Oral History Transcript - William C Pool - December 3, 1991
Interview with William Pool
Interviewer: Mary A. Allen
Transcriber: Mary A. Allen
Date of Interview: December 3, 1991
Location: [not stated]
Ms. Mary A. Allen: this is December 3, 1991. My interest is in the history department at Southwest Texas. I believe you taught there beginning in the forties for a short time.
Dr. William Pool: I came in 1947.
Ms. Allen: Would you tell me a little bit about the people that were there at the time, who hired you, and the circumstance surrounding–
Dr. Pool: Jimmy Taylor hired me for one year, and here I am. [laughter] I retired in 1984 which I guess would be thirty-nine years.
Ms. Allen: Now you were teaching in the spring of 1986 because that was my first year.
Dr. Pool: Okay, spring of 1986.
Ms. Allen: I think Ms. Fitzpatrick has retired formally, but she still teaches a class. Who was there as faculty when you began, Dr. Pool.
Dr. Pool: Well, it was the division of social science, but let’s skip the economics and poli sci people and just get down to history. It would be Jimmy Taylor, Cecil Hahn, and me in pure history.
Ms. Allen: Was Retta Murphy still there?
Dr. Pool: Yes, Retta was still active. Let’s don’t forget about her.
Ms. Allen: Did Jimmy Taylor teach? I know he was the head of the social science division, but did he also teach?
Dr. Pool. Yes, he also taught. Back in those days we taught five classes. They were small, not too many total students but we taught fifteen hours.
Ms. Allen: Where were the classes taught?
Dr. Pool: In Old Main.
Ms. Allen: Seems like the history department has moved around.
Dr. Pool: We really have moved, frequently.
Ms. Allen: do you have any idea about how many history majors there would have been when you came or in your earlier years.
Dr. Pool: I would say ten or less. We had a total of about fifteen hundred students for a long time.
Ms. Allen: At that time, I suppose the emphasis was on teaching teachers. Is that correct?
Dr. Pool: Correct
Ms. Allen: The department itself has been impacted by certain particular events. I wonder if you would reflect on any particular events that might have caused a ripple. I have in mind for instance the Viet Nam era. Did that cause any problem for historians?
Dr. Pool: Not really no. Jimmy Taylor and I were called back into the Korean conflict for twenty-one months. That would be back in 1951 and part of 1952.
Ms. Allen: Who headed up that division in his absence?
Dr. Pool: I think Cecil Hahn, but I’d have to check. That was a long time ago.
Ms. Allen: Was he [Taylor] also Air Force?
Dr. Pool: Yes.
Ms. Allen: Did you know Dr. Taylor before you came here?
Dr. Pool: No, I didn’t.
Ms. Allen: Presidents, university presidents. Did the change in the administrations cause problems? Did you have a particular president that was good for the department?
Dr. Pool: Old Dr. Flowers was fine in his way. He did what he thought should be done on every occasion. And of course, he was followed by McCrocklin. I don’t want to get into that.
Ms. Allen: That was a pretty divisive incident in the whole university.
Dr. Pool: He’s the one who plagiarized his doctoral dissertation, and we finally proved it on him.
Ms. Allen: I was unaware of that until some of these interviews. I had no idea that anything like that had taken place.
Dr. Pool: Yeah, he was a real no-no from the word go. And split the faculty right down the middle, and there are people still in town, living, retired now from other departments that have very little to say to me because I was on the committee or team – or whatever you want to call it – to get rid of McCrocklin.
Ms. Allen: Doesn’t plagiarism strike at the very heart of the university?
Dr. Pool: We tell our students not to cheat. And here our president did it long before he came here.
Ms. Allen: What was his response to that? Did he deny it?
Dr. Pool: Yes, he denied it and denied it and denied it until there wasn’t anything to deny and the Board of Regents let him go, which is what they should have done. He was an operator. I guess if he’d stayed here, I would have gone somewhere.
Ms. Allen: I understand he’s in real estate out in the Wimberley area.
Dr. Pool: Yeah, he went bankrupt. Section 11, bankruptcy code and I think took one of the banks down with him, so I don’t know what his status is now.
Ms. Allen: In the last five years, I bet a lot of many real estate people went belly up.
Dr. Pool: That’s true. Then Billy Mac Jones, and he did a pretty good job all in all. He brought Tug Wilson here, he and I together did, and that was a point in our favor. And then he thought he wanted to do better things and he didn’t stay. And Lee Smith didn’t do very much except talk, talk, talk. But Bob Hardesty was a good president.
Ms. Allen: He was president before President Supple. I have a class with one of his sons, a graduate history class. Seems like a fine young man. The statistics tell me that minorities in the faculty have been underrepresented.
Dr. Pool: I think so.
Ms. Allen: I don’t think that has been a deliberate plan.
Dr. Pool: No, there is nothing deliberate about it, but that’s true.
Ms. Allen: I’m interested in the few women that have been there with good tenure; they seem to have been very strong.
Dr. Pool: hey were. Emmie Craddock, Betty Kissler still are strong. They did a great job. And Merry FitzPatrick. And Retta Murphy, oh, gosh. She was something else. She was a goodie. She wasn’t afraid of anything or anyone.
Ms. Allen: I heard she could be an imposing figure, an imposing presence.
Dr. Pool: Yes, she could. I remember her with great fondness.
Ms. Allen: About your offices. Did you share offices and work together?
Dr. Pool: In the early years we shared offices. Dr. Taylor and I officed in the same place for several years and then finally we moved over to Evans Academic Center, and we had private offices.
Ms. Allen: What do you think some of the strongest attributes of the department as a whole would be? How would you describe it?
Dr. Pool: Stability. Knowledge of subject matter and I guess ability in the classroom.
Ms. Allen: Given the tenure of so many faculty members, I would think that would have to be the case. What would be the weakest point? Where do you think it needed help? If there was a place.
Dr. Pool: I don’t think we needed any help really. There may have been a weakness that I don’t know about, but it’s always been a very strong department.
Ms. Allen: How do you view the students? Has there been a change over time during your tenure, from the beginning of you career until you retired?
Dr. Pool: Oh, I think so. Students back in the old days had purpose, most of them knew it was and they carried through. But so many of these students today don’t care. They don’t really care whether they learn a whole lot or not. The least they can get by with is the road they take. That’s been my observation, and I hear that from others, too.
Ms. Allen: I see some of that in my own children and wonder why. I don’t know why.
Dr. Pool: I don’t know why either, and I see it in my grandsons. I can’t explain it, can you?
Ms. Allen: No. I always enjoyed learning.
Dr. Pool: I always enjoyed my teaching. I think I knew what I was talking about, and I think I knew how to put it over to the students.
Ms. Allen: I enjoyed your class.
Dr. Pool: Good. We didn’t rush too much, pointed out the things that needed to be pointed out.
Ms. Allen: Do you have some good stories you’d like to share with me on some of you[r] colleagues? This is not an expose, something humorous.
Dr. Pool: I'll say this, that I know that at least two people who left here and haven't been with us now in years that wish they had never gone. They wish they had stayed right here. Of course, they did leave for different reasons and David Conrad is one, Southern Illinois University. And Bill Malone down at Tulane. Of course he is a very received person in the history of country-western music. He published two books.
Ms. Allen: The curriculum. Do you think it changed much over your career?
Dr. Pool: Oh, yes it has. The curriculum has changed. We've added more new courses that we needed. Back in the old days we were limited in how many courses we could offer
because of the student enrollment, but not recently, not the last twenty-five years. The curriculum has been expanding to fill gaps. The gaps needed to be filled, and so we have a wider selection for students.
Ms. Allen: I see that happening just in the last couple of years, new courses, changing, courses that look very interesting.
Dr. Pool: That's good. There's never been any emphasis, maybe now, but if so its recently, but never any great emphasis on publication. You had to do your own research on your own time. If you published okay, if not, okay. But you had to be an expert in the classroom. The classroom came first. Your private endeavors or publication came second, which is the way it should be, I think.
Ms. Allen: Do you think that's changed? Is that different from other universities? Say UT?
Dr. Pool: UT puts more emphasis on publication, sure they do, and they teach fewer hours. Until recently that would be true. They’ve cut the teaching load here, down to nine hours.
Ms. Allen: That's something new, just in the last year or so.
Dr. Pool: The last ten years for sure. That's good.
Ms. Allen: Do you keep up with the faculty now?
Dr. Pool: I keep up with the history department fairly well.
Ms. Allen: What do you see in the future for them?
Dr. Pool : I don't know. I would hope the students will improve. They are going to be busy. I know that. They will continue to do a good job teaching.
Ms. Allen: You think the emphasis is still on teaching.
Dr. Pool: The emphasis is still on teaching.
Ms. Allen: In the forties and fifties the ties between SWT and UT were very strong. That is not so much the case today.
Dr. Pool: Yes. You mean so many of us came from UT.
Ms. Allen: I guess that's why the ties were close, so many had degrees from there. Now it’s a mixed bag.
Dr. Pool: Which I think is good. Back in the old days, we could rely on UT to send us real strong people, and it always worked out that way but now these other schools have come along, and we get strong teachers from all over.
Ms. Allen: Do you see any particular pattern to the hiring as far as fields of interest or locales.
Dr. Pool: No, I don't, which I think is good too.
Ms. Allen: Chairman. You were there when the department became a department as such. Cecil Hahn would have been the first chairman, then Everette Swinney.
Dr. Pool: Jimmy Taylor, then Cecil Hahn, Everette Swinney.
Ms. Allen: Then Betty Kissler.
Dr. Pool: For a while and now Tug, James Wilson.
Ms. Allen: The roll of the chairman, do you think it is a passive role. They are holding the reins of something that pretty much takes care of itself, or is it an active role and determines direction?
Dr. Pool: Its passive and active. Passive because not much needs to be done, keep the faculty solidified and moving in the direction they are supposed to. In that respect it would be a passive role, but they are busy all the time. They have so many reports to send up to the “Power Tower” [J.C.Kellam Building] as I call it.
Ms. Allen: That's what it’s going to be with everybody moving over there. Put them up on the eleventh floor.
Dr. Pool: We won't talk about that. [Laughter]
Ms. Allen: About the time everyone got used to it being called “the cheese grater” [as JCK was known before the renovation] then they change it.
Dr. Pool: I tell you what, we've got so many people over there I don't think the right hand knows what the left hand is doing.
Ms. Allen: I hope they will consolidate some of the offices on campus in a central location that the students might need like financial aid, parking permits, etc. As it is now you can run yourself to death all over. Admissions, everything is spread out and not very student oriented. If they are going to have all that room, I hope they put it to good use.
Dr. Pool: The Power Tower. I hope Supple can stand it all. [laughter]
Ms. Allen: How would the department settle the conflict? Democratically or boss rule?
Dr. Pool: Democratically, always. I don’t know of any dictators.
Ms. Allen: Do you have anything else that you think is important? Something that should be included in a general history of the department?
Dr. Pool:I really can’t think of anything. I think you are probably doing a great job, hope you keep it up.
Ms. Allen: I know you have some really great stories.
Dr. Pool: If I had time to think of them we could talk a long time. They are about a great bunch of people, too. Most would be funny, they wouldn’t be critical. I’ll make a note and if I think of them I’ll write them down.
Ms. Allen: Thank you, Dr. Pool.
---End of Interview---
TO THE READER:
I have taken the liberty of editing in order to make the transcript more readable but taking care not to change the context or meaning. In doing so I have deleted false starts, “uhs”, misstatements, and rephrased statements. The process has been difficult; however, I have endeavored to render a transcription as true as possible. Laughter, smiles, facial expressions and other such body language cannot be faithfully portrayed in this form and thus the document can be labeled as “fallible” (51, Oral History for Texans). Words added for clarification of the reader are placed inside [ ].
This project began as a term paper for Dr. Swinney’s graduate Historiography class. It seemed like a clever idea to learn more about the department from which I had received an undergraduate degree and hoped to earn another. The original plan called for interviewing a few of the older faculty in hopes of tracing the evolution and changes occurring within department over the discernible past. From here the project I initially perceived as simple enough to manage became more detailed and involved. After my interview with Dr. Brown, he explained his interest in oral history and asked if I would be interested in transcribing the tapes and placing them in the SWT archives. Already desirous of hard copy from which to take notes for my original paper, I agreed. Thus, the Taylor/Murphy History Department Collection began along with my own interest in the methodology of oral history. I would have liked to interview all current faculty members and I would have liked to have had more of them become comfortable enough with me to share anecdotes and memories of their days here. Regretfully, practical time restraints did not permit this, and I found myself constantly needing to “stick to the history” of the department. Personal glimpses of someone's world are often the most interesting and the most telling. Hopefully others will add to this collection in order to leave a record of this outstanding department
Mary A. Allen