Oral History Transcript - Pat Norwood - November 9, 1986
Interview with Pat Norwood
Interviewer: Laurie Lindig
Transcriber: Laurie Lindig
Date of Interview: November 9, 1986
Location: Mr. Norwood’s home, 905 N. LBJ Drive, San Marcos, TX
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Begin Tape 1, Side 1
Laurie Lindig: Pat Norwood and we are fixing to do an interview that will be placed in San Marcos in Southwest Texas library. Mr. Norwood, do you agree to this?
Pat Norwood: Oh, yes.
Lindig: You came to this school in 1935, correct?
Norwood: In 1935.
Lindig: In 1935. Whenever you came in at this time, what was your job here?
Norwood: Principal of the campus training school. That was the school in which we had 725 kiddos and the prospective teachers observed the teachers in this school and did much of their practice teaching in this school. We were supposed to have master teachers, and many were.
Lindig: Where was this school located at?
Norwood: It is what is now the Psychology Building on the campus. And it was very well-suited to what we had because we had the first three grades on the second floor, the fourth and fifth on the bottom floor, and the junior high school on the top floor. The kindergarten school was part of the Science Building now, one of the rooms over there.
Lindig: I understand in 1939 to ’65 you were director of public services.
Norwood: That is correct.
Lindig: At Southwest. What was in this job? What things did you do?
Norwood: Well, Dr. Evans, the president of the college, sent for me in the spring of 1939 and told me that he had crazy ideas, and he had another crazy idea. He was going to take four activities that had been assigned; one activity to a teacher and relieve her of a class. He was going to take those four activities and put them into an office and have a full-time secretary and put me in charge of it. And he told me what the four would be. The four would be the placement office, all classes off-campus, the extension program. Then I was to be the executive secretary of the alumni association, and the fourth, in charge of general publicity. Now the first year, I didn’t have a thing to do besides those four things and teach four classes on the campus. That was a nice introduction to start with. He said he was going to put me in charge of it. “Go home and think it over now and come back and ask me any questions you have.” I went home, and I was just getting ready to write my dissertation for my doctor’s degree, and I knew that if I went into this new program, a new set-up, it would take all of my time. So, and I had my materials for that dissertation ready to write. I knew that it would delay me at least two years for the doctor’s degree. Well, I came back a week later and asked him some questions about it. He said, “Good questions, good questions, go home and think about it for another week.” It was the fourth week before I agreed to take it but did. Went into that office to handle those four jobs and pull them all together.
Now, after I got started, I started the correspondence school up there, and the correspondence school now is operated out of an office near the west campus. And then I had a sixth area that I had to do that I called general public services. That was anything that nobody else on the faculty wanted to do. They would turn it over to me to do it. That was nice. And I enjoyed it. But, it took time. After the first year, I taught only one class and had this program going. Now, it was a very interesting thing because that sixth area that I had suggested here, I was director general of Region VI Interscholastic League Meets. We had the top-ranking group, which was quadruple A then, and then B and A Districts, region. We had to run those all on Friday afternoon, night, and Saturday. All three the same day. That was a very interesting thing to get directors of all the events, for each one, for each classification, set up the schedule, check with all the directors to see that they had made all the arrangements including judges and what have you and then see to it that it went off. Now that included scholastics and all activities like number sense, slide rule, you name it. And debates, declamations, and all that. I handled that for twenty-six years. In addition to that, I had to line up all the graduates three times a year because we had a graduation in January, and then at the end of the spring term, and then at the end of the summer term. So, a lot of fun.
Lindig: Very busy.
Norwood: Well, I didn’t have time to get into trouble if I kept busy. Now, I don’t know what else you would like to know about that. Of course, one other thing was, I had to go out and recruit for the school. I represented the college at the senior days for high schools areas, and then I represented them at the schools when they talked about vocations and professions—what we were able to offer here to students in the field of their choices. So, that is what I did for twenty-six years.
Lindig: What main areas of schools did you go to whenever you were recruiting?
Norwood: Everything from Austin south to Brownsville. I actually went into Brownsville and talked there with the students. Are you interested in hearing some interesting little incidents?
Lindig: Yes.
Norwood: I was down in the magic valley, and there were four or five schools that had gone together to have such a meeting. There were other schools represented, of course, colleges, so they had a lot. In my group, I was in my group, and I was telling them about Southwest Texas State, and I said we have programs there that can prepare you to do the sort of thing that you want to within reason. Now, for example, Lyndon Johnson came to this college, and he found enough to be President of the United States, so what do you need? And I said, now if you come to the school there, I’ll tell you how you can get out. One is misbehave. They will send you home. Another, fail to do your work, and if you fail, you go home. And that is what about all that is necessary. But, I said, that is not what we are looking for. We are looking for students who really want to do the work. I said, if a student comes there and he has, doesn’t care to work, we can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. A boy in the audience held up his hand. I said, “Yes, sir.” He said, “They have done it.” I said, “Young man, you are right to a degree. Science has made what he called a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. But that was still a synthetic silk and not the real thing. And we are looking for the real thing at Southwest Texas State and not something synthetic.” He didn’t ask me any more questions. That is one of the experiences.
And then another thing that I did was to represent the college when high schools got ready for graduations. For those years, twenty-six, I was scheduled out every night the last two weeks of school with commencement programs. And enjoyed them immensely and never failed to make but one. And one, it was a very tough spring, and I simply told my secretary before I left, I think I am due somewhere tonight. Now, where am I supposed to go? She said, “It is not on my calendar.” And it wasn’t because I had accepted over the telephone in my office when I was having a conference and didn’t record it. That night I was sitting here and about ten o’clock the telephone rang, and the superintendent said, “Mr. Norwood, are you all right?” I said, “Well, yes.” “Well, we were wondering, we missed you tonight.” “Oh my lord, I remember now.” But that is the only one in twenty-eight or -nine years because they didn’t stop calling me after that. Are you just trying to find out something about me?
Lindig: Anything about San Marcos or the school.
Norwood: Well, I’ll tell you another thing about the work I was doing and what this school was doing. Now, all this I was doing for the school. Not for me, but the school. When the schools were evaluated, and they had to be evaluated every five or six years by the Southern Association and by the state accrediting group, I handled two of those every year for many years. I evaluated those, chaired the evaluation committee, I didn’t do it alone of course, for nearly every one of the schools in the independent school district in San Antonio and others around: San Marcos, New Braunfels, and so on. And that was what this college was furnishing. The services you see for this. And then after we would spend three days checking, get reports up, and then I would make my report to the Southern Association and to the Texas Education Agency for this college. And that is what this college was rendering in services. Now, general public service was my title.
Now, you might be interested in another thing. When Dr. Flowers came here to become president, he decided that my title should be Director of Public Relations, but the legislature at the time here in Texas was approving budgets by line items, and any representative from an area where there was a problem that he didn’t like he could draw a line out. The University of Texas had employed a director of public relations, and he was doing a great job, a fine job. The legislature said though, “Why are we spending money for a man to go out and publicize the University of Texas and get more students in there, therefore, we would have to have more faculty members, and we would have to appropriate more money for buildings and what have you and keep it like this, and he would have to have an assistant when it got bigger and a secretary. So why did we do that?” So the man in that Austin area, Texas University, drew a line through that. And you know, they stopped his salary, and that man got mad and quit. I don’t know why he quit when they knocked his job out.
So, back to mine now. Dr. Flowers said nothing to me about this, and he went ahead and changed my title in the catalog the next year after he came here. Well, when I happened to run across the change, and I went into him and said, “Dr. Flowers, what have I done that you want me to get fired?” He said, “What do you mean?” I said, “Well, you may not know about this.” Because he had come here from Montclair, New Jersey, where he had been president of the teacher’s college in Montclair, New Jersey, and he wasn’t aware of what the legislators thought. And I told him this story. And he said, “Oh my goodness, Pat, I am sorry as I can be.” So he said, “I’ll delete that.” And so after that I was back to Director of Public Services. That is politics.
Lindig: Did you ever run into any problems while you had that title?
Norwood: No, not after that. But that was the only one as far as the title in concerned. No, I enjoyed it very much. Now, what the college was doing was this: after twenty-six years, the head of the education department came by my office one day and said, “Pat, aren’t you getting tired of running around so much?” I drove an average of thirteen thousand miles every nine months for the college, and that was part of my job. And he said, “Aren’t you getting tired?” I said, “I don’t know, what do you mean?” He said, “We have just been authorized to start a program for the training of superintendents, principals, and supervisors. Now, would you come back and begin that program for us? Because you know all the superintendents and principals around here, and you would have an entrée for the internship. Every administrator and supervisor trainee had to have an internship, and you would have an entrée, and they would know you, and you could get in.” I said, “I may be more interested in that than you know,” because I had only eight more years to work. And he went in to see Dr. McCrocklin, who was president at that time, and told him what he wanted. He wanted me to transfer back to the classroom and start this program. And Dr. McCrocklin, as soon as the head of the department left, said, “Lloyd just talked to me about this problem. Now, I am perfectly happy with what you are doing. You can stay right here as long as I am here. But I can see what Lloyd wants because you do have an entrée with these principals and superintendents. Now, you can do what you want to.” I said, “Dr. McCrocklin, I appreciate that more than you will ever know. You tell me which job you want me to do, and I’ll do my best to do it.” He answered with a word that starts with “H.” He said, “Oh, ‘H’ no! This is one decision that you are going to have to make by yourself.” No president could be better to a man than that. Give him a choice. So I chose to go back and start this program, and if I may boast a little bit, within eight years it was rated as a second-best program in the United States by a national organization.
Lindig: Wonderful.
Norwood: But I attribute that to the fact that I had worked with a national professional administration [National Conference of Professors of Educational Administration], a national organization every summer on which I had served as a director for three years. I learned there what they were doing in other schools. And I tried to pick the best ideas from all of these and put them into one lump. And that is what we did.
Lindig: Very interesting.
Norwood: And right now, the superintendent of schools in San Marcos, the superintendent of schools in Kyle, the Hays consolidated school, the superintendent of schools in Luling, the superintendent of schools in Del Valle are our graduates. In Austin, there are eight high schools, and three of the principals are our graduates. The director of the athletic program in Austin is our graduate. We are very happy with what San Marcos has done at Southwest Texas.
End of Side 1, begin Side 2
Lindig: Do you want to start with the Gilmer-Aikin?
Norwood: The 19, I believe it was the legislature of 1947 that set up an interim committee to study the public schools in Texas. And that committee was made up of eighteen people, six from the Senate, six from the House, and six from the public. All appointees. And they set up Dr. L.D. Haskew as official consultant for the committee to get in line. Dr. Haskew was the dean of education of the University of Texas. Now, they started off with a H.A. Moore, Superintendent of Schools in Kerrville at that time, as secretary of the Gilmer-Aikin Committee. But they were organized at the end of the spring term or early summer. But he was elected almost immediately to be superintendent of schools in Greeley, Colorado, and therefore had to leave Texas and could not be the executive secretary any longer. The superintendent of schools in Austin, J.W. Edgar, telephoned me one day and said, “Pat, would you be willing to do a little job for the Gilmer-Aikin Committee.” I said, “Well, J.W., I will be glad to do it.” Because many public schools and college people were doing jobs for them. He said, “Well, would you come up to Austin this afternoon and let us talk to you about it?
I went up, and Dr. Haskew was there and Mr. Edgar and two or three others on the committee. And he started off, J.W. was chairman, and he said, “Pat, H.A. has just been elected Superintendent in Greeley, Colorado. We want to know if you want to take over his job as being the secretary of the Gilmer-Aikin committee.” I said, “J.W., you said a little job.” And he said, “Ha, ha, ha.” I said, “J.W., I don’t know whether I am qualified to do that work or not.” He said, “Let us make the decision about that. We have looked up your record.” I said, “I don’t think I could get loose from the college because I am scheduled to teach next year down at the college.” He said, “You can get loose because we have called Dr. Flowers, and he said you can get loose.” I said, “Well, J.W., why are you asking me all the questions if you have all the answers?” Well, to shorten the whole story, I came back, I told him I would let him know the next day, so I came back to the campus and went to Dr. Wiley, who was head of the education dDepartment, whom I had great confidence in and respected, and I told him the situation. And I said, “What should I do? Would it be beneficial to the college or not?” He said, “Well, it’s twelve of one and thirteen of the other, and you can take it either way. But I know what you are going to do. You are going to take it.” I said, “What makes you think that I am going to take it?” He said, “Because Dr. Flowers want you to.” I said, “Okay, if Dr. Flowers wants me to, I’ll do it.” So, for the last year and a half, I was not executive secretary, but I was the executive agent. Because it didn’t provide some technicality, they called me Executive Agent. Now, my job was to coordinate the work of this committee and all other services and come up with tentative recommendations, which I had to write out, that they passed on in their executive meetings. And I wrote them out, and we published a bulletin that had the tentative proposals for the changing of parts of the public school system, and it was my job to notify all the men when we were going to have a meeting and that sort of thing. For example, one day, the chairman of the committee said to me, “Pat, arrange for a committee somewhere out of Austin where the politicians can’t find us. Don’t let anybody know where we are meeting except the members.” I went to Kerrville and arranged a meeting in a hotel in Kerrville and went up there. We went up there and had our meeting away from the politicians. So that is the way that we worked.
And incidentally, one little interesting thing happened. We had on that committee Senator Gus Straus from Hallettsville who was a Catholic. We were meeting on Friday, and he called me off to one side, and he said, “Pat, before we have lunch today, could you arrange for me to have fish?” And I arranged for Senator Straus to have fish on Friday. In addition to that, all I had to do was empty all the ashtrays and clean up the place. Now that was my executive secretary job. But then after we had the tentative proposals, it was my job to go around all over the state and talk to interested groups and explain the tentative proposals and show how they would work. And I was on the road, night and day, for over six months. Gone from my home, gone from the college.
For example, I had one meeting in North Texas, way up in North Texas, and the next night was scheduled at Katy, the other side of Katy, near Houston. And it had come a sleet storm up there, and I had to come from there almost on skis. But, I made it. And I’ll tell you another story when we are not recording. That is what I had to do. Then after the people of the State of Texas heard these stories, they had to determine what they wanted to do and how they wanted to vote, and so on. For example, I was invited to come out near San Angelo to Ballinger to make an explanation. I went in out there, and the county superintendent thought the Gilmer-Aikin Committee was going to try to do away with the job of county superintendent all over Texas. Mandatory. And he didn’t like what we were doing, and he wanted me to come out there, and he fixed it so that he could get his on there. Well, I got out there about 4:30 and went up to his county courthouse, got up in there and walked past his office, and he was prancing the floor, just like a prospective father in front of the maternity ward, and I walked by, and he happened to see me. “Oh, I’m glad you’re here.” I went in. He said, “I am just wanting to get ready because you go on the air at 5:30 to speak over the air.” I said, “You don’t tell me anything about going on television.” He said, “Do you have your speech ready for the television?” I said, “I don’t have any speech written for anything because I told this so many times that I could have said it in my sleep.” He said, “What will we do, what will we do? That station is expecting it.” I said, “Well, let’s go down and talk to the manager, and we will arrange something.” We went down. He told me at that time, “Now, we have arranged for you a place in the motel tonight, and I want to tell you now that we appreciate your coming out here.” In other words, he wasn’t going to have a thing to do with me when the thing was over because he didn’t want to be associated with me after that. Well, we went down to the radio station, and the manager was worried when I didn’t have my speech written out. I said to him, “Sir, why don’t we have a program like this. I will give you half a dozen questions you can ask me to answer. and I will answer them. And if you find something you want to ask me, just break in and ask. After I have answered your question though, you can break in and ask me the next question if you can think of one.” The manager said, “Oh my goodness, this is better than any speech at all because they will go to sleep with a speech. This is great!” Well, I went down there, we went in, and he asked me some questions. A question was like this: How many school districts and counties in the state don’t pay any local school taxes at all? And you asked me if all of them count, if all of them paid. I can tell you that there were two hundred and sixty-odd districts that did not pay any local school taxes whatsoever. Now, don’t you think that a school district should pay something?
Lindig: Yes.
Norwood: And did you know that there are two complete counties in the State of Texas that don’t raise one dime’s worth of taxes for the public schools? “Oh,” he said, “is that true?” And I said, “Yes, sir, that is, and I can name the counties for you, I can’t name all of the school districts.” And man, we went through that, and when we got through the program, my superintendent, I could see him from the cage that we were in, and he was pacing out here too, still pacing, and when we got through and they switched the station from the office where we were broadcasting over to another office where they were running another record, this manager sat there and said, “Are you going to open up this meeting tonight for questions from the floor?” I said, “Yes, sir.” “I wish I could be there, I wish I weren’t on duty today, tonight.” I said, “Why?” “Because they have questions written out to throw at you tonight. They have questions.” I said, “Good, if they have written them out, they know what they want to ask. If they just pop in their minds it might not be clear.” He said, “Oh, I wish I could be out there.” I said, “Fine, I wish you could too.” I went out the door, and this superintendent didn’t take me out the building, he didn’t let me eat supper, he was walking out there, and here came three big ranchmen in a rural school district walk across the street, and he introduced me to them and them to me. They looked at me like a foreigner, “what are you doing out here?” But I started visiting with them and asking them about their ranching, and we got along fine. They got to talking to me.
But about twenty minutes or so before I was scheduled to be at this meeting, he said, “It is about time, we better get out to the high school.” I said, “Do you have time to step into the drug store here and get me a malted milk? I haven’t had any supper.” He said, “Oh, that is right. I haven’t given you any time to get you some supper.” And I got my malted milk, and we went out there, and we went in the side door, and he had gotten the state representative there and the whole building was full, and three-fourths of them were men. Well, he took me in the side door and took me down and didn’t let me go out on the setting. After I had made my presentation, I knew that he had stacked it against me. But I just gave them the facts, such as these facts that I just told you about—not paying taxes. And I said, “Don’t you think that we ought to arrange for them to pay taxes?” Well anyway, when we got through and sat down, the chairman, who was the chairman of the county board of education, got up and said, “Are there any questions from the floor? Now we’re ready. He says he’ll answer questions. Who has the first question?” To this day I haven’t had a question. Because I had told them the situation in Texas and what we needed for each one of these proposals. And there it is.
For example, the Gilmer-Aikin Committee changed from an appointed state board of education to an elected state board of education. Each congressional district would vote for a member of this state board of education. And we said this. The governor appoints people on the state board of education to whom he owes a political debt, whether that man is qualified or interested in being a member of the board. Now, interestingly, let me digress right here, Governor White through Perot, who was the chairman of the committee, and they tried to abolish the elected state board and go back to an appointed state board by the governor. And that is what has happened now. Governor White appointed the state board. So, if anybody ever listens to this, you can see what kind of history we have in Texas with this board. Now, it is supposed to revert back to this unless it is made permanent by the state legislature. But, I don’t know what will happen. I don’t know.
But anyway, back out to Ballinger. After I got no questions, people came down to the front and said, We didn’t know these things. This changed our minds, we are for this program. And these men were around, and I noticed a woman came elbowing her way in, and she got in close to me, and she said to me, “Listen, I want to ask you if I can use these statements that you have made here. I am the district president of the PTA [Parent Teacher Association], and I am scheduled to make speeches all around this area. I want to use your speech.” I said, “Lady, these are facts. They are not mine, they are public. It is just what has happened here.” “Well, I am making this my speech that we have got to make these reforms out there.” Finally, everyone had left except the janitor and the county superintendent and the local school superintendent. Those two waited for me. Then the country superintendent said to me, “Listen, Mr. Norwood, we want to take you out and give you a good meal tonight. We kept you from having your supper, and we want to buy you the best meal that they have in Ballinger.” I said, “You don’t have to buy me a meal, I am on an expense account.” He said, “No, sir, we kept you from doing it, and you gave us a talk, and we are going to do it.” So I said, “I’ll eat your meal.” And we went out, they went with me and bought me the best steak in West Texas, and we had a good time there. We had no trouble passing these reforms because we had given them the facts, and they saw what they were. Now, I told you that story because you said you wanted some interesting stories about the Gilmer-Aiken, and that is it. That is the way we went. I had experiences like that, not all that dramatic, all over the state of Texas. Then I had to write up the final proposals that had been adopted up here at the Capitol. We had met in the House of Representatives, and my office was in the House of Representatives in the Capitol building, and we met in there, and they were approved. And it was jammed full of people. And after it was over, the chairman of the Gilmer-Aikin Committee, Senator Taylor, and I were still there, I had to empty all the ash trays, you know, and take care of that, and I had asked them, “Now, how do you want me to work?”
End Tape 1, begin Tape 2 (Side 3)
Norwood: We were saying that I had asked Senator Taylor how I should work, in other words, what did he want me to do next. He was telling me to publish these, to put these into a bulletin and distribute them. But while we were standing there, Dean Pittinger came out of nowhere, I hadn’t seen him anywhere, I hadn’t seen him around; he was a member of the committee. He walked up to Senator Taylor and said, “Senator, I want to apologize to you.” “What do you mean Dean, what do you mean?” “Well, I owe you an apology. Don’t you remember what happened in the governor’s office when the Gilmer-Aikin Committee was organized?” He said, “No, sir, I don’t remember.” “Well, I’ll tell you. When the governor was chairman to offer the permanent chairman, and a member of the house moved that Senator Taylor be made the chairman, and he got a second from a senator, and a man made a motion that we close nominations, and we elect him by acclamation, and when that happened, you remember, I stood up and said, ‘Wait a minute you are just moving too fast. You know good and well that if Senator Taylor is elected Chairman, this committee won’t be worth a dime because we know that he has done some things that public school teachers don’t like, so you better not elect him because I warn you, it is killed right now.’ Well, Senator Taylor, I was wrong. You have led this research and these proposals. You have done an excellent job, and I want to tell you that I am sorry I said it, and I want to congratulate you on what you have done.” Then Dean Pittinger left, and when he left Senator Taylor turned to me and said, “Well, that is that. That is exactly what he did, but that is one reason this has been a success. I vowed after he said that about me, I vowed that we were going to make a good study, and we were going to give some very excellent proposals to Texas if it took my right arm. I would do it. It will kill me politically, but I am going to do it.” Now, that is something that many people don’t know happened up there. That happened in the House of Representatives, and I was listening to it. Now, it is true Senator Taylor was in line to run for the governorship. He never held another office. But he did this job.
(Telephone Interruption)
Norwood: Instead of having a board appointed by governor and then this board, which was a politically-appointed board, would try to run the schools in Texas, the State Superintendent of Schools was elected by the people of Texas, and he was the executive secretary of the board. Now, if the superintendent proposed something to these board members that the board members didn’t like, they would say, You can’t do this. The superintendent would say, “I’ll do this because I am not responsible to you. You didn’t elect me. The people of Texas elected me.” So, you see, you had a conflict between the superintendent and the state board of education. And they could not work together. If anything of great importance should come up, the state board did not control the superintendent. So, the superintendent, instead of being a superintendent of schools, they called him a “commissioner of education,” and this elective state board appointed a commissioner of education. Now, if he didn’t do what he was supposed to, the state board that was elected by us, by the people and not appointed by the governor, could say, “You get in line or out you go.” See? But nowadays, we still have a commissioner, he is still called the commissioner, but he is appointed by this board that is politically-appointed by the governor. And so appointment, appointment. Now, this is a personal matter. If I am not qualified to vote for, to vote intelligently for a member of the State Board of Education, I am not intelligent enough to vote for the governor. So, that is the way I feel about it. And this came out of our study and the Gilmer-Aikin committee.
After this little experience I have told you about Dean Pittinger, I compiled the recommendations into a bulletin and made it available to anybody in the State of Texas that wanted to read it, and we went to the legislature, and the legislator passed all of the recommendations. I don’t know of a one that they altered from this study. After the legislator met, the day that it met, this interim committee was automatically dissolved. Therefore, my job was out, you see. Now the Gilmer-Aikin Committee had been granted $25,000 to make this study. Only $25,000. Nowadays, they want $125,000 or more. When I got through checking up the books, paying all bills, etcetera, I had over $1,300 left out of the 25,000 for a two-year study. So I went to the Secretary of the Senate to turn in this money. She said, “What is this?” “This is the balance that we have not spent for the Gilmer-Aikin Committee.” She said, “What? I don’t know. This has never happened. No committee has ever failed to spend all of its money. What is wrong?” And I said, “I don’t care if nobody else has. I have $1,300 that goes back to the State of Texas, and I am not going to go through Huntsville, the penitentiary, for $1,300.” She said, “I’ll find some way to do it, but this is unusual.” And I expect it is. But the Gilmer-Aikin Committee had over $1,300 left after a two-year study.
I have been asked to say a few words about my work in the Rotary Club. I came to the Rotary Club in the fall of 1925. The next year, 1926–27, I was elected secretary/treasurer of the club, and I started in my work there with the Rotary Club. And for four years I was secretary for the club, and then they made me president of the club, and that took me out of the secretary’s job. Then I served that year, and about three of four years later, the club wanted to get Gene Scrutchin, who was president of Scrutchin Motor Company here, to be president of the Rotary Club. He came into my office and said, “Pat, those guys want me to be president of the Rotary Club, but I told them I won’t do it unless you are secretary.” I said, “Well, Gene, I have been secretary, and I don’t need to be secretary any more. I have been president. Let some of the other fellows get that experience.” “No,” and he used a little bit of profanity, “I will not be president unless you will be secretary because you have studied about Rotary and you know what it is about.” I said, “All right, Gene, doggone your hide, you are not going to get out of being president for that reason. If the men will have me for secretary, I’ll take it. But I’ll tell you, you are going to be the president. And I’ll just be the secretary. Now, I’ll tell you Rotary regulations and rules and that sort of thing, but I am not going to be the president.”
And so it was done, they elected us. That man led us that year in two of the finest things in San Marcos I think. For example, he said that the City of San Marcos did not have one foot of river frontage for a park in San Marcos. And he found a man who owned twenty-nine acres with a river frontage. He got him to promise to sell it to us to the club. Gene Scrutchin tried to get the City Council to buy the land, but they said, No, it is too expensive, and we don’t need a public park. So he, Gene Scrutchin, contacted the other three clubs in San Marcos, namely Kiwanis Club, Lion’s Club, and Junior Chamber of Commerce. He made a deal with them, asked if they would help pay for the annual payments on this property. And they did, and they agreed to it. He went to Austin and got a non-profit charter from the State of Texas, Secretary of State, and brought it down so that we could be a non-profit organization so that we could buy this land. Now, the reason I know this is because the president and secretary of each of these four clubs had to sign this charter, and I was secretary, and I signed it, and I usually read things before I sign. So I knew what it was. It was purchased, and four years later, it had become so popular that the City Council said that they would take it over and they would buy it from them. Now, this property is down here, just south of the college park, and there is a building on it, a city recreation center, and that is built right on top of the property that the Rotary Club initiated the purchase of in 1945–46. Now, it became so popular that the City of San Marcos now has gone ahead, and it has quite a bit of frontage up and down the river, and they have built some parks for softball and what have you. And they did not have any before. And I say that the San Marcos Rotary Club under the leadership under Gene Scrutchin made it possible for the people of San Marcos to have.
Now, the next thing that he did that year was San Marcos did not have a fat stock show. Did not have it at all. So he contacted the proper school authorities and got the kids interested in feeding out cattle, chickens, hogs, and what-have-you, and the San Marcos Rotary Club put on this program. Now, I was secretary and knew what was happening. And in the spring, [we] had a sale, you always have to have a sale you know, and he said, “Now Pat, I’ll tell you what. I am going to give $5 for the first ranking, number one, $3 for number two, and $1 for number three in the ranking. I want you to go over to First National Bank and get silver dollars because when these boys and girls have silver dollars, they will rattle them and they will feel better, you know. They will have something.” Have you ever tried to carry a bunch of silver dollars?
Lindig: No, I haven’t.
Norwood: It is fun. Two trips. I had to be the secretary and pay this out. Now, Rotarians: he moved out all the second-hand cars from under his shed, and the kids brought their animals to that shed, and Rotarians came with cots and slept there with the kids Friday night before the sale on Saturday and carried it on. Now, he got two men from San Antonio to come up here and bid on these animals and fowls. Now, they were the Freeman Brothers, and the Freeman Brothers owned two ranches on the highway to Wimberley. Now, one of those men has given his ranch to the university, Southwest Texas State University. He was there, and they bid on these animals. And he thought it was such a good idea [that] those two brothers, they went back to San Antonio, and they built the Freeman Coliseum as a direct result of the enthusiasm gained here by the San Marcos Rotary Club, and now you have read in your papers every year about the Freeman Coliseum down there and where they have their fat stock show and other things too. So, I am very pleased to have worked with this man who did this. Now, I was elected in 1950 governor of this Rotary District and served the year ’51 in this district. I don’t know of anything much I did, I just served. Some of the men in the district made out like I did something. I was doing it for the college, and it was public relations, but I didn’t want the legislature to know it was public relations. I could say some other things that the Rotary Club did, and I did not have too much to do with the other things. For example, the Scheib Opportunity Center here in San Marcos. I don’t know if you have ever heard of it here. The Scheib Opportunity Center is for children who are mentally handicapped. They have problems and need to be taken care of every day. Dr. Willie Scheib, a physician, was a Rotarian and was chairman of the subcommittee, and he did some really fine things, and he initiated the establishment of the Scheib Opportunity Center where people who have boys and girls who are retarded can go out and get experience. And to give you one thing, one man and his wife sent their retarded boy out there, and they were so elated one day when he came home because he had learned to tie his shoes. Rotary in action.
End of interview