step aside and let my philosophy of the thing prevail and not his.  And I may say that I have much the same notion about my successor; I realize that I must diminish now and drop aside and let his philosophy flourish.  Dr. Evens came to revere and respect very much what I was trying to do, and he told me so and he has told others, but we did not see eye to eye on a great many things.

ROCHE: When the ceremony was held something over a year ago in the main building, and they put the historical medallion there, you spoke of – you recollected several experiences you had with Dr. Evans when you where here as a student.  Will you share some of those with us because – and speak something of yourself as a young man and your attachment to the college.

FLOWERS:  Well, I don’t know that that was – that that’s so very important.  Dr. Evans – I think what you have reference to is the fact that he used to, because the school was so small, they only had about 450 students, so he was in effect President, an dean of men, and dean of women, and everything else.  Indeed he kept a set of books on the finances of the college that he kept separately from the business office; he was a man who believed that the president should keep in touch with everything that was going on and every detail. 

I remember one time of being sent from the library; Mrs. Burleson who was librarian, caught me talking in the library, whispering to some other people across the desk.  So she comes over in a very imperious way and sends me to the president’s office because I was talking – that sort of thing – they had strict rules in those days about behavior of students in the college.  Indeed, if they left town or went anywhere, men or women, they had to report to the main building to let it be known where they were, and where they were going to get permission to go.  So us timid souls, younger ones especially, we were really very much afraid of the administration; we though they were all powerful.  Now I don’t know whether that’s what you have reference to or not.

ROCHE: Yes sir, I believe that you alluded to hat incident back when you were a student.  The thought just struck me that there’s a picture of Dr. Evans in his room there in the museum, and he was a very handsome young man, wasn’t he?

Well, he was a good-looking man, and he had a very friendly way about him; he was very positive, but he was a kindly soul and he meant well for everybody.  He had a big heart, but of course that generous spirit that he had was a remarkable thing, and he never forgot anything, and apparently anybody or anything.  He had up until his death, he had what I would call an encyclopedic mind; he could remember dates, and incidents, and things that most people never even remember, you see.  Well, that’s one of the reasons why he was such a remarkable man because he had this capacity for remembering the tiniest of details that the normal person never tries to even try to remember.  In one way that is a great asset; in another way it really isn’t because I have a feeling that I don’t want to clutter my mind with things that are too incidental and are unimportant.  I mean I never thought I wanted to do that, but here was a man who gloried in that sort of thing and capitalized on it because he could remember; anybody around the campus that forgot some incident and wanted to look it up, they’d say “well, go see Dr. Evans, he can tell you about it, and he usually could come up with the answer.”

ROCHE: He was better than the College Star for recalling what happened when.

FLOWERS: Well, that’s right.

ROCHE: Dr. Flowers, he – in looking at the material in the Evans room, I cam across a letter that Dr. Evans wrote to then Congressman Johnson.  I am sure you have probably seen it yourself, and reflecting on it now, I believe he said in that letter that you had been elected the new president and that you were coming through Washington, and he was asking you to stop by to see the Congressman on some matter, so in a sense, I guess he helped introduce you to Congressman Johnson.

FLOWERS: Well, as it turned out, I did precisely that.  Part of Riverside down here on this side of the river and the island, the college did not own; they had leased it for years from the Fish Hatchery from the Federal Government.  And the highway came through, you see, and they cut off this little corner there, and it amounted to, I don’t know how many acres, but a few acres.  And Dr. Evans had tried for years to get it thorough and then so he finally got the machine rolling.  Dr. Evans thought maybe if I could come by, and I think probably he thought that this was a good chance for me to meet Lyndon Johnson whom he admired very much.  So I dutifully came by Washington and went to see United States Senator Tom Connally [U.S. Senator from Texas, 1929-1953] that he referred me to, and then he said to Congressman Johnson’s office.   

Well, I went to see Senator Connally and at that time the word Lyndon Johnson didn’t mean a thing to me because – I had herd about him, but I didn’t know anything about him at all, so I sat down with Senator Connally and we talked about getting the thing in motion that summer to see if we couldn’t acquire the property and get a title to it, and he agreed to pitch into it at once because it was then being handled in a committee of which Senator [W. Lee “Pappy”] O’Daniel [U.S. Senator from Texas, 1941-1949] was chairman of it, and Mr. O’Daniel was not in favor of giving the college this property or some reason, and had held it up for some time.  I never knew why, but he wasn’t.  But Senator Connally was and Senator Connally – while Senator O’Daniel was back in Texas, by the way – got things done, and I hadn’t been here by six weeks until here came a liter with a statement from the Federal Government saying that this land had bee given to the college. 

Well then I went over to Congressman Johnson’s office and he was gone out to the Pacific he had just joined the Navy and President Roosevelt had sent him back out to Australia to meet General MacArthur who was preparing the troops to go back into Japan, or back into the Philippine Islands.  So I met Lady Bird; she was there in the office – she was the acting Congressman, actually, while Lyndon was away.  Johnson was in the armed services for about – just a few months, when the President by executive order required all Congressmen and Senators to remain on the job as Congressmen and Senators, so he had to come back to his job.

ROCHE: I believe Lyndon Johnson sort of jumped the gun before he could issue that order and just went ahead and …

FLOWERS: Well, I don’t know about that; all I knows is that when I got over to Mr. Johnson’s office, I met Lady Bird.  Well, I explained who I was and she was very gracious, and very nice, and a very young person; she had the appearance of youth, but she knew what was going on and the details of it, and she knew all about this correspondence and she knew about this property, and I asked her if she would do what she could in that office to help Senator Connally in getting this thing through because it was tied up in a Committee in the Senate.  It was not in the House, it was already passed over in the House; it was a special resolution.  But that was my first time to make any contact with the Johnsons – was in the summer of nineteen hundred and forty-two while I was moving to Texas from Pennsylvania.

ROCHE: When did you first meet the President?

FLOWERS: Well, it was back here on the campus.  He was in Texas one time, and he came down to see us – to see the college and we invited him down.  In fact, it was, I guess during the war or just immediately after; and then the next time I saw him, we had a boiler blow up here on us, and I had great difficulty during the war to get a boiler because of the shortage of metal.  We finally located a boiler, and it had already been manufactured, and it was not at the place where it was supposed to go, they turned it down – it didn’t quite suit their need.  But it suited us, and so I had to go to Washington personally and had to battle it though the commissions; the offices where they handled precious metals and got their approval of it, and then I was able to come back and acquire this boiler.  Well, then wile I was there the Congressman, through is assistant, Mr. Jenkins, the just carried the whole through for me al the way through, and in about four hours I got the job done.  And that was my first encounter with Mr. Johnson in Washington. 

I met him once here briefly; he was here with Secretary of the Air Force, Symington, on the disposition of this field out here, and there I had lunch with him and the Secretary of the Air Force and we had some talks together.  The fact of it, I’ve had only a few contacts with the President; they have been very few, but they have been important ones.  I was with him in Washington when he was majority leader and watched him operate from the gallery in the Senate and then had a chance to talk with him.  Then when he had his heart attack and was up at the camp, up at his home, I went up to see him and invited him here for Lyndon Johnson Day; we had the celebration. 

ROCHE: That was his first important public appearance, I believe, after…

Flowers: First appearance after his heart attack. I was very concerned about him and tried to do everything I could to protect him, and then he’s been here about every two years ever since.

 

ROCHE: And you have expressed your pride, of course, being President of the Institution from which the President of the United States graduated.  Dr. Flowers, now many of these men here have been rathe important influences in your life, and of course likewise you have been a very important influence in the lives of many people yourself, and that I know would be quite difficult for you to discuss, but I wonder if you could reflect perhaps on some of the really outstanding faculty persons or staff members that you have known here who have assisted you during your administration?

FLOWERS: Well, that’s a very hard question because I like to feel that I’ve had contact with every head of the department and every administrator, intimate contact with the, and I would like to feel that my professional life has been of some influence in decision making. But to pick anybody out and to say, now that person – I affected them, I couldn’t do that.  That would be, I think more than I could do.  I think those people would have to testify to that, and I have been conscious of things happening that were ideas originated in a conference with them and later on they moved forward and made a record for themselves, and I’m unable to say that what I did was the influential thing, except I do know that a good many things have started on my desk and would up in reality. 

Our own personal organization here is very much the philosophy that I hold, and I’ve stayed in the background and I’ve watched these people move forward in it, but the organization we have in personnel – I’m talking about Dr. Juel, Miss Stewart, Martine, and all those people – are, our housing organization.  You see we have several unique features there in personnel that is not found generally, well, how can one say, now, well, I started that.  I can’t.  I don’t like to lay those claims, because th people who really did it were the staff, don’t you se?  And a lot of the ideas and the uniqueness of this college, and there are some things unique about it, grew out of conferences and discussions and who’s to say that A or B or C, that his idea prevailed.  Take for instance in our teacher education program, our relationship with the public schools – we have something there that’s unique in America, where the superintendent of schools, and his principals and his teacher are all actually member of ours staff.  Their names are in the catalog.  We look upon them as associates in this whole enterprise; they are very important to us.  We’ve established a rapport and contact with them that is – I don’t know of anything quite like it in the country.  Well, now Dr. Evans had certain notions about it, but I think we’ve improved on it; I think that we’ve taken some ideas that he had and some that I had and combined them, and we’ve come up with a thing that’s very dynamic, and we like it.  I mean, not only does the public school like it here at the college.

ROCHE: By saying, improved on it, do you mean principally to make it more effective as a means of training teachers?

FLOWERS: Well, I think so; I think so.  That’s right.  For instance, at one time our student teaching consisted of going down to the other building for one hour a day and teach; they’d go down there and teach and then come back and that’s all there was to it.  We insist on a full half-day experience for 18 weeks or all day for 9 weeks.  You can see the difference in depth and concentration of student teaching.  Now that’s come about since I came, and we wouldn’t think of a person going and teaching one hour and then call it student teaching.  We would say that’s completely inadequate, now, measured by our standards.  I mean that’s jut an illustration of what I mean.  Well, this book that I wrote, there was the chairman of the committee that wrote it on the professional laboratory experiences which went very well and was very influential in the nation.  Our program here is a good illustration of – what I mean to say is that what we did, what we’ve developed here – was greatly influenced by that report and that study, and of course as chairman of the committee I was able to bring ideas to our organization from all parts of the national because our study really covered the nation.  We really synthesized the best practices in teacher education in this country, and so I was able to bring to this group because I was up to my neck in the study you see, involved in the thing, ideas and points of view that I think greatly influenced the whole organization.  But now that was the accident of having been in a certain position on a certain committee at a certain time, don’t you see?  And I have tried to bring back to the campus ideas that I learned and found out about on numerous trips that I’ve made on numerous commissions and any good idea that I could find anywhere I would bring it back and try it out on our people and let them think about it.  I’ve been fortunate in having these national contacts, you see.

ROCHE: This was partly a result of your doing your doctoral and master’s work at Columbia; this gave you a lot of …

FLOWERS: Well, part of it, and then I got connected in the East with some prominent people in education and I became active in two national associations and first thing I knew I was in a place of leadership on numerous committees, and I would say this, that the fact that Binion back yonder said “Go to Columbia” started the wheels to rolling; that’s what I mean when I said as it turned out in my life that little conference that afternoon in that home, hot as blazes, started me on a long road that led me to a place of national importance for a time and from that simple beginning; now I happened to be at the right place at the right ti and happened to have known people who were responsible people and it shaped the whole course of my life.

ROCHE: Well, sir, we’re just about out of tape.  The thought that was going through my mind awhile ago when I asked if perhaps you could talk about some of the outstanding people on your faculty or on your staff that you might recollect, I guess partly is an outgrowth of our talking about the President, and the fact that Professor Greene who was here at that time in particular and was on your staff for many years prompted me to do that.  Do you have any recollections of Professor Green or other outstanding people that have been.

FLOWERS: Well, there have been many.  Dr. Nolle has made a tremendous contribution to this college; he’s a man of many ideas and of great ability and he and I worked together in a very intimate fashion, and I remember him with pleasure and with great appreciation.  There was another man that also, Dr. Dean Elliot who died some years ago who was made registrar the year that I came here as President, he was made Dean of the Graduate work, and he was scheduled to succeed Dr. Nolle as Dean of the College, but died in the meantime.  Dean Elliott was a man of great stature and of tremendous personality.

ROCHE: He was a historian in his own right, I believe.

FLOWERS: A historian in his own right; a fine scholar, and he was a fine administrator.  I think of Dr. Wiley, retired lately, and his contribution, and I have very fine memories of Spurgeon Smith who was the head of the Biology Department, and who came to this faculty in the – shortly after I was here as a student – somewhere around 1914 and 15, along there.  And he was quite a personality here, and I would say among the most influential members of our heads of departments.

Now Dr. Gene Tanner was here for a short time; he was the head of the Social Science Division during the war and went with the Federal Reserve Bank as an economist; in the short time that I knew him, I was greatly impressed by the caliber of his mind and the quality of his mind.  Dr. Taylor, of course, whom you know, but may not have known so well was one of the really great professors we’ve had on this campus; he was a great organizer and a man of ideas and at the same time he was a man who knew how to administer and do wit well, and get the most out of his assistance and his staff. 

Of the women we’ve had on the faculty, I regard Dr. Tinsley, who was head of the Home Economics Department and is now Dean of the School of Home Economics at Teas Tech.  She certainly stands out as one o the top people, and of course our current heads; I don’t wish to discuss them, but they’re all top people and influential in their own right.

ROCHE: Will, this would be very difficult; it is a very difficult question posed to you because of – because I am sure you have so many people probably that you would include if you had the time.

FLOWERS: Oh, yes, I couldn’t begin to name them because they are so much a part of the present group.  I would say this – that we have a very wonderful staff, administrative staff of which I am very proud and heads of department, we can be very proud of them.  I would say one thing in terms of our college; there is one aspect of it that has always been a source of pride to me, and that is that we have no factions here of any magnitude; we work together as a team.  I’m not conscious of any factionalism or of any little group cliques and clans that draw together; certainly when we get ready to make a decision the heads of departments and the administrative group work together as a team in a wonderful way, and I’ve always been very proud of that fact, and I think we’ve – I’ve heard many of them say that one of the characteristics of this college is that there are no dissident groups that are pulling back and organizing to try to  - organizing influences that detract from the college; we don’t have that at all.

Now, that isn’t true at many colleges I could mention and universities that I know about.  You have these factions; you have these groups that organize to try to get something through and pressure groups.  Well, if we’ve ever had a pressure group on this campus, I’ve never been conscious of it; I’ve never know of it’s existence; I’ve never known of anything trying to get a pressure group to try to force some idea through, that is of any importance.  Oh, there’s been disagreements and we wouldn’t be a healthy institution If we didn’t have disagreements, but there have been some instances where committees had there was nothing that stayed over to cause tension or lack of respect between us when the thing was over. I think maybe this happened before you came; there was a committee of people who wanted this college to go along with other colleges and do away with Saturday classes; did you ever hear that story?

ROCHE: Yes, sir, I did, as a matter of fact, I believe that this happened just about the time I came here, Dr. Flowers.

 

FLOWERS: Well, I vetoed it; and I took the position that I felt that going to college was a full-time responsibility of a student, and I thought that the trend just now to move back to five a wee; I thought it was completely wrong and in violation of the thing that we had tried so hard to get across, and that is if we were going to achieve excellence, we needed to set up an organization that would occupy all the students’ time, six days a week.  Later on the Board of Regents of our own system commended the position that I took, and it happened that we are the only college among the six, now, that has a five-day week, and now, I took the position that I wasn’t going to support it.  Well there was at that time a little bit of tension on the part of some people because they got out and worked for it, and here I had vetoed it, and I said I’ll e fully responsible for this whole act and I told them that I didn’t think the data they gathered together even supported their contention, and I took up each one of the arguments they used to go to the five-day week.  And I said, now this is as I see the thing what you’ve done, you’ve tired to – in your eagerness to get a five-day week and go along with what appears to be the majority viewpoint now, I said, you’ve gathered together arguments that cannot be sustained and you can’t prove any of them; they’re just notions and I said for the time being we’re not going on that basis, and even though there was a majority, he said they said of the faculty who were in favor of it, I said to the committee it doesn’t make any difference to me if the entire faculty voted for this, we’re not going to go on a five-day week, I said, now that ends it.  Well, now that was rather an extreme view to take, but I was so thoroughly convinced of my position that I didn’t back down, and I haven’t yet.

ROCHE: And this stirred up some little disagreement for a period?

FLOWERS: Yes for a little while and then later on, I’ll say this, the chairman of hat committee whose name I will not call, later on; a year later, came to me and he said Dr. Flowers, I think maybe I should say something to you; in fact, he did this very year.  He said, you are now retiring and he said, one time I represented a committee that was in opposition to what you wanted, and he said I want you to know that although I disagreed with you then and rather violently, he said, I never lost my respect for you and I believe in what you were trying to do.  And he said, you were probably right, and he said I’ve since come to the viewpoint that the thing I was so thoroughly convinced that we should do, you vetoed it, and you vetoed it, and I don’t mind saying he said that I’m glad you stayed by your guns.  Now, this happened five years after the incident, you see.

ROCHE: Well, the solidarity of the college is something of which you are very proud, then.

FLOWERS: I am very proud, and I I’d like to feel that what I’ve stood for an fought for and believed in has had some little influence in it.  I can’t say how much or how little, but I’ve believed some things, and I’ve been willing to get out and fight for them when the time came.  Now, I don’t believe in going out and picking a fight, but when the chips are down, I think the faculty knows that I’m ready for it, if necessary, and when I deal with the legislature and the committees, I’ve tried to build up the same attitude and the same kind of presentation.  Whenever I go before a legislative committee I present my materials and my budget, and my budget requests in a certain way, and say to them, I’m ready to defend every dollar I’m putting in here; there’s not any padding in this budget, but I’m ready to defend every dollar that I’ve put in here, and I challenge you to question any of it, and so I go into my hearings and in this spirit that I’m ready to defend what I put down and I request.  I think we’ve done as well, and a good deal better than some schools, some colleges, because we’ve tried to be honest with the public in our appropriation requests; I have never had a padded budget in the 22 years I’ve ben here, and I’ve presented 11 budgets to the legislature.

ROCHE: Asking only what is needed and …

FLOWERS: Asking only what’s needed and in a position to justify what I’m asking for, and I believe in that kind of responsibility in administration.  I’ve had some members of the legislature to tell me that felt thy could always depend on my budget because they realized that it was not a padded budget, but one that had been thought out and we knew where we were going.

ROCHE: Dr. Flowers, would you like to hear some of the address?

FLOWERS: Yes, let’s see how it sounds like. 

ROCHE: I think you’ll be very pleased with it.

 

End of interview.