University of Central Oklahoma Oral History Project Archives and Special Collections 100 North University Drive Edmond, OK 73034

Transcription

1 University of Central Oklahoma Oral History Project Archives and Special Collections 100 North University Drive Edmond, OK Name of Interviewee: Mary Bond Interviewer: Diane Rice Date: February 3, 2004 Location of Interview: University of Central Oklahoma Archives and Special Collections Transcribed by: Edited by: DR: MB: Nicole Willard Equlla Brothers Lindsey Johnston Diane Rice Mary Bond [Mary Lou (Sells) Bond was born November 28, 1934 in Ellis County, Oklahoma. Her parents, Israel Edward Sells and Zola Faye (Jones) Sells married in Liberal Kansas on July 10, 1933, were living on a farm near the town of May, Oklahoma at the time of Mary s birth. Mary married Marion K. Bond in 1956.] DR: I think I told you that Dr. Laughlin is working on a new history of UCO. And it will update it from whatever histories were done by1989. So we re looking at, and that s okay, we re looking at from 1990 up to 2005, we re looking at fifteen years of history that has past, and nothing, no publication has been written on it. And of course she will, it will go all the way back to the beginning, they re hoping to make, I mean back to 1889, they re hoping to make a very impressive, beautiful new history of UCO. And as part of that project they re doing these oral histories, the students, the historical research students are going out and interviewing people who were on faculty or the staff, and who know the history of UCO as it happened during their time at the college, and those memories, those accounts are invaluable, because they re first hand, and they contain so many details that no one else would know except someone who experienced that history first hand. And so that s what this is a part of, and basically I think we ll just go through the list of questions and where we need any kind of thing to jog our memory. MB: Right, sounds good Diane. 1

2 DR: We ll pull it out. MB: Diane I was, when you were mentioning the years that this particular history by, is it DR. Laughlin? DR: Mm-hm. MB: Is working with, what was the beginning date again? DR: Well the written histories of UCO kind of finish around 1989, which was our centennial year, 1989, well it was the Oklahoma centennial, and for that project we, there were lots of state wide projects two of them done here at the archives, the Edmond obituary project and the Oklahoma town site cases. And there were a lot of histories written at that time, the county histories, a lot of county histories, a lot of town histories that were done by their historical associations, and projects all over the state. MB: Okay the, yes I was thinking about the big, had to do with the United States historical time, in the 1970s. DR: Yeah that was MB: 1976 when there were so many county histories done. But there was an added item; you mentioned that was beautiful, you mentioned some of the projects that we did. DR: Yes. MB: DR: Mm-hm, for the Oklahoma centennial. MB: You mentioned two; one of them was the indexing, though, of the book about the 89ers. DR: Yes right, Oklahoma the Beautiful Land? MB: Yes. And that was just something I felt that would be valuable, and we had just gotten our brand new computer, for the first time we had a computer for the Oklahoma Collection, or special collections. And, so I believe, yes her picture and name is in there, the young lady that was, I think she probably was my first student to use the, to be hired to be the computer operator for our archives. And so, is it Donna? Any way I said, When we don t have other projects something urgent that you need to be doing for me, could you just keep this book right here, and do us, and make us an index to it? Just start at the beginning and go through picking out primary names, and places and so forth. DR: Right. 2

3 MB: And so that turned out to be a lovely project, and then really you know, we didn t know that it was going to be published in the manner it was, or anything like that, but they republished that book, The Beautiful Land. DR: That s wonderful. That s part of why this collection was started, was to provide resources for researchers and Oklahoma history and how do you think that idea originated, the idea for an Oklahoma collection? MB: Well, very definitely there were several involved with it I think Dr. Lolley as a fairly new director of Max Chambers Library, had a lot to do with it. I think he saw that we did not have a special collections as such in this library. But also in his getting acquainted with, this is just my version of it, but with Dr. Green who was head of the history department at the time, and Dr. Stan Hoig, who was a professor of journalism I believe. We may have to better document his precise title at the time, but he had worked, Dr. Hoig, is a historian and has authored many books, historical novels and well mainly research documented DR: Non-fiction. MB: Non-fiction, right, best western writers award and so forth. But anyway he worked very closely with the photography department and the communications department; he was involved with the communications department and the journalism, and so forth and also maybe history. But Dr. Hoig, Dr. Green, and Dr. Lolly, would have been in my opinion the three that you know started putting their ideas together for the feasibility of starting a special collections. Dr. Hoig and Dr. Green had both been doing research. Dr. Green was very, very interested in the Oklahoma town site cases as was Dr. Hoig. And I can t really speak for them but, knowing you know both of them at the time, and what was going on and the nature of their research Dr. Hoig would talk about how that he had gone I believe it was like spent 400 dollars or something like that just to be in the Washington D.C. doing research in the National Archives, the expense it was to just go up there and try to be there, just even a short time to be able to get in those town site cases. DR: Right the travel expense and the housing while you re there. MB: And see the town site cases were a primary source, you know they were the documents that spun out following the run of 1889, or the land openings in Oklahoma, and the court battles that ensued over the ownership of properties or who was the first one to claim that property and so forth. Those were very interesting, I m sure it was difficult at the time for those dear people, but it s very interesting reading for us now to go back to those documents. Those are backgrounds in the early establishment of towns in Oklahoma, especially those that developed at the time of the runs or immediately after the land openings; there were other openings besides the run of 1889 of course. But there was some thought of it d be so nice you know instead of having to go to Washington D.C. if those documents could be brought back to Oklahoma. Really a feather in our cap 3

4 if they could be at the University of Central Oklahoma it d be wonderful. So actually that s kind in to that, into the beginning of establishing this. But yes go ahead, I m sorry. DR: Do you think it was sparked by the idea that the centennial was coming up and that that would be a special project, or do you think it more just would have happened anyway? MB: That could have been in the background idea somewhat, but personally, I guess when I volunteered to serve on the committee Dr. Lolly made it known that anyone who was on staff in the library who wanted, was interested and would like to participate in a library committee to study everything they felt like needed to be studied. It was very well studied and researched ahead of time about how to do this collection which was interesting, it was fun. And I volunteered to serve on that committee because it intrigued me and I liked new and interesting and different things, but also the Oklahoma history materials were on fourth floor and I was managing fourth floor, at that time. DR: Right. MB: And it just was a challenge to me, it sounded like something fun and interesting to do. And I so enjoyed working with the other members of that committee and I trust that you have documentation of who all those members were. And we had regular meetings, but the same time this was going on there was the professors side of it, or the administrative side of it. Dr. Lolly was meeting with those of us in house at the library and were interested in working on this aspect of it, but then he was meeting with Dr. Hoig and Dr. Green, and the administrative staff, and others who they were working with on the other side of the coin of this. And then those ideas were being put together, you see the professor side, you see we re also talking about graduate studies wanting primary source material for our graduate students, if we were going to further extend and develop our graduate studies at UCO. You asked about whether or not this was, you know if they were thinking about in terms of the commemoration, well yes there probably was. I may not have been fully aware of it at the beginning but I think your right, I think there was probably some thought already gearing up to have, and that could have been it. If we are going to have materials for students to research this event where are they going to get them at? DR: Right. It would have been really, I mean we re talking about 1981 and 1982 so it would have been a good eight or nine years before the actual centennial. So that may not have been a really driving force. MB: But you do always start thinking about these things in advance, when you have a historical landmark. DR: Right, yeah. MB: Especially when it s the 100 th anniversary of an historical land mark coming up, you do start giving thought pretty far in advance. 4

5 DR: It is a wonderful collection. It originally was here in the library on the second floor, is that right? MB: Yes when we actually put things together. It is fun to recall now, it was a lot of hard work at the time, but when you just started from scratch. I mean with what seemed to be nothing, though in retrospect now I see how much work had been done by Lucy Jeston Hampton through her laboratory of history project in part of the library over in Evans Hall in the basement there, and that evolved into the museum, and she collected, appears to have collected materials being donated by family of 89ers, actual 89ers. DR: And those would have included both written materials and artifacts for the museum? MB: I believe so, I believe so that some of the materials that used to be there, or have been there in the past were, you know some of the photographs and so forth. Books and materials would be the older people in town that are starting to pass away, before they pass away or their children and so forth, donating some of those materials that stands to perhaps be researched by someone in the future, or now to verify all that. That was what I felt like when I would observe those things or dealt with any of those materials but that was the case. And now here we are coming to the 100 th anniversary of the run of 89 and we re just now going into a new phase here to further develop. See the library was in Evans Hall back in what? DR: Yes, 1915 up until I don t know 35 maybe 50. It was there thirty five years I think something like that. MB: Yes quite a while, but once the library moved out of Evans Hall, and that was the first building built with legislative, state legislative funds. DR: Yes I know. MB: On a campus at least in true Oklahoma. DR: Oklahoma right. MB: So when the library went over to build the Max Chambers library which was the Communications Building, you might correct me if I get something out of place here. But and then the history department, see we built the new Liberal Arts Building, so the history department moved out, so that left Lucy Jeston Hampton s what would have been kind of similar to like a special collections or something, called her Laboratory of History Museum if I remember right. DR: Right. MB: Just sort of out in the cold over there. But the, you know the history department did a good job of coming over and maintaining some staffing there, and working with that 5

6 and so forth. But, it was nice to be able to, to come into the, went into the phase then when they were going to renovate, or restore Evans Hall that those materials had to be packed up. And, so a number of the things then were able to be transferred into the new special collections and archives that we had then developed. But going back to about the committees, you know researching and everything. We went and visited other repositories, we brought back reports, the larger committee of the library was broken down into smaller groups where we would do, and take different aspects to study and research or whatever. So we enjoyed field trips to other archives, or other repositories, and brought back all these ideas, and the professors you know submitted the materials the types of things they wanted us to collect or felt like they needed to have. I can still see that little old, one drawer out of an old, old library catalog file, the one little drawer, that I started with, with cards, discarded cards from the acquisitions department of the cataloging department that we just typed on the back of I think, or something like that. We had no budget to start with. If you ve done any research DR: That s astounding MB: If you ve done any research into this I believe we had it was probably a grant to begin with or something. DR: Right I found some notes that said that, let s see, in October of 81 Lolley submitted a grant for 10,000 dollars to purchase Opening Day materials for the Oklahoma Collection. And the grant stated that Dr. Hoig and Mike Rogers and Green would go to the National Archives to inventory documents pertinent to Oklahoma. So the grant then did it mostly finance their trip to Washington D.C. or and their efforts, or did it actually purchase any kind of materials for the Oklahoma Collection? MB: You re asking a very interesting question, one that I would probably need to do some added research to make sure of my answer to you. But, basically we had no, the major thing that I remember was there was no funding for staffing, which made it very difficult, because I was managing fourth floor. DR: Right. MB: Which was a full time position in itself and doing all this other on the side. So for the first few years let me see when do you have down that we had the opening? Was it 82? DR: It s in this chronology as April 2, 1982 was the Grand Opening of the Oklahoma Collection. MB: Thank you. I know that somehow we had money for this and I m thinking that somehow some of that came from that $10,000 grant. But at the moment I am not going to be real positive about some of the I was responsible for getting so many things tied together and I do know that I believe that these gentlemen, Green, Hoig and Rogers did make a visit to the National Archives. I know there were some town site cases that were 6

7 purchased in paper copy. We did do that. We did make some orders for that. We surely did. DR: Okay. So you at least had that maybe by opening day? MB: Thank you for helping me here. Those papers were they went the gentlemen went up and made notes of what they wanted to order. I can t remember whether they started or if I initiated had to do through the proper channels to write up orders for those or prepare documentation for all of that. They came in on legal size sheets of paper and the first time I had seen any of that material. So that was interesting and here we were feeling like we needed to do something to make it available to people. Because these are just papers to my understanding, even with dust in them, packed up at the land offices as the files were created as the paper material spun out all of these law suits and court battles. These papers you know people would bring in their affidavits and their documentation of things and they just got put in files and the files in boxes. Then it was sent to the National Archives. When you went to looking it over you would think well what kind of order does this belong in? You would still wonder that. Because you are bringing things from different points of time you might be introducing from one court situation here bringing materials from that over to another level of legal action, you know. DR: Right MB: And that would be inserted here and from different people and lawyers, decisions and so forth. I am going to be jumping here, but from that experience in the beginning with those paper copies it didn t take me very long and I thought I don t believe we can keep dealing with this with paper either, or how to maintain this paper. It is going to be hard to maintain it or to take care of it and there is no use in trying to think in terms of arranging this. And once in a while you did find something that seem to be like put in the wrong place, put in the wrong box that didn t have anything to do with this particular one. But that could become complicated too. Because you didn t know if somebody had brought this in to introduce as an example but usually your minutes would help you with something like that, I suppose. Sometimes things did seem to be completely out of place. So when we went to anyway I soon decided and I proposed this that we get this on microfilm. It seemed to be the professor s preference to begin with that it be in paper copy. They were use to researching it that way in its natural, original status, condition so forth and you know that was before we got as technical as we are now. So they kind of preferred it that way. But from librarians stand point that was going to be complicated or manager of materials for people to use in long term. So very early on I thought we need to start looking at the possibility of getting this on microfilm. So we eventually did that which was a whole other story in itself almost. But anyway that, yes, some of that money I am sure went for purchasing some of those town site cases because the professors came back with what was priority material to them. Some of which would have been of course Guthrie, Guthrie s town site cases. But they were into it enough that they knew certain things that were hot or high priority for them for research to back up things that they were wanting to pursue and wanted to have students to pursue or whatever. So they gave me a 7

8 list of exactly what they wanted ordered from that. DR: That s very interesting. So original the collection was to focus specifically on Oklahoma and Oklahoma history? MB: Primary source material that dealt with certain things. One of the main topics was of course the Run of Then spreading out a little broader into well on the logo the logo on the letterhead I believe Dr. Hoig prepared that for us But that s beautifully I love that logo. You see its Oklahoma Territory Indian Territory and Oklahoma Territory the origin of Oklahoma the early history of Oklahoma. DR: After the Oklahoma Room opened you began to get donations from various individuals and I think Jack Drummond was probably the first donor? I have that he made a donation in 1982 in the fall of 82. MB: That would have been probably the first major unit of original materials other than those copies of the this of course is going to be the original material as this man brought it in. The town site cases were just paper copies of the original. We did not get the originals. We did make an appeal to try and secure the original copies. But that was denied. We did not get that. But I keep going back to that issue and I need to come back to where you are at here, but cause that is another interesting story. The National Archives would not give us permission to have the documents back. Though there was a good effort made to address that. But they had not done anything major to process that material. But due to our interest in it and our renewed efforts later to get those I did phone calls, letters and so forth and worked with them diligently to see if we could microfilm all of that material in its entirety. We had to go in at sort of a different way to get that done. But we ultimately were able to do that. That took some time to do that because we had to deal with also funding so I appreciated so very much the administration and anyone who ever back in the shadows somewhere may have had something to with the funding for that project. But it was done over a period of time. Working with the people of the National Archives to get it accomplished was a significant DR: I bet it was a big task. MB: It was a very significant situation and action. The Archives did pull that material and start doing something more with them to try get them in some type of order for us because of our request. DR: That s interesting MB: Now back to what you asked me about these other papers and things coming in. Now we did start there were some moved to go through the collections we already had of the materials that were things that were getting too old to be on the shelves and things that, you know if it was worth saving then it would brought into the secure 8

9 collection. But this is yes it was some work done if it was out of print and so forth books are hard to find and I felt like they could possibly take it out of circulation. That was another big issue. Many times there were committee meetings or different heads you know acquisitions, cataloguing across every segment of the library staffing at different levels to be able to come to determination of whether or not this item can be taken from here and moved over to a secure collection could only be available and used here in the library. Sometimes that was on a title by title issue, situation there. I also might mention before this time, on occasion there would be things brought or had been brought to the library that we had no accommodation for them. You know people that maybe had rare documents or rare items and we had no place for them. So we really, really needed this. DR: Right. MB: Because people could take their things to other places that would take it. But UCO had no way to handle it. DR: Right.So we begin to acquire things that maybe were not so directly related to Oklahoma History? MB: Well, yes and no. When I said that yes, because you can have rare materials that might not necessary fall in that guideline. We started seeing a need for the overriding term Special Collections rare books. DR: Right. MB: See most big universities have that. They have a special collections. They have rare books. So we saw a need that we were going to have to broaden our horizons here. We were going to have to broaden what we had. But not do anything to not to take from or not to detract from or to lose that special Oklahoma Collection purpose. But this we re broadened out so we can accommodate these other things and since we have things set up now, the facilities set up to be able to handle rare books and special collections. DR: Right. So that was kind of how the focus of the collection broadened from just Oklahoma to include more things that just had unique value in themselves. MB: So then we changed our name somewhat you see. It s not just the Oklahoma Collection. Now it s the Special Collections and Archives and the Oklahoma Collection is a part of the Special Collections. But it s still a significant unit in itself too. But the A. Jack Drummond would be the first real private collection, personal papers and records and legal documents other than that town site case material that came to us. Dr. Green was on the cutting edge of that. I m trying to think if there was I can t remember anything specifically. You didn t pick up on whether or not there was a graduate student involved with that? I think Dr. Green was the one that was somehow on to that material. DR: So he somehow knew or knew of Jack Drummond and might have been 9

10 instrumental in persuading him to donate those materials to UCO? MB: Yes and I just came through Madill, Oklahoma this weekend. This reminds me of that. But the big lake that is down by Durant, Lake Texhoma, a significant item in this material would be the inundations suits because there were oil wells there. So you have them wanting to build this big reservoir or dam and so there were suits that evolved out of that and issues with the ranchers around there. DR: Would Drummond have been one of those? MB: Yes. I feel pretty safe in saying that. It has been a few years since I have been working with this so Diane you may have to DR: We ll dig. MB: People may have to dig or research again on it, but as well as I remember, yes. I was reminded that when I drove across that big Roosevelt bridge the other day. DR: Interesting that s very interesting. Now I know Alice Johnson was very active here at the university and worked I think on the funds for building Wantland Stadium. So her papers their papers did you initiate a suggestion with them that they might want to donate those papers here or did they come up that? Do you remember? MB: You know I can some specific things in her materials. DR: I know that they were very active with the young people state government. MB: Yes, yes she was, yes very active in those kinds of things. You know I would enjoy looking at some of that material again. You are really taxing me here today because that s really early on there. And when we were just really DR: But her s would be directly related to UCO history, mostly. MB: Mostly, but then there is also community history there and you re right about the She really enjoyed politics or and I can t even remember now which party it was. You know attending party meetings and so forth. One of the things that I have used most from that collection that I remember best would be the telephone books, the Edmond telephone books. DR: Okay, I didn t realize they had come from that collection. MB: I believe that s where we had well not all of them but that s what got me started. I think with that somewhat. And then I called oh I was I loved this part of it. I loved solving mysteries or locating materials and so that led me to contact Mr. Breshears that was with the Southwestern Bell Telephone Company. Is his name Ron, I think? And I communicated with him and just got to him in time that they had a number of telephone 10

11 directories, I believe that I was able to secure more there. The Johnson papers I believe if we look back into that I think they were the beginning of our being able to have a significant collection of those old originals telephone books. DR: That s wonderful. MB: Edmond telephone books and I have used those. DR: We use those too when people come in and they are trying to track down early Edmond information. MB: But back to about meeting Alice and how we got on to those papers, Diane I am sorry I am not going to be able to help too much right at the moment. DR: That s okay. It is not all going to come to mind at once. I know that the Lloyd Rader Papers there was a graduate student from here who somehow was working with DHS or researching something about DHS and that graduate student was responsible for getting those records brought here. MB: Yes. Do you have her name there? DR: Yes, I have it in the file. MB: I thought I would remember it, but it has been awhile since I thought about it. Back to about Alice Johnson, you know, she came up she came more to me I remember meeting with her in that little Oklahoma Collection room there on second floor where we had put up that big old double wall or specially insulated wall or dirty wall between the director s office and the lounge on second floor of the main what would be the second Max Chambers Library here at the corner of Ayers and Central Oh, Linda Chisholm, yes she was the one who DR: Who got the DHS papers. MB: Oh, she was the one that had all this delightful time with Mr. Rader you know going around with him and letting him tell her things and wooing his collection. That took an act of legislators if I remember right. There had to be legal action taken on that for those papers to ever be released to us. DR: Right, because they were state papers. MB: He couldn t just give them. DR: Right, I am sure that s true. It was a state agency. MB: Yes, that was an exciting, interesting time. It really was. And some of the things you remember coming and something that have no importance or value at all but they are 11

12 just quirky little things that you have fun remembering. And then you have to wonder what are we going to do with this type of something? Yes, that was those were really significant papers and exciting time during that time. Look at all those boxes that were DR: 500 boxes or maybe a little more. MB: 500 that was a lot of material. DR: Very much and we finally have them all indexed on the computer. MB: Oh, how wonderful. DR: We ve had two master s degree theses written about Rader and the Department of Human Services. MB: Oh, I am very pleased to hear of that Diane, very pleased to hear that. DR: And I am sure much more will come out of it as the seventies becomes a more historic period the fifties, the sixties, the seventies. MB: I was thinking something about those the other day, I think or recently from the stand point there was material in there having to do with the beginning of Medicare, Medicaid DR: All those things, all the programs that benefit the elderly and children especially. MB: See that is when they were just going into that and if I remember right Lloyd Rader or staff were attending meetings to see what Oklahoma was going to do about participating in those kinds of programs, government programs, Medicare. DR: Right it was a very important agency. MB: Yes and now I am on Medicare. (Laughter) DR: So we see that it benefits us in more ways than one. MB: Yes. DR: Let s see another couple of collections I was interested in. I can see how Stoner s book came to us because he was a graduate from here. Did he just read about you doing these things and/or how did that happen? MB: I think that s probably another one of those that I kind of went after. But I am going to have to think about how I did that. Incidentally, I did enjoy meeting Mr. Rader too. Mr. Drummond was, I m sorry I am reverting back again, but Mr. Drummond was our guest of honor for our opening at the Oklahoma Collection. When Dr. Lolly asked me if 12

13 I would take the helm or the wheel to actually put the Oklahoma Collection into being we did all of this, this is going way back to that, but we d done all of research and it s time to do something with it. And whatever the reason or the background or whatever, Dr. Lolly, I remember where I was at, I was upstairs in my little office or out on the floor there by the office on fourth floor, and he came and asked me if I would be interested in or would take the Oklahoma Collection and put it together. They needed someone to write work orders, someone to do something with it now. You can t have a committee. You ve got to have someone now that is going to pull it together. He didn t give me much time to make a decision either. DR: We need this done. MB: So I was doing both. But at least they had gotten me some help up on fourth floor. I did at least some point and time I had some part time help up there so that I could go down and spend some time in the Oklahoma Room. I couldn t spend all day, but I could go down and spend some hours each day to I think when we finally did any opening at all it was like a half a day at a time. I can remember the first action I took. DR: Which was? MB: The first work order I think that I put in was to have light switches and light controls so we could turn the lights on and off and not have lights on all day and all night in there. We could turn all the lights off in the storage part of it and there is no division. We just had some shelves at one end then our working desk or whatever and then the study tables for people coming in to do research. In the front end of it we had the displays. But I put a work order in so we could have light switches. We could turn the lights off and have control in the room itself and that worked beautifully. DR: Yes it is important when you have delicate material. MB: Extremely important. Now back to Albert S. Stoner. You know right at the moment I cannot recall how I became acquainted with Mrs. Jennabell Varbel. Was there an article in the paper? It probably didn t tell how or why we did this. I remember she brought me the book and it was interesting because it was published by the Old North Books Publishing Company. DR: Right when you UCO MB: And I didn t know at that time that such a thing had ever existed. DR: Right, it didn t exist for very long. I think. MB: And every time I go through Cashion I think of this because that s where she lives or did live. But many times, Diane I enjoyed doing this and I could have chosen to just go home and stay with my family. But there were times I felt like it was just like a mission for me, a calling or something. I just had to do it. I wanted to do it. But I took 13

14 advantage of I guess if you want to call it that of opportunities to meet alumni of the school. I would go to events in the fall, in the springtime or whenever they were having homecoming events or alumni recognition type of programs or events. I would visit with people at the table I was at or kind of people I knew a little bit, hob knob with them and when they would find out who I was well so and so would have such and such or you need to get acquainted with so and so and give me leads and tips. If the person was there and could be pointed out to me I made a point of meeting them. So I don t know whether you have her on here but the DR: I have an article on her somewhere. MB: You have done a beautiful job of preparing materials here, beautiful job and oh this is just fabulous. But Jennabell I am trying to remember if I met her at something and I know she came to visit us in the Archives. I just wooed things. I just and it wasn t fake and it wasn t false, Diane. I love people. DR: No, of course not yeah. MB: I loved what I was doing and I was interested in all of this and I loved collecting it and saving it for posterity or for whoever some else down along the line. DR: Exactly. It s precious and it doesn t last and it you know it becomes lost. MB: It just meant so much to me. It does and that s grievous. And this was a beautiful condition book if I remember right. DR: Right and we still have it on the shelves here. MB: And can you imagine us not having a copy of that at all? DR: And it was written by a graduate and published by the college publisher. MB: Yes and we didn t have a copy of it anywhere. DR: And that just points out how important establishing a special collections for those kinds of things was. MB: And according to Albert Stoner s daughter Jennabell Varbel, there were only two copies of the book at that time still existing that she knew of. One of which she donated to us here in the Oklahoma Collection and the other she said was her personal copy. I don t know that I ve ever seen one anywhere else either. Of course I wasn t really searching for it after that but I don t remember noticing one when I would go to old book repositories and places to try to Well, I am sure it is existing in some of the other special collections probably. OU probably has one but I don t know. DR: We can t be sure of that until we 14

15 MB: But Stoner and there are interesting stories I think I interviewed her didn t I? Mrs. Varbel. DR: Yes. MB: And so and his book is his story. I don t remember did he use to walk to school up here to go to UCO? I don t know there was some interesting things about his life, I remember that. He worked on a farm. But his family goes all the way back. DR: Right at least to 89. MB: They were 89er s so there is information there for people researching that. In 1969 Old North Books published their first book and that was it The Spirit of 89. DR: That s wonderful, so it s historical for that reason too. MB: And that s what Stoner wrote. It starts the story of his family I think. Well he wrote about the run of 89 and then I was thinking it gave the history of Cashion. DR: Oh, that s good too. MB: And that s his family. I think he was the mayor. Does this not tell us this? DR: It may mention it in that article about him. MB: I was thinking he was the mayor of Cashion. DR: That sounds very familiar. MB: Is that something someone could read the book and find out? DR: Right. MB: But he graduated from Central State in DR: Oh my, that s amazing. MB: Yes he served as mayor of Cashion for thirty seven years. He was alumni president of Central State in And he was one of CSU s former Distinguished Students. You have done a beautiful job of gathering things. DR: Well, we try. You know MB: That is just it makes me feel so good. 15

16 DR: I was also interested in the papers of former state representative William Edgar Gill which is a very important collection for us. I believe Dr. Mary Jane Riley who was a professor here was somehow involved in bringing Edgar Gill s collection to us. Do you remember if she just knew about the Archives and decided that that would be the place where his papers his little personal library could be preserved? Or did you go to her or did you just make her acquaintance on campus? Or do you remember? MB: You are doing a beautiful job here. Dr. Mary Jane Riley. DR: And there was another relative involved too. MB: Yes, I think so. DR: Another woman I m trying to remember who that was. MB: Oh you are really bringing some pleasant memories to my mind. DR: It s just that we have so much information on the Archives which thankful to you because we wouldn t have any of this if you hadn t created the whole collection. MB: Well, I can t take all the credit. But I tell I will take some of it. That William Edgar Gill Collection and that was now there again that may have seemed like a puzzling situation because if I remember right there was a nice collection of Oklahoma materials but also significant Civil War history books in that originally. DR: Right. Yes there are. MB: They had quite a collection of that. DR: He was interested in history himself, apparently. MB: Yes, yes. We had a nice what did we do? Sometimes we got to where we had nice little openings or little receptions sometimes for releasing materials which turned out to be a nice thing to do. It really was. If I remember right we did for that occasion and that was a very pleasant very lovely time. I thought it was a lovely a I feel sentimental now when I think about it. But you know when you have people that have lost loved ones or dear ones to them and they have things that recognize that had more value than just for the family to hang on to it or to just dump it or throw it away or whatever. Yes, oh that s a lovely picture of that time. I remember that day. Isn t it a more rewarding way to do things? I realize that it takes money to operate archives. It takes money to have places to house materials like that and you have to weigh the matter of whether or not it s worth it. But if you have the space at all I d rather err on the side of keeping something that isn t really needed so much as to not keep it and then some day down the road say why didn t we save that or why didn t we hang on to that? I sort of buy into that idea of not making too hasty a decision that cannot be changed. 16

17 DR: Right, once it is gone, it s gone. That s exactly right. MB: So that was April 1987 when we dedicated the William Edgar Gill Collection. DR: And I think that worked really well for the Archives. It s like you said, having a little formal dedication taking photographs of the donors and the collections, the items that were collected and having the Edmond Sun or the Vista or other publications publicized that, it helps bring in even further donations when people become aware that there is a place where those items will be preserved and be of benefit to researchers and to future generations. MB: Precisely, Diane and that was very good for us, especially when you re a new collection. It s an ongoing thing around you all the time. There are materials that some decisions are being made about them. Regardless of whether they are going to be thrown away or they are going to be taken to someone to You know people want a place to put their things that it s going to be appreciated. They need to have confidence in you that you are going to care for it properly too and that it is going to have access. It needs publicity. Because if no one knows it exists or if they can t get to your repository, if it is not convenient to come to your repository than they just won t bother to bring it to you. I think it is so nice that the materials were developed or created or came to be or collected by someone that s in your area. To be able to have them in your repository rather than going to some repository way off somewhere that has no connection DR: And that does happen. MB: Sometimes it can. William Edgar Gill was an educator, legislator, public speaker and author. He retired in If I remember right he was speaking I remember this little story that he was speaking for some special occasion when he didn t feel well and went back stage and told them he wasn t feeling well and they took him to the hospital. I don t believe he ever came out of the hospital. I believe he had a heart attack. But he loved to keep speaking engagements. DR: Well, if you are a legislator you better be an orator. MB: Right. But his correspondence was from 1929 until Those were his legislative years. He had research notes for book drafts, manuscripts so forth dating 1930, I was just telling someone the other day about Alpha Bill Murray and some of his ideas. But some of the political figures that are represented in his papers are Alpha Bill Murray, Jack Walton, Lyle Boren and Leon Phillips. DR: Who are very important to Oklahoma History and politics. MB: And then you see how you know people don t just come and dump these things on your door steps, some might. But others like this they don t just come dump it on you and don t care what you do with it or how you handle it. Several family members were here having to do with those papers and they provided the means for us to have some 17

18 special book cases for those materials. So DR: They re lawyer s book cases with the glass fronts and the lock. We ve had I ve had several people here in the Archives who have looked at those cases and say Where can I get cases like that? Those are beautiful. MB: Well we I was thinking we had some special made. We had them special made. I believe we did. DR: That s wonderful. We keep his collection locked in those cases. MB: Now they re not the doors that come open like that. They open like this. Yes, we had those custom made if I remember right. DR: Yes because the lawyer s book cases each shelf open up. MB: Anyway, special order. DR: That was interesting because I thought they were donated with the books. But they were specially made. MB: No, I am pretty sure they provided the funding for them and we located them. DR: That s interesting. MB: I m sorry at the moment I can t remember whether we had them made or if we ordered them already made. DR: But they were special for that collection. MB: Yes, we secured them just special for that. DR: Okay, let s see what else oh, I was interested in Spearman s papers. I know that he was a legislator too and is Mr. CSU because his bills, the bills he introduced resulted in this institution becoming a university rather than just a college. MB: He brought that up for us to have the name change. He was our legislator to get put through. DR: Again, did the initiative for his papers to come here come from him and his family. Or did you know him and suggest that? MB: It s such a good question. You are really pushing. How could I forget that, though? DR: He had really strong ties to the university because he was a student here. He was a debating student. I think that gave him the confidence to try for the legislator. 18

19 MB: I don t want to take credit that belongs to anyone else. I m sure sometimes probably some other people may have dropped the idea to a donor. But in this particular case with C.H. actually his wife had worked for a while down in cataloging or acquisitions. But I don t think that was really the real in fact that isn t even at the time that he donated his papers. I don t think she was even here at the time. I m trying to remember if there was there again there could have been some other people who perhaps spoke with him about it. I don t know. I don t remember now whether I initiated the first phone call to him or if he called me. I m kind of thinking I may have called him, Diane, but I am not sure. Sometimes I will remember specifically and in this case I m not positive about it. But there again we worked to follow up on any lead or anyone we knew of or thought was someone who the timing must be right. I think sometimes I just had these intuitions or whatever or doors kind of open that I just would work through and pursue them. C.H. was a dynamic delightful person. I m not sure I can answer your question real honestly. I don t remember whether he approached me. I think somehow we may have approached a little bit to begin with and then just kind of left it for him to communicate back or whatever. And there may have been someone else, though I can t think of anyone specific that would have so. But I remember working with him in the Archives. In this particular instance I did not go to the home. A lot of times I went to the home if I was invited. In this particular case he made the effort to come up or to bring materials for me to see whatever. As sometimes was the case like Bray, Sidney C. Bray. DR: Yes, I wanted to ask you how we got Bray s Collection. MB: That one is very easy for me to answer because he did come in a number of times. He would call or come in. He usually came in to visit. He wanted a place for materials and that is an interesting story there. I don t know whether I should tell you this or not. DR: Yes, tell me. MB: His papers at first I didn t know this. When I found out they were actually already in another repository DR: Oh my, God. MB: I had to really take a second look at this. At first we didn t even know whether this was something we were, you know, where does this fall into our program at? The more I found out about them the more interesting it became to me about them. He would come and talk about all this huge amount of material. I thought at first they were just in his oh, I hope I tell this right now that I remember. I believe he had already taken, yes when I found out they had been somewhere else it really shook me up. I thought oh I have to bet back off of this. But then I believed he already moved them. He had already taken them out of this other repository and taken them to his garage or to his home. 19

20 DR: I wonder why he would have done that. MB: And that changed the whole color of things when I found out that he actually had removed them from this other place himself. Now I cannot be sure of the timing on this and it is not that important either because I wouldn t want to cause any problems for some other repository. I don t know whether he at this point I don t remember, I may have some notes to that effect about it. I don t remember whether he took them out of the repository where they had been at before or after he first ever spoke to me about them that I am not sure. But certainly I was much relieved when I found out that he wasn t at least I didn t know that he was going to take them away from someone else and bring them to us. He already had them at his home when things were getting to the point we might be interested in taking them. I did visit him in his home too. Bless the people s hearts that would help me bring these materials in that was a pretty good size unit of material too. Don t you like those scrapbooks done for the DR: Those are delightful. They are one of the really unique things in the collection. Now that we are digitizing the collection. MB: Oh, wow these were scrapbooks made by school children and their teachers during World War II. Correct me if I m wrong. DR: That s exactly right. MB: But Sydney C. Bray is the man that was in charge of all of Oklahoma and also eight state regions, if I remember off the top of my head. DR: That s right. He was a regional director. MB: Of selling War Bonds, U.S. savings bonds or War Bonds and so forth. Wow, I mean this was a terrific story and period of history and had all those big posters. DR: Over 400 of them in our collection. MB: Over 400 posters in our collection and you know how many people know about all of these things here, Diane? DR: Not many, not many and I mean there are historians that know. There have been two articles written in the Chronicles of Oklahoma about Sidney Bray and his works in the War Bonds sales. Again, as that period recedes in history that collection and everything about it will become more and more important. Those posters even now are priceless some of them. MB: Yes. DR: The scrapbooks I don t know if there is a collection like that anywhere else in the United States. 20

21 MB: Those are the original scrapbooks so there would not be a duplicate of those scrapbooks. Now the posters other repositories do have posters or whatever but not those scrapbooks. So they are a gold mine. DR: Yes they are. MB: And there are materials there that if those were promoted even out in the outlying districts the counties those came from the schools sometime the original photographs in there of children or people that were working with those drives that and I was thinking we worked up a finding aid to those so there s DR: Right. MB: So if there is a name there we have the names of who is in there. DR: Right. They could even be used for family histories if you were trying to find out. MB: Yes. Wouldn t I be delighted if I found out that my picture was in there when I was a child in an old country school? So if those are promoted in some blurbs of newspaper release that could go out across the state or even by some writer that likes little tid bits thrown to them for the Daily Oklahoman. DR: Exactly and I think they could be done as a wonderful display that would be fascinating. MB: A traveling exhibit. DR: Right. Those are our light sensors. It s an economy device. There were a couple of other questions that I did want to ask. About the photography collection, I don t know why that fascinates me so much. I ve been doing a little research on it. I did find some information. They were originally done by Dr. John Davis, right, from 1901 to 1919 something like that let s see. MB: John Davis who was assistant professor of chemistry and physics from 1909 to DR: Right, that would be the period. MB: He taught photography. They did these beautiful professional what we call the glass plates series here at UCO. DR: Right, exactly. Apparently, since Davis had been a professor of chemistry and physics they were housed evidently in the old science building in Howell Hall. MB: You think so? 21