INTERVIEW WITH JOHN BONNER BY ROBERT MCCORMICK DATE OF INTERVIEW: JULY 25, 2001

Transcription

1 INTERVIEW WITH JOHN BONNER BY ROBERT MCCORMICK DATE OF INTERVIEW: JULY 25, 2001 Q. Okay, this is a discussion with John T. Bonner, Jr., former Vice President at the Ohio State University. Let s start off with some background. What attracted you to OSU, first of all as a student, which you obviously were, and then as a faculty member? A. Well, of course, living in the same town with the University, I was conditioned to it, and also the matter of economics. Remember, I entered in the depths of the Depression. Q. You went directly into college after A. 39. So it was one of the best options. Q. as you joined the faculty here at Ohio State? Do I remember correctly? A. Well, you see, I started, I actually graduated in Speech. No, I m sorry. I graduated in Business Organization. Got my bachelor s degree. Got my master s in Speech and my Ph.D. in a combination of Speech and Real Estate. So I was straddling two Colleges all the time. And if they say you re not doing very well in the Arts College, then I d say Well, I m really in Business. Well, you re not doing very well in Business. Well, I m really in Art. Q. Did you do as a graduate assistant in Speech or in Business? A. The first two years in Speech. And then I was teaching Speech at Ohio State. I was running my father s business in real estate, and Judge Riley got me to take over his course that he had to abandon at Franklin [University]. So I was teaching 1

2 Real Estate at Franklin. And Henry Hooglin said Why don t you just consolidate and teach Real Estate for us? So I went over then full-time in the Business School teaching real estate. Q. You didn t teach Speech here at Ohio State? A. Yes, I did for two years. Q. Roy Bowen? A. Roy was a colleague of mine. Q. He was my instructor for the introductory Speech course. A. It s interesting that you talk about this. There was a great Speech Department and I mean that sincerely, at the time. [Department Chairman W. Hayes] Yeager put together. Marvelous department. None of the five full professors got his terminal degree in Speech. One in English, one in Biology, one in Economics Harrison Boyd Summers. Not one received his terminal degree in the area in which he was teaching. I thought that was interesting. Q. That is interesting. What would you consider to be your high point in being a student at Ohio State and what would be a disappointment? Any comparison there? A. The high point was captaining the Big Ten Championship debate team. I felt that was about as well as you could do and I had the lead in Scarlet mass production and I played opposite Eileen Heckart, who later won an Academy Award, in Golden Boy. Now those came the first year. Those were pretty high points early. Q. Theatre was part of the department. 2

3 A. Yeah, right. Q. You took some theatre courses? A. Oh yeah, I took a great many theatre courses. Q. I knew you were interested in that area, but you actually participated? A. Right, actually participated, yeah. Q. You had the lead. Any disappointments? A. Well, I didn t do as well grade-wise as I thought I should. I can give all sorts of excuses for it the war and all those things, but again, I had grades good enough to get me into graduate school. And that I suppose was the best thing. But they weren t great. They weren t the type of grade you d expect for a future faculty member. Q. Right, right, right. You became an administrator, executive, is that the right title? A. Executive Dean, Student Relations. We did want our students to have a fair type of relation. We weren t too sure about. And at the time there was a category, they call it Dean of Student Life. Well, somebody says Well, if they can t have relations or affairs, let them have life. Somebody else had relief for twenty years. Q. There were issues going around in terms of when you were in regard to student relations. A. World s worst time to be Executive Dean of Student Relations. I watched the Big Ten turn over in the seven years that I was in that capacity, I watched my numbers in the Big Ten turn over two or three times. It was just a no win job. As we used to say, you became a father image about the time they were beginning to hate 3

4 their fathers. So it was, I started within two months of the time I was appointed to the position, I was at the corner of Fifteenth and High in the middle of the Rose Bowl ride. And even though I had voted as a member of the Athletic Council to send the team to the [1962] Rose Bowl, I was hanged in effigy because of it. So you see it s a no-win situation. Q. Is that the year that they didn t go? A. That was the year they didn t go, although they earned it. And it was right between contracts. We didn t have a contract that year with the PAC Ten. We had also beaten the team we were going to play. And the faculty, and that was a time that the faculty was getting up on their haunches too. Remember, that was the same, I believe, it was the same year they turned down an honorary degree for Bob Hope. Q. Could well be. A. Yeah, I think it was. It was very close to that period of time. But the students were rebellious, the faculty was rebellious, it was a terrible time to be in that position. Q. I remember the Rose Bowl thing. I was on the Faculty Council at that time. And I wanted to be sure the professor that I voted for them to go, but there was not enough. Which created some A. That was the year Woody Hayes sent out his Christmas card that showed a toilet with roses in it and Merry Christmas anyway. Q. That sounds like Woody. 4

5 A. No, that was a terrible, terrible period of time. You worked all day at your job. I always started before 8:00 in the morning and worked on through until 5:00 and then it was the time that the student thing started. Now, the good student things like the Townshend Society and that was great. And the bad things like the Student Senate, attending meetings of the Student Senate. And the really bad things like riots and things of that type. So really it was 7:00 in the morning until 2:00 the next morning and one time Betty and I checked, we went 61 straight days to at least one event in the evening, sometimes two. But at least one event every evening. Well that s after a full day s work. So it really got to be a strain in that position. Q. Anything else you want to tell us about? A. Yeah, I had the nature of the whole thing was when a student was choking me outside the alumni house at that time. It was back of the administration building. And you know, I kept my hands in my pockets, I wasn t going to hit him, but I had to endure that until the police pulled him off. Jack Corbally [Vice President of Administration, and of Academic Affairs], one time, he went to one of these affairs with me, I forget what it was, but it was some problem. And at the end of it he said You must use a lot of aspirin. It was a really difficult time. Q. Very, very difficult. The Speakers Rule was a factor with the students, but with everybody. A. Yeah, let me give you an interesting incident on that. Even though I was a rather conservative person and still am, I felt that on the basis of prohibiting a speaker, forget it, let him speak and it will go away. If you shut him out, you re in for 5

6 trouble from then on. And I talked to President [Novice G.] Fawcett about that. And he said Will you go down and talk to [U.S. Sen.] John Bricker? And I said Sure. So I got in the car and went down to Bricker s office. Q. Bricker was on the Board [of Trustees]? A. Bricker was one on the Board or Chairman of the Board, one or the other. But he was the prime mover of the Board, whatever seat he sat in. And I talked to him. And he and I always got along very, very well together. And he said John, I can t help you. We re going to have to shut him out. So they locked him out and we just had we would have had a lot of that trouble anyway, but again, there was a case where I think we could have let that go with the Board s and forgotten it. We gave them a cause. Q. Bricker was on the board quite a lengthy time. A. I think the longest stretch in history. Longer than anyone, I think. I think he has the record for tenure on the Board. And the [most] arch-conservative. He and I got along beautifully altogether. Q. I think there s an item in the monthly, Ohio State Monthly, alumni magazine, from that period of time, you are quoted as dealing with the speaker s rule and commenting on it and so forth. A. Yeah. Of course, you have to remember, at that particular period of time [1960s], that something would happen and then the Lantern would pick it up and then the alumni magazine would pick it up. Because John Fullen was very unhappy because he was turned down for President of Ohio State twice. And he let his feelings be known. He was the first advocate I think of what do you call 6

7 it? journalism is a legal term for it. It s where you take sides rather than advocate journalism or something like that. Q. His viewpoints and Fawcett s and Bricker s A. Oh yes, and here I was in the middle. Q. And a little difficult to come up with something. A. But everyone was having the same trouble. Down in Xavier, a Jesuit University, they called the priest the Black Knight of so and so, and said about how terrible his ethics were. You wouldn t think that a Jesuit College would take off on a Jesuit priest that way. But they did. That was the tenure of the time. I m sorry Bob, I don t mean to ramble on. Q. No, that s great. During your tenure as Executive Dean for Student Relations, was when Lincoln and Morrill Tower were built. Do you want to comment on this? A. Yea, we had a whole committee look over plans for the new buildings that were to go up. And the final decision we made was for a group of six- or eight-story buildings. Pretty much cylindrical shape like the Lincoln and Morrill Tower, but the one thing I was sure of, because I was responsible for student housing, was that we had a very firm 50 percent experience. That 50 percent of our freshman would stay over as sophomores. Fifty percent of the sophomores would stay over as juniors and 50 percent of the juniors. And it was amazing that those figures held. So when they said. Well, we re going to build these 20-story buildings, I said, Build one. Let s get the experience and then we can go build a second one in the second or third year when we get that additional 37 ½ percent that we can 7

8 put in there. Well, when I was with President Fawcett to dedicate the first thing, when we got back in his car, he said Well, shall we go over and dig for the other one? I said You re kidding. He said No, we re going to do it. So that was the first I knew we were going to do two buildings. Q. When they started digging A. Well, we went and added 2,600 and some odd student faces like that. And you can t do that. You just can t do that. Q. There were some problems with the buildings, I think. A. Well, yeah, we had that terrible fire in there and I was called in the morning, tragic, tragic day. I went up on that floor and I was there early. And the telephone on the wall of the hall of this building was just a mass of plastic, just hanging by a cord and it was ringing. That was just a terrible experience to go through. Q. There were some modifications, not in the building, but in how the housing A. Oh yeah, the whole thing. The towers never really worked. And I m not sure if we built them one at a time. I know they would have worked better, but I m not sure they would have been perfect. You know, the University began taking things from the towers and putting different things in there. And that was all right. Q. But what was definitely going to be one tower turned out to be two. A. Turned out to be two because of what was it, $200,000 cost savings? I m not sure of that figure. I think that s a figure Gordon Gorreson came up with. Q. The West Campus was that initiated when you were there, and the reactions to it, the why of it. 8

9 A. Yeah, I think the idea was good, to have a University College that everyone must go to and everyone must stay at least a year but not more than two. I think that was a splendid idea. And really I was in my other position when the West Campus got started. But again, I remember I worked so hard on that building which was to be a library. And we don t want a library, we want a learning resources building, because as you know, we had learning resources in there. So we really wired that thing up for all of the good high-tech things that we now have. And I think that was good. Q. Good idea. And it has been converted in recent times, not used too much as an undergraduate A. I don t know. Q. I think the office for the University College or whatever you want to call it, I believe is a building now. You know what I mean? When you were a student, it was the Union. A. Okay, yeah. Q. When you were a later student, the other one was there. But you don t A. I know what you mean. Q. You talked about this a little bit. Any further elaboration on student demonstrations? I realize that you had not been the Dean of Student Relations when the big, the 1970 affair, was leaked? A. I had it all the way through because when I left being Executive Dean of Student Relations, my other job, I had the ROTC, which was right in the middle of the problems at that time. So I really didn t escape all that much. But there were a 9

10 couple of things that happened. One time I was locked in the Administration Building, and we had a mock political convention on campus and the speaker was a congressman who was going to be speaking. I had to call Betty and say Honey, I can t get out of the building right now. Will you go down and entertain this character until I can get free? And two hours later, when I got down there, she was talking with Michigan [Congressman], President, what the hell was his name? I can see him. His wife was an alcoholic. Q. I have trouble with names. A. I m glad I m not the only one. [Former President Gerald] Ford. So she had to entertain Jerry Ford for a couple of hours while I was locked in the Administration Building, never dreaming that she was talking to a future president. Q. He probably wasn t thinking about that either at that time? A. No, no, not. Because he was a congressman then. Well anyway, that was one experience. Another experience was that, well I was locked in the Administration Building twice, once all night. Once by the anti-vietnam group and one by the blacks, who had an agenda of their own. And, of course, people would call the administration, Where s John Bonner? Oh he s dead, we killed him. That type of thing. So it was really a hectic and it just kept going. That s the thing. Seven years of that is a long stretch. Q. Right, right, right, right, right. Your predecessor, might not have been the title, Dean of Student Relations. A. Bill Guthrie. 10

11 Q. Bill Guthrie, who was A. Became President of Buckeye Federal Savings and Loan, which was then the largest savings and loan in Columbus. Q. His father operated that one. Well, I guess one other question here. You served under two presidents, rights? A. Yes. Fawcett and [Harold] Enarson. Q. Any comments about different administrative styles? A. Yes. I thought Fawcett was an excellent administrator. It doesn t mean we agreed on everything. But again, I think from the standpoint of just pure administration, that he was excellent. Now from the standpoint of his positioning, he was a conservative. There was no question about it. But I don t think he ever let that get in his way. Harold Enarson, on the other hand, was a liberal, and he did let that get in his way of being a good administrator. With the ROTC, he was dead against the ROTC. And you know, that s a problem, when you re responsible for the ROTC, reporting to a person who is against it, on political grounds, it makes it extremely difficult. But he was, I m trying to think of some other things that Q. Just from your point of view, there were number of things A. Oh very definitely. I did not feel that he was a good administrator. I thought he was a nice enough person. But I don t feel that he was a good administrator. Now that s just a personal opinion. And that really is not much to do with his political leanings, except when he let them interfere with his work. I often felt that a faculty member, who is a teacher, if he or she ever let his or her students know 11

12 politics, religion, even not doing a good job as a teacher, I think you keep that entirely separate. Q. President Enarson also had some, I don t know this for sure, he had some conflict with the Medical College. A. He hated the Medical College, he hated the Ag College, he hated Woody Hayes. When they fired Woody Hayes, he had told the cabinet before that he was going to fire him. And Woody just gave him a marvelous excuse for doing it. He would have been fired anyway. But this was a very convenient excuse that Woody supplied him. But again, and the reason why he didn t like those things is that they had prominence. For example, you Aggies, you control the state. At any rate, he felt that and resented it because he was the President of the largest university, he should control the state. The Medical College, he couldn t control the Medical College, so he resented that. ROTC, so you had all of these resentment that I think got in the way of his being a good administrator. Q. We ve mentioned a number of things student-related student affairs. When you became Vice President for Educational Services, you had a wide range of things that you were responsible for. And one of them was the library. A. Right, right. Let me make a general statement that covers both of my positions. I was very fortunate in all of my years of administration because I had really great people working with me. And you of course were one of them. And I just couldn t have made it without that. And any success I had I think is because of the fine people. You mentioned libraries: Without [Libraries Director] Hugh Atkinson, we would have been back in the dark ages in our library. And Hugh brought us out of 12

13 it. He is the one who automated the library, he supplied a great deal of new things to the library. He s a marvelous person, despite driving his motorcycle with one eye. Q. Yeah, I understand what you re saying. Hugh actually became Director of Libraries when you were in charge? A. Right. Lou Branscomb was the former director and before I came in the position, people had worked with him trying to get him to change and he just wouldn t do it. So we made him, gave him a name professorship. Thurber I think it was. Q. You re absolutely right. And he was very Atkinson was very aggressive too. A. Yeah, but not, he wasn t aggressive in taking the position from Branscomb. He was aggressive in doing things for the library. Q. You were also Vice President when Dr. [William J. Studer] came. A. Right, he was my last appointment. Q. Okay, let s talk in some detail about an area that you ve mentioned a couple of times. But the ROTC unit. Now when you became Vice President for Educational Services, were the freshmen required, they were still required to take two years of ROTC? A. Freshmen and sophomores. Two years of ROTC. Q. And then during your Vice Presidency, that was changed, wasn t it? A. No, I don t think so. Q. I thought it was. Tell us a little about your work with ROTC. A. My general, I think as you knew, Bob, my general feeling about administration is that when you re responsible for something, you promote it, you work with it, 13

14 you help it. And you know it s like, if you have a family, if one kid is sick you spend your time with the sick kid. That was the case of ROTC. I was responsible for it and I felt that I needed to promote it. Also, it was the one that was under the most fire. So it was the sick kid that needed tending to. So I spent, admittedly a disproportionate amount of time in that position with the ROTC. Had we not had the situation where they were trying to push the ROTC off campus, I would have been spending a lot more time on a lot of the other areas. And indeed at that time, many universities lost their ROTC completely, where they didn t lose it completely, there was no faculty rank for the professors and military, navy or air science. They weren t allowed to wear uniforms. They weren t allowed to carry arms. It was just a thing they were shoved off in the corner and just barely tolerated. But in many institutions they were gone completely. So, I think preserving all three ROTC units through that period was quite an accomplishment. And in Army alone, one year we graduated 500 second lieutenants, which was better than anyone except the United States Military Academy. And that doesn t include the Navy and Air Force cadets and midshipmen that we graduated. So we did, I think, a very, very good job on that. Q. Had you been in ROTC when you were A. Yes, I received my commission out of ROTC. Q. You were one of the last ones that received it? A. As a matter of fact, we were the first class that went to OTS [Officer Training School]. And I had to get President [Howard] Bevis to make the announcement at 14

15 our commencement, that those who were going to Fort Sill, Oklahoma could pick up their train tickets at such and such. Q. Literally. A. Literally, we got on the train and went to Fort Sill. Q. The reason you didn t have a direct commission at that time was there was no summer, had to spend summer A. Well, what they did, they moved us up and we took course in the summer. So we graduated then in March and then had that three months to spend in ROTC. And some of the people lost their commissions. They didn t make it through OCS. But it was good that we had both experiences, I think. Q. You were given, if I read the background correctly, a number of awards through ROTC. Maybe I ve got them down wrong here, but maybe Distinguished Service Award? A. Yeah, the three awards, really there are five, the Navy Distinguished Service Award, which is the highest medal given to civilians by the Navy, the Army, I forget what they call it, it was not the type Army decoration. It was the second highest award given to civilians. And then the Air Force outstanding public service award, which is again the highest civilian [award]. And then the Secretary of Defense outstanding public service award. And then the Association of the United States Army presented me with a General Creighten Abrams medal. These are five of the top decorations that you can get. I don t wear them on my pajamas. You remember Mary Walker, Civil War doctor, female? She wore her medal of honor on her night clothes. 15

16 Q. I didn t know her personally. A. No, I didn t either. Q. But in addition you had some appointments with the service? A. Yeah, I was Civilian Aide to the Secretary of the Army. I was Chairman of the Board of the Academic Advisor Board of the U.S Naval Academy. And the Army, whatever it was, deal. I think you had it right here, whatever it was. Army Administrative Board, ROTC Affairs. Q. Those two items I have here, I acquired through the OSU Monthly, not through whatever material was in your folder here in the Archives, which is useful. There s another item that has to do with military service. You were apparently at Fort Meade. A. Yeah, I went over to Meade from Sill. I got my commission, went back to exec. School, which was one month, and got married at Fort Sill. And then I went into the pool school and taught in the pool school for I don t know how many months it was. Q. Tell us what that means. A. Well, these are people who have gotten their commissions and they haven t been assigned yet, so this is a temporary thing. They give them classes while they are waiting for them to go out to their units. So I taught that. Q. There s a reference here, in the Ohio State Monthly, one of your unusual tasks at Fort Meade was to dress in a German uniform and demonstrate all the [techniques of Nazi anti-personnel mines]. And rating here was a superior. This was a combination of some of your background and instruction in theatre, I presume. 16

17 A. Right. Q. Was that most of the time while you were A. Yeah, during the time I was at Meade I was teaching, of course. Q. And you found this desirable or a pleasant experience? A. Yeah, I wanted to get overseas and I kept telling the people at Meade I m the best shot you ever had in the field of artillery. Why don t you send me over where I can do it? Well, no we need you here and so forth. So then I got sent overseas and I ended up with the 45 th Division. And the Battalion Commander said Now, what is it that you do? And I said I m a teacher. No, you re not, you re a shot. Get out there with the. I ve always liked teaching. I really got into administration because President Fawcett said Now, you ll be working with students and that s why you re in teaching. He didn t tell me the whole story. Q. There s some difference. A. Well, of course, when I went in, there was already trouble brewing, because they had gotten in trouble with, I forget what it was, something, with the radicals. Q. Well, let s see if you have any comments about any of the other areas when you were Vice President for Educational Services. We ve talked about the University libraries and continuing education. Of course, you and I worked together in that area. A. Yea, and Bob, I am so grateful with everyone connected with the Ohio State University. You were the one that brought us Program 65 that later became Program 60. And that was just one of the things that you did for us. But that in 17

18 itself, that was a real landmark because you were reaching and we were way ahead when that happened. And we had an excellent, in all of our categories, throughout all the colleges, and thanks to your work, we had an excellent continuing education program. I don t think it s been as good since, Bob. Now that may be prejudice, but again Q. It s been in and out and so forth. Of course the Fawcett center was built while you were Vice President and there s been some changes there. A. Yeah, John Mount started it and I finished it and staffed it. Q. There s no question about that. You mentioned learning resources. You want to elaborate on that a little bit? A. Yeah, that was put together before I came into the position fortunately, because it was necessary. And one of the things that we did that was good, we had a meeting of the entire faculty, and we put on a program called Learning Resources Here and Now. And maybe you remember that, Bob. And we demonstrated all the types, movies, television, charts, film strips, dial access listing center. You name it, we had everything in the program. And we got a standing ovation from the faculty, which I thought was very, very good. Q. It took some yearnings to get those. A. And the people, for example, in the Fawcett Center, we had a three-language translation system. And you know, we went around pricing it. And the prices were just way out of line. We got our telecommunications center to put it in for 10 percent [of the other bid prices] and we got a better system than we had. But we saved 90 percent by putting that system in. And also, the telecommunications 18

19 people, at my request, rigged my office so that we could have people in, faculty members and others, and demonstrate. We could tune it to the dial access listening center. We had pulled down a screen and here we could show slides and so forth. And all of those things, I think, were very, very helpful. So we combined all of those things. And I think Bill Bemister did an excellent job as his capacity there. As far as the telecommunications center, that of course under Dick Hall and later, who was that pretty red-headed gal we hired to replace him. I can t remember the name, but she was going to kill me at one time. We went to New Orleans together for a conference and we stopped in Atlanta to change planes. And our plane was late and we had ten minutes to go from one end of the Atlanta airport to the other and I ran her in her high heels. And I don t think she was going to speak to me. But then I got worried after we took off, I thought oh boy, we made the plane but what about our baggage. Well, it made it all right. So she was talking to me. But she was a competent girl. She went with public television when she left us. But it was so interesting that she was a marvelously qualified young lady, really. Q. Well, we mentioned theatre and an item here of recognizing Jerry Lons. Did you have him brought here? A. No, I didn t have him brought here, but I was his host when he first came. And then we started working together and as a result of that, we set up the American Playwrights Theatre, APT, and what we were doing was producing plays in lieu of Broadway. Many of the playwrights of the time felt that you couldn t get any play of ideas. It was the syrupy sweet musicals that were dominating Broadway at the time. And 19

20 they wanted to get some theatre of ideas. So we began putting on plays at universities and community theatres such as the one in Dallas and so forth. And it really became an interesting thing and as a result of it, I got to meet Elmer Rice, Pulitzer Prize for Street Scene. The one who got the Pulitzer Prize for The Subject Was Roses [Frank D. Gilroy] was on there. And, of cours,e Jerry [Lawrence] and Bob Lee. Bob s dead now. And who else, Anderson. Robert Anderson and his wife, Theresa Wright. 20