Oral History Transcript - William C Pool - November 13, 1985
Interview with Dr. William C. Pool
Interviewer: Kent A. Krchank
Transcriber: Kent A. Krchnak
Date of Interview: November 13, 1985
Location: Dr. Pool’s Office, Taylor-Murphy Building,
Texas State University, San Marcos, TX
_____________________
Begin Tape 1, Side 1
Kent A. Krchnak: Testing one, two, three. Testing one, two, three. November 13, 1985. This is Kent Krchnak interviewing Dr. William Pool of the Department of History at Southwest Texas State University. It is November 13, 1985, at Dr. Pool’s office in the Taylor-Murphy History Building at Southwest Texas in San Marcos, Texas. Dr. Pool, when did you begin teaching here at Southwest Texas?
William C. Pool: I came here in September 1947.
Krchnak: So you’ve almost been here forty years?
Pool: Almost forty years.
Krchnak: Exactly how did you get the job teaching here at Southwest Texas?
Pool: Well, I was about to finish my doctorate at the University of Texas in Austin, and Dr. James Taylor needed someone and came to the history department there, and they recommended me. He came out and talked to me, and I wasn’t too eager in coming down. I wanted to finish my degree as soon as possible. Dr. Eugene Barker and Walter P. Webb and others talked me into it. [They said] so when you get a degree, so you can get a job; if you can get a job before you can get your degree, go ahead and take it, so I did. Lo and behold, I’ve been here ever since.
Krchnak: So it’s been an enjoyable experience for you?
Pool: Very enjoyable, very enjoyable. I wouldn’t change much of anything if I had to change. [If I] had a chance, I wouldn’t do it.
Krchnak: Since you’ve been here at Southwest Texas how do you feel that the students have changed the most in that period of time?
Pool: That’s a difficult question to answer. It seems to me like in the forties and fifties that our students were a little bit better prepared when they got here and just a little more interested in trying to do a good job while here and after they graduated and went on. I don’t know. I don’t know the cause of this, but I think overall they were much better students than the ones I’ve had for the last two [or] three years here at the school.
Krchnak: When you came to Southwest Texas, this was following World War II.
Pool: Yes.
Krchnak: I understand that there was a Student Veterans Association.
Pool: Yes.
Krchnak: Could you tell me something about it?
Pool: I was faculty sponsor of the Student Veterans Association for several years. Most of the male students, at least half or more, were members of the Student Veterans Association, the SVA. They had the old coffee shop up in Old Main down at the end of the hallway on the first floor. That was their source of funds for the most part. That pretty well ran student affairs here at the school for four or five years, 1947 through ’52 or ’53, along in there. [They were the] most prominent, active organization on the campus. [It] had some fine characters in it. [I] knew them well.
Krchnak: How many students were at the school following the war?
Pool: [It] seems to me like in the long term between 1,800 and 1,900. In the summer school [there were] 1,200 to 1,300.
Krchnak: So it was fairly small at that time.
Pool: Very small. Everyone knew everyone. [The] faculty knew the students, and the students knew the faculty.
Krchnak: When did the school really start to take off in its growth?
Pool: I think you can say that after Lyndon Johnson became vice president in 1961 and then, of course, soon to be president, the school really began to grow, numerically, headcount wise, and it has continued of course every year—
Krchnak: Uh-huh.
Pool: —from the mid-sixties down, of course, to the present time.
Krchnak: I understand that you wrote a book on Lyndon Johnson.
Pool: Yes, with Dave Conrad and Emmie Craddock. We did a little biographical account of Lyndon up to the time he became a politician. It was on his family background, his school days here at SWT in the twenties and early thirties, and his year-and-a-half or two years teaching in the public schools of Texas.
Krchnak: Did you personally know Lyndon Johnson?
Pool: Yes, I knew him, not real well, but certainly a handshaking friend in political rallies and when he visited the campus here as senator and even as vice president. Yeah, I knew him.
Krchnak: Do you have any particular feelings towards him?
Pool: I voted for him. I thought he was tough, tough-minded, and [he] made a fine president. His Great Society, his difficulty to talk—I think if he had any difficulties at all, it was in foreign affairs. [He] got involved in that Vietnam War and didn’t quite know how to get out of it. That probably did more than anything else during his administration to drive him to the wall and cause him, I think, to decide not to be a candidate again—
Krchnak: Uh-huh.
Pool: —in ’68. I believe that’s true.
Krchnak: I understand that in 1968 that you were co-chairman with Bob Barton of the Hays County Citizens to Elect Humphrey and Muske.
Pool: Yes, and also along with Ernest Morgan [I was] co-chairman of the JFK-LBJ campaign in 1960—
Krchnak: Uh-huh.
Pool: —and then Bob and I in ’68. [We] certainly did do all that we could do to try to elect Hubert Humphrey. I think it’s a tragedy that Hubert Humphrey was never President of the United States, and Muske.
Krchnak: What exactly did y’all do serving on—trying to get Humphrey elected?
Pool: Try to have some political rallies of course, with guest speakers. [We did the] same old thing as every year.
Krchnak: Uh-huh.
Pool: [We would try to] get the vote out on election day [and] try to transport people to the ballot box and raise money for the campaign in Texas.
Krchnak: It was a close election that year.
Pool: Very close.
Krchnak: Uh-huh.
Pool: I really think if Humphrey had had another three weeks, he might have closed the gap on Richard Nixon. [He] just couldn’t quite do it.
Krchnak: You’ve had other involvements, I understand, in politics in this area. Did you serve on the city council?
Pool: [I] served three terms on the city council in the 1960s—
Krchnak: Uh-huh.
Pool: —beginning about 1962. It would have been until about 1966. That was a unique experience. I learned things they don’t tell you in government classes without city government.
Krchnak: At this time when you were on the city council, did you serve on the San Marcos Equal Opportunity Committee?
Pool: Yes, I sure did. In fact, I was, I guess, one of the more significant members of that committee. We did all that we could do to push equal rights on minority groups in this town and this community. Sure.
Krchnak: There were a lot of problems with discrimination in San Marcos.
Pool: Probably not as severe as in other places, but yes, it existed. Sure did. Cafes weren’t integrated, motels weren’t integrated, and I’m proud to say that we did all that we could do to integrate them, and did as time passed. That took up quite a bit of my time back in the sixties. I was much more active politically then than I am now. I didn’t have any more time then, but I was younger and had more energy.
Krchnak: Uh-huh.
Pool: I think.
Krchnak: What were some of the major issues the city council faced while you served?
Pool: Let me see if I can think. [They were] acquiring the airport, traffic control downtown, the opening of the eastern part of Ranch Road 12 out to IH-35, the widening of Sessom Drive around the school, the new sewage plant, which is absolutely necessary and almost inadequate from the time it was finished, but we had to have it. Things like that. Typical growing city problems—
Krchnak: Uh-huh.
Pool: —or problems of a growing city. Let me rephrase that.
Krchnak: So it sounded like y’all stayed busy most of the time.
Pool: Stayed busy. The phone rang all the time.
Krchnak: What exactly was the Urban Renewal Project on the San Marcos River?
Pool: I forgot about that. That was one of our major projects and one of the most controversial too. The Urban Renewal Project was simply trying to beautify the San Marcos River, virtually from the bridge on University, what’s now University Drive, all the way down to IH-35. I think it was very successful. We acquired all of that property from the owners at the time. Although we still have a long way to go to develop all of it, it has parkland potential for a long time to come. Yes, we fought that urban renewal battle daily and weekly all during those years.
Krchnak: So you feel that it was a success?
Pool: I think so. I think it was an unqualified success.
Krchnak: You also served as the baseball coach here at Southwest Texas for a number of years? Is that correct?
Pool: Yes, off and on. Baseball’s one of my avocations. We had a fine team back in the student veteran days in ’48, ’49, and ’50, ’51. Then the Korean War came along and that sort of squelched it. Then we started university varsity ball in 1957, I believe, the spring of 1957, and it lasted until the year 1969 and ’70 when it was canceled out. We tried to start again as a club team in 1967, I believe it was, and finally after six long, hard years, [we] managed to get a NCAA varsity team, which we have now. Yes, I worked in that. I certainly did.
Krchnak: Was it enjoyable for you?
Pool: It was enjoyable. It was time-consuming. [It was] very enjoyable and sometimes a real financial hassle to try to keep our heads above water financially. We made it with the help of some good people downtown simply by subscription method—donations.
Krchnak: Uh-huh.
Pool: We were able to do it.
Krchnak: Did any of the students receive scholarships for playing baseball?
Pool: Not until two years ago. Since then, we have some of them on scholarship—
Krchnak: Uh-huh.
Pool: —a limited number of course. The money goes into football, as you know, everyone knows.
Krchnak: How do you feel that this area, San Marcos and Hays County, has changed the most over the last forty years?
Pool: I think with the advent of people in the area—population growth.
Krchnak: Uh-huh.
Pool: This idea of a strip city from Austin to San Antonio isn’t too far-fetched. In fact, we virtually have it. The whole area, the Hill Country—all the way to the Austin lakes was certainly virgin territory in comparison to what it is today. Tens of thousands of people have moved into this area, [the] so-called part of the Sun Belt of Texas. While we like to grow, and we like to grow numerically and financially, of course, increased population brings problems. They’re some of the major problems that we face today in this area, as is quite evident every time you pick up an area newspaper and read.
Krchnak: What changes do you anticipate in the future?
Pool: I don’t know. Continued growth, no doubt, population-wise, continued financial growth, probably some increased industry, not too much I hope. Pressures will be brought to bear on municipal and county governments with regard to waste disposal, which you see in the Austin area and here too, even now. These are problems we have to face up to and try to find the solutions for. It’s not going to be easy. It’s going to be costly. We have to adjust.
Krchank: Uh-huh.
Pool: I think.
Krchnak: You’ve always been active politically, and I know that you had served on the committee in 1968 with Bob Barton. So [have] you known him for a number of years?
Pool: I’ve known Bob ever since he was a student here at Southwest Texas State. We’ve been great friends. We think alike, and we vote alike. We fraternize with each other, and he’s just been a great friend for a long, long time.
Krchnak: I’d like to ask you about some of the people that have been here at Southwest Texas, say, over the last forty years since you’ve been here. What are your reflections of Dr. James Taylor?
Pool: Everyone liked Jimmy Taylor. He was a redheaded Irishman and could be tough both as an administrator and to students in class. He had a heart of gold, really, and one of the most fascinating individuals I’ve ever known, and he and I were friends too. He built the history department almost from scratch when he came here the year before I did—in 1946. I don’t think we had but three real historians on the staff. The department experienced great growth during his tenure as chairman of the Division of Social Sciences, it was called then, as you know. We finally got a separate history department years later. Jimmy brought all the old-timers here and managed to keep us. So he deserves immense credit for a job well done. He certainly did. He does.
Krchnak: Did you know Dr. Retta Murphy?
Pool: Oh yes, real well. She was a tower strength, a real tower strength in the department. Fine historian. Fine personality. [She had] a fine dry wit that was almost unbelievable. Yes, we all loved Retta Murphy. Sure did.
Krchnak: What about Dr. John Flowers?
Pool: Oh yes. Dr. Flowers was so sincere in what he was doing. I don’t know what to say about him. We all liked him at the time. He was a benevolent dictator. Let me put it this way. He ran the school, and he never let anyone forget it. He didn’t have the funds that we’ve had since. So campus development lagged behind a little bit for reasons, which are apparent, of course, to everyone who lived through the period. Flowers did a good job. He really did a good job, and he too, in the years that followed World War II, he too built the school from a very small institution when the people started coming back from the war to a sizable school when he retired in 1960—I believe it would have been ’64. He did all right for us. I remember him well.
Krchnak: What about Jim McCrocklin?
Pool: Oh, I don’t know. I’m biased there. I shouldn’t say anything I guess. He could have been fine, but we thought he had committed a cardinal sin on that doctoral dissertation up at the University of Texas. A bunch of people, and I was one of them, proved it on him. So I don’t think there’s any other solution except to let him go.
Krchnak: What about Lee Smith?
Pool: I never did know Lee very well. Lee was too busy to have any time for people in departments. He did his thing, and we did our thing. Sometimes I thought there wasn’t much connection between the two. I don’t know what to say about Lee Smith.
Krchnak: What about our present president here, Robert Hardesty?
Pool: He’s nice. He’s easygoing. He has the personality. He leaves us alone. He does great things in the public relations field that are just unsurpassed when you compare him to other presidents that I’ve known here, and that’s what a president should be. I’m very satisfied with Bob. He’s doing a great job. [He] certainly is.
Krchnak: Back to your teaching here at Southwest. Do you have a particular philosophy on how you teach?
Pool: Philosophy?
Krchnak: Uh-huh.
Pool: On how I teach. Well, I don’t know that I do. I try to stay informed on my topic. [I] try to bring information to my classes that run a little bit deeper than the textbook because you really have to get out of the textbook to really find the interests in history, and believe me, it’s there. It’s just not always written up in the printed word by these authors of textbooks. I try to make the class interesting [while] at the same time cover the information in both American and Southwestern American history. I try to do the best job I can do.
Krchnak: What all courses have you taught over the years here?
Pool: Oh gosh. Thy survey course, of course, the survey course in American history, Western European history in the early days every year, diplomatic history, constitutional history, the American West, and finally Texas and the Southwest.
Krchnak: So you’ve had a wide variety of courses you’ve taught.
Pool: Wide variety. Right. Back in the old days, we always had a course too in sophomore government, [which is] now called political science.
Krchank: Uh-huh.
Pool: Of course.
Krchnak: Dr. Pool, I understand that you were a pilot during World War II. Could you reflect on that?
Pool: That’s long ago. Yes, I went through—(coughs) excuse me. Sorry to mess you up. I went through aviation cadet training in the early 1940s because I didn’t want to walk and carry a pack on my back. I finished in early ’44 and went directly to China-Burma-India and flew over there for twelve months. During that time, I flew an old C-47 Douglas Aircraft, [which was] one of the finest airplanes, I think, ever invented and ever used by the Air Force. We carried all the supplies into Burma and China that the ground forces and the Air Force and the air corps ever had in China then. There were no roads. Everything had to go over those mountains by air, and that was our job. After somewhere between eight hundred and twelve hundred hours of combat time, we were rotated home. When I got home in the summer of 1945, I had enough quality points to get out if I chose to do so. I chose to leave the service and went back to school at the University of Texas and started work on my MA and doctorate. After I had been here for a couple of years, three years, in 1951 the Korean War—they called me back in, and this time I was a pilot instructor in a B-25 and a T-6 at Vance Air force Base in Enid, Oklahoma. That was another twenty-one month hitch in the service. I came home in December 1953 and resigned my reserve commission so things like that would never happen again. I’ve been here ever since.
Krchnak: You later had a private plane of your own, didn’t you?
Pool: I had a little ninety horsepower low-hang air coupe. I enjoyed it thoroughly. [I] flew all over Texas in it. [I] never did take a long trip because you didn’t have much speed, and if you had adverse wind conditions, you didn’t make much speed over the ground. I made extensive trips to Abilene, Fort Worth, Houston, [and other] areas around Texas. [I] enjoyed it immensely. It’s a fine way to travel if the weather’s good. If the weather isn’t good, you’re in trouble. (Laughs)
Krchnak: Could you talk some about the assassination of John F. Kennedy?
Pool: Oh no, that would take us for the rest of the week (laughs). It just—just say that we don’t know anything really for real. We’re not sure what happened up at Dallas that day, and after twenty-odd years, I don’t think we’ll ever find out.
Krchnak: That’s true.
Pool: I think it’s a moot question today. You might as well accept what we do know and the areas about which we’ll never know. There’s no need to work on that anymore. I still know people who are digging on it almost constantly. There’s no use. It’s all over and done with.
Krchnak: Could I ask you, do you have a certain political philosophy that you abide by?
Pool: I think you can say that, for whatever it’s worth, that I’ve been a lifelong Democrat. My first presidential election at age twenty-one was Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1940. I supported him, of course, and Truman—Mr. Truman, I think, may have been the last of the honest, courageous presidents that we’ve had. I voted for Adlai Stevenson twice in the fifties, John F. Kennedy in 1960, Lyndon Johnson in ’64, Humphrey in ’68, McGovern in ’72 — [In] ’76, who would it have been? Carter.
Krchnak: Uh-huh.
Pool: I’m one of the few, I guess, that didn’t vote for Ronald Regan either time. Whatever the Democratic Party stands for, I think we’re more humanitarian. We have the interest of the common man and maybe the working man, the forgotten man, as Franklin Roosevelt phrased it. We do more at heart than the Republicans do. I have many friends who are Republican. We don’t quarrel. I’m a philosophical democrat with a small “d” in the old Thomas Jefferson sense of the definition at the time.
Krchnak: Do you think Hays County is changing politically?
Pool: I think so. I think the student enrollment has a lot to do with it too. Many of the young students vote Republican. The influx of people from the North has changed a great deal the political makeup of Hays County. Sure, no doubt about it.
Krchnak: How do you view the future of the Democratic Party in Texas?
Pool: I don’t know. I believe in a two-party state. I think it makes for better politics. I think we have a dearth of leadership in the Democratic group as well as in the Republican group, for that matter. I think there isn’t any essential differences on the state level sometimes. There isn’t much difference in the two parties. It’s sort of six of one, half a dozen of the other. I would still vote Democratic.
Krchnak: How do you feel about Governor Mark White?
Pool: Well, I know him, and I like him. I think he’s made some mistakes in the educational reform bill last summer. I know he’s alienated the public school people in the state. I don’t know. He’s dynamic, and he makes a good appearance. He makes a good speech. Just how deep his political convictions run, I don’t know. I would prefer him over Bill Clements or anyone else the opposition has on the horizon right now.
Krchnak: Do you feel that Governor White will be reelected next year?
Pool: I think he’ll be re-nominated, and I think the general election will be a real tough battle for him. I really think so. Whoever the Republicans come up with, I think it will be close. It’ll be tough and probably a little bit mean along with it.
Krchnak: Exactly what aspects of the education reform bill are you not in agreement with?
Pool: Well, I don’t know, I just hear people talking. Evidently, in the public schools, it’s the career ladder concept that has caused so much grief in the ranks. I think this no pass-no play thing is just fantastic. We ought to not only keep that but enforce it and keep those dumb athletes out of higher education. I don’t agree with the coaches association on that. The no pass-no play or no performance, whatever type of activity, that’s fine if you’ll motivate these young students to do better in the schools. A career ladder is what the public school people are so dissatisfied with. It’s sort of an ex post facto law in that it covers their cases of long ago. [It covers] not only just the current generation that are finishing school. People that have been out of school for a long, long time have to go through this, whatever it is. I try to keep out of it and keep quiet about it.
Krchnak: What does the future hold in store for you?
Pool: I don’t really know. I’m going to try to make it at least one more year.
Krchnak: [That will] make it forty years.
Pool: [I will try to] get to a nice round figure. Yeah, forty. Then I don’t know. I’d have to have a part-time job, as long as my health holds up. I’d play some golf and baseball and do a little bit of traveling. I’d have a little bit more freedom to travel. I like to go to England and Scotland whenever I can. I have no great desire to really go anywhere else much. I do like the British Isles. [I’d] take it easy. [I’d] do some writing. I have at least material researched for three more books. All I need is time to sit down and put the story together. That would certainly occupy part of my time.
Krchnak: I understand that one of the books you’ve written is on Eugene Barker.
Pool: Yes.
Krchnak: Could you reflect on him?
Pool: Dr. Barker was my major professor in the history department at the University of Texas. Like historians sometimes are, he was a controversial figure. He was very anti-Roosevelt, very anti-New Deal, and I thought he was misunderstood by a lot of Texans. So I decided to try to pull together all the information that I could on him, and it wasn’t too difficult because it was a lot, and do a little biography of him. I think that’s a well-balanced book, in fact. I don’t take sides with anything. It just sort of tells the truth as it was. Dr. Barker was our first great Texas historian. He did more between 1910 and about 1938 or ’39 for Texas history than any two people in that state have ever done. Therein lays his significance in the profession. He was a fine fellow.
Krchnak: How do you feel about the school of education here at Southwest Texas?
Pool: I think it’s like schools of education all over the United States. Absolutely worthless! That’s all I’m going to say. (Laughs) Okay.
Krchnak: Dr. Pool, do you have any closing comments you’d like to add on anything concerning Hays County or San Marcos?
Pool: No, not really. Maybe about Southwest Texas State University. I’ve enjoyed my forty years here immensely. I’d glad it’s all happened to me. I have never really had any desire in many, many, many years to go anywhere else to teach. I’m going to finish my career right here. If I had it all to do over again, I think I’d do it the same way. Okay?
Krchnak: Okay.
Pool: Good.
Krchnak: Thanks a lot for the interview.
Pool: Yeah, sure, absolutely.
Krchnak: This is Kent Krchnak. This concludes the interview with Dr. William Pool on November 13, 1985.
End of interview