Gerald W. Smith Memoir - University of Illinois Springfield

University of Illinois at Springfield
Norris L Brookens Library
Archives/Special Collections
Gerald W. Smith Memoir
SM57. Smith, Gerald W. (1906-1985)
Interview and memoir
26 tapes, 1560 mins., 4 vols., 488 pp.
ILLINOIS COMMUNITY COLLEGES
Gerald W. Smith discusses his work in Illinois education and Illinois community
colleges: Moline High School and Moline Community College 1946-53;
Elmwood Park Community High School district 1953-60; Executive Director of
the Illinois Association of School Administrators at the Illinois Education
Association in Springfield 1960-66; the Illinois Board of Higher Education and
the Junior College Act of 1965; Executive Secretary of the Illinois Junior College
Board from its founding in 1965 to 1970. Also discusses establishment of a state
system of junior colleges: reorganization of existing junior college districts and
creation of new districts; problem areas and failures; interim and permanent
buildings and campuses; programs and curricula. Also recalls growing up in
Arlington and Zearing, Illinois; family, schools, and German immigrants;
education at Knox College; teaching in the towns of Media and Alexis; and
military service during WWII.
Interview by G. Ernst Giesecke, 1976
OPEN
See collateral file: interviewer's notes, correspondence, and Illinois Junior
Community College Development 1946-1980 by Gerald W. Smith.
Archives/Special Collections LIB 144
University of Illinois at Springfield
One University Plaza, MS BRK 140
Springfield IL 62703-5407
© 1976, University of Illinois Board of Trustees

Gerald W. Smith
Jack always walked a half a length ahead of Nebb whether he was pul
load of corn to rrarket or plowing corn or what it was, Jack was alw
there--nervous animal.
I-
Well, I1mtellingthis story because one Saturday when I was workin for
Glenn, I recall vividly, we were making hay. It was a dry smr
was kind of hard to come by and Glenn had bought the cutting f'rom a farm
about two miles away and we'd gone down there one Saturday af'ternoo . Because
the hay was so sparse lt took us most of the afternoon to loa two
loads of hay, we had to do a lot of driving to get a load of hay. So we
got back to the barnyard with that hay around five o'clock or sorething like
I that and it was Saturday eat. Glenn said to me, "Gerald, I don't have
any canvasses or anything to cover this hay with, would you mind if we went
t
ahead and put it in the mw? We' 11 be late toni@S?t , but would you mind?"
I
No, I didn't care, so we went to mow the hay. He had a rather interesting
barn--there were several of them in that area--I don't know what the influence
was, but instead of the barn door being at the end of the barn, which
meant you pulled the load up to the end and then pulling the hay on a fork,
these different barns had a driveway throu@ the dddle of the barn with a
mw on either side. I suppose in the days before the big lift forks they
could then pitch the hay off the wagon on either side. Well, we drove the
load in there, Glenn was setting the fork and I was over in the mw mowing
the hay. Ruth, his wife, was driving the mules Jack and Nebb on the hay
fork but we couldn't see her because she was out at the end of the barn.
We had gotten one or two fork lifts off into the mw and just as Glenn
was about ready to set the fork for another one, all of a sudden Ruth began
to scream and yell., the fork flew up and hit the track and went down to the
end of the bm. He had a little road imre that was kind of a nuisance,
she d corn up and teased those dam^ mles until they ran away. (lawter)
They ran off across the lot, broke the singletrees, tore up the h ~ s and s
went over in the comer of the barn lot and were just standing there, We
jwnped off and went around there--there was nothing wrong with Ruth, she
was just screanhg. Glenn stood there and surveyed the scene. Here it was
six o'clock on Saturday nidt, the harness was broken up and the singletrees
were broken. Glenn surveyed the scene, looked at those two mules,
and said, "I'm sure glad they haven't forgotten how to rm awaiy . " (laughter)
Q. Oh, that's marvelous.
i
I I A. So this was the kind of a temper that this man had.
Q. Well, we're mst at the end of this side of the tape, I'd like to,
adn hazard a kind of pulling together here, Gemy. I do it this way so
that you can set the record straight if I misinterpret. But it sounds as
thou@ this arrangement involving Glenn Steele particularly, came jUt at
the time when you were ready to really start feeling your oats, branching
out, developing your own ideas, your own style of doing thins, and that
he gave you or seem to have given you a very supportive kind of f'riendship,
encouraging you to do things your own way, not arbitrarfly saying, "No, not
that way, you got to do it this way," but giving you a chance to try yoself,
Is this a fair question?

Gerald W. Srriith 5 2
A. That's ri&t, yes. And the other people in the neighborhood to* their
cues fmrn him and helped . . . i
j
1
END OF SIDE ONE
A. . . . helped open up horizons for a young fellow, because I came out of
this kind of a family that I have described. The Swans and the Hulttnes up
and hat road I worked for were Swedish -people with whom I ate Swedish
food and listened to the Fwedish envimmnt. The Bauhs were Gem and so
I had a touch of that culture. Other people of that area were like Glenn and
Ruth who belonged to the old Yankee tradition. It was an lnte~sting place
and an enjoyable area in which to live and work mng people who received
me in a fkiendly way, who gave n~ work all the time and were supportive of
the kinds of things that I wanted to do.
I don ' t ~nmber, again, exactly when, but I 'rn sure that by the junior year
in hi& school I was definitely aspiring to college; they knew this and they
talked about it. When those old people see IE now they kid me about the
thing we used to talk about. Maurice Vickery, whom I referred to, is a man
in his middle ei@ties now, and when I visited him on the weekend of Memorial
Day in his horn he was kidding about some of the thine we used to talk
about and do and sore of the thine that I was interested in.
Q. Gerry, we are at the point now, I think, where it's time to mve on
to the post secondary years, the collegiate years. If you're agreeable, shall
we start In on that?
A. That will be fine.
Q. Well, let me ask you a couple of wide open questions. In the first
place, why dfd you want to go to college? And, secondly, why did you choose
Knox as the place where you would go to college?
A. Why I wanted to go to college is one of those things that's a bit hard
to be specific about. I recall very definitely that as early as the seventh
grade in school I began to think that I would like to go to college and I
don't know exactly why because I had never seen one, I didn't really know
what a college was. Probably it was the influence of teachers. But at any
rate I can well remmber, and remenS3er at home saying to folks that I was
interested in college and oh, they're sort of agreeing with me, but I don1 t
believe thinking of it as a very real option at that particular point. But
in high school rqy teachers all throw high school were very supportive of
the idea of going to college. In addition to that, because of the economic
level of the area of the state was pretty good, college going was not all
that unusual. It was not uncommon for quite a few, as I recall, of that
first graduating class that I referred to to go to college. There were six
girls in it every me of whom becm a teacher. Wile you could begin teach-
ing in the rural schools in those days by passing an examhation with the
county superintendent without ping to college, it was already the practice
to either go to norrral school some or to go to normal school after you began
teaching, and those people did that. One of those graduates went on to a
bachelor's degree program and became a high school teacher, but the others
were elementary teachers.

Gerald W. Smith 53
Q. Did you not also mention earlier, I seem to recall this, that s
or other the culture of the first group that settled fn Bureau Count in-
cluded peat respect for education?
ThOW
A. For education, that ' s ri&t. But at any rate, during my hi@ s
teachers were very supportive of nly going to college and so--by
Now the reason for going to Knox is very simple, it was the influence of my
teachers. Three of the teachers that I had in hi@ school were Knox paduates.
The principal of the high school who was quite influential was a graduate of
Knox, Miss Lock was a graduate of Knox and Esther Shaw one of the math
teachers was a graduate of Knox. So I had three Knox teachers and they sort
of pointed me toward Knox. (tape turned off and on) These people interested
me in it.
In the fall of nly junior year--I'm somy--the fall of rp~ senior year Miss
Bradley, the principal began to counsel me with regard to college and ICnox
and took me to the Knox college campus in the fall. That was the first
college carrrpus I had ever seen. On the basis of that visit I made an application
for amssion to Knox, made an application for a scholamhip and
an application for work. In the course of the fall, by Christmastimte, T had
been notifled that I had been accepted for amssion, and in due time I was
notified that I would get a half scholarship. In those days, in the fall
of 1924 when I entered Knox, the tuition was two hundred dollars, so I got
a hundred dollars tuition and I was advised that I would have to walt until
the next smr, of course, about employment. So, by Christmas of qy senior
year in hi$ school the fact that I was going to Knox was already es
What I did not @t understood thorou@ly was exactly how I was
finance it because it was my intention to finance myself through college so
far as tuition and the cost of living were concerned. My pwents would buy
m SOE clothes and I'd send nly laundry horn and a few things like that.
(laughs) But the basic effort would be IQY own, so that was how I happened
to go . . .
Q. You must have had a fair amount of money saved up, I would ass-,
after your working surmrs and so on.
A. No, I did not have. I had no nest egg with which to go, I was dependent
at the tim I started and all through college upon current earnings. I never
had nare than I needed for the upcoming year. But we will see as I along,
everything worked out very nicely.
Q. I was completely broke, too, when I went to Stanford. (lauds ) What
- .
were som of the goals that you had in mind?
A. By the time I entered Knox goal was specific, maybe not very r 2aListic,
but specific, and it happened to work out. By the time I padm ;ed
from high school I knew I wanted to be a teacher, and I hew I wanted to be
a hi@ school teacher, and I knew I wanted to be a principal. And wl ;bout
any realistic howledge of what it meant to be a principal I started ;o
college with the idea when I graduated I'd try and get a principalshi 1 with

Gerald W. Smith 5 4
it. So I went to school with that aspiration. 1
i
Now along the way I had also thowt at one time I would like to
I had never tho@t of that as being anything other than an
a pleasant enterprise. If I'd had the money I rdght have done it.
piece of an opportunity to go to work in the local bank and
thou@, I ml@t like to pursue that, but the people at the
wisely took care of that, when they said you want to gp to
to college, and they hired another young man to take that
really didnf t have that temptation in the end because I can still repember
Mr. Sutton, the h-are dealer and the chairman of the bank board, $wing,
"You better go to college. "
Q. Well, did anything happen during the time that you were at Knoxi that
made you consider other possibilities?
A. Yes, they did. As I say, I went to Knox wanting to be a hi& s$hool
teacher and wanting to be a hi@ school principal; that was it. I had one
interruption in that tho@t, but not a very serious one. I've almady
mntioned that at the end of rry sophomore year in college I read in the
paper that the Congregational church in Wataga, a neip$boring town, was
looking for a number of substitute ministers for the s mr and might be
interested in a colles student, so I applied. I didn't know anybody up
there or anything, I just applied and they invited ms up a couple of
Sundays to fill the pulpit and were foolish enou* to employ E. (lams)
So I went up there and worked that surrmer and had a very interesting experience.
There were two churches in town, the Congregational churah and
the Methodist church, and the Methodist church had George Hoyle, whq was
one year ahead of rr~ in Khox and whose goal was to be a Methodist
and who, in fact, has just retired after a long career in the
Mstry. He was supplying on a continuing basis the
Wataga, and so, here we were, he entering his senior
rry junior year in college--two young men. We teamd
job of it that smmr and we sort of becam the youth leaders of tha cornnaunity
. We took over the scouts, we combined our youth pups in the two
churches for the smr activities. All of the comnmity certainly got
mdiocre preaching fkom m, If m not saying anything for George, but ,at any
rate, the cormunity really got the benefit of what I look back on *om
pretty effective and strong leadership from two young college men. ow
I'd been a Pkthodist at Wden, because that was the only church th
althou loots were Presbyterian. While in college, again, sincrdox
had a conbined Congregational and Presbyterian background as an out&avth
of the hyican history in the emly 1800~s when there was an effort;
nationally to rerge the Congregational,ists and Presbyterians, Knox was
founded by both groups.
didn't realize that.
A. Yes, it was. They cam out to Knox County and bought this land which
is where Galesburg now stands--it was farm country then--and foundea that
college.

Ge~ald W. Smith
1
Well, after attending both the First Congregational and the Presbyt rim
church I joined the Presbyterian church where they had a young, ve
dynamic outstanding rdnister by the name of Ray Freeman Jenney . He was
extremely active on the campus at Knox College and was a dynamic pr acher,
dynamic man in the pulpit, and a dynardc pastor. I joined his &rurp and
was already a mber of it by the tire I went to Watsga that smr 1
Dr.
Jenney becam quite interested in what George Hoyle and I were doin at
Wataga so he cam out and visited us and he visited with m during he
swnmer on numerous occasions. At the end of the smr and when th fall
term started, he tried to counsel IE to think about the ministry.
went so far as to take IE over to Peoria to the Presbytery and have me put
under the care of the Peoria Presbytery as a potential minister in the
Presbyterian church,
And so during w junior year in college, I gave thou&& to that idea but
by the tirne I entered rrly senior year at Knox w original interests were
paramount and without any real struggle at all, I just made up q mind in
rry senior year that I was going to pursue idea of being a high school
teacher and of being a high school principal. (lau@s)
Q. Let m pick thBt up there for a minute, Gerry. Back before the war
and after the war I was quite active in student personnel work and I got
acquainted with the students that were In UYJaana in a way in which most
faculties would not have a chance to get to how them, simply because we
were trying to work with them using the mthodology of the new student
personnel mverrient which had come into being in the late 1930's. Of" course,
the choice of a cmeer, of a life's work was somthing very much on the
mind of the students then, it was af'ter the Depression and then af'ter the
war. I remember how many of the students at the university were there
to become teachers and this used to puzzle m, why so mmy of them wanted
that--the Aggies, of course, cam from the farm and they wanted to be
fmrs , the engineers they wanted to be something else, they hew this, but
so many of the others had as their goal to becom teachers. I finally
concluded that the reason for that was, or one of the reasons was, that
they had never really had a chance to observe any professional group close
up other than teachers in school, because they had spent their whole life
ming to school. Nau, would you c m to coment on your own decision?
A. Yes, I think: that this was very much a factor. All thro@ hi school
I lived in this cormunity that I spoke about. There were no lawye2 in
there, the closest lawyers were in the county seat in Princeton.
were no doctors in there, our doctors cam from Malden; I was not
tied in with any industrial opportunity, I knew nothing about the
ties in the industrial world, I was to learn more about them while I was
at Knox. So I think that, probably, having developed some desire to do
the thin@ that professional people do, the thing I felt closest to and
hew most about was the profession of teaching. That was probably true
of other students in the school as well, the young ladies . . .
Q. This was clewly true of re, back in high school days.
A, Yes, yes. Well, I'm sure that this was true a lot. Had I grown
jl:
up
mre related--in rrty mature yews I have becom very much interested
laws, in reading law and court decisions. Actually rrg work has been

Gerald W. Sdth 56
such that it's tied me in to it--I can well imagine that I would have
been a very happy man had I elected to be a lawyer, had gone to law, school.
Had I been fortunate in experiences in lm, I think I would have: found
that a very fascinating experience, but I lrn sure what you said is tyue.
Q. Well, I would say it's a good fortune of the state of Illinois
you didn't have other examples, Gerry, because I think there's no
about the contribution that you've mde to education in this state
it ' s outstanding.
A. You know, q experience has been so rewarding.
Q. sure.
A. And for m personally, it was so exciting that I've never had any re-
grets or an;y second tho&ts, althorn I have seen some other f?ield$,
that had rry background been such, I really believe and one of them, especially
law.
Q. In uy case, to examine this particular contrast, this lack of exposure
to other ways of making a living, other kinds of careers, until later on
in life has kept m on the nave constantly, shifting fmm one aspect of
higher education to another, so I've been all over the place and I've done
a little bit of everything. Sometimes I don't how what I am (la@s)--
but I understand what you're saying. Well, what about the studies that
you pursued, what were sow of the things that really struck hone with
you and that mant a lot to you?
A. Of course, Knox is a liberal arts college, at the tim I was at Knox
the enrollmnt was around six hundred. There were about two hundred fn
freshman class in colleg, which to me was a huge institution. I think
again of how relative these things are. I remember a boy by the name of
Jemy Tunnicliffe, who had corn from Davenport, Iowa, to Knox and he was
always talking about how small box was and what a small class we had. Of
course, I l d never gone to a school over fifty and two hundred students in
one class and six hundred in the whole school. It was a pretty good sized
operation to IE.
So far as q studies were concerned, I pursued the fairly classical liberal
arts education, I went on into Knox and pursued only the study of English
as such in freshman year. Well no, hglish and speech. Then, I
continued speech and debate and oratory into the sophornore year, but those
were the mly two years. I'd had two yeam of Latin Fn hi& school and I
took a third year of Latin in college; I took a year and a half of Greek,
and I took a year and a half of mench in college. As you see, I pursued
the language aspect of college, and even though I was only a nmediocre
student in lanw. I felt it was important , and I enjoyed it. The
rest of curriculum was fairly well-balanced. One of the mst exciting
teachers I ever enjoyed was Dr. Longdon in a come that I took as a
freshman, in physics. I consider him one of the mst exciting teachers
and it made physics a very interesting study to m, but it's the only
science that I took in college. 1: took some work in economks, I tqok
I
govemnt and history, and rrathematics and I majored in psychology.1
I had a narrow escape in one thing and that is that with my mbitior/ to

I Gerald W. Smith
1
57
be a hi& school teacher and a principal, I had no one counseling very
carefilly with regard to that. Knox did not have a central counsel ng
program, each student was assigned to a professor. Interestingly e ough
Dr. Wiltbank, who was the chairman of the psychology department the area
in which I majored, was to re a very exciting teacher. I thought h was
great, both as a classroom teacher and a master of his subject, but
f
he
was quite an introvert and he was qy counselor who never counseled e. I
would go to him at the beginning of each semster with my layout of courses
for the semester and show them to him and he would immediately sign them.
When I would ask him if they were all ri&t and he said, "Well, tha 's
what you want, isn't it?" (laughs ) And that was . . .
Q. He was way ahead of his time.
A. That was all of the counseling that I had. But Dr. Conger, who was the
chairman of the history departrent-and as I indicated, I took histgyy and
political science and those kinds of things-becane a personal friend of
mine. Dr. Conger, self-appointed, took quite an interest in all of the
students who wanted to teach; he and I became personal friends and be
would have me over to his house to visit. As I was finfshing junior
year and we were talking about rqy aspirations to be a high school teacher
and a high school principal, he pointed out that q aspirations were not
impossible, that it was feasible to do the kind that I wanted in some of
the small hi& schools around. So he began to question me about my pprc-
gram, observing that I had two weaknesses in my program: first of all I
did not have enough courses in education to qualify for a cefiificate,
nor did I have enough work in a minor outside the field of psycho log^
which was not really a very usable subject for a teaching position at the
high school. So, he had me arrange schedule and even did some things to
accommodate me for it, so that I was able to build up enough in the social
sciences to qualif'y and to qualify for a certificate, so I cam out all
right with it.
NOW Dr. Conger was also the man who personally led me to my first employ-
ment whfch we'll talk about a little later on. So interests were general,
I took courses in quite a few of the areas of the college but majored in
psychology. I majored in it simply because I was fascinated by the sub-
ject and by the professor who taught it.
Q Did you mu? into any field of knowledge and encounter any ways of think-
ing that repelled you?
A. Yes, I did, but I ran into a method of teaching that repelled me and
this was in the study of French. I studied the foreign languages and I
liked them. I have indicated that I was not a particulwly strong student
in languages, and I had teachers who, for the most part, were interesting.
Professor Drew was rry teacher in Latin, I thought the world and all of
him. And I learned one thing about teaching from him that's always stayed
with me. Now I came to the study of third year Latin as a college fksh-
man and I was very weak in some of the Latin gramrm, particularly the
ablative absolute. Therefore, Drew proceded to teach me the ablative abso-
lute, or so he thought, and he worked diligently at it and really
he taught it to me, but he didn't. What he really taught me was,
there was a point of grarranar he called on me to explaln, the

Gerald W. Sdth
ablative absolute. Then he would point to IE and say, what is it?
I would say, the ablative absolute, whereupon held smile, nod and :
"See Gerald, it isn't so hard. " I didn' t really know what it was,
hew he wouldn't be calling on rrie if it wasn't the ablative absoluf
he was a fine teacher and I enjoyed hlm. That was one of the thin6
learmed about teaching, by the way, it's always stayed with me. Tc
don1 t always know what they we teaching. (laughter)
Q. How true, how true.
58
And
Y 9
just
, But
I
chers
A. I also had a very interesting teacher in G~eek, Dr. Adamec, who was
a Yale graduate in his second teaching position. A young man who had some
innovative ideas about teaching Greek, namely that you don't st& with
g r m , you start with reading, so we began to read Iliad on the third day
of the semester. We learned our gr- and our vocabulary by reading the
Iliad and he was a very interesting and inspiring teacher. And there were
so many things that he added about ancient Greek history and the mythology
and about the character and stmcture of language that I enJoyed and that
have been helpful throughout,
The teacher in French was a very competent teacher. I'm not going to name
her because I'm going to say something about a characteristic of her's
that repelled me. It was not the F'rench, It was her method of teaching.
As I say now, she was a very competent teacher. She went to France almost
every summer, she did her sabaticals in France, she was fluent in Fbench,
but her teaching methods repelled me in that you could not respond to a
question, you could not ask a question, or could not volunteer a response
without her searching out a three by five cwd. She had a little deck of
three by ffve cavds for each individual student and every time a student
spoke in class, standing on a little platform at the front of her classroom,
she searched out that card and made a m k on it. That was a block between
me and her and learning of French. It took the joy out of teaching. Now
apparently it didn't bother some students, but it did bother me and that is
the only course that I took where I remember being, consciously turned off.
I think I might have done better in French, although I was not naturally
a strong F'rench student and I did all right, I got good enough grades.
Q. She was the model of the perfect pedant.
A. That's right, yes. And she was an interesting person, we were good
friends. One of the nice things about bhe Knox faculty members and the
students was that as they got acquainted we were invited to people's
horns. We knew one another on many an occasion and she . . .
Q. Too bad that had to be sacrificed.
A. Yes. She was one of the people with whom I was a good personal friend,
but she turned roe off in the classroom. The minute I walked inot the class-
room, as soon as she got on the platform with that deck of cwds, (laughter)
it turned IE off. That's the only thing I remember really being t ~ e d
off on. Knoxls faculty I liked very, very much.
Q. Were there scholars on the faculty, teachers who espoused some o
newer ideas, the issue of evolution versus religion and in other are

Gerald W. SrriLth
Was this in any way a controversial question?
A. Yes, it was a controversial question. Of course, those were t& days
of the evolution trial. We had chapel at Knox, w &shrran year,
chapel every day just before lunch. Then, after nly f'reshrran year,
was changd to three days a week and chapel attendance was mdato
Faculty mrrS3ers spoke, and I recall all three years in chapel, two peeches
t
each year. One by Dr. Longdon, the physics professor of whom I spe , and
one whose nam escapes at the moment, but who tawt the courseqin
Bible, old and new testament. Each year each of them mde a speech, Long-
don accepting the evolution theory and the other professor trying to ex-
pound the literal translation of the story of Genesis. Dr. Longdon would
come in to say that the evolutionary process cam along and he would quote
the Bible to the effect that a day was as a thousand years in the si@t of .
God and, therefore, each of those evolutionary things spelled out in Genesis
as happening in seven days srd&t have taken eons. Whereas, the other pro-
fessor would corn and insist that that was seven calendar days. It was
not a bitter struggle, but yes, the evolutionary trials were followed with
considerable interest . , ,
Q. Well now, did this kind of conflict set off reverberations in the
minds of the students?
A. No, no, student bodies in 1924 to 1928 were not the activists of today.
Student bodies were mre passive as far as that part of it goes. No, we
sat around and chatted about this thing and that and talked about it, but
so far as there being any organizations fomd or strong editorials in the
papers, school paper and so forth, no, Knox was not that kind of a . . .
Q. Knox at that tirre, in Galesburg was fairly well insulated, I guess, f'rom
much of the mainstream of life, it would have gotten newspapers, I guess,
but I don't know. Was that so?
A. No, I don't think so, I think we were pretty weil tuned in to the dnstream
of life and I think we had a faculty of scholars, and of people with
broad eno& Interests and who were active enough in m y of their fields.
There were a rimer of such-Dr. Con~r, of whom I speak, was strongly
active in the political domain. He had once been the myor of Gale burg
and Professor Kern, who was the chairnen of the Modern Languages De$artmnt
was a man who was very active in all of the political and socia mvemnts
of the day and who traveled as a lecturer in those Melds and was
fairly wel-hown .
Q. So Knox encouraged this kind of thing.
A. Yes, and Professor Curtis, who was the chaim of the Depar*tmnt of
Business and EconomLcs was a well-known scholm in the field and was tuned
in with many of the developmnts of the day. DuTeng fYeshrran year at
Knox, Dr. McConahey, who had been the president for flve or six years be-
fore I went there, resigned to becorns the president of Weslegan College in
Connecticut and subsequently becm the governor of Connecticut. He had
this kind of a flavor. His successor, Dr. Albert Britt, who was the

Gerald W. Smith
president of Knox the f'inal three years of college and for seve
years after, was a literary man, a wdter. His major writing befo
c m to this occupation had been writing and editing in the spor%s
fleld, outdoor type of thing. He was a literary rrm of the first
who always spoke at chapel on Fridays and who browt a wide array
jects before us. I found his speeches of t~mndous interest, som
on important topics and somtimes he Id make an important topic out I
rdnor one.
I rerfember one of his talks, "He '11 Do to Take Along. An Army and, Navy
football had been played that was a close gm. One of the players,
in the days before players becam hi@y specialized, was a kicker who won
the gam for the Amy with a place kick. Dr. Britt made a speech out of
it, "Helll I 3 to Take Along." But whether it was Lindberghls flight across
the ocean or somthing else, Dr. Britt was likely to work up a speech with
r e ~ to d it. He spoke on a wide range of political and literary topics.
Q. Again then, it was a very stimulating kind of enviromnt that you
found yourself in.
A. Yes. I referred to sore of the speeches in the chapel but not only
were there speeches in chapel but Knox had a practice at that tire requiring
all of the rnen to eat in the single dining room. Now, we had fraternities.
There were fraternity houses, but there were no dining rooms. There
had been dining room in earlier days in the fraternities, but for a period
of ye- those dining room were closed. While I was there, the~e was
always controversy--the fraternities wanted them back--but we all ate in a
comn dining mom and the faculty ate with us--they werenl t required to
but frequently they did. I always tried to get to the table Dr. Britt
was at because I hew the conversation was going to be interesting and
stimlating. The fkaternities didn't like it but agalvl I liked the comn
dining room because we all knew one another. In those days Knox wa.a 60
percent rnen and 40 percent womn. So, we had between three hundred fifty
and four hundmd mn in the college all eating in the dining room.
Q. The mn and w en didn't gp to the sam place.
A. No, the worm ate in a separate dining room. Now, I only ate oqe ma1
a day there because I did not live on the campus. Perhaps I ought to speak
of that more.
Q. Xne, yes.
A. I mentioned that I earned money to go to collepp. Upon entering
Knox I was seeking a job by which I could e m board and room. Cne rainy
day during threshing, a short tfm before college was to open, not having
heard from Knox about a job I got on a train and went down to Galesburg.
When Dr. Whitford--an English professor who was in charge of these jobs--
arrived at his offlce I was sitting on his doorstep. During that day he
flrst of all suggested that I take a job with a funeral home who wanted a
young man who would work there, stay there all niat and would help answer
calls at ni@t. I went down to see about that job but there was a Rotary

Gerald W. Smith , 61
convention in Galesburg that day and a big pwade. I went down the
or three times and the worn who ran the place was
parades, and I couldn't find anybody there. I was
went back to see Professor Witford, who said, 'Well,
I'll tell you about. Therefs a man by the nam of Mr.
He's an elderly man, a widower and a real estate man.
large house out on the north side of Galesburg and he's
man to live with him, take care of his house and the
But he's not always the easiest m to work with."
Then he told re of the young m that worked there two years. MY. Morey
thowt a pat deal of the young man who happeried to be the son-in-law of
the dean of the colleg. Then, he said, next year he had four boys, after
which he gave up in disgust. He said, "If you and I@. Morey can get along
it '11 be a pod job. He said, "If you want to see him, go see him." So, I
went over to Mr. brey's offlce and saw him and he said, 'Well, afger lunch
you corn back and 1'11 take you out and show you qy little cottage &d we '11
look at It." So in the afternoon we went out to see his place and his little
cottage was a sixteen room house, (laughter) in which he was living alone
as a widower. I took the job and in my freshman year. I was to take care
of the house and prepw the breakfast, That way I had i-qy room and
breakfast provided for. I had to do something about the other mails sore
other way. So I entered Knox that way.
I scouted about for other jobs, odd jobs to buy noon and evening mals.
At about Thanksgivingtim I found this matter of scouting around for these
extra jobs a bit of a burden. By that time Mr. Morey and I were getting
along-and by the way, I was there all four years; a rich experience--so,
I said to Mr. Morey , "You how, Mr. krey, you've st this big house, "--and
he liked for me to take care of his cavl and the driving--I sad, "You've
got plenty of work here and I'd just as soon do mre work. Would it be
all ri&t with you if I did mre work and had rq~ evening ma1 here?" I said,
'II'd be willing to cook it wself if you dl1 bqy the food." He said, 'Well,
Sonny ," by that tim he was calling me Sonny, (lau@s) he said, "That ' s a
good idea, I get tired eating out, 1'11 eat with you." So for the rest of
qy fl-eshman year I p~pared the mming and the evening mals and took care
of the house and we lived together. At the end of ny fieshrran year he asked
m if I was coming back and I said, "I would like to, but I would like a
new armngement,ll +'And what is that?" And I said, Well in addition to
noon and evening mals at home, I would like to eat lunch at the dormitory
at the college. I'd like for you to pw for it. " (la&s) So, he agreed
to it, so the rest of rry college days I regulwly ate noon ma1 in that
comn dining mom.
By the way, you had to have permission to live off the campus, but during
four years then I emed board and room. But by and large by living
with Nr. Morey and keeping house and cooking for him and looking after the
house we became fast friends. At that time he was getting up clase to re7
tiremnt . He had one sister who lived in Galesburg. He had a daughter
and husband and a @andchild--who was born the first year I lived with
him--who lived in Peoria. The man over there was a lawyer. That was his
total family, so- I became a part of the family, you see, and I'm sure that

L for them and for m, too, it was a pleasant experience. So, I live there
Gemld W. Smith 6 2
i:
shaving and bathing, to go down and st breakfast. Then Mr. krey am down
and ate breakfast with re. He did not get ready to go to the office until
after breakfast while I dfd the dishes. And it was eighteen blocks to
Knox and I always had an ei@t o'clock class, all five years, never missed
an eight ot clock class.
all four years and it made eming rry livelihood in college a lot e ier
than washing dishes in restaurants or doing thing that other peopl did
and I had a great deal of flexlbf lity . I could do the work when I anted to.
l'@ pattem of daily life at college was to st up in the morning an after
Q. Did you have a bicycle?
A. No, I walked. It was a mile and a half. I would leave the house at
seven-thirty promptly, and on the way there were three professors, Fro-
fessor C d i s in economics and Professor Cawlwho was also an econpmics
teacher and the registrar, and Professor Kurz of the foreip langua&e de-
partment. They walked and I joined them and WE? four walked to colle@.
END OF TAPE
Q. Gerald is talking about his experiences at Knox College. Sorry that
the tape ran out just at this point, Gerry, please take over.
A. Now, as I was saying, days at Knox and the pattern was regular throw-
out the years. I went to the campus for an ei@t o'clock class in the mom-
ing without exception, stayed on the campus until four o'clock, then at four
o! clack I walked over to IW. Morey s office in the Bark of Galesburg build-
ing, in his real estate office and there received instructions. These
might be to go buy sorre groceries and go on out to the house and get the
evening meal; on som occasions it might be to take the car out and wash
it, and then corn and get him for the evening real, and to do whatever
other work I wanted to. And then the evenings we worked out;, you know,
whatever was brought up. It was not uncomn for him to have m drive him
some during the evening, either to show houses since he had evening appoint-
rents to show houses, or in those days the Orpheum Theatre ran a changs of
program twice a week and Mr. Morey attended each change--there was a movie
with vaudeville in the rtriddle of it. So, I would take him to the theatre
in the car and then go spend the evening at the library, or go back,to the -
house and study and pick him up at the end of the show. A lady about Ms
age in the conanunity and he were good friends and he frequently took her
to the show and to other affairs. ?"nus, I f'requently would have the busi-
ness of driving them to wherever they were going and picking them up. But,
it was a fairly constant pattern.
I was saying I had a great deal of flexibility in rry job, I always worked
for Mr. Wrey all day Saturday except during the football season, at which
time I went to the campus on the afternoons of the home gms. The only
restriction on employmant with Mr. Morey prohibited IE fmm partici-
pating in intercollegiate athletics; he had no objection to athletigs but

Gerald W. Smith
he did have objection to the person who worked for him being away op the
trips with the team. Otherwise, I think--while I had had no athlet c ex-
perience--1 pmbably would have tried out for fwtball. As a I
wei&ed 175 pounds, was a pretty good chunk of a boy and might have made
a passable lineman or reserve of som sort.
Q. I i wne you were fairly fast on your feet too, weren't you, CRrry?
A. Well yes, reasonably so, but not really. I was always built for comfort
instead of speed, but (laws) I did go out for cross country as a fresh-
man, but that was the limit of athletic activity. It was a good job, I
worked with a great deal of flexibility.
Speaking about that evening meal, the longer I was with lW. Morey the fewer
times I prepared the evening ma1 because he was as much interested in corn
pany as he was in the work. So, with increasing frequency I would stop at
his office at four o1 clock when he would say, %Jhy don't you go out to the
house and do whatever you were going to do, 'I because, you how, he knew I
hew what had to be done. Then he ' d say, "Bring the cw back at five-thirty
or six o clock and we 11 go down to the Amrican Beauty and eat, " or, "We 11
go to the Hotel Custer and eat," or 'We'll go to the Galesburg Club and eat;"
those were our three central points. I would say by rry senior ye= in hi@
school I doubt if I awrag?d preparing more than two mals a week in the
evening. We ate out at ni@t more that we ate at horn. Again, it was a
good experience for me because Mr. lbrey had his circle of friends at the
Galesburg, Club, you know, I got acquainted with people in Galesburg I
never would have mt had I not been in that activity.
I even had a little follow-up to that job with the Sunera1 parlor. Mr.
Moreyls sister that I referred to, passed away while I was at Knox and he
engaged that f'uneral parlor. I mt the lady who ran the f'uneral parlor
during the days that we were taking care of Mr. rYaoreyls sister. When I
told her the story of how I missed her she offered r r ~ a job. (laughs)
She always had Knox students and it was a good place to work, but obviously
I wasn't interested. (lau@s)
Well, speaking of my job, this was a good job and I did have the dormitory
as a place to eat at noon. I had another contact at the dormitory . W
closer mends that I fomd at Knox, particularly in rry class all lived
in the dodtory. So, as the years went on, pay.t;icularly in the room of two
boys that were friends of mine, Henry Selter and Jms MclWllan. Their room
becam headquarters on campus and while I didn't live in the dormitowy
I practically had a room. I went there in the daytime when I wanted to be
relaxed. Our social affairs at the college centered pretty much around
the%r activities, so Seyrmur Hall, the dormitory becane second horn.
Earlier you asked m about the fraternities. I was not a fraternity man
at Knox, but I was invited to join a fraternity and did in fact accept the
initial invitation but changed qy mLnd and decided not to go thmugh with
it. a activities of that type at Knox were related first of all to a
social orgamization. It was made up of the nowfraternity group; we did
have a little group of our own. And then in f'reshman yew I becm
interested in the Cosmpolitan Club . . .

Gerald W. Smith 6 4
Q. Excuse m . (tape turned off and on) You were talking about bqlonging
to another non-fraternity club.
I
A. Yes. I beloned to the Union Club which was just made up of t/he nonfraternity
people. We were not a hi@ly structured organization, but we
did have activities of our own. I was always krlendly with the mmbers of
all the fratermities and it wasn't uncommon for r r ~ to be invited to one
of the f'raternities. But w job and qy interests were such that I just
was not attracted or the fraternity as such did not appeal to nze strongly
enough.
In qy freshman year, I becam interested in the Cosmopolitan Club and Knox
did not have a sizable nwnber of foreign students, but we always had a few.
I developed a close Mendship with two Chinese students in nly freshman
year and remained active in the Cosrmpolitan Club which was made up of a
certain number of we natives who were interested. The other mmbers were
the orient a1 students , usually Chinese or Japanese and Spanish-speaking
students, and the black students. We did, agaLn, not have very many black
students at Knox, but we had a few and that was the club as I rerrerrS3ered;
the Spanish-speaking, the Chinese and Japanese. We had som very fine
people. Well, I formed this Mendship with Cooper K. P. Chen--he took on
the ES?glish narc of Cooper while he was in this country--who was attending
hox on a special funding progam set up by the Chinese Government on the
reparations fhm the Boer War. He was interested in government life and in
economics. We were good friends and still are. As a matter of fact, om
correspondence, of come, was shut off for the twenty-five ye- that China
was closed, but immediately after China opened, our correspondence renewed
and we are corresponding with one another now to . . .
Q. To this day?
A. Yes, he lives in Swatow in China. The other one was king Chen, who
was a math major. They were interesting young mn that I enjoyed. They
moved f h m Knox after graduation, to the University of Illinois. bQ first
contact with the University of Illinois carpus was visiting them and living
for two or three days within the Chinese community which was quite separate;
just north of the old pg-rnasium was a sett lert-ent of houses where all those
people lived.
Q, Let me just throw in a question here. I'm surprised that with your
versatility and your maturity and you experience and obvious ability to
express yourself and all this kind of thing that you didnlt somhow, get in-
volved in student ppvemnt.
A. Well, I didnl t. I was never aspired to the govemnt offices in any
way, and never participated.
Q. Because you certainly had all of the rr!akings of a big man on canpus,
you know.
A. Well, I was not--althou@ I was known on the campus ax we all were, but
I was not a big man on the campus, I guess. I would have to say t w or ~
three tbFngs. F'irst of all, student govemnt on the casrlpus was nqt a very

Gerald W. Smith 1 i 65
visible thing, it was not a very highly active organization, there
student government and a student organization, but students were p
those days and I did not even becom very much interested in those
The thine that I was interested in was working in the Union Club
ing in the Cosmpolitan Club, active in som of the affairs over
Presbyterian church, but I was not too much of a participant, or
pant at all, in student govemnt.
I
9. The sw thought occurs to n~ here in this context that occurreb to
me last tine when we talked about the earlier enviromnts in which~you had
lived. That is these are usually smll and intinate environnents where you
experience the totality which today are almst closed. That is an experience
that's almost nonexistent for anybody anymre simply because we live only
in little segments, see only sepnts of the total life of the comunity,
and this was the big thing, I guess, that I too, enjoyed at Stanford.
A. Yes, you see I lived in small units, I livedwith Mr. Morey, an old
widower and there were just the two of us and his small family. The whole
Knox campus was a sdl campus with six hundred and som students and the
activities, of course, were in ratio to that kind of an organization. I
probably was not ready for the larger circle, I was beginning. Probably
getting ready to p w into the broader circle of activity and experience
which developed later on in life. As you already said, it was small
and intimate. A student could know the president personally. One of
Knoxts distinguished graduates, and a fomr president, was John Huston
Finley , who w& at that time the editor of the New York T i ~ . s He was one
of the self-made young men having walked from Grand Ridge, Illinois, over
by Streator to Knox, graduated *om box, and earned his diploma by
loging in the library. Then, later on, he was the president of Knox and
became a world citizen as the editor of the New York Tims. He was one
man you took everybody to met. . A distinguished ~rnber of the Board of
~rustees at Knox,-he was on the campus two or three tirnes, he always
addressed Chapl, and arrangemnts were always made for students to meet
with him in small pups.
Q. So this kfnd of thing is an
young person who experienced it. Just as an
I had the opportunity to wash dishes in
student and I had the
see and to hear in an
president of St anford.
At this point we're going to call a halt to theday" proceedings. We will
resm in a day or so, but this is termlnatingthis particular interview on
August 4, 1976. (tape turned off and on)
Q. Good mming, this is now ~ugust 6, 1976, s m people, sar~ place. We
didn't quite get through with the chapter on lhox College on Wednesday so
this mmg Gerry indicates that he would like to say just a few swrnrdng
up remarks about that experience as a starter. Gerry.
A. Thank you, Ernst. I just have a few random thing to add to the Knox
years. I gaduated in June of 1928 with an B.A, [Bachelor of Arts]j and a
major in psychology and a &or in the social sciences.

Gerald W. Smith 66
Q. I believe you gaduated with honors, did you not?
A. Yes, I graduated Cum Laude at Knox and was happy to see that be ause
you did not know what your honors or lack of honors were to be unti ! you
received the comncemnt propam on graduation dqy . I was real tbilled
to see Cum Laude at the end of m in the graduation program.
Q Speaking of graduation, were all mrnbers of your family able to!com?
A. Yes, the people that I've identified, my mother and w father were
there, and up-Lelia, whom I was to marry later that smmr--was there and
her mther and sister. &q grandmther and IQI aunt Sis--to whom I refer
so frequently-were there and other mmbers of our family. Yes, we had a
very pleasant day on graduation day at Knox, which was held in the Congre-
gat ional church at Galesburg .
Q. One other thing, I think, that would be nice to get into the record
here. Were you the first rnember of your family on both sides to graduate
f'mm college?
A. Of our inmediate family, yes, I was the first. I believe I was first
of the cousins that I had--I had forty-four of them--(lams) to be a college
graduate, but others fYom then on did graduate. I had had a second cousin
who had graduated f'mm Knox, who was considerably older, but of our imme-
diate fdly I was the first colles graduate. Although a nwnber of my
cousins went on to paduate later on.
By the time that I was well into my senior year and through rq~ senior year
w professional goals were very clear in my mind. I wanted to be a high
school prhcipal, I wanted to pursue a career in teaching and administration.
Admi.nistration appealed to me particulmly as I had watched It when
I was in hi& school, and I think perhaps again in college. The swerintendent
of schools Fn Galesburg and the principal of the high school tauat
part of the education courses for the Knox campus, which gave the students
at Knox an opportunity to become acquainted with those people and to becom
acquainted somwhat by visitation in the Galesburg schools. And I was also
hoping that somwa~ or another leadership oppoAunities mi@t open to ITE in
w career, both in tern of the kinds of positions I mi@t reach and in
terms of the positi~i~s to which people are selected in professional asso-
ciations. I cam out with that kind of a goal. I also cam out of &LOX
with an interest and a desire to be an active commmity worker, to do that
kind of thing. Zhose were really two things that I cam out of Knox with.
But primax%ly, to be a teacher and a school administrator; in those days I
thought of them as one.
Q. I'm interested in the observation here, the comnt on the cormunity
leadership, the community involverent. You intimated here that maybe this
was a product of your Knox years. Do you think that's an accurate state-
ment? Or was this community orientation and involvemnt somthing earlier?
A. Yes, I think it was perhaps a product of both rry hi@ school and nly
box ye-. I'd had an opportunity to see people working in scouting and
to see people working in the outreach mas of church work; It d had ,a
i

Gerald W. Smith 67
opportunity to see sore of the people at Knox whose activities reached
into the Galesbmg comunity. I had lived with Mr. brey,
larly at our dinner meting at the Galesbwg Club I had
with people who were, of course, mng the outstanding leaders
community. Som of the older people tied to Knox College had
their families had lived there and their families were still
Those people's lives were associated both with Galesburg and with the
college and somhow or another, I think I solrt of got a feel for that kind
of thing.
Q. Maybe for the implementation of leadership. Let me reveal one of
own biases here, Gerry, which underlie the question. I keep thinking again
and again of your complete imrsion and complete assimilation into that
little community in Zeavjng with all of its matifaceted experiences; work-
ing experiences, social experiences, religLous experiences, educatianal
experiences and so on. You had it seem to me a pasp of the totality of
existence which clearly would--from rry feeling--would be an essential con-
dition for a comunity leader or a person with comnunity feeling of
responsibility would have had to experience somwhere along the line.
A. Well, of course I don't know, maybe that gave me the background and
undergriding to respond to that kind of thing, I lm not sure. I wasnl t
aware of it. (lams)
Q. No, of course not, so let's not spend anymore tim. This to me is
one of the mst interesting aspects of citizen leadership in our kind of
society, so this is why I bring it up, so please go ahead.
A. Our students at Knox, by the way, the student body of Knox was made up
of an interesting mix, like all of the liberal arts colleges, I suppose,
within two or three hundred miles of the large cities. The Chicago area
made a sipificant contribution to the student body of Knox, par%icularly
the Cook County corrmnmities outside the city made up a sizable portion of
our student body. But likewise, the student body was made up of young
people flvm mny conmnities in Illinois of the smaller type, the cornunities
of five hundred or a thousand. I suppose because of rqy background f"rom
Malden and Zearing mst of qy close associates at Knox turned out to be
people that had a rather similar experience, although they cam not from
northeast of Galesburg where I came from, but mre to the west and south-
west of Galesburg. I guess it was coincidence that John McHenry whose
father was a banker in Biggpville [IlUnois] a town of about five hundred
southwest of Galesburg, was a rnernber of class. We fomd a lifelong
friendship out of that; he himself went into banking in Peoria.
Jams McMillan, or Jim McMillan, whose father was a dentist in Macorfb ,
Illinois, was mng the close friends that I had. Jim's profession turned
out to be the Presbyterian dnistry; he is retired now and lives in Macomb.
Henry Selters, fmm Clayton, Illinois, a town between Galesburg and Wncy,
a comunity of a thousand or so, whose father was a f mr and who later
had so= business interests in the town of Clayton--Henry cam there, then
later went on to further training in the store rmagemnt for the Kresge

Gerald W. Smith
people. fis career developed in that area, primarily in Lndhna,
and Nichigan, but most of his experience was in Indiana.
i
Q. There's one other thing I would like very much to have you get nto
the record before we leave the Knox chapter, and that is how you se the
fact that you had as pure a liberal arts degree or curriculwn at Kn x as
one could hope to md. How that fits in with your subsequent care r which
was involved really in the professional areas, where you dealt with other
professionals and on professional concerns, and so forth. Was this a useful
kind of background?
A. Yes, I have always been pleased, both that I went to Knox becau$e--not
only was it an excellent college but it was unusually well suited to ITE as
an individual. The liberal arts education that I had at &ox, I feel, has
been a magnificent resource throughout rry life. I have always been,a life-
long exponent of the liberal arts as the broadest and the best educ+tion on
which to build any kind of a life, professional or other area of octupation,
or personal as a citizen and as an individual. I have felt that I have
been well served by rry liberal arts education.
Q. Playing the role of the devil1$ advocate for a mmnt, how could the
study of Greek and French and philosophy and things like that prove to be
usef'ul to you?
A. I think thatls hard to answer and I'll always remrber when I was in
college, cousin Jenny Grable used to frequently ask me, "Gerald, '' she
would say, tlyoul re going down to Knox and you1 re studying trigonomtry and
you're studying Greek and you're studying history, howt s that going to help
you earn a living?" (laughter) And that was the questim she used to ask
so often. And I think, of course, that those things are subtle wd they
we somwhat ii$angihle but, by the s m token, I think that in the ! study-
ing of Latin and the Greek and of the histories that went with it a$d of
the work that I did in philosophy, that you get a hf storical and a gocial
perspective that is as applicable in this day as it was a hundred years
ago or five hundred years a@, or ever was. I believe that you can draw
on those perspectives. Certainly I . . . probaly havenJt read five pages
of Greek since I graduated Porn Knox, but the things that we discussed m
class and som of the historical and social background that I got out of
the study of that and the discussions that went with it, have been invalu-
able to me throughout life.
Q. Are you saying that you acquired a sense of where you fit in tire and
place in the history of mankind?
A. Yes, I think so, that s ri@t. I think somt lmes in the kind of work
I've been in, its been ve~y helpful to rr~ to be able to look at things in
a historical and philosophical setting, as well as in the little problems
of the day.
Q. Well, I think maybe this is a very good basis or topic on which to
wind up the formal part of your education at Knox. I think you've given a
splendid characterization of the experience that you've had. You we about
to start out now to rmke a living in 1928, but I think there were s
other personal developments in there that we haven1 t heard very rnuc

Gerald W. Smith I 69
Alluded to your life's partner this morning and so in whatever way ihat
you' d like to begin talklng about these things, why, I think this
a sod tim for it, Gerry.
A. All right. I think mybe this would be a good t hie to mve me from
Knox College campus in Galesburg, Illinois, to rrg first position as pdnci-
pal, superintendent and teacher in the small hi@ school at Media, Illinois,
whose title was the longest I ever had on a letterhead. P& first job was
in the Media Township Cornunity High School and Weaver Media Academy.
And 1'11 tell a little bit about that in the character of the institution
in which I began my wo~k.
As I was in my senior year ln school, and as I think I've already put into
the record, I found wself' approaching the end of my college career with
an aspiration to be a high school principal and a teacher, but perhaps
coming up short in the courses that were necessaq to qualify for a certificate.
As I have indicated, Dr. Conger, head of the Bpay7tment of 4Hstory
who was sort of the self-appoimted mmber of the college faculty, particularly
to help people who were interested in teaching positions, had been at
Knox a long tim. He was a popular speaker for paduation exercises, he
liked local history and he knew individuals in about any communities you
could thlnk of in a radius of one hundred miles around Galesburg, and he
followed the careers of his students or the Knox students who were there.
When I was thinking about a position in my senior year I first of all signed
up with som of the teacher agencies, comrcial teacher agencies, in order
to gt som nms and leads. But Dr. Conger early in the second semster,
February or Mch, brought to my attention that a fomr JSnox gra(1mte who
was the superintendent-principal of the little hi@ school at Ikdia, was
leaving that position at the end of the year and that he believed that would
be a good place for m to start, and he believed that he could help me get
that position. So, he took me to Media and introduced me to the man who
was leaving there who, in turn, introduced me to some of the board mmbers,
and I put in a,pplication. The spring moved along toward the end of
April or the flrst of May, but I still hadn't heard mything from Media,
so, I was getting somewhat uneasy. But I had had offers for a couple of
jobs; one on the upper peninsula of Mchigan and one down in southern Illinois--teaching
positions--but Dr. Conger said, "You just sit still, I
think that mdia thing is going, to work out." And so, one day in the spring
I did gt a request to ccm to Media to meet with the Board of Educqtion.
In those dqys the Cormunity High School districts had five mrrber boards.
After a brlef discussion they advised rn that they were offiring ~ ~ the l e
job and on that occasion I had a teaching experience, or a learning experience,
I mL&t say.
In those days hi@ school teachers in good high schools in Illinois were
getting beginning salaries of about twelve hundred doll- a year. I had
hoped that since I was going to be not only a teacher but the principal-
superintendent of the district maybe they would offer m sixteen hundred
or somthing like that. Mrs. Bertha Pogue was the C h a i m of the Board.
When she said they were offering re the job she said, "Now, what do you
want for a salary?" And I, standing there with that sixteen hundred
dollar or so figure in mind, and I guess controlled a bit by proyidence
because my response was, "Well, I presum that if you're offering t e posi-
tion that you have a salary in mind and if you do, I'd like to hear it
1

Gerald W. Smith 70
and I'm not bashful; if I'm not satisfied 1'11 say so. " "Well,"
sald, "we do have. How would two thousand dollars be?" (laughs)
I &ept my composure and looked out the window about thirty seconds
cided it would be all ri@t. From that day to this, I've always 1
ployer suggest I-QJ salary to re and in rp~ paz-ticular case, fortunat
usually have done as well or better than I would have wanted.
So qy first position then out of college was to go to Media as a principal-
superintendent and teacher of that school which up to that tlm usually
had an enrollrent of about fifty or sixty students, somwhat comparable to
the commfty from which I had corn. lkdia was a little village Wut like
Malden where I had gone to hi& school.
Going back now, however, my transition fmm a college student to rqy first
job also included the establishnt of rry fdly life. ken I was a freshri?an
in hi@ school I mt Lelia Rackley. Lelia had been born in Bureau County
and her fanily was mng those old Yankee families. Her fmly on the
two sides cam f'rom New Hampshire and Vemnt to Illinois, but Lelia's
parents when she was just a youngster had mved out to Boone, Iowa and
lived there for ten years. In 1920 they moved back to Illinois as her
Grandfather Rackley retired from farming and her father c m
back to move
onto the horn farm and take it over. He was the only surviving son of
that family, he had three or four brothers and sisters but they had died
from typhoid fever as so rmny children had back in the early days, you how.
And so he was to inherit the farm. He decided to cone back and st it
going and so Lelia was in the ei@th grade the year I was a fkeshman in
hi@ school and . . .
What was !!4r, Rackley ' s @ven n m?
R-A-C-K-L-E-Y?
R-A-C-K-L-E-Y.
And how did Lelia spell her name?
L-E-LI-A, Lelia.
Okay, thank you.
And so I mt her, we becam acquainted. She was in the ei@th grade
d I was a freshman and we were in the same building. Interestingly
enough she was a little girl that attracted rry attention, but not much mre
than that. We had nothing mre than passing acquaintance through our
f'reshman and-sophornre yeam in high school but in our junior year in high
school we be@ to date sore. By the tim I was a senior we dated on a
regular basis. She continued in school and graduated from Malden Hi@
School in--the year following E--1925, went to n ~ mschool l at Northern
[Illinois Wversity] for a yew and then began teaching in a one-room
country school there in Bureau County, which she did until I graduated
f'rom. ..

Gerald W. Smith
Q. Northern was called what at that t'ime?
A. It was Northern Illinois--Teachers Colleg? Was it Teachers Co leg
at that tim? . . . It was a normal school. T guess it was just th 1 norm1
school of IkKalb. I forgot the offidal nam at that time.
Q. And she graduated from Northern? ! I
A. No, she went there just a year and then went to teaching and taught
until we were married. In the s mr of 1928 on August 19, just before
I went to Wdia to begin rqy first position, we were mied and mv$d to-
gether then to Media. I was in &dia seven years; they were very pleasant
and interesting years and were good years for rre . As I've indicated kdia
was a community of about two hundred and f'if'ty people. The high sdool
served about two township areas around there, and the enrollrent wa$ between
fifty and sixty. The school had a rather interesting background. In the
late 1880's l'k. Nathan Weaver, a fmr at Media with a Pennsylvania back-
ground, was interested in education and so he established personally the
Weaver-Wdia Acadew and Henderson County Nomnal School.
Q. Weaver hyphen Nkdia?
A. Yes, Academy and Henderson County Normal School.
Q. Henderson County, goodness, what a m .
A. Now it was strictly a secondary school because in those days you could
qualim people to teach on a hi& school education. So, the Hendemon County
Normal School was the teaching aspect of the secondary school. He built a
building, a f'ram building, but a very adequate building, in one of his
fYe1d.s riat up there at the edge of the villw, and until about 1893 he
operated the school himself, hired his teachers and ran it. He built a
modest size house as a dormitory for students.
Q. Did he do this for tuition, or did he receive public money?
A. Oh no, this was a totally prlvate enterprise and he did it for
i
uition.
In 1893 he had the school incorporated. He subsequently moved out o Iowa,
but it was handled by a board of trustees. He retired f'rom active articipation
in it in about 1901 or 1902 and I believe died around 1908 o 1909.
The school ran as that type of academ, a secondary school for that area,
with vayying levels of success or fortune. I think perhaps it was lways
successful, but its fortunes v&ed through the years. At somtim it
succeeded in having rather strong enrolhrents. Upon his death he left a
will providing for the continuation of.the school and endowing it with some
land. The heirs attempted to break the will and in the period of litigation
that followed his death, I think there were a couple of years the school
did not operate, but it picked up again and ran.
In 1917 the school was having great difficulty with finances as a private
institution, but the people of that area were very practically minded so
they mved to organize a cormrrunity high school district and elect a board
of education. That was how the Media Township Cornunity High SchooT was
I
I

Gerald W. Smith 72
the building, maintain it, heat it and hire the comrcial teachers (laws )
fomd in 1917. There upon the school district--and thls was a part
kiSh
of
the plan in calling the election--the school district and the acade entered
into a mutual worldng agreement. The school district would operate the
school, the board of education would manage it and m it and eqlo the
teachers and do all the things that boards do. The acadew would
And they operated that wa$. I do not know when they terminated the / ernploy-
rent of the teacher, but when I went to work there in the fall of 1928,
this was still the arrangment. So I was hired by the school, but we were
using the acadew building and they were maintaining it and I believe were
not heating it, we were heating it, but they were providing it and we had
that working arragpemsnt. So it was kind of an interesting setting to go
into . . .
Pretty introduction to the subtleties of administration.
A. Yes, yes, and a pretty good introduction into the history of Amrican
secondary educatfon; the total transition f'rom the old academ to the public
hi@ school hadn't quite disappeared there. The student population cane
f'rom the little village of Media and f'rom Raritan. which had the s m New
Jersey background as hitan, New Jersey.
END OF SIDE ONE
A. Raritan was somwhat larger than Edia and their youngsers practically
all cam to the high school, althow they were not in the hi& school
district. This was in the days when 50 percent or mre of the Illinois
territory was not in a high school district, but there were legal - pmvi- -
sions for them to attend and for their tuition to be paid by taxes, They
cam by bus. A man in Raritan, again it was private enterpfise, owned
the bus and transported the students to the school, (telephone ring)
Several thin@ happened to me at Media that I think me of worthy note as
a part of q~ professional career and life since I fwshed college. The
student body at Media was, I'd say, an above average student body, the
families that lived in that nei&borhood were progressive families, they
tended to be generally quite well educated. The influence of the United
Presbyterian College at b!bmuth was very evident there in the people who
went to lkmuth. The use of the normal school at Macomb had had quite
an effect on people, a nwnber of people had gone to Knox College, so the
educational level was fairly high, and likewise the perfomce. Fifty
percent of our hi@ school paduates in the seven yews that I was at Medla
would go on to school after paduation which was, you know, falrly hi& for
that t-. It was, of course, a close and intimate relationship with the
students, there were five mmbers on the faculty, there agaln their standards
were high, we hired no faculty ~mbers that were not graduated f'rorn college
before they began teaching. For us and all of the teachers that I d
did paduate wo~k during the years that they were teaching with us
Media. The faculty was also quite stable, we didn't have a heavy t %
over, but we did have som because we lost our teachers to bigger j
better paying jobs from time to time.

t
Gerald W. SrriLth
$:!
Arnong my experiences there, in March of my first year. in the Spring of 1929,
one morning around ten o'clock I was teaching a class in economics
looked out the west window of my classroom, I saw custodian
his house to the campus and pointing to the yoof. It tumed out th schoolhouse
was on fire and it burned to the ground between then and noo
m~ng, so we lost ow, building right in the middle of a school . We
were fortunate, while it was a frame building it had one of those o d metal
ceiliw and the fire apparently--we knew for SUE-but apparently L st have
started from a defective flue and the fire was contained in the attic for
considerable time. They were building the hard road past mdia at that tine
and they were just about a block and a half from the schoolhouse, so the whole
crew came over. The perlod of time that the fire was contained in tbe attic
was sufficient tire to allow that crew of people to salvage every bit of equiprent
inside. We took everything out of the building,The top floor had an assem
bly hall and a stage and they even took down the stage curtains and that kPnd of
thing; the only damage we really had was the little breakage *om things that
they dropped out the second story windows. I still remember the value of
fire drills, we had had some fire drills when I tumed in the fire drill and
the students went out very orderly, not !mowing the schoolhouse was on fire.
I thought they were a little slow and I remember saying to some of them coming
down the stairs, "Move along," and one youngster, Lawrence Pogue, responded by
saying, "What's the humy of the fire drill?" (la&s) But they went out.
So, I imdiately then in first year of administration had the experience
of losing a building, of having to rr!ake plans for the last couple of months
of school in a humy and, of course, of thinking about the replacement of
the building. Subsequently, then, in the next couple of years I had my first
experience in the construction program.
Q. Was the board willing to pretty much twn the responsibility for all
of these activities over to you under their consultation, of course?
A. Yes, this was an excellent boasd and they were the policy makers, they
made the decisions, but there was never any question about who was employed
to do the work.
. It was just about an ideal situation under which to begin working.
A. Yes. Yes, I was fortunate that I went Aght out of college Into that ad-
ministrative role of working with the board to have such an enlightened board,
but I did have. First place, I had been preceded by capable adn-ihistrators,
they had had good people there ahead of time. And again as I say, we had
an enlightened board. Bertha Pogue was the chairman of that board and she
was a graduate of Monmouth College and she knew how things behaved, but so
did the other board mr&em. In rr~7 seven yems there I only had one board
change, only one man retired from the bomd. So, for seven years I worked
only with six dffferent people on the board.
The acadew tried to replace the building but thefr resources sFnzply were
inadequate, so after several months of search for a way to have the acadeq
replace their building we abandoned that and went to the standard bond issue
referendum. The high school district built the building, but we built it
on the acadeqy property. Again I might say, then when the new high $chool
bullding was complete and things were moving along the acadeny decid$d there
was no longer any reason for its continuation as a corporation, so ,

Gerald W. Smith 74
they deeded their property to the high school district and dissolved. I
saw all that occur the^.
Q. Well, other than as a cleraman there was probably no other rolq possible
in a town like %dfa or a township, or Alexis, or any of these placds that
would have given you the opportunity to becorne involved with the totial con-
munity as did the principalship of the high school.
A. No, no, that 's riat. The principalship of the hi& school gave me
total involvemnt with Media and RaY.ltan and the cormmities around. That's
rigtit because there were no other professional people around. We had a
minister and this was a dual system, we had a superintendent of the elemn-
tary dtlstrict and a suprintendent of the hi* school district, but we had
no lawyers, we had no doctors. I guess the nearest thing we had then to
a professional person was the banker.
I had a fine experience with an excellent board, I had this business of the
building propam, I had the administrative experience of dealing with a
bank failure in the Depression. All of our school funds being in the bank
that failed and having to work out plans and a procedure to continue to pay
our faculty and to do those thins, this gave me an interesting opportunity.
Q. How did you react to that kind of duress, to that kind of stressful
situation personally, as a h m being? Did it bother you much?
A* No, it didn't bother re very much, I guess. By that tim I had Glenn
Steele's philosophy (laws) somewhat unconsciously, you know. You don't
get rattled, you don't get excited, you have a problem to deal with and
you proceed to handle it. We did this the day the building burned. I
suppose it was the beginnert s daring mre than anything else, but I still
~mrnber that by eleven-thirty the building had burned to the ground and
here was the campus completely covered with all this furniture and equiprent
that we'd taken out of the building. Even by the time the building
had bumed to the pound we had already had offers from the local scene-there
were two churches; both churches, and the elementary school had a two
story building whose top floor was not in use. We already had offers from
them to mve, so I asserrbled the students mound re--this was on Wednesday--
I told them there would be no school tommow, I don't know where we'll
met, but we ' 11 have s chool Friday. ( lamter)
And we did, and that afternoon the Board of Education rnet and we reviewed
the possibilities we decided at least for the imdiate f'uture we would take
the offer of the elemntauy school and we their upper floor. Then that
afternoon f mrs came in with wagons and hayracks and we hauled all of
that equipment down to the pade school, and at six o'clock that ni@t
all of that equipmnt was on the second floor, but just in a pile, you know,
it was an awf'ul mess. The next rnorming we had to begin to figure out how
to sort it out and get a plan for us. And we did met again--the school
rnet again on Friday and I'm sure there wasn't very much instruction that
day as far as the course work is concerned, but the students learned a great
deal about helping to get things moving again, and of course, that began a
two-year experience of innovation and developmnt that they cherished,

Gerald W. Smith 75
Still, when I see those students who went through that period, theyt some-
how or other feel that the people who cam in afier the new buildi was
nnished missed something important because we always had to innov$e.
Q. You man the period before the new building was finished?
A. Yes in the interim between the fire and the . . .
Q. You man there were some interesting educational by-products out; of
this experience?
A. Oh yes, yes.
Q. Could you touch on a couple of those?
A. Oh yes, there were several. One thing we did not lose was our gmnasiun.
The ori@nal building had no gym in it and the school district had purchased
a rather sizable old store building and converted it into a gym, but it had
no dressing moms in it. We dressed at the hi& school building where we
did have showers and dressing rooms in the basement, but then the students
had to go about two blocks to this gym for their gymnasium. Football was
held out on the Mathersbpasture at the southwest comer of town--Mr. Mathers
was a peat man, he let us use his pasture for our football field and even
allowed us to develop it som . So the students could agajn dress for foot-
ball at the school, which was about five blocks over to the football field,
but we had lost our showers and our dressing room. I had a young coach
who was just a year out of college--no, matter of fact, when the building
burned he wasn't there, I hired him that year, a graduate of kmuth
College-&ark Wilcox. We had to get readx for football in the fall with
no dressing rooms and no showers.
Down on ow school farm was a little lake--really ought to be called a pond,
it was kind of small, it was !mown as Lake Weaver-with a little bath house-the
building was about twenty-four feet long and fourteen or 'fifteen feet
deep wfth a porch on it the length of the building and about eight feet
deep. But they no longer used it, the lake was no longer used for awidng,
so we decided to take that building and br4ng it up and use it as our dressing
room. Frank and I went down to the school farm, which had timber on
it, cut d m a couple of trees to make skids. We jacked the bathhouse up
and put the skids under it after which the township road co~ssioner took
his diesel tractor, or his caterpillau, tractor, hooked on to it, and pulled
it up to us and for the fall we pulled it out on IW. &itherst pasture. We
went down in the old fire ruins, rescued the shower fixtures, took them up
and rigged them up and got a couple of oil barrels and put them up m the
rafters. We got us a heating stove and put it in there and we rigged a
coil down into the heating stove which circulated the water.
Q. Did the boys, the students have a chance to gt in on these activities?
A. Oh, they were all involved, yes. They were all down there helping us,
the students were involved in doing this kind of thing. men, of course,
we had to carry water to flll those barrels, but Frank had a very imagina-
tive manager who--kids who came out to watch football practice, in order to

Gerald W. Smith
get the benefit of the warmth in the building, when they had to get
had to carry two buckets of water (laughter) so we used that device
when football was over, the township road codssioner pulled our b
down and set it aQ;ainst the gym, so we had a bathhouse or a shower
just out back; then the next fall we pulled it back out to the riel
(laughter) Well, that was just illustrative of nmrous experience
students had. No activity in the school ever suffered as a result
fire. Well, another experience--what were you going to ask?
Q. I was going to say, was there comparable inventiveness displayed in the
mtter of instruction, in the instmctimal program?
A. Yes, yes, in many respects. Since our laboratories, you know, had to
be put together, the teachers worked out various mthods of settbg up
the laboratories so that we could do the kinds of things that . . .
Q. Did you make any actual changes in the curriculm as a result of this?
A. No, we made no changs in the curriculum as a rule. We taught the
s m program, our curriculum there--the seven years that I was there--consisted
of the regular liberal arts college prepmatory propam and a very
strong comrcial program. Vocational agriculture, did not come into the
hi@ school until the year I left. I was instrumental in bringing it in,
but IW successor actually imple~nted the Ag pmpam. I'm somy, we did
have horn economics in the school, but we didn't get Ag in until the year
I left. So that I had the experience then of dealing with an institution
in an emrgency basis which was a very valuable experience for nr;.
It was also the years fn which I proceded to get n'y masters degree at
the University af Iowa. In those days there was a very strong progmn
at the UnImmftY of Iowa in education and educational administration and
many people f'rom western Illinois were going over there. Again, it was
closer to Iowa City than it was to Urbana, Illinois. Many of us from that
area of the state dmve over there for Saturday--they had all day Saturday
classes-and of course, went over there in the swnmers and I began rry
masters degree propam in the school year 1929-1930. I started with
Saturday classes, went to school every smr. No, I didn ' t , the sunmer
we built the schoolhouse I stayed at horn because the board hired m as
their supervisor on the job and I worked there. The other smrs I
conq3leted masters degree at the University of Iowa, in 1934.
Q. The previous remark suggests that your appointmnt was for what? Ten
months, your regular appointmnt?
A. Yes, nly regular appointment was for ten mnths and then I had two
mnths off except the smner we built the schoolhouse it was for full tim.
The Depression had interestfng impacts upon us there and that's whene I
lived through the heart of the Depression because I lefX Media in 1935
when we were beginning to mve out of the Depression. The bank failure,
of course, had an impact on us, but one which we fortunately were able to
work out of. The little bank at Raritan did not fail. The timing of our
bank failure was as follows: we all received our pay on F'riday befoqe
school closed for Christmas vacation, and of course, we teachers and the
I

Gerald W. Smith
janitor put our paychecks in the bank in Media that afternoon. l'Q
and I proceeded to go up to Princeton to visit her folks and the ne
day I got a telephone call fkom Frank Wilcox, qy coach, telling m,
got som interesting information for you, ow bank didn't open this
ing . ( lams )
Q. What year was that?
A. It must have been 1930, I guess; mybe it was 1931. I think it
I've forpptten the year, it was in the Depression, it was among the
failures.
Q. It was 1930 or 1931.
77
,ire
t
"I
wrn-
was 1931.
bank
A. At any rate, I decided that mney was going to be important because
everybody's mney was tied up in that bank which ultimately paid seventeen
cents on the dollar. So, I decided to go down to Raritan and ask Mr. Barry,
the cashier at the Witan bank if he would be willing to lend each of the
faculty members a hundred dollars for the mnth of January, which was quite
a bit of mney then, because weld be among the few people who had cash. He
agreed to do it. So, each of us borrowed a hundred dollam from the Witan
bank. Then I had one conplication, MY. Pendamris, who was the cashier of
the Pkdia bank was also the township school treasurer and that mant he had
the school funds and he, of course, was dejected and not really thinking
about everything 5n the world so mch. I kept trying to press him that
we should try to get some mney so that by the end of January we could
operate. Our district was in excellent fiscal position. All our cash was
tied up in his bank, but he was a little bit reluctant and I can see why.
So, finally, one day in sore mild exasperation he said to m, "If you
think you can pt som money, go find it." (laughs) And so I did. I went
to Ivksmuth, the county seat of Warren County, and went to one of the banks
there and talked to the banker there and described our situation to him.
He said, 'Why sure, we ' 11 take your anticipation warrants, we'll lend you
mney; there isn't a more solvent district anywhere in the country. I'
As a result of that, by the end of January we had sold anticipation
warrants and had enom mney on hand to run us the rest of the year. In
spite of the fact that we were a rural community and suffered all of the
financial reverses of rural comunities, our school district
vent, and our faculty was always paid on tire and with
never had to issue teachers orders or
felt rather fortunate soretimes when I
districts, som of them whose faculty were
pression.
So, we went throu& the Depression unscathed, as a matter of fact, even the
reduction of salaries for faculty. Of course, you know, in the thirties
the annual concern was not how much is the raise going to be, but how much
is the reduction pirig to be; you mew it was comhg, but we had small
~aises there. As a rnat;ter of fact, we were fodunate enough that wkn I
did need a teacher I frequently could go to places that were paying ei&t
and nine hundred dollars a year for a classroom teacher and offer them
eleven or twelve hundred at Media. (lau&s)

Gerald W. Smith 7 8
So, we could really get the kind of teachem we wanted. So that was an
experience.
In q family life our two children, Larry was born in 1932 and Doro$hy was
born Fn 1935. We bomt our first house while we lived in &dia an$ estab-
lished a pattern for the rest of our lives of buying houses in the various
places that we mved. The faculty was very compatible. It was, of ' course,
a close situxbion and the school was tied into it, particularly in *he De-
pression years.
This is the second impact--1 mntioned about som of the impacts of the
Depression on the school. We stmed the construction of our high school
building and completed it in 1930 and mved into it about Thanksglvingtime
of 1930. The Depression was having its impact and we had students in the
outlyhg mas who had been going sometimes to other schools. With the
new building and with the impact of economy on the Depressfon we began to
attract mre students, so with the new building and the new progam ow
enrollrent grew fmm the fifty or sixty typical to somthing over a hundred,
and we beem very close to the whole comunity. We became the social cen-
ter not only for the little village but out around; all sorts of affatrs were
held in our new school. We had squm dances at least once a week. At
the end of the football season there would always be a football banquet and
it would be a commmity enterprise.
Q. Who took the initiative in developing thin& like this, Gerry, where
did that come from?
A, Well, it came from community people and the faculty, but it was a mutual
affalr. I remnber the first football banquet, which was a comunl.ty affalr,
started at the football game when three or four of the parents of the boys
were interested and they just started walking mound the sidelines, asking
people about a banquet. Now this was before we had the new building, so
we had to use the old p. We had no equipment, we had to go to churches
and borrow tables and chairs; we had to go to churches and borrow dishes.
The ma1 was brought in like the church supper by people preparing the
food, but you know, instead of within the little village out six, eight
miles people cam and, of course, it was a huge success. We got a little
more sophisticated after that and had the meal catered by a firm in Mon-
muth, but it continued to be a year after year comrrnanity enterprise. At
the last football game they went around and selected a cormittee, really,
then that codttee set up plans for the banquet.
The square dances, again, were pretty much cormunity centered. We people
in the school were just as much a part of it as anybody and we used it for
a great nwnber of things. The commmity, I suppose, assembled in ow new
hi@ school building for one kind of an ac*ivity, either the basketball
games, or the high school plays, or the Mothers and Dawters banquet, os
the comunity-wide affairs, which were not specifically school; they just
used the schools. That 's where we had something going on, you know, three
or four tims a month.
Q. How did this kind of activity codty involvemnt stack up alongside
of your own educational philosophy?

Gerald W. Sdth 79
A. Well, very much. I saw the school as being closely related to the cow
munity. relationship to the school was that I saw the school tying the
child and the f&ly together and I saw the family coming into the jschool
very close; this cormunity did it easily and naturally. The
bm&t som envimmnts together as a result of that, too,
don't think we d@t have had those community activities had
for the Depression.
!here ms an Irish-Catholic codty out southeast of kdia
ways gone to parochial school, but they had to go to ~nmouth, ei
miles aww. That total community began to use the public
total comity then, which had its own little country
pretty much of a pup of Irish inmigrants who had come
their life had been pretty much around their church and their own c rmwity
affalrs, using the parochial school. They became a part of the l&r
cornunity and were extremly active participants and pat supporters of
the school.
Q. Wasn't this a f*aisly innovative kind of thing that you got going them
in bdia, or was this already fairly universal, this kind of cormmfdty?
A. I think that many colnmullities were doing this kind of thing. I don't
like to take too mu& credit for it. I like to say that, I hope, I think I
was supportive of it. I think q nature was such that perhaps, because of
the role I played as the principal of the high school, because I hew all
of those people all the way around, peljnaps I did help it. It was a great
experience for m because it gave me a concept of how a whole community
could center mund a wlit like that. That concept served me well later
on in several situations, so from that standpoint it was a growing experience,
at least as far as I was concerned. I might also say that because I was a
major in psychology I was interested in students and in counseling, and
I think one of the things I contributed to the school was the role of the
student counselor in those early days. You know, the= weren't too many
of them. I could really how them all personally and comsel with them
all.. .
Q. Sure, sure, what a wonderful experience that mt have been for you.
A. Yes, yes. experience at Wataga preaching had a little bearing,
sombody learned about that and one of comity activities in the llager
comunity-the whole area around Media, really the county and the adjoining
county was to be called upon as a supply pulpit man for nmrous chwches
of variuous denominations. That again was a nice tie. Those people in
that area appreciated their principal or superintendent having that kind
of an identity in the cormmity.
Q. That must have been very rare.
A. Yes. I1d forgotten, there's one little anecdote that I would like to
nention here, and that is in that area of the state-and I don't knav just
how large the area is, but it's Media and the surrounding territory for
some distance. The principal of the high school and the principal-superin-
tnedent was always a joint corrbination, you know, of the hi& school was

Gerald W. Smith 80
'Ithe professor1' and so that that was the title that he went by, I'd almost
forgotten that, so if I was being introduced to sombody it would be, you
know, I'd like to have you met PIP. Smith, the Professor. Everyboq around
here knew what that meant, you know, the professor, it was an honomle title.
I' d never heard it, it was a local termin&ogy that was new to
arrived in kdla I had never hewd it. I learned to like it.
relationship, the people that I knew. I was very seldom
the people who knew me well enom to call me Gerald, I
you see. The students had a connotation, Prof, (laughs) or Professor and
it was a nice little thing and I enjoyed that.
Q. I'm awfully glad you mentioned that. This brings to mind that the
principal in that of the public school down in Texas where I went to school
back in the early twenties, played a role very simllar to yom in that cow
munity ' and he was called Professor, Pmfessor Steele.
A. Yes. Well, that's interesting. Over in the part of the state I pew
up in I'd never heard it until I went there, and of course to this Clay, if
sombody f'rom Pkdia back in 1928 to 1935 would if we should met him on
the street here in Spx-lngfield this morning, they'd say, llAh, there's the
Professor." (lamter) I think that pretty well covers the principal
elemnts. (tape turned off and on)
Q. When we were making plans for this morning's visit last week or earlier
this week, you indicated that it was In this period, after you had become
active professionally that your horizons began to reach out beyond the local
corfmmity and to the wider professional area. Would this be a good tine
for you to comnt on this, Gerry?
A. Yes. I had this kind of interest, as I think I indicated earlier even
before I began that I becm active beyond q local position almost imd-
iately upon beginning rqy career. The first areas in which I operated be-
yond the school distuict professionally were in the County Educational
Associations. We had an association of the principals and superintendents
of the county. Our school was in a conference which included two counties
and I became active in that, I almost immediately began to serve on cow
mittees within the county associations. Those activities brought ne into
other comity affars and while I was in bdia I semd as the chaim
of the Red Cross for Henderson County, and so began to reach out into
those activities. There was an orgmization known as the Illinois School-
mastem Club that had regional groups in the state that served several
western Illinois counties and centered primarily through leadership at
the normil school at Macomb.
Q. Illinois Schoolmasters. Three words?
A. No, the schoolmasters was one, the Illinois Schoolmasters Club.
Q. Okay, centered at Macomb?
A. Yes, Maconb. And I became active in that which did two things; it
was strictly a nlen's organization, but it b mwt young administrators like
me into close association with the people in the lmger fields and t
leaders. Walter P. Morgan, who was the president at Western [Illino

Gerald W. Smith 81
Wversity] at that time and the mst dominant educational leader in
western Illinois was one of the people whom I becm personally ac ainted
with as a result of that experience, as well as the admhistmtors&
munities Like Quincy, and Pkcomb, and Galesburg, and the larger
professional life also of public school people centewd in the
State Teachers Association, now known as the Illinois Education
You mved Into activity in the state association thm@ your divis/ions,
regional divisions, we wem: in the Western Illinois Regional Divisim which
reached from Galesburg to Macornb, I'm somy to Quincy, a whole block over
there in Western Illinois. I imdiately became active in that and served
as a delegate to the State Education Association ny second year, in 1929,
which was first mle in that activity. We met here in Springfield in
the auditorium of the Centennial Building. So, I began to move and I be-
gan to hold offices and to serve on codttees and to be known by rm~
mng rry fellow educators within that area.
Q. In your own dnd, how did you justify to yourself using your time and
your energies for this kind of thing? For this kind of professional acti-
vity, how did you see that in relationship to your own school district and
your own responsibilities there?
A. Well, first of all I envisfoned each one of these orgqmizations as a
supporting force for education and it was qy judgement that many of the
things that core out of leadership and supportive activity that strengthen
schools cam throw the leadership of those organizations. So, I really
felt that I was serving school district well by behg active in those
organizations, first of all because I becam mch better Informed about
the activities and the problems and the issues of the day, and I also
becm a participant in them. I saw that as a contribution to the school
district in which I worked.
Q. This was a natural progression for you, then, an evolutionary progression
in your own growth.
A. Yes. I felt then, and I have always felt, that althorn school districts,
probably in a financial way and sometimes in terms of time, do have to make
a contribution through their personnel, I have always felt that those school
districts probably receive more rewards than the cost.
Q. Is it fair, do you think, for me to think about this kind of thing over
the years in this context? As I think back of own experience, roughly
to the s m time, the era that you were speaking of, the various associations
and societies that existed that were of interest to me as a future acadedcian
generally tended to be directed toward self-improvement, improvemznt
of the educational processes, improvemnt of the local institution and this
kind of thing. But through the years these organizatfons have taken on
quite a different purpose, and it seems to me that one of the reasons we're
receiving so much criticism in education today is the fact that we have
allowed these things to becom self-serving rather than serving the cause
of education.
A. Well, I belong to the generation that definitely has that cmvi
t
tion,
that's Ti&t. I can think in all those years, when I attended thos organizational
meeting that I'm talking about, rarely ever hearing anyth g

Gerald W. Smith 82
that had to do with other than the support of teacl-ring and of education.
The speeches that were made at these affairs were almst always devoted
to the improvement of the teacher, or the improve~nt of teachhg, or the
improvemnt of the curriculwn. So ,far as the personal benefit of
L,
t e person
was concerned, about the only one I recall is the one that$ be n a
constant threat as long as I can remrrber and that was the improve of
the pension system. (laughter)
Q. Yes, that's pretty important. Well, thank you, Gerry. (tape turned
off and on) It seems to ma that now your narrative has perhaps gotten
to the point where you can start familiarizing your listenem with the
experience that you had at Alexis.
A. Yes, Jkdia was a codty, as I've already indicated, about eighteen
miles southwest of Galesburg in Henderson County. In the spring of 1935 I
received an invitation to corn and met the board of education at the Alexis
Comnauzity High School which was about fomeen rniles northeast of Monmouth
and about sixteen or seventeen miles northwest of Galesburg, I did respond
to that invitation and was invited to become the superintendent-principal
of the Alexis Cornnunity Hi@ School. For me, this was what I viewed as a
rather normal progression in the administrative career of a person. I was
moving fmm a village of two hundred and flf'ty people to a cormunity of
about a thousand, and from a school district that was serving about sixty
square rdles of area to one that was serving approximately a hundred square
miles. Also mving to a school whose enrollmnt instead of being about a
hundred, which we had reached at Media by the time I left, to a school
whose enrollment was about two hundred and twenty-five. It had these
interesting challenges, and so I moved to Alexis in the s mr of 1935.
At that tirne Larry, our son was three years old and Dorothy our daughter
was six mnths old and we rnoved up there with great interest.
I knew the school sornewhat and because we had been in the sane bi-county
athletic association, I hew som of the faculty quite well.and I was
interested in gohg. P&I years in Alexis, again, were fruitful years, at
the outset, not quite as pleasant as they had been initially as they had
been at Pkdia because the school was facing sore problems at the mwnt.
Unfortunately, discipline at the school had gotten a bit out of hand and
they needed sombody to bring that into hand. And because of certa,in other
circwnstances the school had been advised by the North Central Association
of Colleges and Secondary Schools that it was not meting all of their
standards and that that problem had to be dealt with. So I came there to
fl11 a vacancy and with two specific charges nmly to get the discipline
in hand and to bring some things up to NojAh Central standads.
FND OF TAPE:
Q. Last t% I think Gem, we had pretty well wound up the experience +
that you had at Media and the superintend&cy or principalship at Media
and you'd gotten into the shift over to Alexis, a new location, and there
certain thems suggested themelves to you, which you'd like to talk about.

Gerald W. Smith 8 3
You mentioned particulaylly , I think, in the last tape that there web
two problems which you had encountered; I think you indicated this
be a good place to start this mrming, so, if you still feel that
take off.
A. Yes, I would speak now very briefly to the seven years in Alex s .
At the outset of our discussion on Alexis lsst week, I mntioned I ent there
1
with the chargp to dedl with two specific problems in adation to d aling
with the total school district, the Alexis Cormunity Hi& School Di trict.
The first problem that I mentioned was one of discipline; there was a very
real disciplinary problem in the high school which was characterized, I
would say, principally by what I woUd call a level of rowdyism. It
was a noisy school, it was a school in which sorne of this had been generated
by the characteristics of the Principal-Superintendant who preceded me.
With all the best intentions of developing enthusiasm and spirit in the school,
but with what I would characterize as a lack of a sense of balance, so that
enthusiasm and that kind of thing became dominant as opposed to serious work
in the classroom . . .
Q. It becam the end rather than the means.
A: Yes. So I cam there with that charge and the first two of the seven
years that I spent in Alexis were directed very much to the problem of
restoring a somewhat more business-like atmsphere in the school. In the
course of doing this a group of boys, most of whom were seniors w first
year there, althorn som were juniors, had established the dally practice
of disturbing whatever classes they were in or whatever activities were going
on. So with charge as prfncipal, it became a matter of rr~y pretty much
following those boys from one class to another thmm the day, knowing that
something would be apt to core up. Now as usual some mrrbers of the faculty
had more problem than others, I can remrrber very well two teachers who,
each time these students appeared in their class, were in for a difficult
hour. 1 could expect two or three ths,a week to be called in to help
bring t h w to order. As you well know, in this kind of situation it
somths becomes necessary to sacrifice a superintendant or principal in
the process of correcting it. I did not have that experience; I think the
thing that I was fortunate about was that the corrnaunity -- the parents and
the students -- were tired of the monkey business and were ready for it to
end. Habits of behavior had becom so firmly rooted mng part of the
student body that you had to hang on through their junior and senior year
and graduate them in order to get the.problem totally worked out. The
facts were that there was a genuine interest mng everybody, so b
we found cooperation mng the students and among the people of
as it became necessary to m e
harsh and unpopular ju-nts
those disciplinary procedures that are necessary in order to
offending condition. So that situatilon demanded of E, I
characteristic I could Mnd in firmness, in kindness, in
standing in order to work it out. I'm happy to say that
third year, the problem had disappeared and one could not have wanbed to
be involved in any finer enviro&& or working situaiton in a scho~l than
we had fkom then on.
Q. Were you able to kind-of identi0 the problem together with thq boys
who were the problem . . . get them to lay it out and look at it jo@tly?

Gerald W. SdtO
Was this the way you were able to go at it?
A. Yes we did this a good mamy tines. Tne unfortunate problem was that,
while we had discussions, while we understood one another quite well, those
bovs had built up such firm patterns of behavior that it was dffficult for
th&n to just suddenly change- their pattern. As in every school sitwtion,
probably only three or four of that pup had enom general inclimtions
in that direction to make it a problem. That was one of the challenges in
my new situation, and I think I never worked harder for a two year period
than I worked on that problem. By the sam token, as I say, we had lots of
cooperation and I suppose in a m ls total career it was a good experience
even thou& it didn't seem so f'rom day to day while it was @ing on, but
it did clear it up. Alexis is a fine cormunity and itls made up of fine
people. It certainly demnstra'ced the fact that the leadership, the faculty
leadership in the school, particularrly through a key person like the principal-
superintendant, can have an impact upon a school that can create problems
that it takes some tire to clear up and correct.
Q. But at the sm tlr~ you acknowledged earlier that, at all times,
the superintendant, the administrator, the leader always has to face the
fact that he may become expendable.
A. That ls rig$&, yes, and I mew that, I knew that when I went to the
cormunity. I was invited to come to Alexis; I did not apply voluntarily,
people hew TE because I was in me same league. Some of the faculty hew
re there and sore of the board had heard of me. They invited IE to come and
talk things over and they laid out the problem fairly clearly. Besides that
I was close enough to have som direct bowledge of their problem. I did
not really appreciate how pervasive it was throu@out the school until
I was there and carre face to face with it, but I hew that I was taking one
of those risks where a person is sornetfms expendable when I moved there.
I was fortunate, I guess, that that didn't turn? out to be r r experience ~ ~ in
that position.
Q. Is fair at this point to ask if in a half a dozen words, you could
summarize your philosophy, your concept of administration?
A. Well yes, I can try. lV@ flrst ocncept of adninistration -- I'm talking
particularly now about school administration and the superintend ant.^^,
1
as
we had in those community high schools of Illinois, the conbination superintendant-prhcipal
-- I see that position as calling upon the indi ' ual to
be an educational leader in the co&ty, and with the board and th the
faculty and with the student body, in every sense of the word. I nk
that he should be viewed by the faculty as one of the faculty, but e should
also be viewed by the faculty as a leader and one charged with res risibility
to see that thine happen. I've always believed that, and I still elieve it.
Secondly, I believe that effective admhistration is that adrmFnist ation
which causes the things to happen that ought to happen, and for th mst
part; causes them to happen in such a way that the people who hple nt them
do so almost with a sense that it was really their idea in the fi* place.
I think this is one of the basic elements of educational leadership. I think
the Board of Fducation should be worked with in such a way that the decisfons
they make, even though mmy of them may have been laid before them by the
superintendant, either directly or gradually over a period of time, som
seeing to feel as thou& they had been thellr own ideas all along. Then I

Gerald W. Smitj~ 85
think you have the kind of support you want, I like the faculty to ifeel
that way. I
Q. In other words, what I hear you saying -- and this is I-I-QT word
if it isn't accurate, please correct me, is that the primary
administrator needs to be to try to be of
faculty, to the comnunity; and that the concept of
into so often now-a-days, is both distressing and
look upon administration as a discrete career
wself that the job I happen to be in is mine to be exploited and to be
used for purposes, to serve r y own selfish ends rather then the best
interest of others.
A. Yes, I'm af'raid that we're in an era or a cycle in which that emphasis
is the= more than I like to see it. I do not like the concept that there
is faculty and there is admlnistratlon. I think the professional administra-
tor should, first of all, be looked upon as teachers and as faculty members.
P@ concept of administration says that its primary function is to provide
leadership so as to establish and maintain an environment that mkes it pos-
sible for school, day in and day out, to do what the school is supposed to
do, and that is to provide educational experience for the children and youth
that are in the institution.
Q. I'm very glad that we had the chance to spend a little time on developing
this philosophy of yours, Gemy, because this is a key, a rmjor key, to
understanding your career and your objectives. Can we go lrpw to the second. . .
A. Yes, let's go to the second. The second problem at the tire when I
was employed was that the school was not in the best paces with the No~h
Central Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools. They were bging
advised of certain problems which mi&t lead to more drastic action,by the
Nor*th Central if those matters were not corrected. There were two or three
mtters that were related. First of all, it appeared that the North Central
Association felt that the board of education had not given the kind of leader-
ship in its role as a board that would have taken care of the kinds of pro-
blems I spoke about when I went there. Likewise, the North Central Associa-
tion felt that the board was not engaged in sound purchasing practices with
regard to the operation of the school district, so there was a general feeling
that the school district needed to Snprove not only enviroment witbin the
school but its business practices also needed attention. The b
to be guided by a set of policies that were stronger than those
using at the time. So one of the things that I was charged wit
mtter of givhg the board itself firm leadership. Again one
things was that weld had a very open discussion about their c
fPom the North Central and about the kind of relationships th
exist between the borad and superintendant. This discussion
to agreement that f'mm this time on the Board of Education wa
making body that made the basic decisions while dkpending upo
and staff to carry them out and to implement them.
9. How long dLd it take you to brlng about this Mnd of new balanc
t
, or new
equilibrium?
A. It waa~'admst immediate. It was a very easy thing to
say that there was a readiness for it, the board having probably
some bad habits, had gotten into them not by intent but by
-

Gerald W. Smith
into them, and they were ready and eager for m e . They were int
well educated people with no interest other than the best interest
school district. Even the sloppy purchasing habits had not been de
semre any vested interest of a board member. It was actually rathceasy
and the relationship between-the board and me was excellent fYom t
I ever met with them and it was never anything else. I had set f
very clearly what purchasing practice would be followed if I were
responsible, and I made it very clew to them that unless we coul
purchasing practices as I outlined them I could have no pa& of t
or twice along the line board members wondered if it was really
as straight laced as I was being, (laughs) But we talked it out .&d had no
issue over it. They realized, you how, that that was something you couldn't
correct fn the fbrst month of school and they were very understandim, so we
had an excellent understanding with regard to that, no real problem of handlhg
that.
Q. Well, on the par% of the board there apparently was a basic understanding
of the nature of the problems that they faced.
A. Yes, that's right. And in hunting a superintendant they were trying to
find a man whom I think they wanted to do two things. They were hunting for
a man I think, first of $11, whom they felt they could work with in the kind
of a relationship they hew ou@;ht to be and, secondly, the kind of person
who would lead them with firmness in that direction.
Q. Now, (telephone rings) in making its selection or ccnducting its search
for a new Superintendant-prjncipd, was the board conbmed primarily with
the formalized qualifications of the indiadual, his having studied certain
courses or certain kinds of subject matter and having certain forma ized
qualifications including, of course, certifkation; or was it look$ more for
other kinds of qualities, perhaps, in the new superintendant?
A. I think that the board was first of all taking for panted that any
candidate they considered seriously would be one who was properly certified and
whose graduate education at that time was of the kind that was usually
recogiized for good administration leadership in the school, I think they took
that for panted. I think primarily they were looking for an individual In
whom they had reasonable confidence at the outset, who was the kind of a person
with whom they would like to work, and who could accomplish in their school
system the things that they understood needed to be taken care of.
Q. But that's a far mare difficult kbd of judmnt to make, isn't t, than
the other?
A. Yes, cer%ainly, it is and it probably is one of the reasons why ;he two
or t h e principal candidates they wem considering were in each ins4;ance an
individual whom they knew something about or people close to them kn2w some--
thing about.
Q. I'm thinking of experiences I've had, ard I'm SUE you1 w had thk too,
the difficulty and often times the awkwardness involved in trying to make this
Mnd of very sharp dLscrhinating judgment and yet, so help me, if appointments
are made without reference to thf s kind of screening and cmf'ul screening in

Gerald W. Smith 8 7
making harsh, hard judgrents (not harsh, sharp judgpnts) it can easily
lead to a catastrophe.
A. I think this is what they were looking for and was their guide.
(tape turned off and on)
Q. It's been a very interesting discussion Gerry. I think, tho@, now
wetre ready to mve on to the other item you said that you would like to
touch on.
A. Yes, there were two or three other thin@ in qy seven years at Alexls
that I feel I would like to add to the record. me was an idea that I had
that I thowt worked quite well, nwly that of providing professional
leadership to the faculty for the improvemnt of teaching and the improvemnt
of courses. I had finished masters dewe as the University of
Iowa in 1934 md , of course, in doing that masters clegree I had followed
the pattern of programs that had been set out. By the way, in w masters
degree I majored in secondaq education and minored in educational psycholofg
since undergraduate mjor had been in psychology. At Alexis, I had a
feeling that the school could be strengthened if the superintendant and
the faculty engaged in joint studies and discussions of matters related to
the improvemnt of the curriculum and, along with that, the related matters
of teaching. mewise, one of the responsibilities of the principalsuperintendent
in secondary school is the swervision of instruction in the
school. That meant that in a place like Alexis you were supervising the
teachers of English, you were supervising the teachers of science, the
teachers of agriculture, horn economics, foreim languages, social studies,
and it seerned to re that in order to provide leadership in that a.rea a
person ought to become somwhat literate in those flelds. So I went to the
University of Iowa and asked if I could enroll in special study, bependent
special study for the smr and develop a bibliogmphy as a preparation
to establishing a professional library in our Alexis Hi@ School and. , in
the pmcess of doing it, to engage qyself in a smr of reading in the
areas of the curficulum that were in our school. Dean Packer of the College
of Education tho@t this was a good idea and he assigml a young professor
there to work with me on it. So I went out and spent the s m r
and. my
procedure was to met with the dep-mnt head in one of those areas at the
university, in Agriculture or in business education, or in the physical
sciences or in the biological sciences, and discuss the professional literature
in the area. Fmmthat person I would get a reading list, then I
would go and spend two or three days in the library just totally re g
in that area, so that I picked up enough of it to understand what th
"%"
literature was and what it said and to build a book list from which to p w
chase. So I went through each of the areas of our curriculum that smr.
And them I cam back to Alexis and in the next year, on the basis of discussions
with these people and in the supervisory role, we built a very usablv and
viable professioanl library which the faculty involved themelves in and
used a mat deal. I ndght say that the people at the College of Edication
thought $hat was a good enou@ idea they decided to suggest it to at er people
who wanted to do independent studying. It was the first tim in q 'P
educational career I ever had an opportunity to direct crwn study for a
whole summer and exactly as I wanted it and felt that we had very poaitive
results. While perhaps they weren't concrete, it &irected thowt and atten-
tion to what I thought was a very basic ratter and certainly It mde lit pos-

Gerald W. Smith 8 8
sfble for IE to visit with Ehglish teachers in tern of a backgo fez
literature, particularly professional literature related to their
most of which before that I had never seen. So that was one of the
interesting thin@;; I think had a lasting follow-up influence on the quality
of the school and the =lationship between the faculty
r;
and administ ation.
Another interesting thing happened while I was there that had t do with
the annexation of territory to the hip$ school district. I think I have
mentioned earlier in this discussion that in the 1920's and 1930's &n
enormous portion of the State of Illinois -- I don't have the accurate
statiscal data of it probably somewhere in the neimborhood of fifty per
cent of the land area of the state -- did not lie within the boundaries of
a hi@ school district, either a unit district or the sepamte township
or cornunity hi@ schools in Illinois. The people who lived in those
territories attended the most convenient high school, but in fact they
attended the one that they wanted to go to, and the= was a provision in
the county for the levy of the tax on the so called non-high school district
for the purpose of paying the cost of these people going to hi@ school.
As an aside I might s a it ~ was rather interesting that we people who were
serving in these hi& schools, and particularly in the rural areas, were
expected by our Boards of Education to actively go out as salesmen and
work the non-hi@ school territory to get enrollments; I somtims felt
when I was in that situation in &dia and Alexis that mybe in some years
the ~asure of nly success by the board was as much hw well I had done in
bringing outside students in as it was in actually mnvling the school from
day to day. Of come, nei&boring principals found themelves out in that
territory and competing with one another for students in that territory
because the school distr3cts looked upon them, you know, as a source of
revenue.
Q. I was going to say, what was the mtivation for the board to pwh
you in this direction, was it the old idea that bigger is autornatic&lly
better or was there mnetary advantage involved, or what?
A. Well, it was both. First of all it is a fact that if you are operating
a small school district -- like, we' 11 say, at @dia -- without a non-high
school territory we would have pmbably had forty or fifty students; with
it we had over a hundred students by the time I lef't there. Now that mant,
of course, a larger faculty, that mant mre selection on the faculty, that
rneant a broader curriculum, that mant mre effective extra-curricqar
activities which were an important part of the high school propam, so I
think there were many thine to say about it. In addition to that hese
peoplk paid their way and so it added to the budget to make the sch 01.
So I think it was a total picture, not just selfishly ours. The fa t that
in Alexis where we had a school of about two hundred twenty five st dents
most of the years that I was the~e, without that kind of activity o
enmllmnt would have been approximately, well, sixty per cent of t at size.
Alexis was a large enough corfmmity that it wasn't fifty-fifty, bu it
would have @ven us that. Well, this is an aside on this matter bu it's
related to what I'm saying . . . I
Q. It would also seem to me to what -- shall I say -- account; for he fact
that the tmtees at Alexis knew something about you in the first p ace when
they decided to go looking for a new superintendant, because I'm s that
your repubation had circulated rather bmadly . . . .I

Gerald W. mth 89
1
A. Yes, well in the two or three county area there, we knew one other
pretty well, we knew the schools well enough . . . we superinten ts and
principals attended enough of one another's activities that they ew who
we were and they heard reports of what was go* on, you know, (la s)
where we were. Well, at any rate beginning in the 1930's and, we1 ,
particularly in the 1930's there were moves on the part of educati al'
leaders and moves on the p& of the mmbers of the legislature to place
this non-high school territory in high school districts. One of t e pieces
of legislation that occuwred In the late 1930's was a provision thqt made
it relatively easy for area outside a high school district to annex to the
district. It was a procedure that did not call for a referendum. Any
portion of a territory outside the district could petition the hi& school
board for authority to annex to their district. Those petitions went to the
County Superintendant of Schools and were addressed to the Board of Education;
and if the requisite number of voters signed the petition and if the local
school board, the receiving district, adopted a resolution that they were
willing to accept them, on the basis of that resolution and the petition the
County Superintendant of Schools was authorized to simply issue an order of
annexation.
In the late 1930's quite a movement developed in that direction and I
was involved in that at Alexis. When the Alexis high school district was
established in 1923, another one of those post World War I things about which
I spoke earlier, the fifty-two square miles, or fifty-two sections, of land
joined the school district, so we had fifty-two square miles in the district,
but surrounding it were another fifty-one square miles that did not cone in,
again for the usual reasons -- the fmrs felt that the taxes were cheaper
to pay the non-high school tuition than to be involved in the bond issue for
the sdmol district. So, in Alexis over a period of about a gear and a
half, all of those fifty-one sqm miles of territory did in- fact join our
district, but in several separate parcel. I thlnk we probably had at least
eight or nine sepwate resolutions or petitions and resolutions by our board,
so we did in my the then almost double the area of the district. Now it
did mctically nothing to the enrollment, because those people weE already
coming, but it did strengthen the land base of the district and, of course,
strenghtened the tax base of the district, and it gave the people in those
fifty-one square miles a voice in the managemnt and govemnt of the district
because up until that tiirne the young people attended the school but they
had absolutely no voice in the govemnt, so it was possible then for people
to serve on the Board of mucation, to vote at the elections, and to vote
on the referenda and this kind of thing. So this was one of the pnincipal
enterp~ises.
Q. Well, I1m sum that- must have posed all kinds of new demands oq the
superintendant-principal's tb~
and energies . . .
A. Yes, yes, it was a period of t-, of course, when you were ouq almost
every evening of the week meting with one corrarmnity p u p or anotl-@-, or
actually working with the petitioners because the people interested in petition-
ing tended to come down to the school office and ask for help with the &&-
ing of their petition and so forth. Yes, we attended m y meetings in the
evening, and then on the fringe meas there was always that matter of do we
go to Alexis or Aledo, do we go to Alexis or Seaton, do we go to Alexis or
Momuth. There was always that fringe te&toxy where decisions had to be

Gerald W. Smith 90 I
I
made. Of course in those fYinge territories there would always be dvocates
1
of mre than one alternative so far as an annexation was concerned It was
a very interesting )activity and in mny respects not greatly diffeqent fmm
the things that I got involved with later on with the establishment of the
state comity college districts.
Q. Exactly. I hear of mny interesting overtones here that will be cordng
back'later on. Just one question on this subject in this area: as these new
demands, or as the responsibliity of this superintendant took on these new
ctimnsions, how long was he able to continue providing this curriculm leader-
ship that he talked about a little while ago?
A. %at was never interferred with, so long as I was a superintendent and
a high schodrl principal in a distfict, I always gave high priority to my
role with faculty and to role in supemlshg and leadership. And idea,
of supervising of course, was a matter of a personal ~lationshlp with faculty
mrrbers. As you know, every faculty has people who have problems, you somtims
make an unfortunate selection in the choice of a faculty mmber and
those people have to be worked with, but at no tim was I ever so involved
that I felt that that role was fnterfemed with in any way.
Q. You man you're telling me that you were able to continue doing this kind
of thing even when you were at Moline with all of the added responsibilities
there?
A. Yes. And when I was at Elrnwood Park and subsequently becam the Super-
intendent of the two districts in the comity. This was 8l.ways a high prior-
ity with me. As long as I was out in the field, I always spent a great deal
of time in the classrooms and in working with teachers. That was always a
high priority; first of all, I tried to have the adrdnistrative mtters that
were routine so organized and so managed that to a large extent secretaries
could carry on that kind of work. Obviously when I had new ones at a teaching
job, I had with them a supervising job, but day In and day out I did not
have to devote mch of tire during the day. Well, of course, in Media it
was a little afferent, I was a full time teacher so five periods of the day
I was in the classmom as well as the others. Alexis my teaching load was
only two classes a day, but the rest of the tine during the day when I was
in the schoolhouse 1 was devoting most of rry time to working individually
with faculty mrrbers and with students and not tied down too tight to those
routine rratters which I could take care of in out of school hours, r for
which I had people trajned. P
Q. What I hear you saying is that you never stopped being an educkor.
A. NO, and I would rather use a different word; I never stopped nc$e do I
thir-k I've stopped yet, being a teacher. I like the professional rm of
teacher . T
Q. Excellent, and I'm with you. (tape turned off and on)
I
A. There is one thing m o ~
that I might add about experience at Alexis.
There I had an opportunity to broaden w activities beyond the school cornrauz-
ity in the affairs of the Western Division of the Illinois Education Associa-
tion and held two or three different offtces. Perhaps the most demapding was
I

Gerald W. Smith 91
the program cormittee for the annual meting of the Western
of the years. I began to serve on some of the cormittees
ically at the offices of the Illinois Education
I fomd associations and friendships with
members in a wider circle around West
those programs. It was during
in a state offlce,
began rqy career the
g h School Athletic
the century as a managing and regulating organization for inter-school athletics
and had gown in prestige and in strength through the years. During the years
that I had been at Media and Alexis the association was reorganized and its
actfvities broadened to include all inter-school activities, music, spech and
all sorts of things as well. The board of directors for this association was a
small board, s m six or seven members elected by regions of the state and I
was elected to serve on that bomd and did begin semring on it . . .
Q.
What was this board called, Emy?
A. Board of Di~ctors, Illinois Hgh School Association.
serve on that board in 1940.
And I began to
Q. Elected 1940, Okay, good. Were there other . . .
A, Well, I think I've given a direction in which it went.
Q. . . . And this now takes us really up to World War 11, I guess, or your
involvenmt . . .
A. Yes, I think I've said enough about Alexis to give some indication. I
would say again that when I was ready to leave there I was very happy that
I had accepted the invitation to come there. I had become broadly involved in
codty affairs of all kinds, as well as in school. Ow children had
grown fromthree year old and a six month old to children in school. By the
the we left Alexis, we made many fkiendships and we have always looked upon
those yeaxs with great warmth.
Q. This winds up most of the discussion prior to Mr. Smlthfs entry into
military service during World War 11. We '11 put nothing more on this aide of
the tape at this point, so this is the end of this particular section; when I
tum the tape ovw, we will then be ready to talk about the next phase in
@my's life.
Ehd Of SIRE ONE
Q. We 're now in 1942 at the start of the interlude in your career as 'an
educator caused by World War 11. I'm sure there are some thoughts and 1 interpretations
and ideas that you'd like to have get into the record, $0 the
floor is your's, sir.
A. Yes, I spent approximately four years in the service from bky of 1842
until Masch of 1946. My service begm, in May. At box College I
four years of work in the ROE, s ~ t h h that g I didn't mention

Gerald W. Smith 92
were discussing my career at Knox. I had been quite interested in the ROTC
and as I thfnk back on it now, one of the areas in whkh I did opepate as a
student leader was in the organization Scabbard and Blade, which was
ization in connection with the ROTC work. Upon gaduation from Knox
cormissioned as a second Ueutenant as a result of the fow years in
that co~ssion being given in 1928. Tmmediately after graduation, t
swmr I spent six weeks on active duty at Jefferson Barracl-cs in Kss
one of the CMTC camps of that day.
Q. This was in 1928?
Q. Before we go on with that, Jemy, what branch of the service was this?
A. . . . I was cmnissioned in the infantry.
Q. Okay, and then in 1928, the swnmer?
A. Yes, hdilatly after college graduation.
Q. You spent where?
A. I spent six weeks of active duty at Jefferson Barracks, MLssouri, with
the CMTC camp.
Q. At Jefferson Barracks . . . where was that?
A. Missouri, just South of St. Louis.
Q, Missowi; and CWC what does that stand for?
A: Citizens Military Training Corps. It was an on-going progmm of that
time that brought young people on to camps for smr service. Subsequent
to that service I began teaching in &dfa and then to Alexis. I began q pad-
uate study toward rrly masters degree, and our children were born, and ao forth
so that in the interveni.lg years after 1928 and until the tirne of Worlid War
11, I had not pursued active duty, I had not kept up my credits in
service. So there's an interesting stom that involves me and se
other ROTC graduates like rqyself who had not kept themselves up to
July of 1941 I received a letter f'rorn the War lkpar%mnt, informi
inasmuch as I had not kept up my military service and had becorne
grade - - still a second lieutenant - - (laughs) that w military c
had expired. War was declared on Cecerrber 7, I guess it was, 1941.
three or four weeks later I received a letter from the War Dep
me to forget about that letter of July, it had been detemned that
sion had really not expired and I was ordexd to go take a physical e
at the Rock Island Arsenal in Rock Island, Illinois, which I dl
succeeding mnths I received two or three comdcatiom with
status as a conanissioned officer and w eligibility for a cal
seemd that a considerably controversy developed between mrnb
Department and mmbers of the Congress as to what the real st
thousand of us people in that category was. So sometime in t

Gerald W. Srrdth 9 3
don't remrriber whether it was Ma~ch or April, I received another
from the War Department indicating that it had not been
as to the status of those cormnissions about which I'm
to clarie it they were giving the officers involved
could sign an enclosed docmnt accepting the fact
remain active and that they considered themselves
and were willing to be called; or they could
case they must sigg up for the draft. I immediately signed the statewnt that
I considered my cormission active and was ready to be called.
Q. This was in the Spring of 1942?
A, That's ri@t, along Mwch or April. Soon the~after I was ordered awn
to go take another physical. Then I was called to active duty to report to
Lowery Field, in Deriver. However, I was transferred from the infantry to the
Air Force as were many of the saw people - - when I went on active duty I
met nurbers to people like myself in our middle thirties who had been transferred
from infantuy of the Mr Fo~ce as were many of the sam? people -- when I went
on active duty I mt nwnbers of people like rr~yself in ow middle thirties who
had been transferred from infantry of the old ROTC days to the Air Force, and
primarily for administrative duties.
Q. But your comnission actually read in the Air Force, you were not an infantry
officer.
A. Yes, I was now a second lieutenant, Air Force, and in May I reported for
duty there. By the way, interestingly enough our school in Alexis, along with
many other schools, as a part of the war effort and in order to free high
school students for agricultural work, had conducted our school f'rorn January
till the end of the yemy six days a week instead of flve, so that we were
able to disdss school by the first of Pky and let these people go on to
farm work.
Q. That's interesting, I've never heard that.
A. Yes, well many schools did it and we had done it, so I was out of school
by the tire I got call. I reported to Lowery Field in the officers replacement
depot and irmediately was placed in classes for wlefresher work for reserve
off'icers of rry categowy. Of course, there were m y of us codng
being assigned and sent out every day. At the end of two weeks I
to the office one day, where I was told that they had observed
that I had a teaching background and wanted to know if I would
in teaching in the military base school there in that replac
thought it looked pretty good and my family was with IE and we tho
would be nlce to live at Denver, so they put me on orders the next
week later I was to go to IQI job.
On the day Z -began job it so happened, and It 11 not
an order cam in flwm the Air Force Office in Washington to
five officers, administrative officers as a cadre of people to org
North Atlantic wing of the Air Transport Command. The priority on
order was such that the people who were screened out to fit
to go, regardless of what other assig-m-ents they had, and so on the
that I began teaching assignrent I received orders that I
stay there. So, thifiy-five of us were picked up h m that

Gerald W. Smith 94
of us with an administrative background, five or six of us in educatip, but
we had all sorts of administrative backpounds in business and industb. We
were a group of people that ranged in age fmm about thirty-three or ow up to
flfty. Most of us in the thirty-three to thirty-four to forty age b~ cket and
as I say all with twelve or mre years of arnistration. We were sh pped to
Presque Isle, Maine, and f'romkere we were distributed in groups of f UP, five
I
or six to the Air Transport Cornrand stations across the North Atlanti which
at that time was headquartered at Presque Isle, Mne as the base in tihe contin-
ental U.S. Then on to Labrador and New Foundland, and Iceland and Baffin Island,
and Greenland. Presturck, Scotland, was the headqwrters base over on the
other side. My assipnt along with three others of that group was to Iceland.
So we went to Iceland hating been given some orientation to the newly developing
bases across there after three or four weeks at Presque Isle. Then we spent
a week at Goose Bay, Labrador on the way to Iceland and we spent a short tirr~
at Labrador, Bluie West Euzht it was called, and then went on to Iceland.
Q. That WFE at Rekjavik?
A: At Rekjavik, yes. Originally we were at Rekjavik and then subsequently the
United States govemnt built 'its own. We used a British air base at bkjavik.
We were subsequently transferred about thirty-five miles out to Keflavlk and
where the United States govemnt built a base that's still there, that still
operates. We were sent to Iceland on extended duty fmm Presque Isle, Mne,
because at that ti= the bases across the Atlantic were not organized. Soon
after we arrived in Iceland, and when we got there, our base was already oper-
ating as a touch down base for the services, but it was in charge of units
already there, not a part of the Air Transport Command. Soon after we arrived
- - fourteen or fifteen days after we arrived - - we received orders that an
Air Transport Cornnand base was being established there and that I as the senior
of the four officers up there was designated as the cormranding officer. So I
became conmanding officer of that base, a role which I held for about nine mths.
However. the cormanding officers of air bases are supposed to be flight officers
.and of cqyrse, I: was an administrative officer. But in 1942, the demand for flight
offi66rs in connection with flight duties, flight cmtrol, or actual flying was
so great that they waived that regulation and used many administrative officers
in cornrand posts. So I took over in that role. We had to st& then from point
zero with the activation of a base, ow horn base being in Presque Is , Maine
and we a satellite out there depending upon the Iceland base comd r a11 of
our services, and so forth.
And so we began, then, about the first of July in 1942, to act 7
These bases were not large, they were in fact service stations ac
Atlantic, as they were across the various divisions of the Air
Our function was to operate a base, to provide rraintenance and
craft as they cam tkrough, to provide housing for the members
ok. passengers on aircraft that lad over at our station, and, o
them. So, our principal operations were the operation of the base,
of the personnel, the feeding of the personnel and, of course, recei
as they cam in and dispatching them as tHey went out; that-was our
Our base during World War I1 and during
the fow of US who arrived there
with other than people loaned to
something like two thousand
Q. ?he air base - - this is

Gerald W. Smith 95
A. That was part of the route, yes. Tne North Atlantic base ultimately;
the North Atlantic route of the Air Wansport Comd ulthately included the
National Airport Operation of AT' in Washington, D. C., a small base at
LaGuardfa Field in New York, a field at kchester, New Hampshire, a field at
Bangor, Presque Isle Fleld, a small operation at Montreal, a smll operation
- - an errergency base - - on the North sfde of the St. Lawrence River, then
Gander Lake in New Foundland and Goose Bay in Labrador, two bases on BaffYn
Island and two bases in Greenland, the base at Iceland and a base at Prestwck,
Scotland, which subsequently was transferred to the European Division. Then
on a more muthemy route we picked up the Bermuda Islands and the Canary
Islands for a more Southemily route, so that was the base over which North Atla-
tic operated .
Q. How about the Azores?
A. Yes, we had the Azores, I'm somy it was the Azores and not the Canary
Islands, I correct wself, Bermuda and the Azores.
Q. Well, I flew over f'mm Washington to Gander to the Azores to Prestwich
in 1945.
A. Yes. The kinds of transportation that c a thro@ ~ us were mde up, first
of all, of the aircraft moving to the war zone; in the smmr of 1942 that was
to North Africa; and we had going across the North Atlantic that summr the El7"s
and, oh, the other big bomber . . .
A. Tne B-24's and the B-17's and the &25 attack bombers, and the B-26 l s.
Then we had another rather interesting operation that first smr. In the
surrnner of 1942 they experimented with flying the P-38 flghter over, escorted
by either a El7 or a E24 for P-38's flying off the wing of a El7 or a B-24.
It turned out not to be a very practical operation and they did not pursue it
after the first year because the weather conditions were so uncertain and we
had such pat difficulty, particulwly in the earlier years, with the
electronic interference wiith our co~cations. Somtims these P-38 s would
sit at a place like Greenland for ten days or two weeks befo~ we would have
a combination of weather and comnunication that made it possible to fly the
next hop to Iceland, for example; we'd get them on our base and maybe weld
send them off to FYestwck, Scotland, a couple of tLrnes and two or three hours
af'ter we sent them off, they'd corn back and it would take us maybe a week. It
was easier between Iceland and Scotland than it was between Labrador ad Iceland.
So we had first of all the M&ter, that type of aircraft,. Secoqdly, we
had a continual fli@t of the Ferry Divlsion of the com~and, which wag the
i
flying of replacemmt aircraft over to Eurr,pe. The fighting aircraft of course,
were always being flown by very young and inexperienced fli@;ht perso 1, some
of them had very little fliet before they started that trip across t ocean.
?he Ferny Division was made up all of experienced flyers, almost with t exception,
taken fmm the regular airlines and so they were expe~ienced an they
flew, of course, much mre regularly, with mch less interference fro the weather.
Then, we had the alrcraft flown under contract service with the alrli s, which
were aircraft taken over flvmthe airlines, painted tke olive drab, b flown
mrrbers of the airlines. Tnese were the alrplanes that provided the ssenger
service and the f'reight flights and, of course, they cam and went a1 the th.
So these were the kinds of alrplanes that we had to receive. We might receive
I

Gerald W. mth
at a station on a given afternoon maybe fifty B-17's on their way to conbat,
which mant we had five hundred people to met at the airport, to trasport
down to our barracks to feed and service, and then as soon as it was ossible,
to dispatch them on the next leg of thefr journey.
?
Q. And as colt~nanding officer it was your responsibility to see that these
things were done, that the services were available when they were needed, and
the whole thing was planned, construction and everything.
A. Yes, my job was as the chief administrative officer of that whole operation.
1 had to see that the food service was organized and operated, I had
to see that the lodging facilities were organized, properly organized, I had
a sizable motor pool because we had to have the transportation to go out and
meet these airplanes and b~ing their crews in. We had a sizable maintenance
operation, and we were also in charge of flight cmtrol and we had people to
do that. It was rather an interesting relationship; when I first went there,
I was a flrst lieutenant, I was later promted to captain and major in that
role, but the senior fli&t offker, when I first went there, was a major and
during w time there became a lieutenant colonel who was a West Point graduate
in the Air Force and a fliat officer. I might say without his help I think
I would have floundered terribly. He, of course, by all normal rules should
have been the coimandi~ officer, he was a wonderful person, W*or Hutchinson
is his nar~. We roomed together and he was dally counsel and advisor
because I was certainly a pen horn at that business, but his relatianship to
me both in our private life together and in any presence we made, was correct.
I was the conananding officer and he alwws recognized me as such and always
dealt with E, even though everyday he was giving me instruction and teaching
because he was the experienced one.
Q. I can't resist rraking one corrnnent here. In the early beginnings of the
wax when people were scarce and there were all kinds of things that had to
be done, the Armed Forces generally were not known for making the kind of
careful personnel selection and assigmnts that was obviously made in the
cases of these people who started the bases. Usually it was just the opposite.
A, No, thfs was rather interesting. This screening that came to Lowery Field,
via the radio to them, was very explicit as to what they had and there were no
exceptions, if the person fit those categories that person was to go. I might
say that the screening t med out well because of the thifiy-five
went, all but one or two twned out to be very successful people.
or two who didn't happen to work out too well, but in general they di
Well, at any rate that was our f'unction at Iceland. After I'd b
Iceland about nine mnths they began to reduce some of the training c
in Texas and some of the other areas of the country and reassign some
older flight offlcers, people, some of them almost retirement age,
comd posts, so they sent a Colonel up to Iceland to take c omd
Ekc,BateQrmade his Executive Officer and I spent the rest
at Iceland, approximately half of it as cormrmding officer and the
of it as executive officer, but again in a very fine working re1ations)lip. The
man that they sent was a very fine person and we were good friends andl I served
as his executive officer and did basically the sarne things I had been doing
before he was there except in the position of' executive officer rather than
cornding officer. It was an interesting experience, one that I look back upon
with a great deal of satisfaction. Of come, there were many inte~scing

Gerald W. Sr~Lth 9 7
sideliats. By the way it was the mst interesting mission, I think, of any of
the dlitary forces in Iceland, because there wasn't a lot of activity in
Iceland. The anti-aircraft people were out on those isolated anti-ai~craf't
bases and rarely had anything to do, other 6han to be on alert. We qd a few
sorties over Iceland by German reconnaissance planes and occasimally there
would be a little interchange between the anti-aircraf't guns and one Of those,
or there would be a little fighting in the air, but it d2dntt munt $0 very
rf~UCh.
Their jobs were sirrple whereas we had the whole world coming to us and through
us, particularly through the contract carriers. We never hew when one of
those contract carriers came in, you how, what hi@ ranking Generals, or
what diplomats might be on it. After we'd been there about a year we had a
%pl1 hotel which we operated, which was very nicely appointed. In that hotel
we entertained Queen Wilhemnia at one time; King Peter, of Yupslavla, was a
guest of ours; Jack Benny and Bob Hope cam through really just on their way to
other engagements but having to lay over for a while they put on entertabtents
for our people. Many of the hi& ranking officers and govemnt diplomats and
so forth would corn throw, so we were busy, we were a twenty-four how operation
and I found it a stimulating and interesthg experience.
We also had a sidelight to that, in the winter of 1943 when we were moving
f'rom the Rekj avik Base which was an English owned base right d m at Rekjavik,
the capitol city, we were moving out to the newly canstructed Air Force base
that was being built by the govemnt. We found ourselves in January, Februaxy
and March of 1943 engaging ourselves amst entirely in aonstruction wo~k, be-
cause the air base was under construction and it was behind schedule and kneral
Bonesteel, the Cormnmding General of the Iceland Base Comd as he told it to
us when he got us together one day, said, "1 got a telegram fmm Washington on
the progress of this air base," and he said, %he essence of it was, we 'E not
trying to tell you how to mu? your business, but we're going to start using that
air base in mld-March. " (lawter) So he simply put together all of the
infantry forces, all of the engineering forces, all of the air force, all of us.
We went out there in January, February, people and I, we dug ditches for
water and sewer lines . . .
Q. And you were out there with them.
A. . . . I was out there with them, actually working. Yes, it was q.n inter-
esting arrangement, the Cormmnding Officer of that sector of Iceland, ,I assume,
was an Infantry Officer and he held regular staff meetings about
When we cam together, here was this Colonel who was the Commandi
that sector, an Infantry Officer. He had officers f'rom the Seabe
two Seabee ,groups there working; he had officer% fmmthe Air Force
he had officers f'mm the Ergheem, he had people like re wi
ATC unit, and so forth. We were a staff sitting mund planning
each tilne. It was one of the finest projects in cooperation that
Tne Colonel was a magnificent leader; people accepted his leadership
worked in the very mu& Icelandic weather that you somtirres have.
we agreed that nobody quit work regardless of how bad the weathe
Colonel 0.K.ed it. Well, it was an interesting experience.
Q. Well, there was obviously a tremndous spirit in this group.
A. Yes, yes, there was that, well the demands bmet it. Well, at any rate
I was there eighteen months and at the end of ei@teen mnths I was returned to
the United States. P& initial assignment upon retm was to be the C ?a"

Gerald W. Smith 98
Officer of a newly activated squadron at Grenier Field at Manchester,
New Hampshire.
A: Yes, G-R-E-N-I-ER. It was being taken over by the ATC from the
first Air Force and the headquarters of the North Atlantic division
were simutaniously being moved from Presque Isle, Malne, to Manchester.
So I began assimnt in that squadron and was thorougj~ly enj oying it,
but had been at it only a few weeks when I received a call one day to
corn to headquarters and was asked to take on an interesting axsigrmmt,
mainly to work in the area of WAC recruiting. At that tinw: in order to
stimulate WAC ~crulthg the had set up what they called "Station and
Job Assigurentl' for womn. The essence of it was, that a worn could be
recruited for a specific job on a specific base as a cle& typist or
somthiulg like that, within the service command in which that person
resided, and New England was the first service cornnand. In f'urther support
of this, the ~rajor commands were given the ~i@t to go out and promote
recruiting for their jobs among the recruiting stations. So I was asked
to cover the six New Fngland States for the Air Transport Comd. So
from about mid-Feb- and until Pky of 1945 I traveled the six New England
States, going from one recruiting office to another, to sell the people
on the ideas of recruiting people for the jobs that we had certified. Which
jobs by the way were frozen for the people that came into the service.
Q. At bhis point, Gerry and I interrupted our discussion on Monday
August 9, which we will continue two days from now on Wednesday August 11.
(tape turned off)
Q. This is now Wednesday, August 11, 1976, Gerry and I are seated in our
usual place at the dining room table on Dedson Drive to resm our
discussion. Gerry, last Monday when we wound up, -. you'd . set the stage for
a bit mre discussion of the experience as a WAC recruiter and you indicated
that you1 d like to pick up with that this morning.
A. Yes, there's just one little sidelight. It d described what our major
role was with rewd to the WAC recruiting by station and jab assimnts,
I
but there were one or two thing that I observed, and about which I did
somthing. In traveling to the WAC recruiting stations in each of $he six
New England States, I discovered that the recmiting offices or the recruiting
officers were constantly looking for new devices and new plans n order
to stir up interest in WAC recruiting or to reach people. I also o served
that it was clearly obvious that after a person had been at one of hose
places for a year or so it was somethes kind of difficult to come p with
new procedures. So I decided that mybe I could help them a bit, s I
offered to serve as a speaker for them and to speak on occasions. learned
that one of their mthods was to set up coffee meetings in neighbor oods.
Another mthod they had was to plan a prow for an evening and ad ertise
it, or they would intempt the shows at theatre's and present sombody for
a short tk. So I m e d to be a speaker and talk a little bit about the
Alr Transport; Comd and the opportunities that it afforded and they took
m up on it. So that was one of the thing that I did around the area a
goodly rimer of times, and it seemd to work pretty well. They usually
got good attendance at their meetings and I did this in Comectfcut and up

Gerald W. Smith
in New Hampshire, and Vemnt and around Bangor, Mne.
The other mtter in connection with a special program that
up was to provide them a mica1 enserrble. At our headquarters
Nanchester, New Hamhire, a smll gmup of rnusicims - -
professional musicians, but most of them just
had put toether a very splendfd little wind
and brass - - I'm not sure but maybe we did
winds a violin in it. They played music of quality and played it w 11, and
so we would book them as a part of these program. I could take th 8 se
people out as far as we could get with a staff car and back in an elrening,
you know, because these were all people with regular assigmnts at the
headquarters. We did that mny tims and they turned out to be a mry pop-
ular pup. I think we were quite fortunate in having the recruiting
offices really interested in us because we had shown enough interest in
them to give them help and we did in fact enjoy rewards of those efforts
by finding that a rimer of young women around the six New Fngland States
did in fact enlist in the service with a station and job assigment at one
of our bases.
Q. Well, I think maybe that's pretty good way to end up the actual mllitary
experience that you had . . .
A. I think we need to add one other - - this was just the WAC recruiting.
At the end of the WAC recruiting in May, I advised . . .
Q. By the way, what year was this now?
A. . . . yes, I want to correct the tape. I said yesterday, or Pbnday,
that this was 1945 and in fact this was in Febrmavy to Pby, 1944. 1 had
only been back from Iceland a couple of mnths - - about a mnth and a
half - - when I was taken fmmmy squadron position and put in this role.
In May of 1944, I went to Colonel Rice, the personnel man for the division,
and told him that I felt we would now reach the point of diminishing returns,
I didn't see enough benef'it from a full tim assilgnment in that role to
justify a field grade officer traveling ammd the country; I said maybe
periodically sorebody might make a follow-up.
This point he asked me if I would be interested in becomlng the NtKiitary
Personnel Officer for the division. So instead of returning to q squadmn
out at Grenier Field, I came from that interlude into the position of Mlitary
Personnel Off'icer for the Nor-th Atlantic Division and served in that office
for the rest of tim, &om May of 1944 unt;il I was separated *om the
service In Pbrch of 1946. During that period of tim I held two positions,
I served part of that tim as a filitary Personnel Officer for the division,
and then the last several mnths in service I was promoted to
of Staff for Personnel on the general staff in the division.
role that I left the service in 1946.
I think I'd like to suggest that one thing happened to rn while /I was
in that role Military Personnel Officer that was usef'ul. I was
an applied personnel managemnt school in Florida. I went down
attend a two week school, but it was a two week school that operate
mrning, afternoon and night. It was an applied personnel mmagem&t school
for Beld gmde officers. In my j udwnt I have nevw attended a sFool of
any kind that did so much in that mmnt of tire as that school. I learned
things about personnel managpment that have been applicable to ever#thing
1
I
1

Gerald W. Smith 100
I've done since I came out of the service; I consider it one of the
pieces of schooling I ever had.
Q. Well, that together with yow assiprent in the Personnel spot,
that responsibflity was a tremendous experience and clexrly points,
seem to m, in the direction which your career took then, af'ter yo
best
with
it
. returned.
A. Yes, I feel that I was very fortunate in qy military service. I did
enjoy it, I did have interesting experiences with the Air Transport base
in Iceland and with the kind of work It did, and I ertalnly had an interest-
ing and responsible position in the division when I @me back fmrn Icelad.
I left the military service feeling that it had not been really an interrup-
tion in my life but, in fact, had been a very important expansion of w
horizons, and that the kind of work I did had been really another impoLrt;ant
development for re in the kind of career I was interested in. So I was very
fortunate. I might add parenthetically in rqy fom years of military service
I was also fovltmate in that I was never one of those people who had to sit
around and w ait for an assigmnt. I know many people ad, you know, thm@
no fault of their own; there was nothing they could do about it. I was
fortunate, I went from one assignment to another with no interruptions at
all, I just worked all the t*.
Q; Yes, I had that good fortune, too. I just had no delays.
A. There was one other thing about nly service in the Air Transport Comd
that I appreciated and enjoyed. In that particular branch of the sedce
we were pretty much in touch with the deve1oprru;nts of the war, both in the
European theatre and the Asiatic theatre, all of the time and frequently
even thou@ sonu; of the action rriL@t be rermte fbm us we were a part of
the action. I found that to be an interesting thing also. I might illustrate
that: 'first of all because we were, you know, in essence a military airline
using all sorts of resources for it, we therefore had the people fm all
parts of the world comlng to us and past us, you know; in Iceland I met
people from all theatres of the war who stopped there, so that we were
very much alert. Because of the interrelatedness of the divisions of the
Air Transport Colnnand around the world we were always in one way or another
in touch with the other divisions because we were dependent upon them and
they were dependent upon us. Somtims lrnjor activities in one area or the
other made it necessaxy for us even to exchange personnel for a short period
of time and so, you know, you sort of felt llke you were into the total
picture. And as I say, the other thing was that there were mtters, in
which they called upon us. I recall up in Iceland one time - - thisiwas in
the fall of 1942, when the North African campaign was in progress - t we
had a gmup of B-25's - - attack bon-bers - - come into us and every pne of
them had defective mtors, they were oil users. We had airplanes
into us that day from Greenland. We had about two dozen of these
our base and we were either having to make cyclinder changes by c
iz- other motors or to replace total motors in order to get
on the way. We had a lirrdted staff, you know, our maintenance
maintenance staff', it wasn't a building staff, so it took us
to do that kind of thing. This was in the fall and the days
short and the winter winds were beghmhg to build up quite of'ten.
do not know how many telepm or radiograms we received
hower's headquarters in North Africa about when we were

C&rald W. Smith 101
barbers down there. In those days, you know, you think about them haying
bw.nbe;ls b) the thousands, in those days a dozen bombers was a cdtica'
I
factcr
and so, you know, we sort of felt we were part of the action. Down i AMca
they were waiting for us to get another dozen bombers down there. I an remew
ber som of the Japanese operations, when we had forty-elght hours to dispatch
fifty of our C-54 transport planes, to get them from our North Atiantijc division
stations over to one of the islands off Japan ready to move personneliinto Japan
as soon as they were going to go in there with occupation forces. So /he= I was
up in Manchester, New Hampshire, on the phone every day wfth the people down in
the ATC headquarters at WashingLon in an operation that was related to get
personnel on the occupation forces in Japan so, it was a part of a world-wide
operation . . .
Q. The= is a fascination about a rdlitary organizatim and the dlitary way
of doing thhgs.
END OF TAPE
Q. Well, @w, we've reached the point, on this beautifil Monday maming,
August 16, 1976, where you and I succeeded in winning the m (laughs) and
we began to approach the point where we were thinking in terms of continuation
of our lives, but before we get Into that directly I think we agreed that there
is one phase of your career, one activity which we have not done justice to.
That is the graduate studies that you pursued after completing your bachelors
degree at Knox, so maybe we could begin this new phase by relating your studies
to your career.
A, Yes. Well, as indicated earlier I finished my undergraduate work at Knox
before I began teaching, and while at Media I entered upon graduate work at the
University of Iowa. At the th~ I was working over in Western Illinois, there
were quite a number of the yow administrators in that part of the state who
found it convenient to go to Iowa because the distance was shorter than to
Charrrpaign. Also, the programs at the University of Iowa in educatimal administation
at that tire were very attractive. They had a strong propam over there and
they were attracting people h m many parts of the country. So I began
graduate study during the 1929-L930 schaol year, second yew of teaching and,
least I forget, I completed my masters degree in the smr of 1934. I pursued
paduate work by attending classes at the University of Iowa on Saturdays
during the academic term in a program that they had designed to serve the people
who could comte the distances that were necessary - I think w comting
distance was like a hundred and ten miles or somthing in that order - - and who
could attend swrmer schools. I went to sumrner school, I believe in each of the
smrs except 1930 when we were building the new high school building at lkdia
because of the experience with our fire. And so I did UQI masters degree. I
majored in secondary education and I minored in educational psycho log^, I built
ruy dnor on top of undergraduate major in psycholo@;y. The programs at the
University of Iowa at that tlrrhe for people taking the kinds of degree I was
taking were pretty well prograrmed, particularly in tk mjor you followed a
fairly well organized curriculum. There was a definite difference between the
person who was majoring in secondary education and one who was majoring in the
general administrative^ certificate. The University of Iowa found it necessary
to modlfy their curriculum sorewhat to serve the rather large number of people

Gerald W. Smith 102
coming over from the dual system in Illinois where, you see, we were : IA
both superintendents and principals. We were in these township and ccnrmunity
high schools and of course, there were only about three states in the Union that
had a dual system and no other state quite to tk extent that Illinois had in
those days. We had something llke six hundred of the township and cormmity
high school districts which were separate entities wlto themelves. Many
people like myself, as a young administrator never expected to work in any
other unit. (laughs ) I anticipated that I was going to be a person in that
kind of a district, probably, so that I pursued that field. Of course, remember,
before I was out of high school, one of my principal pals had been mer graduation
to be a high school principal and superhtendent, and this I was in. They
had strong progt?ams at the University of Iowa, we had programs that dealt with
the history of American education, we had courses that were heavy on the philosophic
bases for education. As practicing administrators we had courses that
dealt with the mchanlcs of being a hi& school principal, that is of building
the schedule, of supervising instruction, of admLnistering the finances, of
dealing with extra-curricular programs, and the magemnt of the high school.
It was a very practical program.
Q. You mntioned a minute ago that you did spend so^ time studying the philo-
sophical aspects of education. How was the philosophy of education taught at
that tim and at the pmfessional level? Was it a matter of acquainting you
with the substance of the historical rims who developed philosophical systems?
Or was it a searching for the educational implication of these systems?
A. There were two phases of it. We had sm come work that dealt with
pursuing the historical evolution of the Arrerlcan system stauzting with the
schools in the New England comities,we had course work that involved that.
The one that I felt was the most meaningf'ul to me, and has been to this day, was
a seminar on the American educational system conducted by Doctor Paul Packer,
the Cean of the College of Education, in which we dealt largely with the histor-
ical evolution in relation to the problems of the day, and so we bm&t in
both the history and the philosophic background. When I talk about philosophy,
I thWc I talk as much about the basic philosophy from which an administrator
works as I do from foml philosophy of education. Let me give you an illustra-
tion. This was in the 1930's - - the middle of the depression - - when the rrat-
ter of who worked and how many people worked was almost a moral issue, you know,
more than one bread winner in the family was amst a crim, and the question of
whether women ought to work and to how much they ought to work. So, Coctor
Packer saw to it - - about two thirds of this class were Iowa superintendents - -
that the employmnt of women was the W n issue and particularly the emplopnt of
mied women. The various superintendents wemrather eloquent on th@t subject,
one tim or another. Then, after allowing them a reasonable amount of f"reedom
to discuss, he caw in with a philosophic point of vlew which has alwvs been
the kind of thing that served me well. His philosophic position with vgard to
thls was, that the only thing an administrator ought to be concerned
filling a teaching position was the selection of the best candidate
available at that time for that position. Such questions as
single or married, En or women, Norwegians or Gems or
a political matter that belonged to the B oa of
tor ought to do is to get the rules set by the
they said hire all Swedes, then you hire all
those days you could talk in those tern,
their problem to set that kind of a goal.

Gerald W. Smith
you as a superintendent only want the best one for that classroom posiition.
Q. In other words, he was concerned with the applicatim of the
and the ideas and utflizing them in a very practical sort of way . .
A. Oh yes. The College of Education was geared pretty much to that point
at that tire; for example, one of qy first courses on the adrdnistratim of the
high school, high school itself, was taken with a man by the mm of Cbctor
Puckett, I think his name was Paul.
Q, Puckett?
A. Yes. 1'11 just say Coctor Puckett because Paul isn't right. And at that
tin^ he was the Director of Secondary Gchools for Toledo, Ohio. Now he had a
background of having been a high school principal, he had been a supefintendent,
he had been a professor and at that t b
he was the Director of Secondary Schools
so he brought to the class, a rich background of experience, and right from the
field. Our person on the junior high school at that time was Doctor Glass, who
was one of the best known of the Arwrican scholars in the fleld and was kind of
an evangelist for the junior hi@ school.
Q. Well, now, after you finished your masters degree at Iowa then, subsequently
you took additional work or did you take another degree at Urbana?
A, No, I never took a degree beyond the masters. Following the compLetion
of rqy masters degree in 1934 I returned to the University of Iowa for two smrs,
one swraner to do the special project on the supervision of instmction in the area
of curriculum, which I think we taped several days ago, and another swnmer just
to do some advanced graduate work beyond that. The rest of rqy graduate work,
since my msters in 1934, beyond those two regular sutrmrs has included some
work in the pemnanent extension centers of the Wversity of Illinois at our
Molim C o d t y College, which we're going to talk about. The University or
Illinois established, in the 19301s, sore pement extension centers with a five
year cycle so that people could do quite a bit of work, and I took som of the
graduate courses that were offered in education while I was at Moline in those .
. .
Q. That's where you took mst of the work then, beyond the masters f'pm Iowa,
at Moline?
A. No, that was f"sornthe University of Illinois. Yes, I took most o
i
my work
at the University of Illinois at bline and then, while I was at Pblh I did
a sumner workshop on the cormunity college, again at the University of Iowa. And
I have done no formal graduate work since I left Moline in 1953.
Q. The work that you took at bline Ln the Extension Center, did it ollow
any certain threads or themes or was it pretty much . . . f
A. Yes. The University of Illinois program there was set up on a
cycle and was designed to m e
It possible for a person to prepare
for residency at the U of I, either on a masters or a doctorate
had a theme but I didnlt follow it.
Q. No, I meant whether or not you had a theme . . . !
1

Gerald W. Mth 104 /
-*I
A. No, I did not. I took a course on the cormunity college that I w s
working in and this type of thing - - I just picked courses.
tell you a little bit about experience with a doctorate. I went t Moline
as first job after the service - - well1 talk about it a little 1 ter - -
and I was forty years old when I came out of the service. After I'd en at
Moline approximately two years, I think it was about 1948, I began to consider
the feasibility of pursuing a doctoral program under the GI bill. I rrpde two
trlps, I made one to the University of Iowa to discuss it with them w&re they
discouraged m on the matter of resigning a good posltion to do a doctoral
pl'Ogram, sayfng that, now you're forty-two years old, by the time you flnish
a doctorate, youlll be forty-five or over, and this was, you rernen@er, now in
1948-49. They said a forty-five year old doctor is hard to place, you'll
probably end up with a lower paying job than you have; they sald if you're going
'GO pursue the doctorate we recommend that you work by having a position
someplace that's close enom to a graduate school to hold your job and do It
also; so they did not encourage me to resign and work under the GI bill. Well,
I thought maybe the Urrllversity of Iowa was trying to tell E something, maybe
they didn't see me as doctoral mterial having done my masters there, so I
went then independently to the University of Illinois not saying a word about
the fact that I1d so@t counsel at Iowa. There I received exactly the s m
counsel and advice. I always think about their trying to forecast needs, it's
rather interesting that in 1948, '49, at least the University of Iowa and the
Unfversity of Illinois thought that a forty-five year old new doctor wtthout a
job was a bad risk for emplopnt . Ten years later (laugh$) they thought differently
and would have given IE very different advice.
Q. It's also a cormntary on the enrollnaent picture f'rornthe institutions1
point of view; I suspect they werenlt hurting for students at that tim, but
I'm also sure that point of view was quite accurate at that tim, so . . .
A. Oh yes, I1m sure that this was their experience at the tk. At any rate,
I did not resign and complete my doctorate nor did I ever find ~ self in a
position where it seemd I wanted to do it, so I've blundered along (lauter)
on the basis of a masters and this additional graduate work.
Q. Well, what you did was blunder along without a MI, instead of blundering
along with a PhD. (lawter)
A. Iguess so.
Q. Well, it's nomagic pass key . . .
A. No, it's no mgic pass key, and yet I must say that I regret that
do it. I've had one experience in q pmfessional life and that was t
a bachelors degree when I began teaching I was a little ahead of
but with a mterl s degree so sow after I had completed
one of the few people who had gmduate education beyond
time. I have worked and lived long enough to see the
basic pattern, a basic credential in the educational
regret that I didn't do it.
I
Q. I can understand that; at the same time it seems likely that the xt few
years are going to creat a situation, confront us with a situation, wh$ the
PhD is not the desirable thing . . . I

Gerald W. Smith 105 !
A. Yes, it may even be a detrirent . . .
Q. . . . it mLght be a handicap, this is absolutely right. 1
I
A. But at any rate I wish I had done it, and I didn't; on the other and
I've been fortunate.
P
Q. Yes, you haven l t done badly &my. (laughs) Now, are we ready -t;o talk
@out the job possibilities that presented themselves to you when you got back
and were ready to go to work?
A. Yes. I carne out of the service at the beginning of Wch of 1946, having
been in the service four years, and without a positim to go back to. When I
entered the service from Alexis in 1942, it was possible to take a leave of
absence - - there was a legislation that provided for that - - but I had been
at Alexis for seven years and I was already thinking that it was tim for m
to move to a new area. I felt that the war was going to be a relatively long
one and that inmdfately after the war, opportunities would be plentifhl, and
so I did not take a leave of absence. I cut qy cord at Alexis and resigned, so I
was without a position. I cam home, then, in early March to Princetm, Illinois
on the famn that my wife's people lived on and there we headquartered while I
began rry search. I came out of the semriice, I think probably basically feeling -
that I was going back into educational admiikstration which I had enj&yed so
much the fourteen years before I went into the service. But I also c m out
thinking about two other possible fields.
Having been In the Air Transport Cammd and having had khe association
with many of the airline people and par%icularly hi& officials - - the Cornranding
General of the Atlantic Division under whom I was Assistant Ehief of Staff
Personnel for quite a bit of the tim was a vice-president of American Airlines,
for example - - I knew a good nwnber of these people and so, I had dewloped
some interest in the potential of perhaps going into administrative wmk with the
airline. It did not take rru; long to analyze that situation in terms of what
the &Line did for its older and retired pilots as agalnst what it did for
non-rated personnel and to make a decision that that probably was not the wisest
choice. Then too, I had rret a rn and becom quite well acquainted with him who
had had a position with the Moorman Feed Company of Quincy, Illinois who was high
in his praises of lbom. Since I had an agricultural background it was not
hard for him to stimulate me with the idea that mybe I might be interested and
so I contacted the Moorman people, even took some of their tests.
But again the school thing appealed to IE strongly and after a vep-y short
tim I knew what I was going to do althau& I didnl t drop those possib'
i
lities .
Returning to Illinois in March of 1946, then, I began to explore the p tenth1
for positions and I began to attend educational neetings to learn abo opentlngs.
Among those that I learmed about were thee that appealed to rre. One as the
assistant principalship and dean of boy@ at the Moline Senior High Sc 01, ane
was the superintendentrprinctpalship ofthe Pontiac Township High Schobl, and the
third one was the principalship of the Urbana High School, which like Moline was
a unit district. I mde application for each of these three; they were the only
ones I made application for, and I was fortunate enough to get serious consideration
for each of them. The order in which they closed was, first, Pontiac where
a man by the mm of Watson and I were the last two candidates. They chose Mr.
Watson; both of us were returning service men, about the s m age, about the
same previous PE-was experience and about the same credentials. He stayed there
for several years and was a very successful lllan there until he moved sanewhere else.

Gerald W. Smith 106
The second one to close was the principalship at Umana. I was very q ch inter-
ested in that one because of the possibility of graduate work at t 3 1 t y
of Illinois. They selected a man by the rxms of Howd, who was just c leting
his doctorate at the University of Illinois. He stayed there not too Years,
I'm not sure how long, but say like three of four yeam, after which
to Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana, where he was still se the last
I knew.
Then, about a day or two after that second one closed I received a call
flwm Mr. Clyde Parker, thesuperintendent at Moline, informing me that he had
recomnended me to the board and the board had voted to offer E the pasition of
Assistant Principal and Dean of Boys which I accepted. Just for the =cord and
mmentarily, it was not the top of my choices primarily because of salary. Each
of the first two positions was beginning at four thousand dollam and the position
at Moline was be^^ at thirty-two hundred, but as I w ill say later on there
is such a thing as providence, there is such a thing as fortune and within weeks
of having accepted that position I would not have traded it, nor any day for the
next seven years, with either one; the Pbline position tmed out to Ix a field
of rich opportunity for me and I was always happy that that was the wag things
twned out.
Q. Yowl guardian angel was really on his toes, wasn't he? Okay, now what was
the situation at Moline? Are you at the point where this would be appropriate?. . .
A. Yes, I think I mlgbt, just for an FntraIuctPon to one of the things we1=
going to be talking about a little later on, list the categories of activities
because in lbline I did become active both within Maline and beyond M~Jine in
a nunber of areas, and maybe this would be a good place just to make a statement. . .
Q. What you're talking about is not job description as it existed in people's
minds at the the you went there, but the things that you got into, just itemlze
the things that you got into during the what, six years?
A. Seven years.
Q. Seven years . . .
A. And 1'11 just list sore of the categories. Within these bline school
system - - I went there irdtially as assistant principal and dean or boys - -
before the school term got started in the fall I was also made dean OF the newly
established Moline Codty College which was in connection with the ~eidor
hi@ school facility. While I was there I also sewed five years as t e coordin-
ator of cwriculurn for the total, K through fourteen Moline school sys em an
additional duty. At the beginning of ny second year I moved f'rom Assi tant
Principal to Principal ofthe hi@ school and Director of the Comnnulit College
which was basic role for six of the seven years I was there. i
Q. The dual responsibility?
A. Yes, it was a unit as I will describe in a minute, but the two titles in
connection with it. Tnen, on two occasions the Superintendant of Schools who
was new also the sam year I went there, placed Clyde Parker who hlred me
because Clyde mved to Cedar Rapids, Iowa. I served as the Acting Superintendent
of Schools$ once for a three month period and another tb~ for about flve months
(a semester and into the sumner) while Alex Jardine went away to Colu@ia Univer-

Gerald W. mth 107
sity to coqlete his kctorate. So, as you see, I had a nwnber of roles within
the school system over that period of time. In addition to that, while I
was in Moline I served three years as the president of the 111Fnois A$sociation
of Secondary School Mcipals. In a period of considerable activlty!by that
organization, I became immediately very active and remained active wi$h the
Illinois Secondary School Curriculum program which was organized in 1947 and
which later became the Illinois Curriculum Program.
Q. This was in the realm of extra curricular professional activities . . .
A, Yes, this was beyond the city school system. I also becam very active
state-wide in the the junior college activities of the state. So, those were
areas of activity while I was there. I miat also say that, city-wide, I be-
came quite involved in cormunity affairs.
Q. Well, this has been a hallmark of yours right along, tlemy , but you1 ve
gotten involved in codty affairs. One thing we want to touch on briefly,
wbe now or maybe later on, as you prefer, I keep hearhg you speak of the
comunity college in bline. My impression has been that this desigmtion,
comity college, is a relatively late invention as a nam for this type of
institution. Now, whenever you would like to talk about it, if you'd like to
throw it in now, maybe this would be . . .
A. Well, now is a good tine. I'm talking about the cormunity college, of
course, as you mow the term junior college was created by William Mney Harper
at the University of Chicago in 1896 and the public junior colleges in this
country began to form at the turn of the century and from 1900 when Joliet
Junior College - -"which is the oldest public junior college in existence . . .
A. 1901, what ad I say?
A. I see. 1901 when their college was started it was the first one. From
that up mtil the late 1920's or between 1925 and 1930, I think, the 'Qerm
junior college was used universally, but leaders in the field, like
and Doctor Eells and some of the others in the late 1920's began to
this institution in tern of its codty hction, a broadexkg
riculum to be somwhat mre conpllehensive than just the upward
high school liberal &s program. They also said it ought to
focus and they began to tU about that. So certainly - by - 1930
becam editor of the Journal- - the Junior College Journal for the
Association of Junior Colleges - - there were people swsting
an qpropdate name, I have never researched the- subject to &ow
institution that dght ever have called itself a cormnmlty
say that when I came to Moline in 1946 - - and that's when
college arena - - in which I've been connected most of the the
term cormunity college was already being used by a goodly
mere was a rather strong advocacy for that name for the
while everybody talked about the junior college as mch
were many doing it, so . . .

I
Gerald W. Wth 108
Q. Well, was the word aommmity actually in the nan~ of the institution
of bUne . . .
A. . . . yes, well in the fall of 1946 when we began to operate, the orL@nal
name of the newly established unit was Moline Codty College.
I Q. OK, this is important, I think.
A. But as I say, there were certainly a goodly number and there was a strong
advocacy of that in many mas of the comt~y,
I
I
Q. Good;because I'm quite sue that subsequent auditors of thls dbcussion
will wonder about usim that term. Well, very god; I don't think we need to
spend more time on this topic. Now, there were sorne interesting aspects, some
interesting developments going on, as I recall your alluding to them, in Moline
that really made the situation ripe for sore innovative thinking, organization-
wise, curriculum-wise and so on, so if you'd like, maybe this would be a good
tire to get into that.
A. Yes. In 1946 - - at the tine I was rnovilng to Moline - - the educational
system was in a considemble state of femnt and had been for two or three
years. Af'ter having been a very stable situaiton for forty years, some changes
in the Board of Education in Moline and some very strong forceful leadership
corrdng in there had caused a series of sapid changes in the Maline school system,
such rapid changes, you know that stir up a conanunity in some respects and it's
not really a part of story because most of it happened before I went there,
but that is the env5mnmnt that I entered; a good mmy things had hqpened.
And so, the things that had occured in the spring of 1946, I want to point out,
are just som additional steps in a sequence that had been instituted a couple
or three years before. In the winter of 1946 the Board of Fducatim had employed
Doctor Reavis, h m the University of Chicago . . .
I l Q. That's Claude, isn't it?
A. Doctor Claude Reavis who was a senior man in education at that time
and nationally known - - they employed him with a team of some efght or ten
people Pom the University of Chicago staff to come and do a complete evaluation,
survey and evaluation of the Moline School system and to make recmndations.
It was intended that this study should take probably a couple of yeam, and so
Doctor Reavis and his people began to move into the school system in the
winter and spring of 1946. As Doctor. Reavis mved around the city @ began to
get an early survey of the things, he made comnents about thi
was ready to write any report or recmndations. He observed as
there, that the senior hi& school facility was basically 1914 bui
on a hillside with no room for expansion, supplemnted by an 1894
building just to the west of it, and a mchm3cal arts building o
and a half away f'rom it, all of them on the risn of the bluff, and
He observed this. He also observed that neither the Calvin Cooli
John Deere Junior High School facilities were be- used to capac
suggested that maybe a better utilization to think about - - he
this - - but maybe a better utilization to think about would be
wade from the senior hi& school, because they had a K-6-3-3 s
tenth grade over to the junior high school. And he also suggested
rr9ght be a good occasion to think about establishing a Junior c

Gerald W. Smlth 109
know which term he used, a junior or conwaunity college, (laughs) he pqobably
used cormrunity college, because he certainly had been subject to a lo
influence - - and have a K-6-4-4 organization, whfch of course was a
had been developed by Koos and strongly advocated by Koos. As a matt
at one time Koos thought that Mght becaw the prevailing pattern of
he called it the four year junior college. Well now, another thing
this can st a little long winded, but . . .
Q. I take it that these ideas, if I can anticipate for a moment, that this idea
of the six40w-four organization actually fell on pretty fertile ground . . .
A. Yes, that's right . . .
Q. It kasn' t sprouted yet . . .
A. . . . yes, and particularly with the chaimnan of the Moline Board of
Education, who was, as I say, aggressive and really full of ideas. In the spring
of 1946 - - I go back a little, If anybody's listening to this, this is the way
I talk, I introduce sorething and then pick up somthing else, but they all fit
together eventually.
& You're very clear, .@my; you core through nicely.
A. In the spring of 1946, withkhe end of World War I1 and the hordes of
returning veterans and all the benefits of the GI bill, the universities of this
country, of cowse, were bekg overwhehed with enrollments. One such institu-
tion was the University of Illinois. In the spring of 1946, they had on hand
applications that would provide an enrollment in the fall of about twenty-three
thousand students at a t3m when the Urbana camprus, they felt, could handle a
maximum of sixteen thousand; and of course, that ' s the only campus they had at
that tim, so they began to cast about for ways to solve this problem. Now in
later yews you solved the problem by closing enrollments in February, but in
1946 you did not close the door to returning veterans, the whole climate in
hrica was you serve the veteran, so the University of Illinois began to tlvlvlk
about mthods by which they might help alleviate this problem. One of the ideas
generated there was the possibility of utilizing som of the excellent facilities
in the Illinois High School plants. We had many high school plants with magnif-
icent laboratory facilities. So they conceived the idea that maybe same of these
high schools would operate extension centers for the University of Illinois. In
March or April they sent a letter - - a mmmdum type of thing, to ,I don't
know how many of the school districts, what the selection was, but to
them, obviously ones large enough to have those facilities - - sugges 'ng the
idea and soliciting a response. $""
Q. I happen to know that an additional consideration there was the ity of
the students which these institutions had been sendfng to the Univers
A. Oh, I'm sure that was true, yes. I
Q. . . . Let me just throw in here a personal reference, if I
was involved in this whole process that you're talking about now,
University of Illinois point of view, so I can check up on you as we @ along here.
( laughter )

Gerald W. Smith 110
A. I don't tell the truth. (laugh) Well, this letter arrived in Moline. Now
we put two and two together, we have the Board of Education under the aggressive
leadership of Mr. Earl Beling, I think he deserves a place in this . / .
A. B-E-L-I-N-G - - of Mr. Earl Beling who was the chalman of the Ward of
Education and of course, well supported by his Board. You had him, ycpu had
these suggestions that had been planted in the discwsion by Doctor Reavis just
in his preliminary discussion, so Mr. Beling puts two and two together and suggests
to Clyde Parker, who was still the Superintendent - - he hadn't moved yet
- - oh, by the way, I forgot one thing, the University of Illinois1 letter had
another thing in it too: in addition to soliciting the response of the schools
to this idea there was a suggestion in the letter that sore districts might find
this a convenient way to establish a junior college; the University of Illinois
Board of Trustees had been on recoM for sw tln~ in support of advancing the
junior college developmnt in tUs state officially; so this was in that letter.
So this letter arrived in lbline , you have the survey that was under way by
Doctor Reavis to think about, and the fertile mtnd of Earl Beling, the Chaim
of the Board, and so forth, so, the idea that was generated then was, why don't
we do two things? Why don't we use the University of Illinois Extension Center as
a mans of establishing a corrnnxnity college program and get mvfng? Mr. Beling
was not one to wait very long; he also suggested that not only do we apply to the
University of Illinois,for approval as one of their extension centers, but let's
also imdiately move to the six-four-four.
END OF SIDE: ONE
A. The Board of Educatim did take action in the direction that I'm talking;
in mid-Nay they voted that for the 1946-1947 school year they would reorganize
the school system into a K-6-4-4$ that they would relocate the tenth grade to the
junior high school which, of course, mant that the ninth grade graduates weren't
going to leave the junior high school buildings in which they were already enroll-
ed, and that they were going to establish the lbline Cornunity College, using
the University of IlUnois Extension program as the basis for the curriculum
and the program, at the outset in the fall of 1946.
Q. In other words here was a situation where there was a series of msses in
juxtaposition to each other that were ready to go critical once that ope final
ingredient was provided, which was the and of Earl Beling. That's ve
esting.
A. Yes, now this was the envimmnt at the time that I mved to ~olhe.
r
Q. And you didn't bow anything about these things until they were completed,
until you got there.
!
A. . . . no, well of course I learned about the two or three yew fe nt as
I was an applicant and met with various people and after being employe in bline
there were sane people I knew there who told n~ more of the story. I ew just
from casual statements that there was the idea that Moline might have junior
college some day, but I had no notion that I would be involved with it in anyway

Gerald W. Smith 111
what so eves; there was no suggestion. I was corning to IvIoline in 194 i as
the Assistant Principal and Dean of Boys in the senior high school, i
grades ten throw twelve, with the understanding that they wanted a
would be a potential candidate for the high school principalship at s
in the future but with no promise or anything of that Hnd. They jus
said they were looking for a persm with those credentials.
lit ially
lerson who
UE time
, simply
Q, Well, it sounds to re as though you're about to start playing a brand new
game, &my, over there. You thought there was one set of rules when you went
there, but between the blowing of the whistle and the kick-off (laughs) the
rules of the garre changed rather suddenly and you were in for an exciting tine.
I'm not quite sure, not having been there, I dmlt kncw what to suggest, how
to start talking about it but there's certainly somthing here that needs to be
told.
A. I think I need to simply tell of the events of the s mr that led to the
opening of the fall term. Soon after I was eqloyed and about the tir& the
announcement was made of the reorganization of the school district, Clyde Parker
accepted a position as a superintendent of schools in Cedar Rapids . . .
A. . . . so the Board was in search of a new superbtendent, who ultimately
turned out to be Alex Jardine, from Ehnsville, Indiana. Likewise, before the
end of May of 1946 the prfncipal of the high school left, which was a part of the
ferment, you see. The Board of Fducation induced him to leave and while he
officially resigned it was a part of the negotiation.
I was living up at Princeton, Illinois with wife s folks about sixty-five
miles away, in a position which was initially to have been the Assistmt Frincipal
and Dean of Boys to work with the principal of the high school and the superintendent
of schools, only to find that by the end of May neither was there. I had
adequate time because I was, as you know, h m from the service, so I began to go
to hbline about two days a week, just m my own initiative and spend time at the
school wlth the office staff and with mmbers of the faculty. I could see
ir~nediately that there were things that had to be done. ?here was the whole
business of rearranging things; before Clyde Parker left he had taken care of the
mtter of reassigning the faculty that were going to go over to the junior high
school to teach tenth grade that had been in the senior high building. So, there
needed to be a review of what faculty was there. There needed to be som thinking
begun with regard to how we were going to operate grades eleven througt? fourteen
there, at this tim on the assqtion that we were going to be an extepsion center,
it wasn't really quite offlcial but it was ninety-nine per cent a ce
during the month of June I spent about two days a week there
these things and becoming acquainted with quite a few of the
around, and so forth. In the ~antim the Board of Education
search for a superintendent and Alex Jardine cam on board July 1 . . .
Q. Ch, then you were fortunate.
1
A. . . . but the principalship was not filled and at that time they bre not
considering re for that principalship, they were looking elsewhere forlthe
principalship, which did not get filled until at the opening of school in
September. When Alex Jardine arrived in the city around the fowh or fifth of
July - - not the fourth, but the fifth or sixth - - I phoned him from the high

school building and introduced rryself. I presurned that he hew somt
$" about
being there, but we had never rntt or knew one another and I said t him on
the phone, I said, ''W nan~ is Gerald Smith," and he hmdiately said "I hope
not Gerald L. K., " (laughter). That was our introduction to one anoiher . I
went over and met ~ 5th him and, of course, here he had all of these new things
on his hands. By this tire the University of Illinois had decided tMt they
were having a meting about midJuly of all of the proposed centers mmd the
state, an orientation meeting down at Chmpaign, and here was Alex witrh a reorganized
~~ school that wasn't reorganized yet and no principal in it and an
assistant principal and dean of boys who was brand new to the system md who
wasnf t officially to go to wo~k until September, (laughs) or rrbd-August , I've
I forgotten which it was. At any rate, he made a quick decision that, inasmuch
as I had done this mch pund work, he would reconmend to the Board that I be
I inmdiately placed on duty and so - - I don't re~mber
have been later than the sixth or seventh of July at a Board meting that they
accepted his reconmendation . . .
I
just when - - f t couldnlt
Q. I bet your salary jtnrrped up to what it would have been at the other two
places.
A. . . . Yes, well I ended up at the end of the yeax having eamed more
mney in Moline than I would have eamed in,~ither one of the positions and of
having, of course, a very exciting the. Then, at a meting of s m af the
people in his office on the ei@th of July, 1946, Alex Jardine launched m
into a junior college program with which I was to be affiliated you know, to
this day . . .
9. (laughter ) Never a dill rrwment .
A. . . . by saying to me, "we have to implement this thing" and po1lrtih.g tp
m and saying, llthatls go- to be your role.'' All of the work of getting ready
to open that extension center in the community college is to be your role, on top
of being assistant principal and dean of boys and, in effect, being acting
principal of the high school during the surer mths until the new man came.
So this is what we b@gm to do in the smr, and these were busy wee& ahead.
Tne trip to CbampaAgn was made wlth many questions and some misgivings,
feeling particulmly uninfomd and illiterate about what we were going to be,
and happy to be reassured at the meting at the University that practically
none of the answers had been determined yet. The meeting that they held around
the fourteenth or fif'teenth of July was the first assembly of these schools
around the state that cam?, which by the way ultimately turned out to be thir%y-
one high school centers. Therefore, the s mr months then consisted of the
activities necessary, flrst of all, to complete the schedUng, the s edule
making, and the registrations and so forth for grades eleven and twel for,
although we were going to be grades eleven through fourteen, in fact r that
id
first year we were really going to be two units in one plant where the University
extension center or Moline Corranunity College - - so we called it - - the
high school were really two separate activities there . . .
Q. Just to clarif'y this a little bit f'wther: were all of the grade khirteen
and fourteen students who finally enrolled with you that first year, &re they
all in the University of Illinois &tension Center Pmgram, rather than in the
Community College Program at Moline?
A. . . . Yes, when we opened on Septenber 18, with that propam, our student

Gerald W. Smith
body was entirely enrolled in the Center, we did not try to enroll anybody.
By the second semster we had a few people who had enrolled with us indepen-
dently, but all of our students in the initla1 enrollrent were . . .
Q. Well, that sinplified things just a little bit.
A. . . . Yes, that simplified things. So we were getting the high $chool
operation ready, which was quite a new setting and getting ready. Now in order
to operate those extension centers, it turned out that the University of Illinois
provlded the registration, they prodded us all the registration form and while
the registration was done in Moline the students were literally registered at
the University of Illinois.
Q. Well, de facto these were University of Illinois students . . .
Q. . . . who happened to be getting their instruciton there rather than in
Urbana .
A. . . . so the Unfvemfty provided all of the registration materials and
the students filled out exactly the sarne forms and pad exactly the same fees
as they would have at the University of Illinois.
Q. Again, just for the recard if I my dipess momntarily: in 1946 the
University of Illinois opened two additional branches or extensions of itself;
one at Navy Pier in Chicago, which mked the beginning of the University
presence at the undergradmte level in Chicago, and the other one at Galesburg,
Illinois, in a fomr A~QT General Hospital Wch was not used because the
invasion of Japan dfdntt core off. That's where I got into the act, I helped
set that thing up and get it going.
A. . . . yes, a place which I visited a nwnber of times, but for some reason
or another we never met. (laughs)
Q . No, we never met.
A. We met in Springfield instead of Galesburg.
Q. Right, excuse IE that I mentioned it.
A. The University, then, provided the registration - - the students! were
University of Illinois students - - they were registered on University of Illinois
forms, we used the course outlines of tbe TJnlversity, all of the courses were
listed with Mversity catalog numbers, we used the University of Illinois text
books, and the University gave us minim support throw a couple or three
resource people who could answer ow qumtions. That was the extent of the
University involvemnt. The selection and emplopnt of faculty, althmgh subject
to University of Illinois approval, which the first year was rather cursory
(laughs) because of the speed with which all this had to be done, they did retain
an approval privilege on the faculty, the selection of faculty, but tk University
did not ass= any of the financial ~sponsibility for the financial 3peration
of the institution. Tne Centers did that entirely on their own; we &;ermined
our own salaries; we selected our own faculty; we set up our own payrolls; we
had the big initiation of &fng collections under the GI Bill and eat:? of us had

Gerald W. Smith 114
to work our way through the intricacies of the GI Bill program for the m y
veterans who were enrolled. The schedule rraktlng, that is the total a@rdnlstration
of the program was left in the hands of the local institution.
Q. That's very similar to the way these two University branches operated. At
Galesbwg there were two of us thexe on the staff who knew something @out the
University of Illinois. William &glish was one and Bill was the bus$ness
manager, he had worked in the business office at the University of Illinois;
and Emst Giesecke was the other one, I was Assistant Ban at the Galesburg
undevlgraduate division. I had been an Assistant Dean of Liberal Arts and Sciences
on the Urbana campus for about two months in the fall of 1946. At Galesburg we
started much the s a kind ~ of set up that you did. We had to begin from scratch;
it was w to us to make it wo~k.
A. Initially in the fall program, for several reasons, we began the operation
of the Extension Center Pmgrms at about three o'clock in the af'ternoon. We
actually and space because the tenth grade had been moved out, we had space in
Mch to operate, but we weren't organized well enough to do it and we had to
depend for some of our teaching from faculty that were in the senior h&h school
propam but we did not have time to adjust all of their work loads adequately,
nor did we really have time to plan the fusion of the two programs sufficiently
to do really good scheduling to accomdate the faculty. So we began on the
operation of the Extension Center about three o'clock in the afternoon the first
serfester. Thereafter, we began to work it more into the day, so . . .
Q. recollection is that in these Extension Centers the hi& school teachers
who taught the University level courses, typically did so on an overlOad basis.
A. . . . yes, that's right, we had a goodly nwnber of our stronger high
school teachers teachhg one or two college classes in addition to their
regular load overtime . . .
8. And you recognized this contribution on their part by paying them addiitional
salaries?
A. . . . oh yes, we paLd them additional salaries for this work. Yes, they
drew their regular salaries for their activity in the senior hi@ school and . . .
Q. . . . But the basic salary scale was the same . . .
A. . . . yes, the sw, yes, we paid them on the sm level, but we just
paid them in addition. Now, of course, beyond that, we also supplerrle 'ted
that faculty wlth other people in the c odty - - the Quad City are was a
large enom population area, that there was a pretty good human reso ce area
from which to draw. We also used some of the Augustma faculty in o institu-
tion. I might say that we started in the fall of 1946 with a W f i c nt working
relationship with Augustana and we were from the outset supportive of one another.
So we started and we opened the college section of the classes on Sep mber 18 . .
i
Q. Let ITE interrupt for a mmnthere Gerry. That's very unusual be use when
a new collegiate level institution is coming into a codty all of e local
institutions, there typically felt threatened and they would have res sted - -
this was true for example of your alma mater In Galesburg. box Coll e was
very suspicious of the fact that Unfversity of Illinois was opening u an
i

Gerald W. mth
instructional center there in Galesburg; but this was not true in theicase of
Wline.
A. . . . No. Doctor Bergendoff, Doctor Conrad krgendoff, the prestdent of
Augustana College was supportive of the idea of the junior college in the Quad
City area and was very swportive of our activities, fmmthe very beginning. . .
Q. Well, that's so unusual that I felt it deserved to be mentioned bere.
A. No, we enjoyed that relationship. I think mybe, I don't know, Augustana
dght have had a somewhat different attitude if it had been a state Univemity
coming in. He probably didn't feel so threatened by the Moline Public School
System operating a unit there.
Q. mat's a good point, I didn't think about that.
A. Yes, you know, rraybe they saw a public university coming in as a bigger
threat to them, whereas we were part of the local school system. At any rate,
on Septerber 18 we opened with two hundred and twenty-two students and somthing
like 75 per cent of the student body were veterans under the GI Bill. The
classification of the students was overwheLrningly male that ye= and the
largest curriculum that the students were enrolled in was engineering. Again, in
the fall of 1946 &@neering was being pmmted in a great way and that would
have been our largest group of students to begin with. And so we mved in to
the 1946-'47 school year with a eleventh and twelfth grade high school and thfs
University of Illinois Extension Center - - and Moline Cormunity College - - we
called it - - the flrst semester offmlng nothing beyond the University of Illinois
courses. By the second serester we began to offer a few of our own.
Returming now to the relationship between Augustana and the Cornunity College,
one of the areas in which we cooperated inmediately was enrollment. We had the
University of Illinois engineering program and in that program offering sore
courses that Augustana was unable to offer for want of enrollimnt. So their 1 1
students cam over to our college and enrolled in our Extension Center in certain
engineering couvlses as I say, whfch were not being offered on the Augustana
carpus. Likewise, it was not long until we discovered they had courses that were
operating in foreign languages for wkuich we did not have adequate enrollmmt,
and so they accepted our people in their foreign languages . . .
Q. Well, maybe it's not just an accident that in the Quad Cities to this day
there exists this rather active graduate study center which was truly cooperative
- - I man it's not a direct extension of it, but never the less . . .
A. I think the climate was there.
Q. The climate must have been created back then.
A. Well, in the Quad Cities - - I just rrrlmt add pmnthtfcally - - he clhmte
for this type of cooperative program is of long standing . . .
Q. Oh, is it?
A. . . .
-"1
Yes, the related t~aining program in apprenticeships betwe the industrial
comnurdty analthe public school system, was already fo&y ye s old
when I went to Moline, so that the Davenport, Rock Island, bline, Moline
I

Gerald W. Smith 116
hi@ schools were already operating apprentice program for industI5a.l
apprentices and industry was providing the money to pay the
happened that lbline was the adrriLnistrative unit - - we had
were on ow roll, but they worked allthrou@S? the Quad
Quad Cities had this climate.
Q. Sure, and then I assm that there was a considerable proportion of
university educated people living in the Quad Cities who were available
for teaching and who had a curiosity about such things.
A. Yes, Augustana College was there and the--whatls the name of
the college in Davenport, St. Ambrose College. And then there was a women's
college in Davenpo& (MaryCrest); so there was a hi&er education climate
as you say Pbline or the Quad Cities. The whole Quad City area had a lot
of college graduates who were executives in the big manufacturing companies
there. It's the horn office of Deere and Conrpany and there was the Inter-
national Harvester plant . . .
Q. I can very easily imagine the rather direut relationship between the
strong enrollmnt in engineefing and the presence of Deere and Internation-
al Hmster and so for%h . . .
A. . . . I'm sure that added to it, althougl? in the fall of 1946, en@nee~
ing across the country p w . There was a call for engineers three years
later. They said, "Please shut them off. l' (laughter) The cooperative
climte in the Quad Cities was something older than Moline Comwlity College
or Gerald Smith arriving. (lams)
Q. Yes, vevy good, okay.
A. I think for the 1947-1946 school year I would, without having to go in-
to endless detail then, conclude by saying that as far as story is con-
cerned, I got caught up then in the codty college development. The
principdl who came for that year, Mr. Lloyd Ashby, decided when he arrived
that he would devote his principle activity to the administration and super-
vision of the senior hi@ school element. Since I was already deeply involved
in the cormunity college and although he was aven the title of Director
of the Corrrnunity College, that that would be pdnciple ballwick and so I
carried, I suppose, 90 per cent of the responsibility for that. I also con-
tinued to serve as the Dean of Boys . . .
Q. Well now, this was recog-dzed, this responsibility for the corfmmity
college developmnt was recogized about when?
A. Mr. Ashby cam on duty about the first of September and I would say !
within ten days we . . .
Q. Oh, ri@t within the week . . .
A: Yes, as we got acquainted we did this kind of thing and see he
were three of us that had to work close together, Alex Jardine was
the city, Lloyd Ashby was new to the city and I was new to the
lunch together, we held nwnerous conferences together to lay the
because here was, you how, something quite new and, as far as
concerned, unique because there was not another six-fopfour in the/ state.

Gerald W. Smith 117
Q. Well, probably it was an extrodLnm good fortune that the thre~ of you
were new, because if any of you had been old timrs there in that %? a you
pmbably would have know too many thin@;; that couldn't be done. way
you didn't how. (laughs)
A. Yes, we had two advantages, the three of us be being new, we ha@ several
advantags. F'imt of all, there was considerable cormunity resentmnt to the
sudden action of the Board in the middle of l%y. The ninth gmde graduates
at the junior hi& school who already had their graduation clothes bought and
plans for the graduatim exercises about three weeks away, who sudd$nly found
they were going to stay in the junior hi& school, of course, were terribly
disappointed. Their parents were disappointed and somewhat irate in some
cases. The senior hi& school faculty that was mved from the senior high
school over to the jdor hi& school resented it in mny instances, They
looked upon it as a demotion going over there, because first of all many of
them who were teaching tenth grade science also had eleventh and twelfth
grade science on the cwriculwn. Now they were going back over to the junior
high school and either teach totally tenth grade or maybe pick up some ninth
grade activity, and they resented that. None of the three of us who had to
imple~nt this propam had anything to do with the generation of the idea and
none of us were ever accused of that. So we were brand new, we were having
to inqlemnt something Uke that was quite new and work with faculty that
was kind of upset about what had happened to them very suddenly and to work
with peaple in the comwlity. It was fortunate - - but I must say, in spite
of the fact that the people of Moline resented what had happened to them they
were wry civil about it and very considerate' and we did not experience any
great tram. We just had, you know, in sore cases that little feeling of
tension here and there or the constant complaining (laws) about it.
Q. Once the Pbline Codty College became established and had a firm
identity of its own, I imaglne then certain of the teachers who had corn there
originally into the high school became affiliated permanently and full time
with the junior college, did they not?
A, Yes, some of the hi@ school teachers becam essentially full time
corrmmity college teachers, but not very mamy, because rry basic principle was--
and particularly, remember at the end of the first year Mr. Ashby mved on to
Omaha and I becam the Principal and Director,-one of nly basic prinqiples was
that we were trying to operate a four year unit and therefore, I w ted faculty
crossing the lines and I was not too wch inclSned to encourage the faculty to
give up hi@ school teaching entirely. 7
Q. Were you able to keep this peckhg order, hi@er pecking order,
developing on the part of the people who went into the teaching in
nity college to tend to look down on . . .
A. No, we really did not have the problem of two faculties. There
think the four year unit pmbably was a pretty good base from which
and no, I do not think that we did. We had, well, you know, all of
faculty with a good deal of seniority that wanted to, if they wanter
teaching comity college work as well as the hi& school, and the:
of it as a unit, we dCld not develop . . .
Q. Well, that was a real asset that you had, this larger entity th:
could be part of. There s one date that I l rn not sure that has been
1
igain I
;o operate
>UP strong
to, were
thought
; they
)inpointed

Gerald W. Sdth 11 8
Gerry. You becam-during the first year, you were appointed hi@ school
principal and director of the Cornunity College. Are those titles
correct first of all, these two titles?
A. . . . for the second year, yes, you said first year adnute ago.
Q. Oh, okay, when did that take effect this new . . .
A. Mr. Ashby mved to Omaha in June and the Board made the appointmnt
to the new role imdiately, so that f'rom June 1947 throw the remaining
six years, while I did the nwnber of things that I mntioned emlier on
this tape, basic mle was Principal of the hi@ school and Director
of the Commlty College. Therefore, the story that is to be told here
regarding rrg involvrrent has to follow tw@ threads: the junior collegp and
the high school .
Q Very good. Well, suppose we plunge into that now in any way that
yoytd Like to begin. I how one of the things that we did talk about in
tlvs conte&, and mybe a good way to begin, is that this is the period
when you becm involved state wide in junior college affairs and activities.
A. kt ' s follow the junior college thread a minute and then we ' 11 go back
and pick up the hi& school thread. WLth regard to the comity college
in Wline, In the fall of 1947, the beginning of our second yew, mst of the
students who were returning for a second year continued their status as
University of Illinois Extension Center students . . .
&. Oh I see, for the second year.
A. . . . for the second year, yes, because, you see, the biversity of
Illinois guaranteed them adrdssion as juniors if they completed the two
years.,, That was a part of the contract with the thirtyTone high schools-
around the state, so that those people who continued with us, most of those
who cam into the second year now, were continuing as that. However, we
allowed students to enroll in the University Extension Center if they so
desired at the beginning of the second year, but very few did. Begimning
with the second year practically all of our enrollrnent was - - new enrol*nt
- - was in the nam of the Ybline Corrmymity College-and also in the second
year, we began to expand the curriculum of the cormunity college into fields
outside of the liberal arts or the University of Illinois program, and to
do it rather rapidly. bline had had an adult education program that, had
been operated in connection with various parts of the school districk . The
decision had been made dwing 194&1947 that that was a functi
ity college, if you had one. So, it was officially assi
responsibility for adult and continuing education becm an o
the cormunity college enrollment. We actually began to move into
Fn the second semster of the first year, but by the opening
year, we had mved into it.
mewise, by the opening of the second year we were intro
in our comity college that were related &hectly to the voc
in the Quad City area and so we were going into the vocational
those days frequently temd as the terminal program, we di
that. By the second year we had already established wo~ki
with the businesses and the industries in the ccamrunity to

we were offering prog%ms in - - directly for certain interests of the Quad
Cities; and so we expanded hto that role by the 1947-1948 ye=. I'll
give som illustrations of what I man. It so happens that in that particular
period in histo~y, industry was very much interested in time and motion studles
and so Bere and Coupmy called upon the cornunity college to become the
educational unit through which the time and motion, studies were worked. Now,
they had the experts; we set up the curriculum and operated the program and
hired their expex-ts as faculty, you see. Another Illustration: sow of
these - - the time and mtion study program was a fairly lengthy sequence - -
were shorter sequences; something I had never heard of until that the was
the position of a concrete tester, and it turned out that there was a need
for those people and for training of those people. The contractors in the
to the community collee to see what we had that their people rd@t
area c m
take, so we set up a special program in concrete testing. There were
excellent engineers over on the Rock Island arsenal. The men who did the
enmeering up azid down the Wssissippi River; we hired one of those people
to direct the progam and to teach in it, and we built a laboratory under that
persont s direction and for the next three or four years we had a wafting list
for peoplt to take this program. It was a one semester program, that was
all there was to it . . .
Q. And now these were all course and program of study to which anybody
could be adtnltted.
A. Yes, that's rLght, but . . .
Q. You didn't lhit enrollmnt to &ere employees? . . .
A. . . . no, no, we didn't limit it to Deere, International Hamester or
J. I. Case or anyone else who was interested in tirre and motion study, or
one of our own students, but the activation thing came from that industry.
At that the International Harvestor, which was in East Moline - - their plant
was in East Maline - - had a program for workers in which they offe~d to set
up any kind of a course, Fnglish, History, anything else that enough people
wanted to take, and they had som classrom in their plant and they offered
these courses between shifts, so that if a person corrdng off the three o'clock
shift wanted to stay for an hour and attend class, there was a classroom
there.
Soon after the Codty College was in operation, International Harvester
Company was saying, the teaching of those program is an appropriate role for
the Cormunity College, After all, the factory is not an educational institution.
So they asked the Cormunity College to take that over and
a relatively short period of time, mst of that teaching
shift courses at the plant to night classes at the
of the people preferred to have them to go horn and
and to do that kind of thing, and then COKE to
Signal Comapny , which is a big manufacturer of
of thin@, ,they asked the Comnaulity College to
grading machinists to tool and die makers.
were their employees, again it was opened
years; we- regularly offered program there
giving you illustmtions of the
point out to you that there was a clirmte for this . . .
Q. Exactly, no wonder you called it a Corfmmity Collegy . . .

Gerald W. Smith 120
A. . . . yes, you see, the schools had been co-ty schools, the/ apprentice
program in connection with industry had been going on for a good Y e a .
Q. Now as you educators got into this kind of activity, you must *ve realized
how little experience you'd had in this sort of thing. Were there ~ther
junior colleges or cormunity colleges elsewhere in the country that had gotten
into this sort of thing as early as you . . .
A. Well, I'm sure there were, but we didn't have any contact with them. No,
we worked it out with our relationship. What we had in the community during
the six mnths of the year on one evening a week the hi@ school counselors,
the high school principals, and when we had a comdty college, our comraulity
college counseling and administrative staff, mt once a month for six months
of the year with the personnel people and som of the special people in the
industries and this was an on going thing, so that we had a direct line of
communication with one another.
Q. Well, impression is, and I donlt how the history of the junior college
well enough to be able to speak in terms of more than an impression, but this
kind of close intercooperation between education, post secondary education
and industry, must have been rather rare.
A. Yes, e n
at that tim - - I'm taking the country as a whole, I'm not
go- to say how rare it was, but I will simply say that Moline was one of
the most fertile fields for that kind of thing because of the climte that
had been created between the schools and industry when it did develop. We
had sMlar relationships; I l ve used industrial ones only, but let me give
you one other illustration, althorn it turms out to be both business and
industry and it dim1 t happen in 1947-1948, but I'm trying to illustrate the
kind of thing we got into in 1947-1948, and simply say that it never ended.
It's still going on. When I visit with the people of Black Hawk College now,
which was the successor to Pbline, that thing is still going on, but to show
you som other ramifications. In. about 1949 the Quad City business and
industries began to mve to the machine type of accomthg and bookkeeping
and so forth, and the flm that had corm in there and had gotten the foothold
to begin with was IBM. I've forgotten the exact year, I think it was about
1949, the International Hamester, &ere and Company, J. I. Case, the Iowa
Illinois Gas and Electric, 'Che kdem Wodimm of American, whose home offices
were in Rock Island, those and perhaps one or two others, I've forgotten,
were go* simultaneously to IBM. So, they again turned to the Moline Community
College and IBM had a plant downtown in l'bline, in which they
contract work in IBM computer operation. IBM did not wish to m
so the &line Comnunity College at five olclock in the afternoon,
the IBM physical plant and operated a school hrn five o'clock
All of the people who were trained in IBM operations, all of
and industries that I've named, took their education throu@ the Co
College, at the Cormmmity College.
END OF TAPE
Q .- This tape is being recorded on Wednesday mrning, August 18, 15
Gerald Smith and E m t Giesecke . It will be a continuation of the IT

Gerald W. Smith
that we were discussing
Gerry, when we wound up
I
at the end of tape number six two days ago. I Well
last time, you had pretty well covered I thib,
the begirn?ings of the cormunity college developmnt at Moline.
tdked about the exparsion in %line1 s part of the curriculum i nY~~e~~~mnunity
college that began getting under way during that first. You hadl talked
at SO^ length about the IBM program and computers about the t k that we
wound up the tape last time. Are there sane other developements along these
lines that you'll like to pick up here?
A. Yes, I'd pmbably would like to talk about much more detail than is wise
or necessary. (laughs) . . .
Q. A pat temptation.
A. . . . Yes, but I1llmke one or two mre comnts about the program in
the cornunity college and then move over a little bit to what was hwpening
in the eleventh and twelfth gades as a part of the four yew unit.
I spoke last time about the expansion of the program and then us@ three or
fowl specific items as illustrative of what 1 mant by the expansion of the
program. I thfnk I would swrmarize all that I tried to say the other day by
by indicating that, beginning with the 1947-48 school year, the Moline
Codty College propam launched into the development of a ccanprehmsive
program as defined in cmnt law. I think we were mving very much by 1947-48
to the definition of a comprehensive program as contained in the 1965 Community
College Act, which says it shall include liberal arts and science, general
education, adult and continuing education, and developmntal educatiq; we were
actually mving in all of those areas. Now, the c odty college was small, I
think we never had over four hundred people enrolled in those days, sro the size
of ow program in the credit .area was, of come, limited. In the adult and
continuing non-credit program we were talking in dimensions of over Ulree
thousand people at a tim . . .
-
QI'. JQ goodness, that early?
A: . . . Yes, this was a very, very rapid expansion program and in @l the
areas of the cw~iculm and the liberal arts. We had the adult and ntinuing
education in the occupational fields, particularly those related to $e indus-
tries and bushesses of the Quad Cities. Then I have not spoken but
occupational program and business education was very st~ong; and our Kt
prog~am - - the lwgest single program we had - - was in homemaking, where
we had a very able and aggresive director; we had classes in hornemakihg mu?-
ning morning, afternoon, and night with waiting lists In sow of the wore
popular courses.
Well, these we the ckirections that, the college began to move in 80, with
a basic emllrnent of about three hunwd and fifty to four hundred people by
the second and third year in what we W d call a more tr-aditional credit
program, and then surrounded by this w h luger non-credit program, the college
was a busy place. I
k
Q. Well, it almost sounds as though one could conclude that these de elop~nts
at bline sort of becm the prototype for the ideas that would then e built
into the cormunity college system. Is that a fair statemnt?
A. I donlt know whether we became a prototype or not, but I would say this,
&

Gerald W. Smith 122
that the Moline Commnlty College right fkom the beginning and particularly with
the initiation of the second year, certainly began to enter into those
activities which were most cormnonly described in the best literature as to what
a connaulity college should look like and what kind of propams it should
be engaged in. I think we were probably about as -essive in our promtion
of that kind of a program as any of the colleges, you know, the state is a big
state and it's a big country and I'm always hesitant to say we were the prototype
but I do say that we moved with great enthusZasm in terms of what the concepts
were of what a conmnmity college was arid perhaps ought to be.
Q. Were there other institutilons in the state that were sort of the same type,
that had the same . . . could you name som of these?
A. I would mms som of them. First of all, of those that stmed at the
end of World Wa~l 11 as we did, Elgin was trying to move in the sarne direction,
Danvllle was trying to move in those directions, Bellevllle was growing in that
area; these were the newer ones that were developing. There was, 1 thought,
quite a bit of rebirth and new activity at Joliet as a result of the influence
of the post World War I1 era, so I would say that most of the colleges were but
probably, especially, the new ones.
Q. And it was more a matter of responding to the changed conditions, the
conditions of the times of the era in the dddle for%ies, fifties, rather than
actually following a mdel.
A. Yes. I would say the tires were right for it. One or two other things
that happened in the community college, we began in 1947-48 to employ the
full- ti^ faculty from the outside to join our staff, recruiting some people
f'rom other coummity colleges and from various sources so that we had people
comlng in that were working solely at the thix-teenth and the fowlteenth year.
We began to be mre definite in our delineation of the mixed role of faculty
mrrbers beginning with the second year and that cmtinued.
Thls leads me to mve away now for a few mments fromthe th-irteenth and
fourteenth yems of the Wline Cornunity College phase of our four year unit
to what was happening to pades eleven and twelve or in the high school program.
One thing that happened, we were reorganizing the daily procedures and programs
in the senior high school considerably aw8y from a typical grade nine through
twelve high school day. For example, we now began to think of our schedule as
running f'rorn about eight o'clock in the morning and until ten o'clock atnnight
and we began to open up the schedule so that we mm the eleventh and twelfth
grade classes later in the day. We began to introduce the colle
the second year earlier in the day, and the eleventh and twelfth
began to attend their high school classes very much on the patte
college students. For example, the high school student could c
in the mrning at whatever time they elected to take their firs
o'clock, nine o'clock, ten o'clock, whatever worked out best fo
simply pursue their class schedule through the day. The st
fined tostudy halls, the high school students in their free perio
llbrary was available and there were mas of study, but they had
open periods. What actually happened in %hat practke was
school students began to develop their schedules so that c
from the time they arrived until they left, but they didn't need to,
responsibility for attendance at school closed with their last class,
began to operate mre like college skudents operate, although the pat

Gerald W. Smith 123
quite as open . . .
Q. Did you gather any evidence as to the effect, of this kind of
and scheduling and greater independence of the students on
A. No, I never had any hard data or objective evidence with regard 40 it.
The only things that I thought I could observe, in the high school iqcluded a
more relaxed atmosphere, and you didnlt have those tensions that som@times
build up in a high school program as the day gets longer and longer. There
was a little more relaxation. The students in general liked it very much,
and I always had a basic feeling that there was a =eater maturity on the part
of the eleventh and twelfth pade students that became noticeable of the
atmsphere in which they lived. But one thing I was never able to determine
for certain, whether that was due to the kind of schedule we had and to their
association with the older college students, or whether it was the absence of
the younger people. (laughs ) I was never certain. No, I don1 t have any
actual evidence, the kind of data you would use for achievenent. We didn't
gather such dataj we didn't even try to, I must honestly say.
Q. Well, it's not surprising; very few people did in those days.
A. At any rate, our school program went on very nicely. I would say that
one thing we did try to do in a mild sort of a way, was to hear in mind the
criteria that Leonard Koos and others had set forth as guide lines for an eleven
through fourteen institution and as desirable end results one should expect to
see. We always felt that what was said in the literature actually seemed to
manifest itself in owl unit. 1 might also say that this p&icular program at
Moline operated for seven years, it began in 1946 and operated for seven yews,
at which time they changed it and went back to a K-6-3-3-2 system; but at the
end of the seven years, during the seventh year, Doctor Reavis and his people
fkwn the University of Chicago came back for a follow up evaluation and observed
the high school and the senior high school cornunity college unit. Their repor%
indicated that, as far as they could see, the opemtion of the system had ret
practically all of the claims made for it in the literature.
&. Is that right?
A. . . . Yes,
of it . . .
Q. Ch, Reavis
and their reason for abandoning it, or recmnding abandomnt
and his crew recomnded abandonment?
Interestbservation
the things
fity
nior high
school to begin with, and they don't like it anylibetter seven years ater. Since
in our judg~nt, in a public school system the citizens mst determi e basic
guide lfnes and have the right to create any kind of a system they w nt; since
no system is perfect; and since In 1946, there was room in the junio ' hi*
school buildings, since the population distribution was changing, an new
construction had to be provided in the f'uture, therefore we reconm ded that
they plan to devise a new senior high school large enough to take gr ,des nine
A. . . . Yes, they mcmnded abandonment of it seven years later.
ingly enough, it was for another reason. They said, in effect, our
is that this has been an excellent program, that it has done most of
that the literature says would OCCW, but another smey in the corn
points in another direction: the people did not like the four year j
i

Gerald W. Szith 124
through twelve. Actually what mlbe did, then, was to bald a new high school
building and to assign the original high school building, the one we were in,
to the sole occupancy of the comnunity college. The community college remained
in the old high school building when they built their new high school.
Q. But they were all still close to each other?
A. . . . Qh yes, they were a11 very close, but bline then went back to a
ten, eleven and twelve year him school.
Q. Well now, as I =call this new physical plant that Blackhawk College has
over there is physfcally quite separate . . .
A. Well, that's a whole new organization.
Q. Yes, that's what I thought.
A. Yes, I'm talking about 1953, 1954 1955, when they built a new high school
building. Blackhawk College did not core into existence until 1962 and when it
did, it was a separate, autonomous district no longer a part of the Moline
Public School System.
Q. Oh I see, OK, fine. Well, this is very interesting; now are there some
other tho@ts along these lines?
A. Yes, I would like to also speak of another thing. I want to speak about
the development of the Illinois Secondary Schol Curriculum program auld its
impact upon the senior high school, and the cornunity college for that matter,
at Pbline. I had been elected a mrnber of the curriculum cormittee for the
Illinois Secondary School Principals Association sorneti~ prior to World War
11. With most things of that type du-ing World War 11, the pmgmns becam quite
dormant because all energies went into the war effort. In 1946, Doctor C. W.
Sanford, who at that tim was the principal of the University High School at
the University of Illinois and chairman of the curriculum comrdttee for the
Secondary School Principals Association, held a series of metings with consnittee
mmbers, using pretty largely the holdover mmbers from prior to World War I.
TIE di~cussfon at these rneetings centered mund new directions. The Secondary
School Mncipals Association had been very active in curriculum work fop many
years and the idea was accepted that it should continue that role in education,
and so we began to discuss new direction.
The result of those discussions was, the launching of a progarn originally
hown as the Illinois Secondary School Cwriculm Program and subsequently known
as the Illinois Curriculum Program when, at a later date, it was expanded
beyond the high school to include Kthvugh fourteen in the school system. In
the smr of 1947 a serles of workshops were held at East Bay, on Lake
Bloo~ngton, for MgZn school principal$ across the State. As I reca 1 it, in
the course of the surrnner over five hmbd principals attended these workshops
at one timt or another to discuss one basic topic. '%ow to arouse t !e interest
and concern of faculty in cwriculm improvemmt." They were very i rteresting
workshops. From that beginning in the smr of 1947, the program t 1 which I
refer was developed and launched.
The mechanism for running it was as follows : Mr. Vernon L. Nicke
State Superintendent of Public Instmction, becarre very mch intelles
deliberations of the cormnittee and Doctor BTll Sanford, (C.W. ) was a

Gerald W. Smith 125 1
persuasive fellow dso, and so Mr. Nickell succeeded in gett
from the general assenbly in the winter of 1947, to finance
c~culurn development in the senior high school 3 so the pro
ateithen under the sponsorship of the mficeof the Superint
Instruction and funded by it. Doctor Sanford was selected b
first director of the propam and he perfomd in that role
at the University of Illinois on a half time basis.
High schools across the state were encowaged to propose curriculm projects,
specffic projects, and m,ny high schools across the state did this kind of thing,
so that the high schools were the source of proposals for specific cmiculwn
developmnt. For exarrrple, at Pbline - - I said it had an impact on JYbline in
the 1947-48 school year - - we set up four of these projects, one in the area
of horn econdcs, one in the area of industrial arts, one in mathewtics, and
one in wish.
hother facet of this program involved the colleges and universi$ies, particularly
the public universities and the larger universities, such as the University
of Chicago and Northwestern, along with each of our public universities
and teachers colleges. These institutions gave a substantial amount of time and
energy to the program and made a significant input. When a project was subrrdtted
to the steering cormittee of the Illinois Curriculum Program and was approved,
a team from a university or a team made up of representatives from mre than one
university, then began to work with the faculty in the school system in the description
of the project, the Curriculum Development Project that was in mind,
that the schoolhad in mlnd. Tnen the local school faculty, working with resource
people from the university, began to set up their projects, some of which were
exploratory, some of them were =-writing curricula, so= of them were inproving
supervision of instruction - - they took all sorts of directions. Well, this
became a sizable program in the State of Illinois and, as I say, becam so strong
that within about three years at the insistence of the ather school units, the
elementary people, it was expanded to include K through fourteen and changed
its mm fmm secondary school curriculum to Illinois Curriculum Program, and
the Biennial appropriations became substantially larger. Another result of this
program were publications; it was one of the objectives of the Association to
develop publications on curriculum and they were published in the n m of the
cmiculum program; two or three of them becarre significant enough that comercia1
publishers picked them up and published them. Now to come back to Moline,
which we're really talking about . . .
Q. Before we leave that, however, how endwing were tk effects of this cur-
riculm study?
A. . . . They have never ended. There is still the impact, and alttpou@ with
the chwng tims and the changing leadership in the Office of the @perintendent
of Public Instruction which has alwyas been the center of this move nt, the
thing has changed. But there is still an advisory cormittee on the wriculurn
made up of lay people plus professioanl people that still mets unde the auspices
of the Superintendent of Public Instruction. 'Ihe focus of the prop obviously
has changed, but 1 would say that the inpact of that program on the tate of
Illinois was enomus and still is; it has never ended, although the nature of
the program is substantially different from what it was for the firs ten or
fifteen years. "j.
Q. Well, it was rather unusual, I imagine, for school systems, pub1
people, to take the initiative on a thing of this sort - - pre-colle
educators.
I
c school

Gerald W. Smith
1
A. Yes. The objectives of the Illinois Curriculum Frogmn were to use the
interest and concern of faculty, to provide resources for curricul development,
to hold workshops, and these efforts were ve3y significant bee use the
faculties from all of these pmicipating schools met three and four times a
year in workshops, two and three day workshops, whem they brought t emselves
together and pooled what they were doing. Now the impact on rn and n the
Moline School System was significant; the impact on me was very grea for I
was a member of the cormittee that began to think about this, and-I as a member
of the steering cormnittee for, I expect, rmch too long, for many yem. I
served for seven or eight years as the chairman of the state steering cormittee
for the Illinois Cumdculum Program, so it had a great irrpact on me, but I'm
more interested on the impact it had on our shcool system.
The -act of the Curriculum Fkogram, f'irst on the high school faculty,
was great, The faculty mmbers who entered into it were among the older faculty
members, leaders within the school distrcict; they were respected people. When
they becare extremly enthused about the program and the things that were
happening within the four departments that were officially associated with the
Curriculum Pro&;ram. These things also became so interesting and so exciting
to everybody around there, of course, that the spirit spread throughout. Then,
of course, this excitemnt had an impact upon the jwdor high schools and upon
the others. Another impact was that, because of involvemrrt in the State
Cumdculum Program and what we were dobg in the senior high school, when the
Director of Cwriculum for the schools of Pbline left us to take a position with
the University of Florida the Superintendent, Dr. Sardine, at the suggestion
of the people in the program decided to designate me as the Cwriculwn Coordinator
for the city. So, for five years - - my last five years there - - 1
worked with the entire school system in this capacity. All of this, I must say,
undoubtedly began with the launching of the program in 1947-48.
Q. Well the thing that I hear, as you talk about this, is that this is a
continuation of the very thing that you sta;rted in Alexis.
A. Yes, yes, that's ri&t. At least, you know, it appealed to re because it
touched an ma in which I was interested. I was always interested in all of
the aspects of school administration, but the two that I liked the best were
the students and the programs.
Q. Now, throughout all of these changes and Job positions and so on, did you
retain responsibility for the Dean of Boys position?
A. No, no. A.t the end of the first year, when Doctor Ashby left us and went
to Omaha, I became the Principal of the klgh School, Director of the
ity College, and I might say that in 1948, we added a Dean. We had t
Boys, the Assfstant FYincipal and Dean of Boys in the hi& school, a
added a rull time Dean for the Corrnnunity College.
Q. Oh yes. One thing I think rmybe we have not talked about qulte
as we should had to do with your relations with the students, your w
the students, your perceptions of students and this sort of thing.
somthing in this area that would be approp~ate to inject at this s
Com-
ie Dean of
d then we
IS much
rk with
1s there
age?
A. I don't know whether there's anything; I presm I'm no differer; than
thous&kIs of people who went along, but I was always interested in 1 ldividual
students. As the principal of the smller high schools at Pledla and Alexis,

Gerald W. Smith 127
of course, I was the Chief Counselor Sn the school system and so fofih, (lams )
and I thoroughly enjoyed the one-to-one relationship with the
smll hi& schools and I had a one-toane relationship with them.
cam into the larger shcools after World War TI, I never could
Of ocusse, my first year at Wline as the Dean of Boys in me
me the real opportunity to carny on that role, and so long as
with school districts - - which I was until 1960 - - I always
rather close one-to-one relationship with a good mny&u&nts. Now the propor-
tion of the student body that I could do that with, of course, dropped as the
school enrolbnts got larger. And of course, one of the interesting things
was, in the four year unit - - the eleven throu@;h fourteen - - again the
n&er of high school people was not so p at, whereas we would have been a
high school of about fif'teen hundrvd if we'd have had grades ten thqugh twelve,
we'd have been a hi& school of about thirteen hundred. I take that back. We'd
have been a high school of about eleven hundred. In my days in Moline, it was
a period when high school enrollmnts were declining because we were picking up
the depression birth rate, you how, 1950 was the low on high school enrollments.
Q, Well, that was still manageable.
A. Having talked now about some of the specifics with the regard to the developmnt
of the cowaraulity college program and some of the things that were happening
in&e high school in l'bline and a little about the Illinois Curriculum
Program, I think I will conclude my discussion on the Moline years, 1946 to 1953,
with three or four observations that bring in a few more specific items. I believe
that' I pretty well covered though, most of the things that are important.
So far as rry own individual experience goes, I've spoken about many of the
things that happened. I spent my last five years in Ivloline in the role of
Principal of Hgh School, Director of the Corrnrnvlity College, and Coordinator
for CwrLculum Affairs in the city. In 1948, I was elected President of the
Secondary School Principals Association in the Ztate and, of course, that sinply
moved m into the work of the Illinois Secondary School Curriculm Program with
greater intensity, because that association was the agency that was the basic
sponsor to begin with and stayed very closely associated with that. I had an
inte~sting experience in 1950 when I was selected as the Illinois Representative
with a goup that traveled in Europe under the nam of the Ewvlpean Flying
Classroom. This was a project promoted by Mchigan State University and the
party that went was mde up of about sixty-flve people fmm all of the states.
We had a very rewarding and interesting experience; the details of it do not
belong here.
A couple of other things that were of interest in those years: in 1950 and
in 1953 I was invited to serve as the co-director of an adrrdnist~ators workshop
at Purdue University. In the course of being there in 1950 and working with
the other merrber of the leadership team, Ihctor Mark Hlls - - who was-super-
intendent of Schools at Flint, Nichigan - - I subsequently was invited to Flint
to serve as a consultant to the high school faculties on mtters of Qhe cunxic-
ulufn developmnt pmgram. I
Q. Were there any developments in the general area of community relations and
developments that you must have gotten drawn into, Gerry? 1
;i
A. Yes, a$afn mving into the program, we at Moline inmediately bee involved
- in the state-wide activities of the cormunity colleges of the State there
was an active on go- propam; the leadership coming essentially the Eeans

Gerald W. Nth 128
of the comnau?ity colleges.
Q. What was this association or organization called?
A, Tne Illinois Junior College Association, no, Illinois Associatiqz of
Junior Colleges . . .
Q. Illinois Association of Junior Colleges.
A. Yes, and as I say, the basic leadership came fromthe Deans of these
institutions. Of course, in those days each of the junior colleges was stmc-
turally a part of the public school system; either a unit district or a town-
ship or cornrmnity high school. The older ones at that time, were Joliet,
Chicago, LaSalle, Peru, Oglesby , J, Sterling Morton, Thorton at Harvey and
Lyons at LaGrange. I believe those were the older ones that were in existence.
And then we had these new ones that staulted in 1946, at the time Moline began
with Belleville and Danvllle and Elgin. Then, two or three others were active
for a she* period of tine and then had a period they were out because they
dropped the U of I Extension Program and then subsequently caw back again, such
as Bloom at Chicago Heights. These were the colleges that mde up the system
- - I am not in this navrative attempting to be sure I have everyone, but I
believe I have most of them here. Before I get through, 1'11 make sm that I
give an accurate listing of the colleges.
Well, this association had an ongoing program which we at Moline joined and
in which I became very active. The program had two or three thrusts to it: first
of all, it had the thrust of brhging the Deans together several t3ms a year
to discuss t k junior college picture in all of its facets; second, the organi-
zation conducted two state-wide conferences per year that involved the Deans
and the other adhninistrators if they were active (such as superintendents) the
faculty and the student body. The conferences were made up of three divisions
each time and they were held on the campuses of the several districts. They gave
a feeling of unity to this very srrall body of people in the State, but this was
am ongoing program when I cam into the business in 1946.
Q. Before we forget thfs: you've been speaking of the deans, now the deans
were apt to be the chief a&dnistrators of the commmity colleges, were they not?
A. Yes, they were to the comity college what the principal was to the hi@
school.
Q. Okay.
A. In general, that ' s mat they were.
Q. But over the whole business was the superintendent?
A: Yes, the district of course, with tk governing body with the
Education of the High School Unit District - - the Superbtendent
Executiw Offlcer of the Bawd and therefore of the college, but
pattern was to appoint a dean of the ccxrmmnity
one or two exceptions - - these deans who were
college developmnt until the passage of the
When we core to that I w ill want to speak of what an
individuals.
I
I

Gerald W. Wth 129
Q. Right, and I hope that maybe you can put together or that you have somewhere,
when you get to that point a list of the names of the deans yho were
most active in this area,because I know that they played a very si ficant role
in these developments. @T i
1
A. Yes. Of course, sm of them became presidents of the ongoing olleges
under the reorganization. We wre participants in these state-wide confe~nces
that were held at least twice a year. So one thrust was this matte of an
association working together and of involving administrators, studedt s and
faculty in the programs. The other thrust was toward the hprove~nt of legislation
for the colleges and the prime movers of legislation, up until the tire
of the master plan in 1964, were the group of deans of the c m t y colleges,
as I say, aided and abetted by a small group of the superintendents who had an
unusually strong interest. Usually it was the dean. The legislaticm that was
passed, the amndments that came along f'rom tir~ to tire through the 1940's and
the 1950's was the outcorn of the activities of this association and their deans.
They were serious enough about It that they even had funding for it; each of the
colleges, members of the association, contrtbuted money to a legislative suppox%
fund, so they had som mney with which to work, so that the people from vmious
colleges who worked with the mmbers of the general assembly and with the governors
and other leaders could have their expenses paid for this kind of effort.
And there were a rimer of significant changes made in legislation along the
wag in the forties and f'if'ties, prior to the Act of 1965, as a result of the
efforts of that organization.
END OF SIDE ONE
Q. This recordkg is being mde on FPiday morning, August 20, 1976. Side
one of this tape, nwnber seven, brought us to the conclqsica? of the Moline
experience, of the Moline Chapter, and we're nay at the point of getting into
the Ehwood Park experience. Is this about your perception, Gerry, of where
we are?
A. Yes, that's right.
Q. Very good, and I guess that involves you in the year of 1953, wkn these
activities began, if I remmber comctly. As I recall, there was an interest-
ing kind of beenning - - you were sought out, or something like th&?
A. Yes, inthe surmer of 1953, 1 was still deeply involved in all tl$ things
we've described at Moline and thoroughly enjoying it; however, I di
that year one or two positions that had been brought to my attenti
nothing can^ of them. In the latter part of June I went to Purdue
for the second tim, to serve as the co-director of an administrators workshop.
While there, one day I received a telephme call m t h e University of Illinois
advising me of the search for a superintendent of a newly establishel cornunity
high school district in Elmood Park, Illinois, a Chicago suburb. Tney indicated
to me that the board of education had, in fact, made an earlier searzh for a
superintendent, had errployed one who within four of five days asked ;o be re-
leased f'mm his obligation, and so they were searching again. And t?e U of I
indicated they had submitted rry mm, had discussed my credentials, md that the
board of education had registered enough interest that they were wonkring if I

Gerald W. Smith 130
rw=
would be willing to go to Elmwood Park and be interviewed by the board. I
was sanewhat reluctant to do it, for two or three reasons: nwnber oqe, I was
real busy with dutfes at the University at Lafayette and, second , this
involved going into the superintendency of a high school district
not certain that I wanted to leavethewrit district and go back to e dual
system. Besides that, I was already registered in a workshop as a udent at
Colurnbfa University inmdiately following the activity at Purd.ue. t it seemed
to r~ that if the university had been thoughtf'ul enough to subml nly papers
and to s-st I was a likely candidate and the board had that much interest
at least I could go visit them.
So, I drove to Ehwood Park one evening and mt with the board for a couple
of hours. The situation at Elrmood Park at that ti= was - - a Board of
Education had been elected to govern a new comity high school district that
comprised the Village of Elm/Jood Park - - as you know, in Cook County all those
municipalities around there are organized as villiages rather than cities - -
they had a population of about twenty-four thousand people, the boundaries of
the newly organized district. It so happened were cmfined tothelimits of
the municipality plus the Oak Pwk Country Club, which had some vacant land
that they had envisioned as a possible site (laughter) for their school building.
%he reason for the establishrent of this new high school district was
legislation which mandated that all areas of the State not in a high school
district must be in a hi@ school district as of July 1, 1953. The legislation
made provision that any areas that had not, by their own initiative, attended
to this rratter would find themselves assigned to some school district by the
County Superintendent of Schools fmdiately af'ter July 1.
Q. What was the underlying value or asswnption justifying this kind of a
policy? Was it intended that the entire population of the State of Illinois
should have access to or better access to schools; what was the situation?
A. I don't think it was actually a matter of better access, because for a
long, long time, people had had access to a high school whether they lived in
a district or not and there was a method by which they could choose a high
school to attend, and a procedure for the people of that m a paying their
costs. I think the underlying principle that had been at work actively for
thirty years prior to 1953 - - you will recall in story at Alexis I told
about absorbing fifty-one square miles of territory in the 19301s, which was
a part of that mvemnt - - the unde~lying; principles included such factors
as these: public education was a total responsibility of the State and the
logical basis on which to operate a state system of districts was to have everybody
in a district; I tNnk that was one. I think the second feeling was that
there was plenty of evidence that many areas of the State had stayed out of a
high school district basically because the tax bill was somwhat
therefore, the concept again was that there
where kindergarten through hi& school was really now
educational opportunity for one group of citizens to
advantage over the rest of the State; I believe that
Assembly and many citizens at large had becm
another factor was that within the non-high
mre and more findkg that while their youth
selves had no vioce in the operation of the
attended school.
f
Well now, was this the first tim in' the history of the Illinof Public

Gerald W. Smith 131
School System that this type of legislation was enacted rmking it mandatory
that every square foot of the state . . .
A. No, it was the second time. Actually I canttthis mmS.ng give /you the
specific details, but we went through the sam ~ ~ early in ~ [the history n
of the State with regard to elementary school districts. Originallp in %he
State of Illinois, the fomtion of elementary districts was permls{ive and
people in certain anas who wanted school districts took advantage qf legislation
that authorized them to have a school distfict went out with a petition
and people signed petition to be included in a district. If you're ever looking
at the rnap of Illinois School Districts, the elemntary districts, the old
elemntary districts, the township and commxity high school districts and now
more recently the cornunity college districts, you must understand that each
of the three successively came into district organization by essentially the
same procedure, namely initially, a rratter of local initiative and the priviledge
of exercising the opportunity to de it. Then later on being mandated
to enter into areas. We haven't quite closed the gap in the conanunity colleges.
Q. But essentially the sam procedure that had gotten underway in the
codty colleges. This is the point that I was trying to establish.
A. Ewlier, much earlier in Illinois history, the elemntary district thing
was mandated, but it was essentially the sarre step. We had had this matter of
high school districts with a lot of non-high school territory, of course,
actually in existence for many, many years and then we took the next step.
Q. Well, that's good. I wanted to get this in here because, I don't know
that you need to dig into the exact information with regard to the elemntary
system, but this is a pattern which I thought existed and listeners and readers
are going to appreciate, I think, having this little explanation.
A. And politically and philosophically, now up through the cmmnity college,
the same basic system has been used, namly, that the initiative for establishing
a unit or a district starts with the local people and starts with a petition
to sore approved authority for the right to hold a referendum, and. then by
referendum people make the decision as to whether that unit shall be organized.
That has been followed. As I say, it gives you these crazy boundaries that we
get and you pp out and allow people to decide whether or not they're going to
be included. Anyone looking at it h m
a control bureaucratic offiqe, you know,
thMs it Is a crazy quilt pattern. kll, it may be a crazy quilt paTern, but
it is based upon one underlying principle.
i
Q.
A. I
Wch is a very sod and I think, a very disirable principle.
. . . Wll, at least it fits Illinois. I
Q. Yes, and it fits the whole ocncept of our kind of society.
A. Yes. At any rate Ehwood Park had decided to take its own
as the people there gave consideration to the alternatives and
initiative was concerned the only alternatives were either to
own high school districts, of come, the third alternative
and allow the County Superintendent to W e a decision for them.
the fall of 1951, therefore, do a feasibility study of
1
I

Gerald W. Smith
very active and very excellent comfttee which did a feasibility stydy, and
they did decide to call a referendum in early-in fifty-three when
elected the board. Under Illinois law, such a district
at any th during a year, becam effective the next July 1
1953, they were officially in business. The board was hiring a supqintendent,
so it was to this kind of a situation that I went for an interview.
Q. Then here, Gerald is being sought out once again by an entirely new kind
of situation.
A. Yes, yes, this is a brand new situation. As I say, I went them in
Esponse to an invitation, with no really serious thought of being interested.
We had a very interesting interview, sitting around the edges of Jwk Rossiterls
screened in porch, at his house, and inthecourse of the two or two dyld a half
hours that we visited, I became quite intrigued about both their prqject and
particularly with the seven members of the bomd. They appealed to me as people
with whom I would be interested in working; they were a very interesting group
of individuals.
Q. Was Rossiter the chalmnan . . .
A. No, Rossiter was the secretary of the board; he was a mth teacher at the
Oak Park High School, and quite an individualist. Fred - - I'll have to think
of his m; I gave you a clipping f'rcun him the other day - - was the chaim
of the board. He worked for a big bakery firm.
Q. You thowt of the mls name?
A. Yes, the chairman of the board was Fred Ecker.
Q. OK, fine. So a kind of rmce developed between you and the board?
A. Well, I certainly was attracted to the possibilities of mving ahead with
a conpletely new developmnt in cooperation with what appealed to me to be a
very interesting and able group of people . . .
Q. Md they have some interesting ideas of their own, as to what they wanted
to do, or was it mre their willingness, their receptivity to working wltth a
new program . . .
A. . . . !hey had som very interesting ideas about what they wanted to do,
but I think the thing that I saw was the opportunity to work with a pup of
people in a team situation and to develop what we wanted to do. And so, I
think the only questionable thing that I saw, they had developed a little bit
of skepticism about adninistrators because of their experience of having chosen
a man and having him leave them within five days, without ever comi
job. Other than that, the situaiton was excellent. At any rate,
either in desperation or because they were Interested (laughs) . .
Q. Well I'm sure it was desperation. (laughs) I
A. . . . kveloped a real
to return to Latayette for
you this position will you

Gerald W. Smith 133
Q. (laughter) Boy, that I s putting you on the spot, isnf t it?
A. . . . hd rqy answer to them was : I have three questions that I 4ould have
to deal with; one question would be, do I in fact want to come intoithe
Metropolitan Chicago area? Ifve never lived in the Pktropolitan a; I've
lived in the smll rural village; I 've lived in the complex of the =I he Quad
Cities, a pretty good sized city, but I'm not sure whether I want tQ corn to
this great Chicago Metropolitan area. Nmber two, I'm not certain whether I
want to leave a unit school district and return to the dual system, and although
I had rr~y first fourteen years in the dual system, I have lemed to enjoy
working with the K through fourteen system, or in other cases the K through
twelve, and Ifm just not certain that if I make the mve from Pbline, whether
I want to actually go back to the dual. And the third question is: how much
will it cost IE to live here? And how mch does housing cost? I don know anything
about it and I 'm a man of moderate means, and (laughs) so, those are
three things. Well, they tried to dispel1 each of those item. At any rate,
we left that evening wlth the questions whether I would accept and what kind of
deal I would like, and returned to Wayette. The next af'ternoon, about four
o'clock, I received a telegram from Jack Rossiter, thettr secretary - - in Jack's
own sytle - - which said, "Get busy on those three questions, wef= offering you
the job: and they stipulated a salary and that they wanted me by July 1.
Q. Is this literally what the telegram said, "?It busy on those three questions. ?'
A. Yes, yes, Ifm quoting even fmrn mmory, "kt busy on those three questions,"
that was the opening sentence and then, "We're offering you the Job," and stipulated
the salary and July 1 as the starting date. So, that was the introduction
to Elrnwood Park. Without going into f'urther details I imdiately called Lelia,
wife at home, and we decided that before I made the decision whether to
continue on to New York City for the workshop at Columbia - - which she was also
going to attend with re - - that I would return at the end of our workshop to
Moline, and we would discuss the matter. I did return to Noline. I did then
make quite an investigation because I knew nothing of Elmood Park, even the
m of the comnunity was not one with which I was familim; first visit
there was when I mt those people. I lmw that .area of Chicago, because ElrraYood
Park on the east was joined by Chicago and on the southeast by Oak Pwk and on
the south by River Forest and Maywood and those other cormmities smunded it,
codties with which I was fardliar with. ElTtMTood Park itself had no identity
with me. I did call eiends of mine, b the area, school~imn p&icularly, and
on every hand I was encouraged to give serious consideration to the position.
So, we did decide to accept the invitation on the very sudden notice;
i
I don't
remrnber the date of that interview, but it had to be swwhere around Jme 22,
23, it was amst the first of July. At any rate, we did make the ecision to
accept the position and I began duties in Elmood Park in July, ommuting
thm@ the month of July and August from Moline to Ehwood Park, b cause I had,
of course, on that very sudden notice many things to be taken care of yet at
Moline as well as starting in on the new positim. It was a very i beresting
experience. I don't want to go into a lot of detail about Elwood ark, except
to cover four or five item. We moved there in 1953 and stayed se n years,
which turned out to be third tenure of seven years. lkdia seven kline seven-no,
Media seven, Alexis seven, Moline seven; this became q fourth ne tkat
\ tmed out to be seven years.
1
Q. Is there any particular significance that attaches to this sp of the?

A. I think the only sJgnificance that attaches to it was the fact that in
my career as an adrrdnistrator I always thought after about five ye
was thr~ at least to be open to possible change and probably
some investimtion of new possibilities. But 1'11 speak a
when I leave FiLmood Park.
Q. OK. Yes, one can speculate m all kinds of reasons; I've wondemd about
this sort of thing wself.
A. I think it '11 be more ~aningful when I tell you about leaving Ebmood
Park. Obviously, or wbe it isn't obviously, one of tk -at attractions
to Elrrlwood Park was the opportunity to bean at point zero, with the implernmtation
of this new high school district, Up to that date the imple@ntation had
involved the legal establisbnt of the district by referendum, the election
of a bod of education and the establishnt of a local tax base or rate on
which the dlstrkt was to be operated. It was a very pleasant and a veyy rewarding
and, of course, obviously a very exciting experience. Exciting, I
guess, because the whole cormarnity was excited about the prospects of their
new hi& school. There had been fifty or seventy-five people on that organizing
cohttee, who had been deeply involved. I can still rewmber one lady coming
up and touching me and say%, ''1 want to touch you because you're the first
live evidence that we're g0bg to have a high school. '' (lau@ter)
Q. Oh, that's wonderfur.
A. . . . Yes, this was the kind of a spirit. The survey and feasibility study
had been a mqpificent piece of work done by these people, but they delivered
that docmnt to re and I found it of tremndous help in every bit of planning
I did, because it gave their projections for enrollmnt, They had done
indepth studies about what kind of a faculty they would want and about how
mch it would cost; they had done an indepth study and survey on the interests
of students. Their students had been attending high schools in Chicago, Oak
Park, Proviso and Leyden. They'd gone into those schools and surveyed the
acadedc interests of tk students who were going there.They had surveyed the
eighth and seventh grades, I believe, in the elementary schools and so We had
a very interesting picture drawn of what they perceived a curriculum to consist
of in the school Mstrict.
It was also exciting because Elmwood Park is a suburban community that
is essentially what they refer to up there as a bedroom town. The high school
was the first public institutbn of that type - - the first institutbon of that
type - - that was really Elmwood Park and included all the city. The people of
Elmood Park m l y had an oppo~unity to work or met together as ai total
comunity; they entered the city as they returned from Chicago to tl
in the city, by afferent hiaways, or different roads. The church : ;mcture of
the town was such that the congregati s were segregated. Take for ?xample,
Elm~cod Park had a sizable Italian an T sizable Polish population, rm 31 of which
or most of which was Catholic, but evm the Catholic Church was not 2 center
because there were four parishes that served Elm~ood Park, none of v lich was
totally nithin Elmood Parrk. One of them reache& two of them read ?d in from
the east and north in Chicago, one reached in h m the west at Rive1 Grove and
one reached in from the south at Forest Park.
Q. Well, then the culture of the population of Elmwood was in no st
OUS .
3ir areas
Ise homogene-

Gerald W. Sn~Lth 135
A. Oh no, no, Elmood Pmkts population - - Elrmood Park was not a /very
old town; it had been incorporated in 1914, and the older m a of
J
t city
had originally been strongly the Italian population. Subsequently, the
northwest half of the city had been developed through a subdivision that grew
up just before the Bpression of heavy Scandinavian population, es cially the
Swedish and the Norwe@an people, and so there was a heavy Norwegiarl and Swedish
population there. ?hen, subsequent to World War 11, ELnwood Park - - the
south half of E;lmwood Park - - becam quite an attractive constructjoon area
and the second and third generation families of those people who lived in Oak
Park and ~ m and d those other comnwlities, the older congregatioa had moved
in there. I had at least three mmbers on q board, people whose families had
been in that kind of population that was around Oak Park. And then again in the
1950 's the Polish population which had ori@nally settled in Chicago just west
of the Loop around the sixteen hundred block area, and then the secmd generation
had mved out to around forty and fifty hundred west, the third generation of
population was going suburban. ELnwood Park became one of the places that this
suburban population mved; so our Polish population was quite new. So we had
Italian, we had Swedish, we had Norwegian, we had old American background, and
we had the heavy Polish.
Q, Well, did the board or the cormittee or whoever it was that made these
surveys, did they manage to tap each one of these areas . . .
A. They tapped all of these, yes . . .
Q. . . . They got them interested and got them ifivolved and . . ,
A, . . . A ll activities of the e m t y , fortunately, did involve all or
these people. Althow they were not elected by precincts they werc elected
by the village at large. The village board represented all of this population;
the myor was a &er of the Italian segnlent; the city manager was a mmber of
the Swedish population. (laughs )
Q. And so there was a considerable consensus about the kind of school system
that they wanted?
A, Oh, yes, there was no problem on that whatsoever. There was a rqal concensus
and ow Board of Education was made up of people representative of
Two mmbers of the born c m out of that Scandinavian area, one
out of the Italian area, three board members c m
out of the
made up of the young executives who had grown up in the more
ities of River Grove and . . .
&.- You surely must have run into some pretty tough questions that
resolved in the course of getting a new school like this started,
A. Well, yes, I don't how that they were tough, but they were int
questions; they were problems that you . . .
Q, I man questions that we^ argued vigorously. Could you @ve
or two? Maybe it isn't fair to . . .
I
A. Well let's - - maybe as we go along, they'll present themselves a little
better, because the whole movement was a positive one.
So we got started there. The first year, 1953-54, was of cow , totally,

Gerald W. Sdth 136 1
i
a planning year, because when I went to work for them on July 5th o 6th,
George Calhoun, the superintendent ofthe elementary schools, provi ed re
an offlce in one of the elerrenta~y buildfng;;3 - - I took over a clas room
for the smr. I ml&t say rry offices moved rapidly. I had an of ce in
his classroom until school opened in Septenber, then for a couple o mnths
I had a little dressing room off the stage in the gym (lams) - they
had a combination ~mauditorium in that grade school bdlding. !The( elemntary
school owned a cluster of four of the old barracks type buildiqgs that
were built during the Depression, which the elemntary schools had abandoned
in the previous four or five years. We leased one of them, or I guass they
made it available, and we fixed that up as a headquarters building and some
time in October we mved there and there we stayed ~$31 we had a new building.
So I had a series of offices. I must again here and now say that
Mr. Calhoun, the superintendent of the elementary school system, was one
of those people who were terribly enthused about this new school district,
and he was of assistance in every way imghable. In the f'irst year we
we= given over to planning - - I sdd we started f h m zero - - our first two
months we had to write a budget and adopt it. We could make a tax levy for the
first year and so we could borrow some money so I could get rry first months
salary. (laughter)
Q. You did start at gound zero, didn't you?
A. . . . And so durhg the first year, then, the things that we addressed
ourselves to included, first, M ng sure that ow student body was provided
for. The= were about eight hundred hi@ school students in 1953-54, approx-
imtely half of them attending hi& school in Chicago hi@ schools and about
another two hundred going to Oak Pa.& Hi& School, a smaller contingnt at
Leyden Hi& School, by this tine Proviso could no longer take them. They
didn't have room and then others were scatte~d. I thirk altogether we had
about thirteen hi& schools, but the basic group were in those three schools.
And I d @t say again, I imdiately established personal relationships with
the principals and the counselors of each of the hi@ schools, so that I had
a personal relationship with them. . .
Q. You rean the hi& schools where your students were coming from?
A. . . . In Chicago and Oak Park and Leyden, and also made our office available
for any problem that dealt with - - we accepted official responsibility for
our students, for the schools taking care of them, and again, since I like to
be worklng with students, I made wself available as a counselor on problems,
and did a great deal of that kind of thing during the first year, particularly
with those students who posed special problem. If it was a matter
1
of attendance
or if it was a mtter of school work, or other personal matters, I w rked with
them. Thus our flmt thing was to make sure that we had our student body
provided for, and that our office now had an identity representlvlg t e new
school. Thus those neip$boring schools were no loner merely taking Elrnwood
Park people, they were providing a service tobhenew Elmwood Park di trict.
It was again, a very pleasant relationship.
We also began to work on the matters needed to get our fiscal sitpation
establfshed, because we started, you see, with zero assets and we hap to
operate totally on borrowed money for the first year and so, that
major item also setting up all of the fiscal operations of the
third one was, then, to begLn to plan for a building. Now the
well established. Ehood Park was so thoro@ly built up by

Gerald W. Sdth
i
school distrLct was formed that there were only about three options and.
really only one adequate one, and that was the property on the Oak ark
Country Club, which was not located within either the Village of E ood Pmk
or the Elrmood Park Elemntawy District. It was actually in the Riv Grove
School District, a neiabor to the west. So, negotiations with the ak Pa~k
Country Club began. They had about thirty acres of land on the no west
comer of their site which was undeveloped land; they had never don anything
with it. I don't know whether you could say it was virgin woods or r.p& It
was adjacent to a section of the Cook County Forest Preserve and it the
sm characteristics. I don't how whether Bt was truly virgh or not, but
it was as nearly that as you could think of; it was an undeveloped pdece of
property. So our first year was negotiation with them for a site and then, of
course, the selection. Then there was planning of a referendum for funding a
building and the selection of an architect and the development of our building
plan. This is what we did during the first year.
Emly in the fall of w first gear there, in the fall of 1953, having mved
into one of these four portables, which were buildfngy about seventy feet long
and about twenty-five feet wide, each with two bathrooms, of course. If you
went into the middle of it, and if you twned ri@t there was a classroom, and
if you turned left there was a classroom. I began to see som virtw in thinking
about giving Eh~ood Park an actual feeling for its high school by starting the
fYeshman class in those building the next fall; and it seemd to me as I found
all of this exciterrent in the community and likewise as Lsaw the pressures on
our money, because our fiscal. situation was tom, st&ing at base zem, it
seerred to m that maybe we could operate a program for our ninth made at a
somwhat lower cost price tag than we were paying our neighbors. It also seem
ed to ms that I could, starting early, be- to select the key faculty as a
corps with which to continue the planning of the new building and the planning
of the cwriculunad the fiture. It would give m some faculty input and I felt
that it would give the comanwlity an identity with their m school rather rapidly,
so I began to think about this. I guess it was probably some tine around
the first of November that the matter was opened up with the board. They had
not thought at all about it. They were quite shocked, skeptical, because one
of the thine that I learned in Elrrwood Park, that they were very m h interested
in their school, and of course, very much interested in their program, but
everybody envisioned the site and a building. The hi& school was a site and
a building. . .
Q. Rather than an activity.
A. . . . YesT and interestingly enom, the experience at Moline had been
quite different. In Mollne the hip$ school was not a site and a building, but
a program and I suspect that that experience had a pat deal to do with conditioning
me for this kind of thinking. I think I already mentioned, that in
Moline, the 1914 building had adjoining it an old 1893 building, that ; the indus-
t~ial arts building was two blocks away. I didn't mention that for t hysical
:ks away,
been doing
was in
"mood
buildins
education we needed also to use our field house, which was eiht
and so we operated a school with people moving &l mund. They hac
thls years and nobody ever even questioned it. In the sewn years I
Moline, I never had a question raised about it. But to the people c
Park, even the idea of the younmters havlng to go:f"rom one of thosf
to the next one, between classes seenaed (1-s) . . .
Q. Oh, for goodness sakes.

A. . . . so~thing of a problem. Then, you know, the fact that the
1,
were old
barracks buildings didn't appeal to them. Well, at any Me, as th board
thought about it, during the mnth of Noverrber, the idea appealed re and
mre to them and I described our Moline experience to them in great detail and
tried to reassure them that, first of all, only parents would have concern,
the students would not, they would adapt to this very well . . .
Q. They would enjoy it.
A. . . . so, by the first of kcerrber the board was ready to give it a try.
So then our next item was to explain this to the people, so we got a roster
of all of the eiw graders h the school system and we wrote a letter to
the parents of 611 of the prospective students, both in the pubUc and in the
parochiaJ, schools. In Elnwood Pwk a larger percentage of the Catholic children
went to the parochial elemntary schools than went to the parochial hi@
schools, so we had a good m ~ ~ n y
hi& school people come out of the parochial
system. I knew it was going to be a shock, so in order to take care of the
shock effect I wrote the letter and explained it pxtty much in detail, invited
their questions and so forth, and then said we would bean to hold a series of
public meeting3 regarding it in January, so they had time to think about it.
Then in January we did begin to hold a series of meetings, which were well
attended and the questions, of course, were nmmus and many, and gradually
support built up for that idea. Until by the middle of February, I would say,
two-thirds of the people involved - - the parents and the students - - were
really interested in giving this thing a try and there w s a feeling of sorrie
enthusiasm beginning to develop for it . . .
Q. And this involved the families of ei&t hundred youngsters?
A. . . . No, no, this involved the families of somthing over two hundred
children. I 'm only talking about ninth graders . . .
Q. I mow you were . . .
A. . . . No, we did not concern ourselves with the others; we were talking
about what was going to happen to the ninth graders. We were also at this
time predicthg that by the fall of 1955, we d have a building to mve into.
You see, we 're talkFng about thEs only as an interim matter. Now this, by
the way, I n&#$t say, was a highly optimistic goal to be in that new building
by 1955; this was a very optimistic thing. It required a good deal of falth,
but at least 1 always tried to tell them that it would be all right; it would
wo* out. And so about the first of March - - all along the Board 4f Education
of the Elementavy District had made it very clear that these buildlqgs were
available if we wanted them for they were standing empty, except fort the one
we were using - - so., by about the fimt of March, we felt the bo
I felt that the atmosphere was all right now to actually take a
so we did. I don't remrrber the exacC date; it was somwhere in
believe. Tne board did vote to begin that operation in the fall
Q. The board made the decision; you didn't camy the decision back o the . . .
A. . . . Well, yes, we camled it back to the constituents; we had
of hands of the people. I'm forgotten the number, but it was in e
two hundred fYeshmn, about two hundred-fifty freshman who were goi
'I

Gerald W. mth 139
high school. At this meetfrg, I would say that of those two hundred-fifty
people, at least sixty per cent ofthe parents were represented and . . .
Q. Amazing.
A. . . . Yes, and there was a difference of opinion, you know, but an
overwhelming mjority of them voted in favor of the effort.
Q. You managed t&is whole thing very, very well, Gerry.
A. Well, ft had to be a matter, really, of them arriving at that decision,
or it wasn't going to work. The last thing I wanted to do was to chill that
great enthusiasm for this new high school. So, we then drew up plans for
the rehabilitation and mdification of those buildings for classrooms and got
started. I think by the first of June we had contractors there working on the
building and by the first of June I was hiring a dean for the operation and I
was beginning to hire key staff members . . .
Q, I1d like to spend just a little bit of time on this question of staffing
and I see w1re almost at the end of the tape, so I think 1'11 wind this up
at this point and then feed in the new tape, if that ' s all right. So, this
is now the end of side two of tape nurrlber seven and this discussion will be
continued on the sarne date, August 20, starting on side one of tape nwnber
eight.
END OF TAPE
Q. This is tape number eight, side one, interview recorded on August 20, 1976,
with Gerald W. Smith, and thls tape continues what was begun on tape rimer
seven, having to do with the beginnings, the establishment of the high school
at Elmmod Park. So Gem, there were some things that you were inLthe thick
of ...
A. I was talking about the portables. Out; there is the temptatim to tell
a detailed story about the use of those portables the next year, but I shall
refllaln from that and simply add that the experience, in the 1954-55 school
year, with the freshmm class in the portables was a very happy one. The
students cooperated beautifully and their parents becm interes
about it. Even two or three parents who, I ~mmber, carre to we
they were very skeptical about us running a good pmgam in thos
nevertheless to feel that that had been a fine thing. Of course,
men, they enjoyed the total attention of the faculty, since the
class. We did proceed to also organize activity program^ for th
fielded a football team; we had a basketball team; and in the sp
track and this involved, of course, setting up som type of inte
which gave the students a chance to do something. So the student
excited about their school and they liked it very, very much. We
things as the school yew went on. Sombody had the idea, why
hot that the students could have for lunch. We had a little 1
the janitor used; we put a little hot burner unit in there
hamburgers. The students could buy hambusgers for lunch in that li
shed (laughs), and there were a good m y other similar touches.

Gerald W. Nth
So, the students liked it very, very much, you know, it was a
ing experience. The facts are that at the beginning of the 1955
cam the to move to the new hi& school building, there were
people who had been freshman that sad, 'We wish we could stay
becorm? home. Likewise, in the three or four subsequent years,
fkeshman class which considered itself as the initiXi start of
always felt that they had it all over the rest of the high school people . . .
Q. Sure, sure they were the aristocracy.
A. . . . Yes, and they actually had two pioneering experiences. They were the
pioneers in the portable buildings, and then it turned out that when we did move
into the new building, it was far from ready (laughs) and so they pioneered the
new building when it ms only about half finished. By the tine they graduated
from high school, you know, they felt that the rest of the students had been
depr4ved of experience. It was kind of like the people back in Wdia as a result
of the fire that they had experienced. So this turned out to be a very positive
experience.
Q; What about faculty, the first faculty? Where did you get them and how did
you find them and how did they take to all of this?
A. Well, again, having decided to operate the school in the fall of 1954, andl
that decision having been made before the first of June, I proceeded then, work-
ing with the board and with board policies with regard to the faculty, to seek
a faculty. I searched for faculty members, first of all, by writing a memom-
dm of considerable length, describing what we were looking for in the fall of
1954 for this fkshman class, indicating, on the things I was looking for
were people who I hoped would be strag enough to be planners and departmnt
chairmen, in such areas as mth, and the social sciences, and bglish. And in
these &as I was looking for people who were going to be key staff mmbers.
Obviously, we weren't going to be needing an awful lot of these people, probably
about ten or twelve Wl-tt;irne faculty members. So I wrote up a memo describing
it and distributed it to the placerrent offices, primarily of the universities
in Illinois. All of the teacher training, both public and private institutions
and thm beyond the boundaries of Illinois to key places where I felt there
might be unusually good . . .
Q; How rmny were you looking for, for that first year?
A. . . . That first year, I think we were looking for about twelve people. I
was looking for a f'ull time person to serve as the Assistant Principal and Dean
of Boys. I was carrying the title of Principle-Superintendent but, you see, the
day to day operation of that school had to be in the hands of smone else be-
cause I was going to be deeply involved inlhe planning of the new facilities and
all of the other things that went on. Well, this is what I did.
The rnake up of the faculty that we were trying to structure was one that
would give us a faculty that would have mst of the characteristics of a faculty
that might have been there eimt or ten years, by the time we had it all stmc-
tured. We were looking for a goodly nwnber of people, we thought, with maybe
six, eimt or ten years experience who would find this an interestir
ment. Who had had experience *om which to plan. We were looking f
faculty and we viere looking for som mature faculty, people with twe
or more of experience. Of course, we were looking to create this f~
three steps, because we early made a decision that we would operate
; assign-
lr beginning
hy years
ulty in
he 1954-55

Gerald W. Srdth 141
school year with the freshrrm only, that we would operate tk 1955-56 school
year with a new fresm class, the sophomores who had been with us 'n the
portables, and we were going to return the juniors - - people who h just
ie
finished their sophomore year from the neighboring high schools - - were
going to return them to Elmwood Park to do the last two years of th 'P schooling
in Elrnwood Pwk. But the seniors were to be allowed to finish where they were.
So, we were going to have to have a faculty to serve two hundred-fifiy students
in 1954-55; we were going to have to have a faculty to serve about even hundred-
fifty students in 1955-56; and we were going to have to have a faculty to serve
between a thousand and eleven hundred students in the next year. So we would be
recdting faculty in those stages and I saw us building this total pattern,
which turned out to be ulthately about fifty faculty mrrbers . We did end up
with a faculty. The average age was young, as I recall it. When we finally
had a faculty of about fifty people, our redim age would have been something
over thir*ty-five, which was young, whereas in the old faculty in kline it had
been fif'ty-three3 you see, there was a big difference. On the other we had
people on our faculty who were in their middle fifties when they cam to us. I
don't recall - - we didn't hire anybody with less than ten yews to go, because
we were thTnking of planning, of looking forward, but we had a substantial
group in that fifty year age bracket and right on down to people just out of
college. . .
Q. Did you have ti= e.m@ so that you could do the careful selection and
searching out and checking, and so forth?
A. . . . cb yes, we had ample time. You must ~mmber that we weren't running
a school that smr and the young rran that I hired as the assistant principal,
Ray Ubner, L-I-B-N-E-R, I found as a junior high assistant principal in
Evanston, and Ocar Chute, C-H-U-T-E, the superintendent at Evanston, assured ITE
that this was a man wlth great potential.
Q. I hew Oscar very well.
A. Yes, well, he assured re. In spite of Wbnerls nam, he was Polish (laughs)
and he belonged to the Chicago Polish Background.
Q. Is he Ray or Roy Libmr?
A. Ray, R-A-Y, and he's still there. We called h3n the assistant
but the following year when we moved to the high school we gave him
of principal, for two reasons: first of all, after being in Elmwood
two years, I@. Calhoun resieed as Superintendent of Elementary Schc
I've. already indicated, I believe, I becam Superintendent of both I
That was a pretty busy year, because that was in 1955 when we were '
get tk new high school opened and I took on this whole new din-ensic
made Ray the actual f'ull administrative princfpal of the high schoo.
still there. It turned out to be a good thing for tk school. . .
Q . That s unusual, yes.
A, . . . and for him.
rincipal ,
ark for
1s and as
ing to
. So we
, and he l s
Q. Sounds to me, as though this is one sltuatfon in which Gerald 9
able to get actively involved with the faculty and p l w curricu work and

Gerald W. Mth
and renewal and . . .
A: Oh yes, I was actively involved.
Q. . . . & you were . . .
A. ah yes, I was actively involved with the faculty and even after 3 was
Supwintendent with both faculties I never gave up that (laughs) . . .
A. . . . Itwe always been too much interested in program and curriculm; I
never gave up that activity . . .
Q. I didn't think you would, but on the other hand . . .
A. . . . but you see, 1 did not have to worry very much about the day-to-day
administrative detail of any of the buildings, because I had very effective
principals that were doing it, but as far as I was concerned curriculum and
pmgram development were a policy mtter that needed the superintendent and I
was very closely involved with those things.
Well, we found the supply of faculty - - you asked me where we found them
- - we found them everywhere. Ow faculty cam from, as I say, long backgmunds
in high school teaching. One of ow first head of our department in math was a
man--in science I mean--was a man who cam b r n mepox% with a background there.
Our first director of athletics and our flmt coach was a man who had had similar
responsibilities in excellent school system around the Btate.
Q. The educational scene back there in the early fiftfes was quite stable.
A. Yes.
Q. And it was a pwth sort of thing and I baglne you had no difficulty in
attracting good people. . .
A. Yes, we chose some of the people fmm sore of the strong suburban high
schools that were around us. They carre from all sorts of places and we employed
young people, and I might say, it's interesting to observe that sm of the
people that were in the plannlng development
Pa&, subsequently went on to be key people in the Triton
Ehood Park is a member. The Dean of the Occupational
College originally came to Elmwood Park when he
at Nol?thern, c m to our faculty as a teacher
went on to Triton College and now is the Dean
A. -son, yes. Jack Trebbe, T-R-E-EB-E, was a football coach and history
teacher at Trinity Hi@ School in Bloomlngton and cam to Elmood Paq k as thefootball
coach and history teacher on our faculty, who soon indicate that he
did not want to find himself someday a high school coach who people hought was
too old and wanted to get into administrative roles. and said none w s too humble
for him to try. b, soon after that we asked Jack h& he would like o be responsible
for developing the adult education pm@;ram in connection with he hfgh

Gerald W. Smith 143
school. He took that over fiom scratch, you know, a couple hundred people
the first semster, and he is now the Director of the Adult and Conynuing
Education Program in Triton College, with thousands of students e
Q. It's the knowledge that you were able to pick people like that recognize
them and give thm a start and see them develop that I think is one !of the most
rewmding aspects in the kind of work that you've been doing.
A. Yes, and all I'm saying is that I think the enviromnt of a newly developed
school mde those people fitting subjects ror this. That was a fact . . .
Q. Oh, absolutely.
A. . . . Well, so we did this kind of thing on the faculty. With regard to
the building and-- I would like to make two or three c~mnts. We did in fact
follow our tim table. In the fall of 1955, we moved the high school into the
new building bringing the first class &om the portables of the sophomores,
starting the new freshman class there and the people who were entering the
junior year, who had been out at neighboring schools for two years, cam to-
gether. It was an interesting administrative problem In that fall, for several
reasons. In the first place, the buflding was only half finished, and had we
not had magnificent contractors who were most cooperative we couldn't have
lived there. For example, there wasn't a door closed on the building - -
exterfor door - - when we mved in and nmrous areas of the building were not
usable, even as to We laying of the tile floors in the corridors. Somtimes
the tiles would be laid during a class hour. Tbe students went in off of the
bare concrete to a class and an how later came out onto a ttlle floor. This
takes good human relations and we had very good relations with our contractors.
Q. It reflects a tremndous espirit de corps which you were able to create
there.
A. . . . Yes, that's right. The other thing was that you must rerfmber that
in that fall of 1955 two-thirds of the faculty were new; only one-third of the
faculty had been with us a yew, so we had twice as many new faculty mmbers
as we had cofitinuhg members going on. We were bringing together three classes
of students, a fYeshman, a sophomore, and a junior class, which had never been
together befo~e as a unit. As elemntary students they had gone to qchools all
over town, public and parochial. The freshman class had been toget
year, the sophornre class--the freslman class were coning together
buildbgs; and these juniors were coming fromall over, and I migh
was an interesting s t m e
that went on imwdiately among the st
juniors not or@;znized, trying to find their place of rightful le
senior merrbers of the classes, but the juniors with their - - soph
their feeling of vested interest having been the student body for
being quite aggressive - - it was an interesting situation. So we
ly finlshed building, we had faculty now, to serve a student bo
hundred-fifty, two-thirds of whom were new to the system, and
classes that were trying to find themselves as a team, it
year and many pmblems, but none that were overwhelmlng.
I mi&t add one other thing. We had one problem a10
our schedule a little bit slower. Since the F2mood P
Evergreen Park High School in South Cook County, which
the same thing that we were doing in about the sm se
out of non-high school territory, and since the non-hi

Gerald W. M.th 144
Cook County had gotten in arrears on the payr~nt of Its tuition for /students,
it had been necessary for the Cook Comty non-high school board to 11 bonds
in order to pay that tuition. So there was bonded indebtedness agai t all of
the previous non-high school areas of which Evergreen Park and Elmw d Park
and other areas were, but these were the two significant ones. Cha
Cutler, the bondlng lawyers, for the approving of the bonds, you km - - they're
the major Chicago firm that's sometimes said to be the second Suprem Court
in Illinois - - raised the question, a legal question, as to whetheri or not the
pw-efisting bonded indebted E~SS in these two corrammities, Wergreen Park and
Ehood Park, did in fact, set as a codtmnt against the five permnt
authorized bonding indebtedness ; did we have to charge that initial bonded
indebtedness against our five per cent authorization? And they were unwilling
to give approval for the sale of bonds short of a Sup~rre Court decbion on it,
so it was necessag for our two communities to go together and to build a
fkiendly law suit in order to get the matter before the court. So, in May of
1954, the two of us did join and we ad create a friendly law suit that challenged
that matter. Technically, the secretary of the board at Ebergreen Pwk
refused to sip the bond (laws) that had been authorized, and then we appealed
to the Supreme Court to take original jurisdiction because of the public interest,
and in June they did take it, but they rendered their decision in September.
So, we went on planning our building through the smr, but ve were
unable to conduct our bond issue until we hew what we could go for in the way
of bonds, and so, the Sup~me Cowlt did in September render a decism finding
that the pre-existing bonded indebtedness, In no way, was to be conf'used with
the new school entity. So we had our whole ftve per cent bonding authority.
Q. That really saved your neck.
A.- . . . Yes, and then on the basis of that we proceded to conduct a referen-
dum. In the mantirne we had been going with the building planning, so it was
Noverriber of 1954 when we were able to award the contracts and. have pound
break- for ow new building, which we proposed to enter ten months later.
(laq$s) So, when I say we were living with optimism, this is what I mean.
Q. You were living recklessly.
A. We were living recklessly. Any kind of a major work stoppage, ar any kind
of a major p~loblem with construction materials would have been a disaster. It
turned out that it worked, as I say, not as well as we had hoped. The building
had many problems, but we did in fact get in it, and we did operate there and
when it was all over with, everybody t$~ought it had been a very interesting
experience.
Q.- That's a fantastic experience, Gemy, that you've glven us. At Chis point
the interview on August 20, was termimted for lack of tim. It will be picked
up again on the followtng Wnday , Aug;ust 23, and continued to concl Ti'"*
Q: This is now being recorded on Monday, August 23, 1976, and we
continue it and then bring to a conclusion the public school
career. Well, Gerry, the building and creative phases of the Eho expertlence have been fantastic and I think it's suggested
well. How did things actually go beyond the beginning?
A. Very well.
T
I mntioned the last tim some of the interesting f ets of the

Gerald W. Srfdth 145
student body and faculty, that first year in the new building, the $all of
1955. I must simply say that the high school prospered, developed *ry well.
We reached our enrol-nt of twelve hundred which had been projecte by the
citizens cormittee before the school district was ever established. k e found
that the proposed curriculum done in the feasibility study p~lior to he
establishmnt of the district served us very well with one exceptio The
citizens in surveying the students, and I've described that before, came up
with just one faulty conclusion: they underestimted the interest in the
vocational fields. The result was that we dld not initially establish a
broad enough curulculwn in that area and it was the one set of facilities in
our building that turned out to be somwhat inadequate. Enrollment in those
progmns was greater than had been anticipated.
The student body at Elmvood Park High School was a delight to work with.
It was a rriLxture as I think I've already described, of all those different
cultures in there, and the educational aspirations of the people of Elnwood
Park were high. I never worked in a high school prior to that whe~ you
could demand so mch of students and how that you had support. As a matter
of fact, I always felt that concern was to be sure that the demarmds and
standards of the school were high enough to meet those of the parents. So
from this stand point it was a delightftd place in which to work. The faculty
rapidly m w into a united team. Again it tmed out that we were f&unate in
our selections and had few faculty problems in tern of incompetency or that
kind of thing. As a matter of fact, we had a faculty that was an inspiration
to the students and to themselves. So, the high school went on to prosper and
is still doing that in Ehood Park. St's still a delight to go back there and
see that institution which got underway with its first students in the fall of
1954
Q. From sitting here, face to face with you as you talk about this experience,
and seeing you, it's very clear that this is an episode or a chapter in your
cmer which gives you pat satisfaction and on which you like to think, and
that you feel that this went very well.
A. Oh yes, yes, it was a deli&tf'ul experience. Now, concurrent with the
opening of the new hi@ school building in the fall of 1955, I think I have
already mntioned that I was invited by the Board of Education of the Elemntary
District there, to assm the Superintendency. lW. George Calhoun, who had
been the elementary superintendent for a number of years resigned, and they
decided that maybe in Ehood Park it would be a good idea to have a joint
superintendency with the two districts. The idea was not unique to Ehwood Park,
there were at least five or six other areas in Cook County and Wage County
where this pattern had mady been established. After conferences with both
boards and then conferences between both boards, this arrangemnt was made and
for the next five years then, until I left Elmood Pmk . . .
Q. Let me call attention to smthing here, if I rray Gelrry. I've
now, as your career has progressed, you start in a relatively
defined capacity and first thing you how - - like dropping a
water, the rings keep getting larger and larger and larger - -
have a knack not only for seeing the relationships between
which is around it, but you seem to have an unusual
broadened sphere of influence mving. I think there
it must be in that part of your career we haven't
any comnt you could make on this?
$

A. Well, I don't know I . . .
Q. What there is in you that let's you do this?
A. . . . The only thing that I can say, is that as long as I can
you know, I've always been interested in the circle larger than
which I was particularly working, or in the orbits that were
ones in which I worked. As a boy back in Zearing in the grade schod, I sat
in the f'ifth grade, you know, and listened to the sixth grade recite (laughs)
wishing that I could be a part of it. I've always been attracted to other
things going on and when opportunity has mde it possible for me to broaden
my area of activity I have always welcomed it and I suppose, at least subconsciously
had a yen for som of it, it's just a part of rr@ makeup. However,
in the case qf Elmwood Park this opportunity came along when Mr. Ca3houn
left and the boavld was interested. Now they were interested, I think, in two
or three things. Ln the first place, since I had been the one who gave them
their first high school, I think, and they were so excited about it, it probably
improved my i q e in the cormunity, so that as they were looking for a new
adhnSnistrator, they rdght have looked at re3 but there was also some thought,
in:the future, about the uniting of the two districts. As a unit district,
and even during n-y five yeam there, we explored the feasibility of doing that.
We didn't do it whlle I was there because we also had a building propp~~~ to be
carried on in elementary district during my five years. And with the dual
districts, you had five per cent bond-lng power in each, or double the bonding
power and we needed that. l!& successor was hired as the superinlxndent of both
districts and subsequently the unit district was created, and so this was pmly
a beginning of that. Well, at any rate, I did take on that role and again, it
turned out to be a vexy interesting and pleasant experience. Of course, it
doubled the nwnber of bod meetings every month, because we had two systems
and two fiscal program and two boards. We did, however, as much as was possible
to try to operate the two districts as a unit. We had a great deal of interac-
tion between the two districts, the faculties met as one, for curriculum plan-
ning and for this kind of thing.
Q. Is there a single district up there now, or has the dual. arrangerent con-
t inued?
A. No, qr successor - - during the term of qy successor, the unit district was
established and it is a unlt district. By the way, the only one in Cook County
outside the city of Chicago . . .
Q. (laughs) Oh, is that dght?
A. Yes, the dual pattern is almost universal.
Q. Let IE c m back to so~thing
we touched on a minute ago, Gerry, ,before
we get away from it. And that is this element of strong support and high
expectations of the pamats and of the tax payers in your cmunity . Thfs
was in the fifties, now, wasn't it?
A. Yes, I was in Elnwaod Park from 1953 to 1960. I
Q. Now, back in those days, you see, that was the flush of
faith in education after World War I1.By that tim, you
very education minded, both in precollegiate and higher education,

GerEiLd. W. Smith 147
believed in it and there was
TY
this energetic mvemnt into the sub
creation of subwban cormunities and school districts and so forth.
that could have contributed to this strong sense of unity, but the ls another
one that I wonder about also, and what I'm getting at is mybe you ould comment
on these too. You bmwt out emlier the rather unusual ethnic an cultural
mix of this comty. As I'm sure you know just as I know, that e ly settlers
of Amrica believed stmgly in education. Bey wanted their kids ta have a
better life than they had had, and so there was always this strong interest
in securing an education on the part of people of the European backpound where
the intellectuals, the university graduates had been the pacesetters and everybody
else, you know, little people that didn't count too much. Were these
elemnts present . . .
A. Oh yes, very much: These were-you see, many of these people from Poland;
many of these people fmm Italy . . .
Q. How recent?
A. . . . These were third generation people . . .
Q. But that influence was still there?
A. Oh yes, that influence was still there. I got to know a good many
of the grmdparents who in many instances were the people who cam to the
United States and to the Chicago area. These young people that we had in
school then were members of the second gene~ation family. Their pwnts, of
course, had spurred them on to greater efforts. Now this second generation
was spurring the third generation on to greater efforts. I'm sm that that
was a contributing factor.
Q. Were there the usual phenomna, though, of suburban living? As I experienced
it on the Southside of Chicago, for example, during those yeas there was
@at interest in oh, doing the right sort of thing, belonging to the right
country club, and engaging in the Hght social activities, and belonging to
the right ch~ch, and aJl such things as that.
A. Yes, I think that there was som of that, yes. I don1 t believe that that
was a very dominant factor in the population of Ehood Park. Of course, I
already mntioned that one part of our cormunity were these young executives
whose parents had lived in Oak Park and Mver Forest and so forth; these people
had mved across North Avenue. As a matter of fact a subdivision of 'the South-
side of Elnwood Park - - I'm trying to think which one, but at any rate it had
a mver Forest connotation (laughs) in the narre of the subdivision so these
young executives, you see, they had this stimulation and this great
and they were camying it on. They were already mmbers of the
(laughs) you see . . .
Q. Oh yes, okay you see, they brought that with them.
A. . . . Yes, they grew up in that; they bmught that with them. I never saw
a peat deal of that in the Scandinavian or the Polish c mties. They were
all of them - - their churches were strong centers of activity of course.
The Polish people were very active-ih Weir chwches and a huge Catholic Church
grew right up in that neighborhood during these years that I'm talking about.

Gerald W. Smtth 148
But so far as social ambition, I did not see it as a very great driving force
because the young executives that lived there were already a part of: that society;
they just accepted it as a way. You know, we had a number of peoplq that were
mmbers of oh, four or five of the country clubs in that area, but tq them
that wasn't anything terribly exciting, because they had always beea.
Q. Well, that is an interesting transitional period when we were experiment-
ing in this country, I think, with all kinds of values, which subsequently
were found to be rather unenduring.
A. Of course, among these young executives were also a considerable number of
young executives who had been attracted to Chicago industrial positions from
other parts of the State or country and who happened to land in Elrimpod Park.
Q. Well, did these young executives tend to be the leading group, to provide
the leadership for the c&imunity?
A. I would say, yes.
Q. Rather than the older
established . .
A. Well, yes, I would th ink they were and yet, Elmer Conti, C-0-N-T-I, who
was the myor of the city and a third generation of the Italian cormunity - -
he had gr&n up in ~lmobd Park. He had gme to Western Illinois University
and gotten a degree; had decided by the tb~ he finished college that a politicdl
career was of more interest to him than an educational career. He was a
real cormunity leader, He had, you know, he had ambitions for the comunity
that he had pwn up in and by the way, had grown up in the Depression. And
Elmood Park was one of the most poverty stricken of the suburbs in the days
of the Depression - - when I say poverty stricken, I wan in the sense of
having public mney and that kind of thing. And so there was a leadership
*om those people like Elmr Conti; he was typical of those people.
Q. Well, did he and his kind of people and the newer kinds of people conflict?
A. ' No, no, they worked along beautifully, no, they worked along very, very
nicely.
Q. When you left there in 1960, had any fissures in this solid wall of
cornunity building begun to appear?
A. No, no, and I don't think it ever had. 1 think the comunity which of course,
you must ~merrber established itself first mst as being a fine resiqential
ao-ty, the only industries there are very small, rraybe about thi
industries - - the largest one would employ a hundred and fif'ty peo
is a retail section of wNch Grand Avenue and Harlem Avenue are the
point, all of that &st of Harlemis in Chicago and in the IvIontmse
of Chicapp, and that west is in Elrmood Park and its one commwllty c
there's the Chamber of Comrce and the Service Clubs and so forth,
there, so there's som excellent retail business in Elmood Park.
Park's primary function is to be a fine place in which to live.
Q. What about kids, the youngsters growing up? Was the codty
provide, oh, constructive work experiences for these kids, or how

Gerald W. Smith 149
their vacations?
1
A; Well, yes, they could have constructive work, but of course, wh n you
are there, when you are in that suburban area, right up against Chi ago, you
do not have to have employmnt in FJmood Park to feel that you are horn.
You can go to the Western Electric, you know, two miles to the west land north
lake, and enjoy it, or you can go mund the Chicago side with some of those
interested. 30 the area provided ample opportunities for employment . . .
Q. This was not a self-contained entity by any means?
A. . . . No, we used to joke that the schoolteachers and the srrinlsters were
the only people that worked in town. (la@ter)
Q. Very good. It sounds as thou& this is a very unusual situation: the
strong interest that you referred to on the part of the citizens in the school,
the prelhinayy work that they had done, the thoughtful, intellig~nt planning
that they had done and the strong support. Itls just quite marka able and I
can see how that m t have been a pretty dam satisoing place to be.
A. Yes, an interesting place.
&. Well, about this tim you obviously got the political bug, too, I guess,
@my. Zdnlt you mu? for the State Superintendent's position at one time?
A. Yes, in 1958, I was the Republican candidate for the position, for the office
of the Superintendent of Public Instruction.
A. . . . That was the year of the caupaip, yes. I entered that however,
rather suddenly and probably, I know, almost all of my friends were surprised
and so was I, so was family, because this was somthing that we had never
thought about, never discussed, never planned, in which I l d had no thought of
being a pwticfpant . It cam about this way. Vernon Nickell, who had been the
Superintendent of Public Instruction for sixteen years and was getting in his
upper sixties, decided against seeking reelection in 1958. He made this decision
in the fall of 1957. First tim I heard anytWng about it at all, w$s at the
meting of Allerton Conference on Education, over at Allerton House near
Monticello, when Mr. Nickel1 called IE aside one day and said
undoubtedly know that I have - - I, Mr. Nickell - -
- - that was Governor Stratton - - in selecting the candidate. He has asked
reelection and that the governor wants to have a hand in selecting 4i candidate
me [MI?. Nickell] to bring together a small cormittee of school
to make saw reconmendations to him with regard to the
Tnis is a party election and he wants to mke a choice,
and so he says this cortnnlttee has given him a list of
candidates, and your name is among them, and there
in you as a candidate."
9. This comnittee that mde the recmm~ndation was made up of yowl peers.
A. . . . Yes, the superintendents mund the State. And so, this
first week in November, so Mr. Nickell lefk tihe conversation by say

Gerald W. Smith 150
you'll probably hear fromthe Governor." Well, weeks went on - - bfo or
I
three weeks went on and I heard nothing more, that was . . .
Q. This was all you hew about it?
A. . . . That's all I knew about it. You see, he just called aside and
gave me this information; that's all I knew about it, and I never told
anybody; I didn't share it even with rry wife. After about three weeks
passed and I had hemd no fkether word, I just assured that had been a
pleasant conversation, but one afternoon, late in the afternoon, I did
receive a phone call fmm Governor Stratton and he repeated the informa-
tion that Mr. Nickell had given IW and wanted to know if I would be inter
ested in pursuing the office.
END OF SIDE ONE TAPE 8
Q. The governor asked if I'd be interested in meeting with him. So we manged
f@r me to meet with hbn within a few days when he was going to be En
Chicago. We did then, meet - - and that was Governor Stratton and there
were two or three mmbers of the Republican Central Cormnittee there to discuss
it and we discussed the potential of rre being a candidate. It was a
very business like discussion and the Governor was a very forthri&t type
person. By the way, I found him that w a for ~ the next year. And that
discussion, since I'd had sorne time to this about it, I explained to the
Governor that there were certain factors that had to be taken into account
if I was to be interested in thinking about the candidacy, and he asked rrie
what they were. I told him there were three things: flrst of all, I would
want "c be assured in the primary that I was to be the party choice; I knew
that there was no way you could limit the number of candidates in a primary,
but I wanted to be assured all the time that I was the organization's choice.
I wanted to be sure that had been cleared with the State Central Cormittee
and whoever else was hvolved in that and I was not very well informed
about party structure (lams) - - in fact, you how, just general. The
second point that I made was that I was not a m of financial means and I
would have to be flmced. I did not have money to put into it and did
not intend to put money into a ampalgn and so I would have to be financed.
Third was that, while I understood that if I should be elected Supertntendent
of Public Instrmction that such positions as Bus Inspectors and Secretaries
and so forth would be structured within the patronage fleld, that
I would insist that pmfessional staff would be picked totally free of the
patron- picture. The Governor said that those sounded like reasonable
requirements and we went away and we said - - oh, and I had a fourth item.
I told him also, that if he and the others did becom intereste
would not wmt any word of w potential candidacy to be anno
had cleared it with both of Boards of Education, because I di
sider nyself a fYee agent. I was under contract and in November
filing petitions for the primry in Beerher of 1957, with
co&g up in March of 1958, or April; and he agreed to that.
I did, on the way horn, decide that I would not take a chance on
so I went horn and got in touch with the president of each of
and asked them to met jointly in a special meting that I ha
for them, and I described the . . .
i
j

Q. These were the two boaulds?
A. . . . In Elrf5uood Park, yes, two Boards of Education . . .
Q. Not just the two charimn?
A. . . . No, no, I askedthe presidents to call a special meting ~f the
two boards, and the two boards did meet jointly - - the next day, I think
it was. I gave them the information on the conversation I'd had with Mr.
Nickell and the one I had with Mr. Stratton, and advised the bowd that
f'romthe tone of the conversation, I felt it was highly possible that I
would be @ven the opportunity to be a candidate 1 f I opted to do so. And
so, we discussed it, and the board first of all, after discussing for sow
little while, decided that if that thing did core to pass, they would
support it, they would be supportive of ne accepting the candidacy for that
office. And then we proceeded to work out the details, that night, and the
first detail was that they would not relieve me of any duties for the pri-
m. It was their feeling that if I was going to run in the primary,
it .would be almst a sure thing for nodnation, since it was going to be
a party slelecbion, and I would be free to travel the state and to do what
I felt needed to be done in the primary, but it did not excuse me from any
of duties or responsibilities. That if I did receive the nomination
at the primary and that on July 1, of 1958 I would go on leave of absence,
without pay and that I would stay on leave of absence for the months of July,
August, September, and October - - and one of those months would be with
pay because I had a months vacation, one mnth would be vacation, I guess.
The pay stopped the first of August, but in August, September, October I
would be on leave of absence - - we would appoint an acting superfntendent.
I would come back to job on election day. I would return on the morning
of election day and then if I succeeded in winning the election I would
resign job effective Ecerber 31, and if I didn't win I was already back
on the job - - I' d be back on the job that day. So those were the plans
that we worked out and it was from that setting at home that I worked. Well,
in fact, I was offered the opportunity and I was a candidate and we proceeded
so far as relationship to Elrmood Park went, it worked with no variation
at all from that plan that was outlined. And it was an internsting and
educational experience, one that I enjoyed , even thou& I had never had any
experience whatsoever or had never even anticipated doing such a thing.
Q. There is one thing I'm curious about, several things. In the cwferences
that you had with the Governor particularly, and the membersf>of the Central
Cormnittee, whatdid they tell you about; their expectations, or wha ; did
you find out mm them about their expectations for the Superintend ~nt of
Schools and the office of the Superintendent and so fofih? Were yc L given
an opportunity to pursue that klnd of thing?
A. Yes, but very briefly, They assured that a professional person,
for the Superintendent of Public Instruction, chosen fkom a list R
by reputable administrators, would be a sound administrator and the
interested, you know, in whether or not they could perceive me as a
would be an active amstrator, so forth, but there were no speci
Q. There were no political axes or political long range policies,
of this sort? Did you discover any evidence of that later on?
m g
:omnded
were
man who
'ics .
r things

Gerald W. Smith 152
A. No, I did not. You see, at that tim the office of the Superintendent
of Public Instruction was in the executive branch of the Constitution. The
Superintendent of Public Instruction was one of the executive officers
elected at large and his position was constitutional. He was just as inde-
pendent constitutionally as the bvernor or the Secretary of State or the
Treasurer and so forth; and it was *om that base that the Superintendent
of Public Instruction held his office and operated.
Q. Well, this is very interesting; I've never lmown anyone who's corn
even this close, you see, to this sort of thing and so, well . . .
A. No, no particular kind of perfomce was exacted from r r nor ~ any of
the specifics. Now obviously as I moved thm@ the months of election
- - and it's a long m, you know, you file for the primary in Dece&er and
the primary - - I think it was in April in those days, they chmge it every
once in a while - - and then when the primary is over you gem up for the
run for the campaign in NovenJser. It's a long haul and obviously in doing
this and in visiting in every county of the State and meting with all kinds
of groups and organizations, you do run into people who have axes to gind;
political and other axes to grind. So here and there I met, but in tern
of the Governor and in tern of the State Central Conmittee and those people,
I was never under any pressure of any kind whatsoever; nor were there ever
any obligations. I never had one of them speak to me about who was going
to hold a job or anything like that. Now, there were other people in the
state system-in the State who occasionally would raise that kind of question;
but really never anything more than just raise it.
9. Qy next question is what changes dld you observe - - changes in attitude
toward you - - did you observe on the part of peers, colleagues, people
throughout the State whom you knew? When they saw you now as a potential
Superintendent of Public Instruction, what difference dfd that make?
A. I didn't really experience any. Of course, I net with them in all kinds
of settings and so forth, but they hew rr~ as Gerald Srrilth, Some of them
hew r r ~ as having been three years the President of the Secondary School
Principals Association, many of them knew me that way. A nwnber of them
knew me as having been the coordinator for Secondary Schools of the National
Secondavy School Principals Association. Tne Superintendents themselves,
by that tim, hew me as a menher of their organization, as active on a
nunher of their comittees, and of come, I had wide visibility for wself
by that tim with several years of leadership in the Illinois Curriculum Program;
but they just saw IE as m. I never had a feeling that they saw E as any-
thing else.
Q, Well, I didn't man to suggest that there was anything else, but
to @ve you som rather provocative questions to see . . .
A. No, I never . . .
Q. . . . Okay. So you ran in the prbmy?
A. . . . Yes, I dght say just a little bit about that year for
It was a year in which there were only two state offices vacant or
and it made the candidates job somewhat more difffcult . The

Gerald W. Smith 153
was open and the Superintendent of Public Instruction and those were the
only two state off'ices. There were no Senatoq no United States Senators,
we didnt t have anything in the national - - you see, it was between presiden-
tial yeaus, it was the dd-term between presidential election - - and we didn't
happen to have either one of our state Senators running at that time. The
only two offices were really adrr~inistrdtive offlces - - they weren't issue-
oriented offices, you how, like Governor, or some of those - - so we had
a problem in attracting attention that year. And in the co~ssior41 election--a
large rimer of the congressiolml districts-the inc-brrhents were
running with almost sure return to offlce; there weren't very many strong
contests at the congressional level . , .
Q. Those were very stable times.
A. . . . Well, yes, it turned out that there was a fact that influenced it
that year, but that was true, it was fairly stable. So, we had this problem
of really trying to attract attention. In the election in the fall, it
turned out that this was one of those major switchovers at the midterm ele-
tion. Eisenhower was the President of the United States and it was the dd-
term, so we had a great wave of switch to the demcratic offices, particularly
for Congress and in the State Legislature, and it had an effect even on som
county offices in Illinois. So in the great swing, the election went to the
top off'ices, the Demcrat candidate for treasurer won, the Democrat candidate
for Superintendent of the Public - - the Democrat candidate was George Wilkin~,
George and I had almst identical credentials. We were mn of--I think within a
year of one another of the sane age. We had had quite parallel careels in ,'
education; at that tire he was county Superintendent of Schools at lUdl.son
County. Neither one of us had had any visibility in the population at large
prior to becoming, a candidate on the ticket and so we won and the outcome was
rather a standard one. There was a strong swing to the Democrat side in the
Congressional and Legislative elections. George carried Chicago over me by
about four hundred thousand votes, I carried downstate - - outside of Chicago
- - over him by about two hundred thousand votes. So he beat m by about two
hundred thousand votes.
Q. Well, I don't want to lose this thowt. I didn't qufte get your explana-
tion for the swing to the Cemcrats in this midelection.
A. Well, I think the swing to the Demcrats in 1958, at that th was probably,
Erst of all, the natural midterm swing. I'm trying to think what tbe other
thin@;s were, but at any rate, there was a move away. We werent t in
econorrdc problem or anything like that . . .
Q. I didnt t recall qthing like that and this is what I heard you s , but
I wanted to be sure . . 8"
.
A. . . . But at any rate, of course that continued, you know, on to
election of John Kennedy as the President in the next presidential e
Q. .Well, that must have been a fascinatUg expqience, Ger~y. I
A. Yes, it was a fascinating experience, as I say. It was brand
It's hard work, you know, long hard work, traveling the State
to the other two or three times in the course of the campaign.
respect for candidates who work a mtropolitan area like

Gerald W. Smith 154
every one of those precinct meetings and make a short speech (lams) and
so forth. You run a t after night until midnight covering five or six of
those metin@ in Chicago and all over. But I did enjoy it. I met a, lot of
interesting, people and I did enjoy it and I never had any regrets fob havhg
run because, I thhk, one of the reasons I had no regrets was first of all,
we ad have a plan at Elmuood Park whi& continued. I went back to work on
election day and stayed there until 1960 and . . .
Q. Zhat helps.
A. . . . and I had no debts, because I had been f'unded for the election by
the organization.
Q. What regrets dfd you have that you were not elected?
A. 01, I would say that sitting up all night and listening to yourself
lose (lawter) is not a very excitfng night, and so I had the disappointment
of that, but that wean off surprisingly fast, in a short time. I did not
antfcipate defeat that ni@t, I was aware of the real chance for defeat. I
was not one of those people who was just sure that I was going to win, but
neither was I anticipating defeat. I felt that it was an uncertain item, as
it really turned out to be, a two hundred thousand mgin on a state wide
level isn't too bad, but, no, I don't think that I really had any serious
regrets about it and in view of the things that subsequently happened to IE ,
I think maybe, for IW personally, it turned out to be a prudent experience,
or a good thing, but I was dLsappointed. I wanted to win, I ran to win. I
wanted to win and I think I would have enjoyed that role.
Q. I can readily imgine asking a lot of people today, whom I know, whether
or not they wish that you had been elected at that the; they would probably
say, "Hell no, I'm daq glad he wasn't elected, because then we wouldn't have
had him for other things.
A. Well, as I say, I was disappointed, but it didn't last long. And the very
capable person who was a friend of mlnz was elected and I thought he gave
a good account of himself, he was only in there one tern, but he gave a good
account of hfmelf while he was there.
Q. I knew him slightly and had no reason not ta expect him . . .
A. I can remenber one day at a meeting in one of the Press Clubs
&en all the press was there and they had both candidates, one of
cerns was that they could not get enough dispute between the two
(tape turned off and on)
Q. Now, it's true that this mute of the
into a wider arena; but you did get into the wider arena with your
after you left Elmwood Pmk. What was it really, now, in
the prospect of becoming Superintendent
you? Was it the adventure of it, was it the
ical convictions or ideas, values or goals5
feel you can say about this, Gemy , I think it would quite . . .

Gerald W. Smith 1535
A. Yes, well, as I look back on it, in retrospect, and I think probaly
I was thinking at the time, I had I think, clearly developed an intepst in
operating in a wider area such as a regional or statewide area. The e was
apped to mc in that. 1 presume it was part of my personal nature, of
n-y characteristics. There was an appeal to that kind of thing. I fo d
challenge and interest in it when I was the President of the Secondary
Principals Association for three years in the statewide picture. I was en-
joying it since 1947 as a part of the Illinois Curriculum P rom, which was
a statewide venture and involved action with many people, so there was an
appeal, there was no question about it and the Superintendent of Public
Instruction, of course, was such a position. I had always enjoyed moving
into the new and the wknown, it was agah a part of my characteristic and
this was something that was new and afferent as far as I was concerned, And
so, I think that made it an appealing thing.
Q. You pointed out several times, in fact in each of the positions that
you've occupied that you felt that you were really continuing to function
as a teacher. What about that?
A. I would have seen the sarne thin@ in the office of the Superintendent of
Instruction had I gone there. At Elmmod Park interest in being seen in
the comrnunlty as a teacher and being seen with n-q~ faculty as a fellm teacher--
I-I-QT plan in Elnwood Park which included a schedule that took me into Every
classroom in the school district at least once a month was, you how, an
organized kind of thing and of course, w work with the Illinois Curriculm
Progmn, because as far as I am concerned the Cumiculm Program was close
to teaching . . .
Q. You were simply dealing with a different dimension of the sm problems.
A. . . . Yes, and had I gone into the office of the Superintendent of Public
Instruction, I would have gone there at least with a potential plan to have
the office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction just as close to class-
room as it's possible to lrake a state agency of that kind.
Q: Well, that ' s nice to hear, Gerry. Those of us who have had sirdhr varied
experiences in the way that you have - - I've always wondered, too, why do
I deep stickkg neck out, you know? I finally cam to this conclusion,
and I'm curious whether this mi&t have figured in yowl thinking, too. I
guess each and every one of us - - I'm going to generalize - - is cmtantly
looking for the limits to what he can do, at least I did.
A. Yes, I think that's probably true, yes.
Q. Okay, fine. (tape turned off and an)
the likes of which most of us never have
to being a schoolteacher and then what happened after that?
A. Ln 1960 I mwd from Elwood P zk to Springfield to become the Executive
Director for the Illinois Association of School Administrators , and Admhistra-
t,* Relations Director for the Illinois Education Association, both positions
newly created and 1 moving into them as the first person to fill those posi-
tions.
Q. Again, a new situation.

Gerald W. Mth 156
A. . . . Yes. ?he base for this was that the adrdnistrators had beep
trying to find a vehicle thm& which they could have an executive director;
they had been studying this for at least ten years and they worked out an
arrxgen~nt with the Illinois Education Association to becm an affiliate
of that association, whereby they received both financial subsidy ar@ office
space for this half-time position.
Q. This promised to be a very interesting development.
A. . . . Gs, and when it was decided by the Association that such a
position was to be opened I decided to seek it - - they didn't seek me, I
sought it. (laughs)
Q. Tnis about the f'irst t3-w you've done this, isn't it?
A; Well no, I s owt job in Media and I sought job in Moline . I was
sout in the case of both Alexis and Elmood Pmk, they first sou@ me as
a candidate, but the others I sought.
Q. Well, it sounds as though you probably did som reflecting on the nature
of your career and what you would like to do with it and I thinkc we'll want
to get into that pretty thoroughly, but it brings to rr;2nd another cyclical
aspect of your career - - you once said that you cycle seemed to run in about
seven year intervals, and ri@t here fkom 1953 to 1960 (lam) another seven
years.
A. me matter of me being in Media, Alexis, Moline and Elrnwood Park precisely
seven years each, I think was undoubtem just incidental, accidental, as far
as that goes. However, I mt say that the pattern of about seven years was
not entirely accidental. That was again a part of q own meup and was related
to my own anbitions and objectives, and even in par% ny philosophy with regard
to the role of a school adrrrinistrator. So that I was, you haw, "available"
and open and in fact seeking (laughs) opportunities for something different
in that time range. I don't how that I had this philosophy very well fixed
in rry first position at Pkdia, but thereaf'ter, I was convinced that an aMnistrator
needed to be in a position at least five years to establish a program
of interest to himelf and to hrplement it and get it going. Therefore
I felt that at least for five yeam, a person ought to just devote his entire
energy to that job and shut out the rest of the opportunities. I have a
fairly strong convieiton in that direction, but I felt that for me a$ an individual,
nature being what it is, IQT characteristics being what they are,
that I was the kind of a person who needed - - after five, six, seve , eight
years, I never was sure about it - I
- I needed to be looking at some ew opportunities.
I had many Mends and colleagues in school a ~stratio who
stayed in their positions for twenty-five, thirty years and in som espects
I envied them. ~W-JY of them I certainly admired for the leadership qat they
had given over a long period of time to a conmmity, but it wasn't fqr nze,
it just didn't flt nly characteristics. I always had sane concern, Wbe even
som fear that if I stayed in a place too long, once I had the
I had established implemnted, that I would allow it to become
and routine and the last thing I wanted to do was to be
of leadership and just resting on what we had done up to
And yes, as I say, I saw many of rr~y colleagues who
but I was always afraid that maybe there was a

Gerald W. Smith 15 7
was deep enough that I might do it. (laughs)
Q. Well, I can m e with the situation you were in there in Elmmd, which
in so lllazny ways sounds as though it must have been just about ideal, that
you would have given sane real thought to your motivation and want* to
consider rr&ing a change frm that situation to take on sorething Wferent ,
something new.
A. Yes, in 1960, when I did in fact mve - - althoup$, you know, it could have
been 1959, or -1961, it could of been 1959, I could have cane d m to Springfield
and been State Superintendent . . .
Q. (laughter) That ' s ri&t.
A. . . . but in 1960 I was fifty-four years old and I was interested in mving
before the end of w career. Elrrwood Park was a delightful place arrj. it would
have been difficult for a man to sit there and get lazy, because the cmunity
expected too much and demded too much, you how. I donr t want to say that
the carmnity dght not even allow the person to do it. But, at least, as
far as I was concerned, I felt that I needed to do somthing other than stay
in E2mwood Pmk until I was sixty-five years old, perhaps getting into a
period of time when I would merely be repetitious in my adrhistration.
Q. I'm beginning to think that you may have been, and my be, one of those
people who gives an awf'ul lot to the position that he is in, but in twn
he takes a great deal fMm it in the way of stimulation and forcing himself
to look at things thm@ a different set of eyes and with different asswnp-
tions and this kind of thing, and that rraybe this receptivity for change for
so~thing different in the fifth, sixth, seventh years, whenever it happened
to corn, was as much as anything a reaching out on your part for sm new
stkU thing to bring about new growth. Is that correct?
A. Yes, yes, I think this is true. I think it was a part of ny nature that
I felt that in rimy cses that new challenges, new situations, perhaps the ,
kind of challenges I needed to work at f'ull steam. Be that as it may, what-
ever the reasons were, whether I analyzed them accurately or not, it had
been a pattern of my life to do this k-ind of thing.
Q. I have every sympathy for that point of view, because the same kind of
cycle has existed in life, and so I've also had a personal interegt in
asking you these:-questions. I'm sure you've la?m people in adrdnis
4
rative
positions just as I have, who did not - - put it negatively first - did
not think. of their contribution to the administrative role in the w in
which you did, as being essentially a demand for or call for som 1 ut and
stlmlation from you to Anprove a given situation for which they we asked
to ass= responsibility. If you look at it that way rather than as an oppo~ tunity for a darned good job that I like and where I would like to stay, and
serve my interest, rather than the interest of the orgamization. . . .
A. Well, at least I've seen places where that seed apparent, whether it
was a fact or not hi? seerwd apparent. I must say that as all of
seen people in roles of superintendent of schools or hi@ school
attempt to stay in positions beyond the period of their
whether it was x?i@t or wrong, I had every wish to
in that position.

Gerald W. 158
Q. This to me has always been one of the mst tragic of situations for a
man who built an illustrious career, and I'm sure we could ideati0 rsome
people if we wanted to, who made significant outstanding contributiqns,
building and so on, unfofiunately seem in time to come to believe that
they were indispensable and they couldn't see that they had outlived their
usefixess, and that a different set of aonditions obtained, the
needed to be played according to different rules and to diffemnt?$ents,
and so they became errbittered and they becorne defensive.
been one of the peatest tragedies that could befall any man and, I
more than any other thing I have tried to aviod ever getting into this sort
of situation.
A. I did too.
Q. At this point, we're going to stop recording our discussion on thls
particular tape became we've reached the end of the Elnazrood Park era and
Gemy is about ready to take off for Springfield, so that next phase of his
career will then begin with tape nwrber nine. Tape nuher eight will wind
up with Elmood Pmk.
END OF TAPE VIII SIDE TWO
Q. Now, Gerry, in July of 1960 you left Ehvood Park and went to Springfield
and that began an entirely new life fcr you. I how that I'd like to hem
about it.
A. When the Illinois Association of School Administrators and the IEA jointly
announced the plan to establish the offlce of the Executive Directo~ for the
Administrators and an Adninistrative Relations Director for the IEA, I decided
to become an applicant. The possibilities of operating on a statewide level
had appealed to me for som the. I suppose rr~y appetite for that hadlbeen
whetted a little bit by being a candidabe for Superintendent of Public Instrution.
Also, I had thought about some of the interesting aspects of that type
of work more than once, so I did decide to become an applicant. !I!he position
was filled by the joint operation of the officers of the IASA [Ill. Assn. of
School A&.] and the IEA since it was to be a cooperative program. Suffice
it to say that the invitation to accept this position did come to me, and w
wife and I after sane deliberation decided to accept it. It was not a very
difficult decision because I was excited about the possibilities, wap very
interested in it, The only consf deration was it did involve some reqction
in salary to move, but I had a feeling that time would take care of that and
without f'urther corranent it subsequentLy did.
So, we cam to Springfield in July, 1960. The position needs to be explained
a little bit with regard to hm IEA was operating at that time. For
a rimer of years the IFA had developed a relationship with other professional,
-educatLoml organizations in the State In the form of an affilated status.
For example, the IEA (the Illinois Education Association) for many years prior
to that was known as the Illinois State Teachers Association, but
broadened its name to the Illinois Education Association, it
nmrous educational professional groups that existed. For
inois Association of School AWnistrators, a separate
ily of the superintendents, professors of educational
forth, enjoyed the relationship of an affiliate with

Carthw
Rahrr Morris
CTUDENT S TRANSFERRI
1-'ROM JUNIOR COLLEGE
'JI THIN LLLINOI S
* Private Jr. Colleges
( ) New Students
3
Black Hawk
2
Kewsne~:
Black Hawk E m
Lincoln*
College In Ill:
I SEE NEXT PAGE
Freepor t Rockford
Highland Rock Valley FOR CHICAGO
Dixon
Sauk Valley
7 (4)
Ogleshy
Ill. Volley
8 (1)
East Psor~n
Ill Central
21 (8)
21 (9)
Malta
K~shwaukee
Mar I oor I
I ~ L l.dfl(1 P
Rand Lake
Charnpa~gn Danv~llr
Parkland
15 (5)
15 (8)
1 ~nroln Tra~l
Carte~v~llu tli~rr
I\I,I~~O
I A 1 I >o~~tl~~~,rstrtrti

Gerald W, Smith 159
list there were a number of them such as the various Principals ~ssoctation,
the Association for Supervision and ~urriculwn Bveloprnent, the Junior College
Association, the County Superintendents Association, the School %cre~aries
Drganization, the Association of Student Govemnts, the Classroom %achers
Association and so forth, they were enjoying this status.
of World War I1 and 1960, that relationship had been one of Between s3.rrpl.y t% a odepate end
working relationship. T k IEA really didn't provide these people any real
service, but they did have advisory comsels that net with the board and the
staff of the IEA. They were reco@zed in the journals and publicaticns of
the IFA and so forth. It was that kind of a relationship; but in 1960 it be-
came a closer worklng relationship and it cam about this way . . .
Q. Before you get into that Gerry, let rne ask a couple of questtons here that
I think might be helpful here to get into the recoml. You say it's the Illinois
Education Association and before that it was the Illinois State Teachers
Association; did teachers individually and according to their own individual
decision take-out membership in the Illinois State Teachers Association?
A. Yes, yes.
Q. So that originally the organization was primarily an organization of
teachers?
A. No, no. When it was called the Illinois State Teachers Association everybody
connected with the school was a teacher; you how, the County Superintendent
of Schools was a teacher, the superintendent was a teacher. These organizations
that we have he=, you know, were groups that had grown up;, but the
connotation of llteacherff earlier than that was anybody that had a license or
a cex%ificate to teach. It was befire we cane into the day when we thought
of categories as classroom teachers and adrrilnistrators and that kind of thing.
It was in a tire when to be involved with the public schools was to be a teacher,
(laughs) and then later it took on the concept of the Education Association,
because there was developing within the cowltry this concept, you kmw, of
diffe~nt phases of the . . .
Q. The increasing professionalization and specialization and all tbse other
things. Clay, good.
A. The thing that happened in 1960 came about this way.
trators had been desimus of having a position of Executi
good many years. Prior to this the the various educat
ularly adrrdnistrative groups, had gotten mst of their
a university. The Illinois Secondary School Bincipals
example, for forty years =ally had a headquarters at t
it was deeply involved with the University of Illinois. The
had had relationships with the U of I and with other - - -
and so forth - - - and so they tended to be related to them in on
other, but they wanted their own. So, the a~istrators in sear
a ten yew period, ways and mans to do this hit won this idea o
the IEA as an affiliate in a closer relationship. I was no
I can't relate the details or discussion; but at any rate,
the decisfon.was made with Irving Pearson, the Executive Se
for about a twenty-fiveiyear period, and with the app~oval of the
that the IEA would subsidize the positjlon of Executive Di

I
1
administrators in this fashion: they would provide the office space;py
woad pay for one quarter of a full-time salary of a person to be wo king
half-tim . So the administrators were going to get a half-tlm persop by
paying a half of that tim; and that this person would cane on duty Fhen
and devote half -time to that role. It was also agreed that the admipistrators
would have the primry role in selecting that person. Bving P@arson
would sit in on the interviews and would have to ratio it, but the principal
employer and the principal recruiter would be the Administrators Orrnization.
And that, once hired, this person that was on the half-time that was to be
given to the adtrdnistrators and working with them with autcnory, you know,
this was to be their position. They and the IEA would also ahme in the cost
of a full tim secretary. And then the person who cam here was to be called
the Administmtive Relations Director of the IEA. A part of Ms tim was
obviously to be in that role for the school aMnistrators; but the other pmt
of the persons time was to be devoted to other affiliated organizations in
the adtrdnistrative fleld, which, at that time, included the Illinois Association
of Elemntary Principals, of Junior High Principals, of Secondary Principals
--- those were three sepwate state organizations - - - the Assocbtion of
County Superintendents of Schools was another. So they made up the body of
the administ~ators and they were now, under the new policy, to be entitled to
so= kind of service throw the TEA with this person who was giving half his
time in the role of Administrative Relations Di~ctor.
Soon after arriving on the job in July, Mr. Pearson again went over this
with m rather clearly and said, "Now, those groups out there are entitled to
something. It's yowl job working with them to decide what; but since we are
subsidizingthe a~nist~ators and since this is a policy matter and since
we're not only doing it with administrators but with some of the other affiliates
through another staff person - - - not Gerald Mth - - - this matter
has to be decided as to what's going to happen wlth regard to them, but they're
entitled to something mre than they are getting!' So, beginning then in July,
I went to work imnecTiately in establishing the office of the Executive Mrector
of the School AdttrLnistrators. Of come, that was relatively easy because
the definition of an Executive Director of a professional organization is fairly
well defined and fairly clear. I became the Executive Officer for the board
of that organization and I f'unctioned as an Executive Officer for that bomd.
I became their spokesman. I becm their legislative liason person, I became
the person who developed the agendas for board rnetings, I became the record
keeping office, or my office becane the record keeping office for
right, it was made very clear that there was to be educational
was the job of th&ir Executive Director to develop ideas and to
fessional. leadership for the Association. They wanted more
keeping person; they wanted ideas for the improvement of the
inprovement of educatf on,
Q Was that the aspect that appealed to you? I
A. Yes, that was the aspect that appealed to m .
1
Now, with regard 'to the
other ~ TD~S: we went throw steps during the months of August and July - -
didn't do very mch in July because I had an overlap of responslbil ty at
ELnwood Park, Tn the month of July I went back to ELmwood Park thre days a
week for a switchover with rqy successor. As a matter of fact, he di 't corn
on the job until August; but we had a little switchover period. In August
and Septenber, I sat dm with the president of each of these affll ate
organizations independently and simply said to them, "Now you're en itled to

Gerald W. Smith 16 1.
something." (laughs) llE donlt know what it fs," and I said, "1 made it,
very clear. Here are sone ideas that I have of some areas of service that
you might have. We could--1 suggested to him-I could become the recording
secretary for your board meetings, you could have a central office instead
of having that switch every time you elect a new officer. Our office could
be the central co~cations office, all of your statewide comunicartions
could go out fmm this offlce, you'd have to pay the postage, you'd have to
provide the stationery and so forth, but the service work would be dam in
our office. We would be glad in this office to help you with the planning
and the irrplemntation of your conferences and meetings throughout the State. I'
Tnese Wre the kinds of ideas we talked about. Then, I also made it very
clear that these a . directLons that are worth explorcing, but you're never
going to get a thing from me unless you ask for it. I'm in no way going' to
impose m$thirg upon you.
So we went through a round of discussions like that with each president.
Then subsequent to that in the fall the presidents invited me to meet with
their boards and we went through a simllar discussion and without mre detail
let it be said that by December of 1960, this new office of Administrative
Relations Drtrector had in &ct become a state sec~taria.1 of so~ts, for each
of the groups that I nmd. The first groups we had, to recw them, were the
elementary principals, the junior high school principals, tl-e secondavy school
principals, the county superintendents there were those four along with
administrators that made five groups to start with. In the course of the deliberation
in the fall it turned out that the Association of Supe~sion a
Curriculum Developmnt, which was an affiliate of the IEA also, and thought
of itself as mre administrative than teacher although there were many teachers
that were members of that association, their leadership thought of themselves
as that. They, of course, felt a strong identity with ms because of my thirteen
years with the Curriculum program. I knew them all and they were very
active in that ongoing progmn, so they requested of Mr. Pearson that they be
transferred fl-om the other staff member in the IFA over in gemup, because
they felt that's where they belo~d Q. And that became number six.
. . .
A. So, that becams n&er six. Then the Association of Junior Colleges
requested that they have a similar status in the group that I was worldrg
with . . .
Q. That was called the Association . . .
A. . , . It was the Illinois Association of Junior Colleges, and t&y so@&
this also. Now Mr. Pearson had not included them in this pattern t
1
begin with
because of the diffe~nt structure; each of the other organizations hat I was
working with was an organization of individual members, they were p fessional
people, they were elernentary principals who joined the Elemntary Prkincipals
Associaton as a principal and so on. The Association of Jm
fundaentally an association of institutions; they pald thei
stitution and everybody in the junior college was a merher (
associatkon by vifiue of the institutzonal members. The lea
Junior College Association, the heavy leadership or prfncipa
fromthe Deans of the several colleges around the the State,
But it was an institutional thing. A conference or two or t
were held with the officers of the Junior College Associati
w e d that the spirit of the thing was identical even tho
--

Gerald W. Wth 16 2
was different; that the spirit of the thing was identical and therefore he
agreed to t k m ha* the sam status with the IEA as the othera and so
nwnber seven then by December of 1960 became the Junior College Association.
Now we didn't move ahead with the fill development of programs for them
uniformly; they staggered in. Sam of those groups were more ready ;than ( J ' 1
others, you know, and mved right in. My gosh, the Elementary Prinqipals
were calling m their Executive Secretary by the end of the yeax, d of ,
cowse, I denied that; the only one I was Executive Director of was the
Administrators because, I always told them, "You don't get an executive
director unless you pay something for his service. You aren't paying anything
for his service." And so that mved ahead.
Mr. Pewson had been working with the universities and colleg@s in the
State for a number of years in an effort to form an Association of Higher
Education, that would be related tg the IEA. After about rr~y third year - - -
I don't remmber the exact date - - - but after about lr~y third year, there
did form in Illinois an Association of Higher Education, The principle
participation and leadership beginning with the State Teachers Colleges.
They were the strong participants in It; the University of Illinois had
very little action with it, and only a few private colleges . . .
Q. That was about 1963?
A. . . . That was about 1963. But they subsequently were organized and
then became an affiliate within this group also.
Q.
And these were institutional members?
A. No, these were individual mnbers, !The Association of Hi&er mucation
on each of the campuses is an individual ~rl~:mbership, just as it is in the
Aswcfition of University Professors.
Q. Yes, so 1eadersHIp for this developmnt, however . . .
A. Stemd primwily From the Teacher College.
A. And the original merbership was strong from those orgamizations.
Q. I can imaghe that the person transcribing this par% of that, unless he
or she happens to know the m s of these afferent organizations is going
to be very conhsed, and that's why I'm taking fairly comprehensive notes
here.
A. Well, ultimately that ' s what we had. The programs for the orrnzations
unfolded about as I have already indicated; om office becarre the office of
records for each one of these organizations; our office became the membership
recruiting agency for these offices and we maintained their membership records
--- when I say recri~Lting, I mean all of the milings for tmrbership that
came out . . .
Q. How big a staff did you have, Gerry?
A. Well, initially a secretavy and wself. Through the first two years in
1960 and 1961, I was there alone as the only professional. At the beginning
"1

Gerald W. Smith 163
of the third year Roy Baker, who was then Superintendent of Schools at
I.aHarpe, then cam in as another full time person in this department.
Agh tMs developmnt cam about because by that tim the elelnentary
principals wanted the same program that the administrators had and so that
was set up and Roy Baker was then recruited as their executive director. 30
he gave half th~ to them and I gave half time to the administrators,
k
and
tkn we divided the other six affiliates between us. He took sm o them
and I took some of them; so I'm talking now about our office. Then e subsequently
had two and a half time secretaries. When he came in we brbught
in a f'ull tk secretary with him; and in addition to that we had a parttim
person on memberships who worked for us just as much as was necessary;
at the heavy work load seasons she worked fill time. It turned out by pure
circumstance to be MPS. Smith, wife; and she did that for ten years.
Q. Oh, for goodness sakes.
A. . . . Yes, but in the fall of 1961, I think it was, when we were getting
on to this kind of thing, I'd been talking to Mr. Pearson about the second
secretary and he seeed to me to be procrastinating in getting one recmited.
So one day I was pushing him on it and he salld,"Would Nrs. Wth be interested
in that?" They had been using her for some proof reading and that kind of
thing during the year and I suggested to him, I hadn't the slightest idea; she
had not worked - - - she had taught before we were married - - - she had never
worked a day in the meantime ad we'd never discussed it, I said, "I would
just have to ask her." Well, she decided she'd like to try it, so she came
on as a pmt-tbre person in the fall of 1961, I belfeve; and I said ten years,
she worked there longer than ten years, she worked there then until Noven-ber
of 1974 but always as a felxible person. In the heavy m&ershlp season,
she worked full tim, in July and August, she might work ten hours a mnth,
(laughs) you how; always by August, it always picked up, but of course, we had
seveml thousand membership records to Wntain and so this office did that
kind of business.
Q. This was the day before computers.
A. . . . Yes, we did it all; we kept our memberships by addressograph. So,
we did this. I wt and then subsequently Roy or 1 always met regulwly with
every board and kept their minutes and they accepted us, really as I say, more
as executive officers than anything

Q. Well now, I know you don't mean it this way, Gerry, but you've been
enphasizing up to this point the provision of all the housekeeping services,
the managerial services; but I'm sure your input was not limited to this . . .
A. Oh no. Our input, as I tried to say, as a part of the board, was
pmfessional too; we were professional leaders; we were idea people for
these organizations - - - and that 's what they wanted; that ' s what tky
were expecting; we weE idea people in conjunction with their cdttees;
we mt with almost all of the comnittees. Now, another thing that we developed
- - - for which I've always been pleased - - - or two things, were two
journals. There had been a j oumal for the administrators in the form of a
mimographed letter, prior to having the office of the Executive Director,
which they called the USA Reporter. Upon taking the position of director
and establishing the office, we converted that occasional newsletter called
The Reporter, fmm a mirfeographed affair to a regular printed publication;
a house o~igh of the association and gave it rather broad distribution and
&. What was that called?
A. . . . It was called the IASA Reporter.
Q. I-A-S-A Reporter.
A. We printed it on an eight and a half by eleven, usually eight page paper,
andwe printed it several times a year; we did not have specific numbers of
issues.
Q. Ch, in the nimograph form it was also called the IASA Reporter.
A. Yes, it was the IASA Ikporter; it had the same rme, except we made it
a printed journal on glossy newspaper or glossy stock and . . .
Q. And the changeover occurred when?
A. . . . in 1960 with the establishment of the office of Executive Director.
Q. Okay, and then the other jomd?
A. Then the other journal - - - it took a year to get it going. It was my
feeling that this office of Administrative Relations Director in the IEA,
ought to also be a coordinating agency for all admLnistration in education
in the State and that it ought to provide a line of comnmication
between all of the administrative
publication entit led ihe Illinois Admhistrators
intent, to be a connan?icator to and between all
the universities and colleges and the county superintendent and so We
published this publication then =In,
and each issue of the publication had feature a.rticles about each o
affiliated organizations. It never vayied, there were always . . .
9. Ihatls a t~mndous
concept, Gerry. There is such desparate ne
kind of coordination across bauriers.

Gerald W. Smith 16 5
A. Yes, so we provided - - - on one centerfold page - - - a directory
of each of the eight organizaitons, listing their officers, their board
members, their conmittees, the information about their dues, their actual
membership and the potential mfiership, and the calendar of their meetings,
and the list of their publications.
Q. And you would have to change this every year, wouldn't you?
A. This had,lto be changed; oh yes, this had to be changed. This directory
care out once a year. and had to be changed. We published it in Febmmry of
each year, because by that time all of the organizations had been through
their annual rwetings and had their new officers, you know, for the ye=.
We also - - in the spring issue - - published in parallel columns the conferences
and the propam outlines fop each of the organizations for the next
year and since this was going to be published, of course, it pushed the leadership
of the organizaZ2qns to get the format of their conferences structured.
I think. of the things that I did in the years there and I enjoyed every
phase of it, I enjoyed as much as anything that mle of editing those publications.
The Corrnnunicator enjoyed great popularity in the State, because of
the fact that the p~&sident of No~htern Illinois University or the president
of the University of Illinois, or a county superintendent, or superintendent
of schools could sit down at his desk and In one publfcation he could read upto-date
infomtion about evevy one of these groups. And if he wanted to
write to the president, he knew where to go and find it all on one page.
Q. And you stmed that in 1971?
A. Well, I think that this structure then, went on and flourished for quite
a number of years, and it was a very interesting and busy world. It was a
good experience. I think it's a good place to stop now.
Q. This is the end of the interview on Monday mrning, Awst 23, 1976. It
will be continued three days from now, on Wednesday, August 25.
Q. This is now August 25, Wednesday, and Gerad Smith arid Ernst Gieaecke me
seated at the dining room table @ to continue this fascinating dialogue,
conversation. We got you down in Springfield now, Gemy, and youtve been
talking about the organization of the Illinois mucatim Association and how
your efforts were related to the different entfties within IEA that developed
--- that you helped develop - - - and strengthen and so forth, ad11 guess
this is where wetre ready to pick up this mrning.
A. Yes, I would like to suIlpnarize or close off this story about the period
between 1960 and 1965 when I was semrifg in the two roles that we are as-
cussing. I think: I've meady covered completely the various functions of
the office that we developed in Springfield for these organizations, having
talked about the nms of the affiliate organizaitons which our office served,
having indicated that we drLd, in fact, operate either an outrQht executive
directorsh3p for them or in a sort of semi-state-secretariat where we were
the office of record; we were the miling office, spoken about of the member-
I

Gerald W. Mth 166
ship activities, spoken about the publications that were edited and
distributed for these pups, about workFng with each of the eight
bods of directors and helping them plan their year's work and carrying
on the inplemntation of much of their work for them, and so forth. I'd
like to add one dimmion to this, namly, that we attenpted to do lnore
than just be a mbiterial office for the organizations and namely t at I
and subsequently Roy Wer and I together attempted to @ve educatf 'd nal
and intellectual leadership in support of tk organizations. They 4xpected
of us and we tried to be idea people for them, working with their
~mbershlp and with their cornrbttees. Among the things that we did was to
develop a series of workshops, dealing with problems and issues of the day
with intellectual or educational concepts of the day rather than just the
"a~st~atimtt of operating the school systems; and these were Interesting
and stimulating and the response film the menbership, likewise, was
very gratiqing. For exaqle, just to glve an illustration of one: af'ter
a series of discussions with different leaders in the Association of Amnistmtors,
we decided to set up a serLes of three day workshops to which
we would invite one or mre authorities in the field, to come and be a
Esourae person and then we would build a three day &iscussion, reading
program and so forth, around the topic; one of those, interestbgly ~tmough
was-on the item, What should a Superintendent of Schools Know? And we
(laughs) set up this workshop at Pere Marquette State Park and it was a .
very interesting thing and the superintendent was able to come down there
and get may from the business of his daily work and just - - - in considerable
depth - - - discuss this ideol~gkal or this IntellectuaJ question;
what does a Superintendent of Schools, what really ought he to know? What
kind of an intellect ought he to be? What klnd of philosophies ought he to
have? We did a series of these md people found them intellectuals they
found them inspiring; they found them as sort of a recharging of their batteries,
so to speak; We did thfs kind of thing.
Q. I1m interested in the process by which you identified these questions,
that could be considered like this. Nm did you do that? (tape turned off
and on)
A. We identified the problems and issues, really by two methods: first
of all, the one on what a superintendent should know with about six months
of lead tim we engaged Ralph Tyler, from the 'University of California at
Berkeley, who at that tire was in the Center for the Study of Higher
mucation. We engaged him as the resource person and whose business it was
at periodic lectures to subdt to the mrrrbership ideas as to what these topics
should be. He was the catalyst that sort of steered the liike of thinking.
Now it so happened that we also had atten- those conference3 a half a
dozen superintendents of schmls Mrn Illinois, who were the kind
that were always f'ull of thls kind of idea, too, and so these were
into the hopper . . .
Q. Are there sane m s
there that come to mhd?
A. . . . Not quickly, no; and I1d be maid I1d leave out the persons that
I should mention, so I thMc I w ill Just leave them out for fear of what the
omission dght do. We administered these workshops so that we built as we
went. Hmt of all we had two observers there all the t k who were listening
to the discussion and sunmarizing the discussion; we had secretarial staff,

Gerald W. Smith 167
so that we were Wing up transcriptions of the discussions and rhimogragh-
img them and distributing m ng the people for pow discussion and *her
reference and so forth, so that by the tim the workshop was over, we had a
pretty good transcript of . . .
Q. ' Are records of this sort of thing available in the IASA offices?
A. I would hope that they were. The IASA offlce, I think, probably has
the records of those workshops as they were reported on the transc&pts and
as they were later sumnarized in issues of the Reporter and the Commmicator.
Q. Qh, very good, okay, that's exciting.
A. Well, I just use these as illustrations. These were days when we were
going much beyond just the administrative detalls of holding these organiza-
tions together and of their structural organization, we were engaged in mamy
other things, too.
Q. Did you ever consider inviting Arthur Bestor, for example, to one of
these sessions? That doesn't call for a serious discussion, @my, but . . .
A. No, we didn't because I happened to be there fYom 1960 to 1965 and
Arthur Bestor's days on the scene were mound 1952, 1953, 1954 and Bestop
had been so& of forgotten by that tirne. But yes, we did in fact, at OW
annual conferences for example, deliberately seek out and bring to appem
before our confeEnces people who might be speaking, you how, from an ad-
versary point of view.
Q. That Is great, that's great. Okay now, that ' s workshops and this kind
of thing . . .
A. . . . I might also say that in addition to the workshops all of these
orgai"dz&ions with which we worked were actively involved with the program
of the Illinois Cwriculum Pmgram which through the 1960 ' s continued to be,
as it had started back in 1947, an ongoing and active thing. As a mtter of
fact, Doctor Fichback, who had been on the stafr of Southern Illinois Wver-
sity, becarne the Executive Director when Gsorge Wilkins became Superintendent
of Public Instruction, and the office, 1 might say, was moved fhn the Unive*
slty of Illinois to Springfield. In that parbicular period of tine, the nmber
of publications coming out of the Illinois workshop was stepped up considerably
and the nmber of task forces. Now the focus changed a lilttle bit; the univer-
sities were not quite so much the point of focus as they had been in the early
days when we were getting going and the staffs of the public schools around
the State were perhaps in a stronger psition than they had been originally
and I think pmbably that was a desirable outcw of the whole business. But
the nmber of publications being developed and distributed in the area of
curriculum, &dalw9t dvery @real& cur?riculm, were stepped up vem mch
and our organizaf;%ons were very active in that program.
Another thing that was of concern in those days was the improve nt of
the professional preparation of teachers, and of course, one of the hings
you always have to do where there is state licensing is to take a 1
what the strengths and wealolesses, what the restrictions are as a r ult of
the licensing propam and these organizations along with other affll ates of
the IEA developed a strong program in a thorough review and with ne recomn-
i

Gerald W. WLth
dations with regard to the whole matter of teacher preparation and of its
relationship to certification. At that t-, Doctor Conant, fomr p~sident
of Harvard Wversity and who at that time, you how, was Mqg his ,
study of the Amrican high school and other things we brought him td Illinois.
As a matter of fact he spent two full days wfth cormnittees of our &up on
this whole matter df certification, which with him at that time was /an indepth
study. Well, these are just ilhstmtive of the kinds of thi~&s that
were going on. It was an active period and you bow, I get wound up on
this and I could talk about it a long tk. Q. This deserves some development, &q, because . . .
A. I do believe that we have, you know, pretty well covered the dtrections
that we went and it isn't the purpose of this one to give a long de-kiled
history, so, I think I would suggest that we be& to move toward the one
we are going to go,into greater detail. Much of what we've been talking
about is a prologue to what wetre going to do now and in much much water
depth, mainly the history and the story of the junior college or comrrunity
college in Illinois. And amng the organlz&ions with which we were working
in our office as has been already indicated, was the Illinois Association of
Junior Colleges. I've already in&Lcated that while we provided the state
secretariat, the association almst insisted that they saw me in the role of
their executive secretary or their executive director, and during the period
1960 to 1965, at which time the Illinois Cormunity College Act of 1965 was
passed, rmny of the developments that led to that were tMng place, and
the Illinois Association of Junior Colleges was a catalyst in this. They were
in a leadership role in this and I was, too; and so, it so happens among all
these things my role with the junior colleges led to this next phase.
END OF TAPE 9 SIDE 1
Q. Well, Gerald, I thir-k we're at the point now where we're set for you
to begin zeroing in, mre exclusively than you have up to this point, have
needed to, on the story of the evolution of the codty college, what be-
carre the c odty college system, of your perceptions of this development,
of yow contributions to it and this kind of thing, which was really the
point of departure in ow decision to begin this series of interviews. So,
if this meets with your wishes, why don't you just pick up the thread now and
start talking about @ving us a summary of, or an introduction to mybe is a
better way of putting it, Gerald Smith's story of the developmnt of the
junior college system in the State of Illinois.
A. Yes, on Septenber 1956, I entered . . .
Q. Septenher what?
A. September 16,1965, I began to seme as the f'irst executive secretary
of the newly established Illinois Junior College Board under the Public
Junior College Act of 1965, a role which I filled for the next five years,
leaving that board in September of 1970.
Q. The beginning date was September 16, 1965 not 1975 as you said,

Gerald W. %ith 169
A. Oh, Irm sorry ; the beginning date was 1965. A period in which the present
state system was essentially developed. All that we have been talking
about up to the present time is really prelMnaxy to entering t 's
part of the story, a story mhich I have wanted record for sever
yeaxs. I have been under some pressure, I might sa~, fmm a nunher
people in IllFnois to leave a record of the developmnt of the co
college because of qy personal invo2vement wlth it, both prior to qth g v e
year perYiod between 1965 and 1970 which was the fomnative period for the
contemporary scene, and my subsequent connections since 1970.
It so happens that I entered the junior college picture in Illinois very
suddenly in July of 1946 at bline when the Moline Camnaxnity College was
established at the end of World War I1 and where I served as the organiziing
administrator in the role of the dean of the conaraunity college. Since
1946, I have been either directly or indirectly involved continuously with
t& junior college movement in Illinots and because of tk circmtaraces with
which I worked and particularly the period 1965 to 1970 have pmbably been
personally involved with the organization and reorganization of the total
state system in greater depth than any single other individual. That's not
due to any merit of mlne, it's due to the accident of history that I
happened to be at the place where that was done. So, the purpose of this
story from here on then, is to try to record f'rom ny personal perspective
the story of junior colleges in Illinois f'rorn 1946 throw 1970 in consider-
able personal detail and since 1970, as I have been related to them from a
little more distant point.
Q. That's very good, that's an excellent plan, Gerry. I'm with you fully.
(tape interference )
A. For the purpose of an o-ly procedure I'm proposing that we set this
tln the following time fk.ms: 1946 to 1962; 1962 to 1965; 1965 to 1970; and
1970 to the present time.
Starting now with 1946 to 1962, I would like to @we so~thing of the
picture in Illinois at the beginning of that time fm. In 1946 the
existing junior colleges were Joliet , (number one), Chicago, LaSalle - -
Peru - - Oglesby , lbrton at Cicem - - Berwy-n, Thomton at Hmey , Wons
Township at LaGrange. In the fall of 1946 there were added to that list
four institutions that almst im&iately became community colleges, but
they stwted as part of the post World War TI University of Illinois Extension
Center P~ogram. Those schools were Belleville, Danville, Elgin and
bline. There were thirty-one of the University Fztension Center teyear
programs around the State in the fall of 1946 ; sow of them ran two yews ;
sm of them mm three yews or so, and then terminated their two y e program,
a few of them pemently . Sam of them however, after a brief internal
then established a local junior college. And others of them that
didn't do it then becam the center around which a junior college was orgmized
when the Public Junior College Act of 1965 was passed. And the climate
in 1946 was supportive of the enlargemnt of the junior college system.
Q. We had peat hopes for education in those days.
A. Yes, and there were a nwnber of reasons for tk supporStive
of the junio~ college. Mrst of all it had been, of course,
trend in this country to increase the span of years and the
gram at which people would have access to education to

Gerald W. Smith 170
tional opportuixity; this had been going on in the high school ever qince
the Civil War and until the early 1920's it really reached the pointt of
the universal activity. In the case of the cohty colle~ and the
case of the senior institutions, this was also true and there were rlany.
centers of sup-po& for the developmnt of the junior college. Edu tional
leaders in the public school field and in the universities, both pu 3 Tic
and private, were continuozlsly writing and speaking in suppo~ of the utilization
of the Junior college as one method of increasing the oppo~unity
for post high school education. The political leaders were a part of this
field and in 1945 the Illinois General Assembly, for exanple, added a section
to tk school code - - and I want to point out that at that time, all
legislation with regard bo junior colleges in Illinois was a part of the
school code and the junior colleges were identified with comon schools.
Every junior college in Illinois was an entity within a public school system
and that showed that our legislation up until 1965, was always a p& of the
school code. In 1945, the General Assen'bly, had for exanple, made it easier
to establish junidr colleges by rraking it possible for boards of education
in school districts with a population in excess of twenty-five thousand
people to create a junior college organization, by resolution of the bod.
Q. goodness, that was generous.
A. Yes, not callfag fdr->a referendum by the people. If they did establish
such a college, it had to operate within the tax structure already created,
although there was a provision, ff they wanted to, to have a referendum and
establish speavlate tax rates. There was also a provision in the law for
codties between ten thousand and twenty-five thousand to establish a
junior college on the basis df
a referendum if they saw Mt to do so . . .
Q. ah, really?
A. . . . yes, as a part of the school district. I dght say that Moline,
E;lgin, ~elledlle and Danville , four of which I lve already m d , actually
cam into existence on the basis of the 1945 law by resolution of the
boards of education of their districts.
Q. Do you by chance happen to recall the approximate population of the
State of Illinois at that tlr~ in contrast to the present time?
A. Yes. As I remenJ3er tk population of Illinois in the late 1940's was
smwhere in the area of about 8 million people, as against the eleven
somthing people. ?his isAjust rqy perception . . .
Q. Sure, I understand.
A. . . . it my not be accurate. And tk junior colleges - -
there was this supportfve effort; the board of trustees of the
Illinois had been on record in support of the enlargenaent of the j
college system in this state for some time. The other universitfe
other educational leaders had &sa been supportive of this idea.
1946 there was a climte, even supported by legislation, for t
developmnt of the junior colleges. And then coupled with this
activities of the IllLnois Association of Junior Colleges, wh
been in existence. It was a well organized, although small

Gerald W. Smith
It was an institutional type of mnBership - - the colleges - - but the
educational leaders in the junior colleges were well organized and they
were forward looking people and they were promoting wherever they could
with the universities, with the local codties, with the legislature,
with the governors and so forth. The idea of the strengthening of the
existing junior colleges and the expansion of the junior college system.
Q. Were the private junior colleges included in this thinking?
A. Yes. In 1946 the number of private junior colleges exceeded the public
jdor colleges and the junior college movemnt was a unit. The Illinois
Association of Junior Colleges was a combination of the public and the
privates tke officers were intermixed; the cormdttee umbership was inter-
rrdxed - - they alms worked as a unit and. met as a unit, and so they
were very much a part of the picture in 1946. And the private universities,
particularly Nor%hwestern and the University of Chicago, of course, were
just as strong leaders as any. University of Chicago was obviously a very
strong leader; indeed, they were the father of the junior college. There
William Rainey Harper established the first one in 1892 and christened it
the junior college in 1896. So, the climate was very supportive.
Now, the climate was supportive, of course, of tk expansion of educational
opportunities on up into the university system and, of course, we were
likewilse just entering the flrst phase of the population explosion that was
facing us, but the ping rate, the percentage of the population continufng
education was going up.
Q. Would it be fair to single out in this connection the entry of the federal
govemnt into the business of financing higher education through
the G.I. Bill?
A. Oh yes, yes of course. ?his had a tremendous impact; the passage of
the G.I. Bill had a very significant impact. Now the characteristics of
the junior colleges in 1946, I think are worthy of note.
Q. Yes, this is important.
A. By 1946 the cormunity colleges had become in essence what we now ~ f eto r
as conprehensive in nature. In the middle 1920ts people like Leo
at the University of Chicago and Walter &lls from Stanford Universi
9
y and
later the editor of the American Junior College Journal, had been prQponents
of the concept of a broader range of activity. Junior Colleges had qtarted
originally as liberal arts institutions, an up- extension of the bcademic
program of the high school and the f'irst two years of the typical liberal
arts program in the senior institutions.
Q, I was a student in California in the 1920ts, at Stanford, as a matter of
fact; I knew Walter &Us and I once dated his dau@;hter. Out there the
junior colleges -re a reality and one heard about them, they had publicity
of one sort or another. But everybody seemd to think of them, perceive
of them there as bringing the first twu years of college to
commnity, so that everybody would have a chance at it.
I
A. Yes, of course, that's the way they started because the junior co lege
developmnt at the University of Chicago In 1892 was the culmination of about

Gerald W. 3dth 172
forty years of dialogue about the reorganization of higher education in tws
coumtry. The people who were the proponents of that were interested primpily
in the reor@zation or refomtion of the liberal arts program in Ameri an
higher education m d so the junior college came via that route, obviously
they started that way. !
But by the middle 1920's there was an increased interest in vocatiod
education as a result of the Mth-Hughes Act, in 1917, of the broadening
vision with regard to education that followed World War I; the junior colleges
were a part of this picture. So, by 1946 these thing that happened with
regard to the local junior college; it was still conceived as a par% of a
public school district; an entity within the school district; but it was now
perceived, first of all, as an institution who should think of its relationship
to the codty, and even the cancept 021 the term co-ty college was beiw
mare generally used.
We started our institution in Moline in 1946, by calling it the Wline
Junior College. In addition to the liberal arts curriculum within the junior
college the occupational programs were being established and the terminology
spoke of "terminalnprogram. Tk idea at that ti^ being that you would put in
to the junior college programs that would rn one or two years, and then that
educational track ended. It was texminal at that point of time and of course,
the-emly terminal programs in the junior colleges were those which could be
seen in that way: business education, secretarial, stenogaphic pmpams were
seen as terminal programs, and wkn you completed them that was the end of it.
Or in the area of ag'iculture, if you were in a mal setting, or in the area
of industrial arts if you were in m industrbl area where people took machine
shop and this kind of thing to obtain work area. This type of education was
thought of $S terminal, but tke cornrmnity college, or junior college in 1946
was seen as the most logical vehicle for the expansion of that kind of educational
program and opportunity.
Q. There was one idea, one attitude that was quite wide sp~ad, as I recall
at that time. At least I used to run into it in university circles, where I
have mved mainly. I'm wondering how widespread this attitude rnay have been
in other respects. Tk university people forPbhe mast part didn't really understand,
faculties didn't really understand what the junior colleges were
about. They could see the flmction of offering the fimt two years of college
on the basis of which then they could be admittedtathe university and ccntinue
their studies wlthout interruption and without hiatus of any sort, but tk other
kinds of prowarns - - the terminal programs, the vocational programs, now called
the vocational technical programs - - were seen as having a prisllary justification
as giving - - this is a very cynical way of putting it, but it's the shortest
w8y 1 lmow how to put it - - as reflecting the fact that tkme an? after all
an awful lot of people in our population who are not capable of doin@; college
work and therefore, because they do want to go on to school, because it ms
popular and it was accepted and it was appmved beyond high school, give them
something that t$~y can do with profit in spite of the fact that they're not
really qualified to go on to coiklege. As I say that's a cynical way of ptting
it, but this is an wgment that one heard very frequently; maybe you coad
cmnt on that a little &my.
A. Yes. Well, I don't really look at it as a cynical viewpoint. In thc
place, I would not have expected the typical university professor in one
acadenrlc disciplines to either be inf'omd about or inte~sted in the ju
college program beyond its work with people who would later on be coming
first
9 the
or
0 that

Gerald W. Smith 173
individual. Because the academic professor, of course, and particularly at
that tirne was a scholar within a fairly XMted acadedc ma, one who had
norrnally pursued a doctorate in a fairly mow fteld and was an expert Zn
that field, and that was what this individual understood about education and
I don't how of any particular reason why we should have expected such people
to be particulary interested or informed about-the other role. In those days
they did not ever anticipate that anyone would want to corn to the university
who had not done two things: who had not pursued a secondary education to hi@
school gmduation with a major part of the work being done in the academic fleld
and at a level of excellence, at least as measured by grades to, say, the upper
twenty-five percent of the graduating class or somthing of that Hnd.
You must remember that in 1946 - - the period we're talking about - - the
professors in the universities of Atrepica were about to receive som new revelations.
They were about to get som new shocks, because under the inpetus, of the
G.I. Bill which opened the opportunity for millions of hrican veterans - -
returning veterans fmm World War I1 - - to go to college, and likewise as a :'
result of the GED examination program which had been developed during World War 11
by the Armed Forces Tnstitute, they were about to receive thousands and thousands
of college students who had terminated their educational program as sophornores
in hi.& school or jdors in hi& school, and they were about to learn that
m3.ny of these people were excellent students without
--
having gone the foml
educational route or without having demonstrated that they were in the upper
twenty-five percent of anybody's class. They wevle about to learn that bright,
mature people were going to demd of them mre quality in the way of teaching
in the next four or five years than tky had ever experienced up to that time.
Q. W b cawed seious constwmtion in &-at minds. I can remmber
that very clearly.
A. Well, maybe this is a good place to terminate today.
Q. At this point on August 25, Gerry and I discontinued the interview and we
will continue along the lines started heye this mrming when we get together
again on Friday Augusb 27. (tape turned off)
Q. This is now the mming of August 27, Frlday, and Gerry and I are continuing
our discussion. Il&e the idea that you suggested, Gem, of dealing with develop~nts
within certain periods, because their is an internal consistency and
that nukes it more manageable. And you were saying earlier this morning that you
would like to kick off this ~hase of the interview with a review of the ;ignif i-
cant happenings, th? things ihat were going on that had inp3lications for the
fiture, for the ultimate development [of] the system during the period 1
So if this is still agreeable with you, why don't you just start talking
any and all p&es of this period?
A. Yes. I would like to do it this way and I would like to repeat for
that this chronicle with regard to the j dor colleges in Illinois is on
being presented in nly perspective, the pempective [of ] Gerald Smith. who
have been on the scene, as we've already sad. In that period of tire--
mny instances I'm going to be talking about in terms of my perspective
be making references to more definite docwnentations that have been well
various dissertations and in various stories of the c m t y colleges a
not feel obligatbd to do that precise docmntation. I'm hoping that th
est of the story this way will be somewhat enhanced.
146 to. 1960.
about
?mpmis
t that's
happened to
.n
md will
done in
ld will
t inteul-

Gerald W. Smith 174
Q. Well, let me reiterate briefly, Gerry. We're not interested in tryi& to
squeeze a f'ully scientific, docurrented history textbook out of you, Wetye in-
terested in your perception and contributions; ineatably much of you
what happened in this period of time increasingly be- the inprint
Smith's thinking and values, and so it's exactly the way we'd like
A. ~swemvenowto1946-- the specific year with which I began ny &hronicaL
- - the junior college districts in Illinois were Joliet , Chicago, La Salle-Pe~n
Oglesby, (referred to as LPO), Morton at Cicero-Berwyn, uons at the Qoms
Township High School in LaGrange, Tnornton at Harvey, and Centralla. Tne newest
of those being Centmlia which had been established in 1941. ?.ne oldest being
Joliet which had been established in 1901.
As we move into 1946, the kinds of activities which we 're going to be speaking
about between that date and 1962 were already in mtion. As World War 11 was
propyessing, there was some stepped up activity and the records of the junior
colleges show that in the period of 1943-1945, there were many things happening
within the corcnnunity colleges and so, we begin in 1946 with these institutions
in operation and already having built up somewhat of a head of steam, which was
to be so apparent in the pelriod of tirne that we 're now going to be talking about
in the 3mediate post-World War I1 era.
It should also be pointed out that the four new cormunity colleges entered
the picture in 1946-1947, first as extension center of the University of Illinois,
but then continous institutions at Belleville, Danville, mgin and lkline.
This group of colleges - - the first name plus these - - are the heart of the
pattern of junior college organization in Illinois throw the period that we're
going to be talking about now. It was in the early 1960's that others begin to
appear on the scene. So this is somthing of the picture that we have.
Within the colleges themselves as we pick up this story in 1946 activity
was aonsiderable. Within the colleges there was effort without exception on
every campus - - oh, let me malce one insert here for the record. I intended to do
this earlier. I happen to find it sornewhat difficult sorneth~s to be clear as to
wb$ I'm talking about when I talk about colleges and you'll notice that when I
mde rw list it was by districts where as others discuss the college pattern by
district and some of them talk about it by campuses (I think that you will find
for example, - . all statistics put out by the Arrerican Assohiation of Junior Colleges
is by campuses.) On our case I need to point out then that I have listed the
districts but that in 1946, Chicago already had multiple campuses. They had
such campuses as Wright and Crane and Herzl and Amundsen - - they were a mult
campus district already to begLn with - - and frequently we need to do it. I
don't know whether 1'11 always be clew on that . . .
Q.
I'll try to help rednd you of this.
A. . . . but the fimt thing that was happening in 1946 and the predominant thing
that was happening in 1946 speciflically, was for the colleges to accomdate them-
selves to the enomus influx of the World War I1 vete~ans. mese new colleges
parrticularly were serving perhaps a huge portion of their enrollsnent in the form
of the returning veteran. At lkline where I was, as I recall it, of the two - ?
hundred and twenty-two people that we st-ed with in the fall of 1946, seventy-
five percent were veterans attending school under the G. I .Bill.
Q. At the Galesburg undergraduate division of the U of I that I was connected
with, starting in 1946, the first opening enrolbent in the fall of 1946, as I
recall, was about six hundred and some. And of that number, less than hplf were
not veterans. I

Gerald W. Srnith 175
A. Yes. !Re cormaulity college, that is, the already existing comnmlty
colleges probably didn't have quite those proportions, but they had a
significant proportion of veterans too. So, the colleges then had to diqect
their attention internally to the acceptance of the students and tk devqlop-
mt of their p r e v
to serve the needs and the interests of the studerjts and
there was a strong focus then, in 1946 on up to about 1949, in all the corrarmnity
colleges in relation to this new student who was on their campus. I'm sure that
there were scp~u?what comparable experiences tak3x-g place in the senior colleges.
It was a period of time therefore when the colleges began to expand $heir
curricula because they were sewing these people. It was a period of tine when
there was considerable discussion f'rom the outside interests and forces or
political and educational leaders outside the institutions themselves for a new
errphasis upon the so-called terminal program &thin the cormunity college.
Q. One small point here: at that point what contmls existed on ,the wishes of
a given institution to expand into a new area of curriculum?
A. It was almst entirely a local mtter. Yes, for several reasons. First of
all, at that tim the junior colleges had not yet been officially proclaimed a
p& of tk commn school system, which they had to be later on in order to
qualify for state fLu?ding. However, they were legally - - by 1946 - - they were
legally a part of the school district: they were all operated by public school
districts, and so they cam under a very general supervision of the Superintend-
ent of Public Instruction, but at that tim the Superintendent of Public Instruc-
tion was not focusing in any specific way upon junior colleges at all.
Q. Well, tkn this points, I guess, toward the subsequent development that
started in 1959, when Rober l3irkhber joined the staff of the Superintendent of
Public Instruct5on and began laying the ground work for this kind of control and
supervision. Well, I just thowt it would be userul to insert this here.
A. That's ri&t. Even the legislation with regard to the legal certification
of teachers was not clew in 1946, so, these institutions were operating pretty
mch as he-standing operations within the school, doirg about as they say fit,
with no particular strong hand saying this you can do and this you cannot do, or
this you should do. Of co~ulse, those institutions which were members of the
North Central Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools were subject to the
standards and criteria established by the North Central Association and so they
had that kind of a guideline to follow. But it was a relatively f'reewheeling
operation and the amount of regulation was not very pat. So, each of these
carpuses were doing what they pleased.
Q. So the veterans had an impact on the curriculum? What other kinds of impact
did tky have on the campuses?
A. Well, fmn 1946 until about 1950 they had, of course, impact on tk
and the enrollment of the c m t y colleges, but interestingly enom,
was a counterpart to that at about 1950, when two t
waves of veterans were throw the first two year phase of their e
were no longer in such great nutrbers on the campus - -
continued to corn for a long tim, but khe big wave had mved across - -
taneously in 1950 the hi@ school paduating classes were unusually s
they ~leflected the 1930 to 1934 depression birthrate.
the State be- to suffer losses in enrollmnt and the
reaction and internal reaction to this matter of think

Gerald W. Smith 176
junior colleges in the future right at the beginning of 1950 when actually the
enrollmnts were shrinking a bit. So the veteran had the impact of causing a
sudden increase in enrollments, but with a subsequent terrqorauy drop.
Q. This is a very vivid illustration of the point that at that tim the Junior
college or the c odty college was somthing for young people . . .
A. Yes, oh yes.
Q. . . . not what it is today.
A. That's &&t, it was for young people. I must point out again that in
this period of tim that I'm talking about, the developmnt of the occupational
program in the c odty colleges was very slow. I'm talking about somwhat of
an increase but, it was very small and as we came up to the study of the master
plan in the early--l96Ots that will be reflected W n..
Q. Well nobody really had been doing much of anything other than the purely
vocational work in the high school, I guess, had there along this line?
A: Not a great deal. And the second thing, of course, lyas that these colleges,
while they were rather flee to do what they pleased they were all operating with
very modest financial support. In some of the districts that were operating there
was no special tax rate for them; they were operating as a part of the school
district and their priority for hdfng was not the top- - the elemntw and
secondary schools and, of course, mst of these colleges were in townships with
cowty hi& schools - - the priority for mney was on the propam of the
elemntary or the secondary schools and particularly the secondary schools.
There was no special state f'unding for them. And so they were operating, so to
speak on a shoestring financially . . .
Q. Which had a restraining influence.
A. . . . yes, the amount of drive and enthusiasm that was present in the
superintendents of a few of these districts, such as Frank Jensen at IaSalle-
Peru, Oglesby, and Oscar Corbel1 at Centralia, and Hal 0. J3all at Belleville,
and Hugh Bow at Joliet. 'Ihese people were very enthusiastfc and they had a
great drive. Now they, of course then, were ajded and abetted by the deans of
whom I speak and at that tim som of the outstanding leaders were Leland Medsker . . .
Q. Excuse me just a minute. These four now, were these presidents?
A. %hew were superintendents of their districts.
Q: There weren't any presidents . . .
A. No, them weren't. SOE of the deans that were inthis picture were Leland
Medsker, the Executive Dean of the Chicago Junior College System, and P. H.
(usually referred to as Phil) Dolan at La Salk - Perm -Oglesby, and r Rowley
at Joliet, and Harold White at Morton, and Susan Wood at Joliet, and
at Moline (laughs) . . .
Q. I was wondering if you were going to include him.

A. . . . these are illustrative - - David Herfernan at Chicago, who was an
assistant to the dean - - these people and others along with them. Harold
Bid- at bolls you know, these people had great drive within the institutions,
but their great drive was not broadly shared outside their institutions and I
do not want to say that by dtting sorte of the colleges that there wereqft
others, you hw, just as enthused and working just as hard - - I just pitcked
up som of the names that were prominent in the news. Great credit must be
given to Frank Jensen and to Oscar Corbel1 and Hal Hall and som of those
people in that pmticular period of t5.m who were @?eat spokesmn for the college
and lad magnificent pyound work for things that were to carry on mre definitely
in the . . .
Q. I'm awf'ully glad that you put this list together, Gerry, because this is
very irrrport;ant. Now therefs one other aspect of this - - what we% generating
- - that I'd 1Lke to mention. Should I just throw it in now? And you pick it
up whenever you want. In terms of the impact of the veterans. Now here the
veterans were mture no-nonsense guys for the most part, som gals, bright, storgly
motivated. They wanted to get through; they knew pretty much what they wanted.
What kind of impact did this lmge of the student, or the character of the student
body, have on the faculty, on the quality of teaching, on the curricular organiza-
tion and this sort of thing?
A. Well, I would say that it had a very pos1f;ive impact upon the attitudes of
the faculty, junior college teachers and I'm sure senior colleges, but certainly
the junior college teachers were sort of thrilled with the experiences that they
were having with the people who were enrolling in the junior colleges and with
their attitudes toward mking academlc progress. It was a very positive impact
upon the college.
Another thing that was happening particularly in the early part of this
perTod that I'm talking about therefo~, was a rapid advance in the consolidation
of efforts among the representatives of these colleges that were in existence at
that the. In sq~port of the Mher expansion d$ the Illinois system, the
further expansion of the offerings of the codty colleges, and the improvement
of legislation as a sound base on which this could be done. There was a certain
feeling of frustration, a certain feeling of sore helplessness in the late 1940's
and early 1950's because ofthe absense of statutes as a legal base in which to
work . . . (Ehd of tape)
ElVD OF TAPE: SIDE 2
A. When representatives of these colleges talked with menbers of th
they were frequently confronted with the problem, "Well, I'm certain
in the junior college, I think it ought to expand, but before we can
very much to help you, we have to point out to you that we need legi
which to do it.'' And then the question of who is going to give the 1
whether it is going to come out of the office of the Governor, is it
come out of the Illinois School Problems Co~ssion, or is it goi
from certain key legislators who just pioneered individual bills t
General Asserbly. These were all mtters that requi~d help. We fo
going to the Attorney General from time to tim in order to get le
1

Gerald W. Smith
Q. Who is "we?"
A. The group of people in Illinois Association of Junior Colleges. I
rKight say that when I speak about groups' efforts, all eff0Y.t was direct-
ed throu@ the channels of the Illinois Association of Junior Colleges
which was already well organized, and a functioning group. The Attorney
General s opinion had to be sought from time to time, the opinion of the
legal counsel for the Superintendent of Public Instmction had to be sought
mm time to time, and even there, there was occasionally a little frustra-
tion since the Superintendent of Public Instruction was a constitutional
officer, while the Attorney General took the positon that he only answered
questions raised by the Superintendent of Public Instruction. The school
districts got their answers from the legal counsel to the Superintendent;
and you had these kinds of things that had to be dealt with. But at any
rate, these were the purists. None-the-less, within the institutions
themselves, as I say, there was a growth, although there was a tempormy
drop, but the growth was slow, it was not rapid or dramatic. There was
some expansion of the programs. There was a great deal of discussion about
expansion, but more discussbn than expansion taking place at that time.
And I would say that within the institutfons themselves, the leaders, the
superintendents who were particularly active in the area, all of the deans
in the community colleges, and many faculty members moved ahead with p a t
resolution, with great optimism; at no time did I ever see any faltering
in $he effort to promote. And I think there was a general feeling that it
was just a matter of tlme until the junior college, by some method, received
the kind of recognition that was going to make it the kind of an institu-
tion that mamy people had been saying for fifty years that it ought to be,
There was this genepal optimism although, as I say, from day to day or one
general assably sepision to the next, considerable frustration on the part
of the people who were moving ahead.
4. Well, actually it was an idea whose time had come a long time before,
at the time of the land grant colleges; hawever, the land grant colleges
never got around to applying this idea to the domain of people. This is
what the cormunity colleges stand for.
A. Yes. Then of course, in the early 1950ts, the scene began to change
in the eyes of the outsiders, as well as in the thinking of the leaders
within the institutions. And this was because of the population explosion
of the rfdd and late 1940 Is. Then we began to move into the early 19501s,
having already been overwhelmed with the sudden increase in population at
the klndergartedp~mary level; witness the situation where cormnunity after:
codty, for a five or six year period, played catch-up, in tern of
physical facilities and teachers, etc. Tnen as that began to hit the
secondary schools in the early 1950ts, and to have tremendous impact by
the middle 19501s, then the junior colleges were able to get the ear of
some of these outside influences that they needed by pointing out to them
that the elementaq situation impact caught us by surprise, that the
secondavy thing didn't catch us quite so much with surprise, but
mde it necessaq for us to work with tremendous speed and that it w
now time to be thinking about what was going to happen in the early 1
when that wave of population growth began to corn out of the secondar
schools, and in the face of statistics showing that the college going
was tncreasing year after year. So in the 1950's this began to have
178
Y
60 s
rate

Gerald W. Wth 179
bearing on people's thinking, and I think made it somewhat easier to get
the attention of the leaders. Now, talking about some of the outside in-
fluences . . .
Q. I can't resist making one coment here: isn't it astounding how difff-
cult man finds it to learn f'rom his experfences?
A. (laughter) Yes it is, that's right. In some of the outside influences,
as the colleges themselves begm to be more and more aggressive with regard
to this mtter of state financing, they found a certain opposition to their
ideas from the external forces; e.g., the presidents of the teachers colleges
were somewhat reluctant to see a new category of finance get in at the
state level. Whereas itdeologically they spoke in favor of the junior
college--I think without exception, as I recall each one of those indivi-
duals--in the early 19501s, they were not supportive of the idea of state
fund- for the junior colleges because in those days they did not envision
a larger percentage of the state revenue going to higher education. They
thought there would be relatively less money for them if the junior colleges
entered the picture.
€2. That was a dominant thread that ran throughout higher education during
those years.
A. Yes. As I say, ideologically, they were in favor of the idea, but
they were not happy to see this kind of thing coming. Some institutions,
like the Illinois @lcultwal Association which later became a strong
supporter in the early 19501s, were not very much in favor of a great ex-
pansion of the jmlor colleges because they saw it as bringing an increase
in the local property tax. I use them as an illustration; certainly they
were not the only one. There was a great deal of ground work to be done
in the early 1950 s as the interest began to develop in expansion of the
junior colleges and as the State began to address itself to two things:
the rapidly growing population moving through the elementary and secondary
schools at that the, and the increased college going rate, and the inpact
of the changes jn technology which demanded more and more post-high school
education. As they began to address themselves to those ratters, it was
an interesting thing. So that if you look at the records of the legislative
years of 1943, 1945, 1947, 1949, 1951, 1953, 1955, 1959, right on up to
that period of time, in those legislative years, without exception, the
junior college picture had to be faced by the members of the General
Assembly. And there was an escalation in the amount of discussion relating
to the junior college in each successfve biennium, or the ones I have
named, and an increasing nLrmber of bills passed and signed. Now, I am
talking about small nunfoers, but at ayr rate if you look at it, every
succesive biennium, there were more bills, there was more discussion and
whereas maybe one yea?, one bill would pass and the next biedum, t
bills would pass, and so on. The mtter of the fhanci81 support
state f'unds to a junior college was a subject of consideration in
one of these successive legislatures that I am talking about, but
lieve ft was in 1955 before the ffrst state finance support bill
in the General Assembly.

The School Problems Codssion which was a codssion of the General
Assembly, or is a codssion of the General Assembly that has been in
existence for mamy years, changed its attitude in the early 1950's from
the late 1940's. In the 1950's it changed its attitude, I think, on the
basis of what they were observing happening in the elementary and secondary
schools, to a lack of support if not opposition. (laughter) Representative
Charles Clabaugh of Champaim, who was an outstanding educatioml
leader in the General Assenbly on behalf of the elementary and secondary
schools and who served a nuher of ths as the Chairman of that Codssion,
became increasingly an advocate of inclusion of the junior college as a
part of the school, and he gave it considerable effort. Representative
Branson *om Centralia, whe~e there was a college that had been established
in 1941, became a strong spokesman in the legislature on behalf of the
junior colleges and was one of those pioneers who had to go through that
unfortunate experience of session after session introducing bills only to
find them passing one house and dying fn the next, or passing both houses
and failing to get the support of the governor. But this was the kind of
thing that was happen% in the State.
The Illinois Association of Junior Colleges was growing stronger, biennium
after biennium, in this period of time as the result of its work and ex-
wrience. Of course, it matured with every two year experience it had in
the leglslatwe and one would find in the &cords of that association,
nherous significant resolutions that were passed, position types of re-
solutions which were used in the promotion of the junior college idea in
the State.
Q. Where might those records be of the Association of Junior Colleges?
A. I am not positive and I w ill have to give that to you, and the reason
that I have to say that is that even though I should know, personally, I
don't know exactly where the records were deposited when the Association
of Junior Colleges became dormant three or four years ago. 1'11 have to
find that out.
Q. If you could, I think this would be an important thhg to get in here
A. They do exist and they a m in fact sanewhere.
Q. I don't want this to divert you fran where you are proceeding here,
Gerry, but I do know this: that the result of thfs ping and increasingly
intent interests in the comdty colleges, in the junior college
idea, which ultimately kept ~ ~ i upon n the g legislature and the governmental
processes here in Springfield, for'fundFng and for authorizatiion,
for decisions about haw to do this and how not to do thfs and so on, resulted
in building up pressure within the legislature, particularly &s I
have gotten the stories, which finally led to the creation of a p
fessional body which became the Board of Hi&er Education and
the system of systems, in order to provide leadership for the
ment and to provide insulation between state govemvllent and these o
pressure groups. Is that essentially correct?
7
A. Yes, that's correct and that leads me to speak about another rno ment

Gerald W. Smith la
that was taking place in the 1950's that had a bearing on the junior
colleges. That was the creation of the Higher Education Conmission, in
1954.
Q. Who created it?
A. The legislature. It was a creation of the General Assenbly* It wa,
of course, an outgrowth of several things. It was an outgrowth of the fact
that the agenda at each successive session of the General Assembly was getti%
heavier and heavier with new mtters pefiaining to higher education, the
state colleges and universities, as well as the junior colleges. It was
also due to the fact that the key people in the General Assembly and the
leadership in the governorls office recomzed that ahead were problems
in the expansion of the system of higher education that were comparable to
what we had already been experiencing in the elementary and secondary schools.
In 1954, we were just in the great wave of the expansion of the secondary
education, and so this was visible. The other point, of course, was that
what was happening here in Illinois was only a part of a national picture.
So anybody who attended national conferences, who read the literature that
came out of the significant and impor%ant journals that were related to
this had to be awwe of the many signals waving as to what was ahead. In
1954 this Higher Education Corrm-iLssion was created and charged with the
responsibility of studying the higher education picture in the State and
of making recommendations with regard to higher education. It so happens
that on that cornnission were people who were later on to be called on to
do a good many things. Dr. Richard Brown who was to become the first Exe-
cutive Director of the Board of Higher Education later on, was a member
of that first cormnission, and so wepe other outstanding leaders. Some of
the presidents of ow universities were members of that conmission.
Q. Do other names come to mind readily?
A. No, but 1'11 fill them in on the transcript of this, rather than hem
and haw here right now. The Cormnission did work from 1954 to 1957 and
submit its report in 1957. Without going into the details of their report,
because their reports are a matter of record and have been noted by a number
of other people, let me summarize that statement, or this part of it,
by saying that in 1957 the co~ssion recmnded that serious study be
given to the expansion of Qdor colleges across the State. They even went
so fw as to suggest twenty-one geographic centers, specific geographic
centers in the State by name, again not recommending that a junior college
be put there, but recomnding that studies be done about the feasibility
of junior college establishment with that particular place named as: a center.
At that time I was Superintendent of Schools at Elmwood Park and, interest-
ingly enough, the conmipion recornmended that Elmood Park be one of those
centers. ' (laughter) Now the Triton College that later on came into exist-
ence, is the college that serves that part;icularr center. ?"ne other Interest-
ing thing is that Wade Steel, the Superintendent of Leyden Kgh School at
that time, imnediately brought together the board members and the superinten-
dents--I was at Elnmood Park then and our Board was one of them. We inme-
diately began the very early steps of a feasibility study in response to
the recommendations of the Conmission. That's what ticked off the early
discussions that subsequently led to the establishment of Triton. Agaln,
it ls interesting to observe if you look at those twenty-one names, haw many

Gerald W. Smith 182
of the present systems of community colleges are established with those
cormmities as the centers or the focus.
Q. It isntt surprising then?
A. No, it isntt surprising, of course, because as you go across the State,
places like Moline, Quincy, Peoria and Springfrield obviously become population
centem with highways in and out of them. At any rate, there were
twenty-one that were specifically suggested as sources of study. Now,
subsequent to that Co~ssion then in the last two years of the decade, 1959
to 1961, a second higher education comnlssion (by the way on the tramscript,
1'11 put those dates In accurately) was established and of course it did its
work building on the reports of the first comnission. It was out of the
work of the second conmission that the Board of Higher Education was subsequently
established, but that is in next time period. One can well
imagine the Smpact of this corranission of distinguished legislators and educators
and lay citizens working, particularly in 1954 to 1957, holding meeting~
throughout the whole state, and holding what really amounted to hearings
and letting people come before them and appear. The news coverage of
their various meetings and the coverage of the report, stimulated the
junior college development and discussion about the junior college. I would
say that, by the time the Coxraniasion finished its report in 1957, most of
the foot-dragging or opposition of five yeam before, had either disappeared
or significantly lessened. It was a continuing move toward a more positive
attitude, towmd the expansion of the junior college.
Then, likewise the legislature began to be more open to the improvement of
legislation so that both in 1957 and 1959, pieces of legislation pertaining
to the junior? co-llege were added to the statutes in Article 13 of the School
Code, which did sevwal things. First of all, they identified the cmmty
colleges as a part of the comnon school system while before this legislation
had simply been permissive-a boa may do it. There were pieces of legis-
lation passed to which I have already referred that made it possible for the
district to hold referendums for the establishment of their college and to
set tax rates fop the establidxnent of the junior colleges, and then by
1959, a statute which made it possible for any compact or contiguous
area to organize itself as a separate legal entity, a junior college dis-
trict corrrprising a school district or several school districts or parts of
federal school Mstricts, so on, or any compact and contiguous mea. By
1959, that kind of legislation passed the General Assembly; and I go back
again through all of this, the people now with much greater support, the
people who were a backbone of all of this, were the leaders in the Illinois
Associatfon of Junior Colleges.
Now I want to add some more names, because as we move through the decade
som of these other people came into appearance. Robert Birkhimer, who
was the Dean at the corrPnunity college in Centralia, became well known; and
when George Wilkins took office as Superbtendent of Public Instmction in
Jmw, 1959, he recruited Bob BiMlmer as his staff member for junior
colleges. Bob 'therefore, moved in and was the f'irst full-time perso in
the office of Superintendent of Public Instruction whose responsibili 'es
were on behalf' of the junior colleges. During this period of time, H ard
RawlPnson at Mount Vernon, became an active member. Out of the Chic i

Gerald W. Smith 183
picture emerged a serles of strong leaders. I think I have already referred
to Leland Medsker, but in the early 1950's Leland Medsker left Chicago and
went to Califormia and subsequently became one of the outstandhg national
figures in the junfor college movement. His successop was Peter MasXko,
who became the Executive Dlrector and a strong force in the junior college
movement in Illinois, and who subsequently becm and still is President of
Miami Dade Corrarmnity College in Florida. Then, through the 1950's we had
these people: I have referred to David Hefernan, who was in the Chicago
system. He was a strong person in that field and he hter moved to the
Office of the County Superintendent there where he continued to give strong
support to the mvemnt. Over at LaSalle-Peru--Oglesby, Frank Jenson passed
away in the early 1950's and F. H. (~hil) Dolan, who became his successor
as the Superintendent of that district, having been Dean of the college, be-
came a stronger and stronger leader throughout the period. At Belleville,
Ken Edwards had moved into the scene as the Dean of the Belleville Junior
College; Ken was subsequently to become the president at Illinois Central
and a strong leader. Gil Renner, Dean at Elgin, grew in strength in the
state system. I think I have already mntioned Harold White at Morton.
Nene McClintock moved into Moline when I moved away from there. IQ
successor at Moline, Dwight Davis, became the Dean of the junior college and
became active. Soon thereafter, he became the Superintendent of Schools
and appointed Gene McClintock as the Dean of the junior college who also be-
came an active worker in the state wide system, subsequently moving to Cen-
tralia where he continued to perform. Charles Monroe in the Ckricago system,
who was a dean in the Chicago junior college campuses--the longest par% of
his career to be at Wflson College campus--and who subsequently wrote a
splendid book entitled, Profile of the Community College, was a strong leader
(I have been using it as a textbook for the last three years).
Again in rry transcript, if I think of other names I'll add them. These
people now were added to those that I have already named, and among those
I've already named of course, all of those except the ones who died or
passed away, continued to give their great supporSt to the junior college
movement. Interestingly enough, in this decade of the 1950 ' s , of which this
is the big body of time I am talking about here, this block of time I am
talking about was not a period of time of formation of new colleges. It
all happened In the 1940's and again in the 196o1s, but in that period of
the 1950's it was a period of discussion, a period of dialogue, of laying
gmundwork, of planning, of continued push by an increasing nwnber of forces
that were interested in the expansion of the junior college; but in terms
of the establishnt of new districts, it was not a fruitful decade.
Q. It was fortunate that there was this time to collect one's thoughts and
ideas and clarif'y and arrive at some agreement.
A. Yes, that's right. Dwling this period Wthe 1950% other leaders
became evident, too; e.g., Vernon L. Nickell in the Office of the Super-
intendent of Public Instruction became increaskgly interested In the junior
colleges and while he did not appoint a person responsible for that, he did
make monies available to advance the studies with regard to the jdor
colleges. One of these was a study done by Colm Griffith at the Univer-
sity of Illinois was for many years the strong spokesm on the university
campus on behalf of the junior college system in Illinois. If you will
look at the programs of the

Gerald W. Smith 184
he was an invited speaker at some of their meetings Fn the 19501s. But
the book that Colemn Griffith wrote was really a product of this gmwing
discussion and focus on the junior college development.
Q. Do you recall the title of the book, by chance?
A. It has a title, and again 1'11 put it into the transcript; at the moment
I am somy to say I don't.
Q. Do you remember the year in which it appeared?
A. No, Ill1 get that too. He did this in conjwlction with the Superin-
tendent of Public Instructionls office.
Q. Did the U of I press publish it or did OSPI?
A. I believe the U of I press, but again 1'11 get it. You had this kind
of help and support going on. I believe that I have said enough to give
the flavor of what was going on in the late 1940's and thmu the 1950's.
That brings us up to the place where we have state finance as a regular
part of the support of cormunity colleges and to where we have considerable
increase in the legislation, where the General Assembly even went so far
in 1959 in that specific act to give school districts with a population
in excess of 25,000 the authority to establish junior colleges as a part
of their school system by resolution of the board, and to give smaller
districts wttth populations of above 10,000 the authority to create such
districts by referendum, if they saw fit to do that. And then with the
follow-up work of the second hi&er education codssion at the begidw
of the 19601 s, the result of all of this was that as we entered the 19601s,
so mueh had happened in the way of the populat2on explosion, so much had
happened to increase the percentage of the population paduating in high
school and the annual increase in the going rate of colleges, that the
time had come that the General Assembly was ready to pass legislation in
the area of higher education to accomplish several thing. First of all,
to continue the planning and studying and to provlde for planning and
studying on a continuous basis. Secondly, to create an agency in the
State which would operate not only as a planning and study agency for all
of higher education, but as a regulatory voice for higher education, and
which would be one single voice so far as the governor and members of the
General Assembly were concerned, and an agency which would be directed to
do some specific planning imnediately. So, the result was that in the
1961 session of the General Assembly, the legislature passed a bill creating
a state board of higher education.
Q. Was it called the Illinois Board of Higher Education?
A. Yes, creating the Illinois Board of Higher Education, as a state agency
whose responsibility it was to plan for higher education, to coordinate all
higher education activities, to take a firm hand with regard to capiQal
development on the higher education campuses of the State, to
pursue certain regulatory powers over the development of
the system, and specifically, to write a master plan for
The junior college story then becomes more significant

Gerald W. Smith 185
pzaphrasirg that act of 1961, they said that in the development
master plan the board of higher education, in addition to giving
tion to the public universities and colleges, should take into
interests and needs of the private colleges and the junior colleges
Q. This was written in as part of the mandate?
A. That's in the mandate regarding the master plan. That's in the para-
graph that deals with the madate to do a master plan. That law was passed
and signed by the Governor, and the Board of Higher Education became operative
on January 1, 1962. That brings us then to the end of the t3-1~ frame
of 1946 to 1962, and perhaps in a good place to stop.
Q. This has been a very thorough and a very interesting and a very coherent
discussion, Gem, one of the best that I have ever heard.
A. Everything I study or look at, I look at in tern of historical perspec-
tive, as it happens.
Q. That's very unusual, most of us don't bother with this kind of thing.
I kind of have this tendency, too.
A. I don't womy, therefore, so much about the vicissitudes of a particular
one or two year time period. I am inclined to say, what you do is you
look at what happened In a decade or what happens in a quarter of a century,
which gives you a sense of direction. It was this kind of base that mde
it possible for me in 1965, 1966, 1967, when I was traveling over this state
two or three nights a week, addressing audiences with regard to the development
of the college syst$m, in response to questions about were we going to
support this, etc., simply to say that all I had to do was look at the history
of the General Assembly for a fifty year period and be willing to say
that at no time had there been any evidence the General Assembly of Illinois
had ever failed to suppo~ its corranitments.
Q. Of course.
A. The measure is where you go and I feel pmud that I went around the
state in 1965, 1966 and said that, because when I visit almost thirty-five
completed campuses, costing 3/4 of a billion dollars, I think the legisla-
ture has lived up to its cornnitmnt, even though there have been many hues
and cries became they didn't get quite as much as they wanted. Or when I
look at the appropriations in suppo13 of the total enterprise and the growth
of the enterprise in terms of enrollment, in terms of expansion of propam
and all of these things, it has been supportive.
Q. You have had this view for a long time, haven't you, Gerry?
A. Yes.
Q. Where did it originally come *om?
A. I think it came out of an approach to historical reading that I some-
how or another developed. I don't know how; I couldn't quite answer that.

Gerald W. Smith 186
Q. No, I'm sure that you couldn't. I wonder if this ability to see
things in the perspective of time is not one of the sources of your
hwr and the ability to contend with all kinds of conflicting force
yowl ability to adapt to many different circumstances.
A. I think it really grows out of that. To do what Jack Rossiter, dhen
I was in Elmwood Park, used to say to me, "I'm always mazed at how dou
can roll with the punches. "
Q. All the time, throughout your narrative now, you're going in one direc-
tion; it's consistent and I wondered whem this canes from.
A. As I said, I'm sure that it is something that I couldn't tell you when
that happened or how it happened. At any rate, w reading and my studying
and w thinking all m in that vein.
Q. I have a hunch that there is a pretty direct connection between that and
the expression of confidence, the expression of satisfaction which you voiced
several times in our conversation about the kind of educational background
that you, yourself, have. The vmiety, the scope, the liberal education
you got as an undergraduate rather than as a . . .
A. Again, when I say that lfberal education--I never became a Greek scholar:
I never became a political science expert, or any of those things. I think
the whole basic push of the liberal education idea fosters that.
Q. That's q judgement, too. The people who have undergone a liberal edu-
cation or a liberalizing education, can become the narrowest kind of pro-
fessional or specialist you can imagine. So, it is not a ma'cter of sub-
ject matter, but it's a matter of what . . .
A. When you take for example the Ph. D. who becomes a professor, he my
have lost most of the benfits of his liberal education by the time he gets
his doctorate .
END OF TAPE 10 SIDE 1
Q. This is being recorded at Gerry's and my first afternoon session. Gerry,
good afternoon, sir, it is good to see you today.
A. Good to be here again. On the previous side of the tape, we were discussing
the period between 1946 and 1962. We addressed ourselves to a nunber
of subjects within that period of time, and I find that I made a misstatement
of fact which I would like to comct. As we were discussi~ some
of the characterist~cs of that
+
period, the observation was made by. me,that,
in the 1950ts, there were no new junior colleges established in Illinbis;
and then we comented a little bit about it. I find that that was not
true when I look at r t ~ fact ~ sheet; and therefore, I want to correct tpe record
now. This much was tme; there was a nine year interval between the
establishment of the four colleges at the end of Morld War 11, in co ection
with the University of Illinois Center program, and the next co ity
I

Gerald W. &nith 187
college. But, that nine year period was not all fn the 195OVs, there was
part of it in the 1940's and part in the 1950fs, so these are the f3cts.
In 1955, Mount Vermn Cormnunity Hi@ School added a junior college 40 its
system. In 1957, the Bloom Township High School at Chicago Heightsi
Illinois, by referendum established a junior college In their diatrjct,
and in fact, built a small building to accomdate it, and that is pro-
bably the first structure ever built in Illinois for the sole purpose of
serving a cmunity college program.
Q. Well, that's interesting.
A. Yes. Then in 1959, the Canton Public School System added a junior
college progmn in their cormnmity. So there were those three that came
into existence in that decade, and I correct mself in this statement.
Q. I notice you have a complete, chronologically m-ed roster of the
cormunity colleges, together with certain information about the higbli&ts
in the development of the different institutions; I do hope, very much, that
you will be able to have this thing typed up, Gerry, because this will be
a very valuable . . .
*6
A. Yes. 1'11 have this inserted h the manuscript somewhere, a complete
docurnent on that chronolo@cal record. As a matter of fact, that already
exists in a somewhat different form in the third biennial report of the
Illinois Junior College Board. I had done it just before I left the State
Bo& in 1970. But Dr. Wellman, when he came here, thought it was impor-
tant enough to include it in that document. It is to be found in a few
other places, but it is in that third biennial report. I would like, swce
we have divided our time period, 1946 to 1962, to put in to the record here
four more colleges that came into existence during the period 1960 to 1962.
The were Wabash Valley at Mount Carmel in 1960, Southeastern at Harrisburg
in 1960, Freeport in ig61, and Olney in 1962. -These colleges were estab-
lfshed during that period in connection with the public school district.
Q. There was a lot of activity in this longer pepiod, then, actually?
A. Yes. Actually, if you take the period 1946 until 1962, there were
seven colleges in that period that came into existence; and there was
discussion of others going on in the State also.
Q. I want to ask you one thing about the Bloom Township Hlgh School. and
the building of the college, the creation of the first college and. the
building of the first building. Was A1 Martin there at that time? Did
he have to do wfth this?
A. Yes, A1 Martin had things to do with that. He was the Dean o
at the high school; he had been a teacher in the Bloom Township H
for a considerable period of time, and then was assigned as the d
the comnunity college when it was established, and worked with it
I think, again, to make the record totally complete, with regard
establishment of districts prior to 1962, I'd better add this to
I believe that I have already noted that the General Assembly pas

Gerald W. Wth 188
in 1959 which provided for the establishment of independent junior college
districts, and the first communities to take advantage of that law were
the Moline, Rock Island, &st Moline; and then in 1961, by public referen-
dum, the first separate or independent junior college district in the State
of Illinois was established, to be known as Black Hawk.
A. In 1961, the referendm was held in 1961. This college took the name
of Black Hawk; and it, of course, absorbed the existing kline Cornunity
College which had been a part of the Moline School District since 1946.
!The boundaries of that district were the Rock Island School District, the
Wline School District, each of which were unit districts; but, in East
Moline, it was only the city of East Moline that joined that comity
college district. The interesting thifg was they had a separate high school
district, United Tomhfp High School, which was considerably larger than
the city of East Moline, but was not included in the original corrnmunity
college organization. I guess they were not certain that those neighbor-
ing areas were ready for this yet. Black Hawk then became the first separate
or autonomous distrikt under the authority of the 1969 law, by action of the
voters in 1961.
Q. What is the legal entity--Black Hawk hat?
A. In those days, Black Hawk Junior College was the legal name.
Q. Black Hawk Junior College District?
A. Yes. I believe, however, that they elected to call it just Black Hawk
College, popularly; officially the legal name was Black Hawk Junior College.
I n-dght say that it began operation by virtue of the law, a new district
established under a referendum that became effective the next July 1. So
on July 1, 1962, the Board of Trustees that had been elected in preparation
for it, officially took over, and that was the end of the Moline Corimmlty
College as such, because it was absorbed into this institution.
Q. Now, at one point in our last conversation, you reminded us that you
had not yet saLd anything about the leaders in the private higher educa-
tion circles in relationship to the developmnt of the junior college system,
and you wanted to be sure to touch on that today. Maybe this is a good
time for that.
A. Yes, I should do that and it would be a serlous omission not to address
ourselves to that topic, for several reasons. First of all, so far +s the
junior college development in the United States goes, which is a phe
prhwily of this century, we have to note that the early
the early leadership was much more rapid in the private
than it was in the public; e. g., by 1920, there were
colleges in the United States and there were more than
of private junior colleges, and it was not until
that the enrollment in the public junior colleges
ment in the private dmn.
4
Now the private dodn moved more rapidly. I don% tow that it fft

Gerald W. Smith 189
here, but now that we are talking about it, I'll comnt on it a little.
We have to remember that William Rainey Harper was the real catalyst,who
got the junior college thing going by his organization of the Univerdity
of Chicago into a j dor and a senior division; he also advocated very
strongly the development of the private junior college and was a strong
advocate with regard to many of the smll private colleges that had grown
up in the United States in codties of 5,000 to 10,000 people. It was
the observation of Dr. Harper and other leaders of his t- that we were
approaching the day, with the continued rise of the public universities,
when these small private colleges in small comnunities were going to be
adequate, and so many of them were encouraged, in literature and in public
speeches from platforms or in educational meetings, to consider doing one
of two things: either dropping off the junior and senior year and operating
and concentrating all of their resources on the first two years, or dropping
off the bottom two yews and concentrating only on the upper division. Dr.
Eels, in his book on the junior colleges which he wrote in 1930, describes
that in considerable detail and refers to it as the process where he said,
some advocated amputating the legs of the upper division or decapitating
the institution and having only the lower division. Monticello College
at Godfrey, Illinois, which had originally been a private female semhary
started in the fiddle 1830fs, established itself as a private junior college
in about 1897 OF 1898, and in some literature, is listed as one of the first
private junior colleges in the country; and it operated that way until 1971,
I believe it was. A number of colleges did it, but it wasn't a universal
thing; but the impact was such that either through the reorganization of
some of the smaller private colleges or the creation of new ones, the
development of private junior colleges in the first thirty yews of this
century, or almost thirty years, was more rapid than ever. This was true
in Illinois; we also had it. But now to come back to what is more perti-
nent to nly story . . .
Q. I am so glad you threw in side-glimpses like that, because most of us
are not aware of it or stop to think about it. I knew, for example, that
as our mlgmtion mved westward and as c o ~ t l ewe= s established, about
the first thing they liked to establish was a church, and the second thing
if they could possibly swing it was to establish a college, and so there
was hundreds of them established .
A. Yes, we had a nwnber of codties in Illinois, towns of 3,500;
Abingion, Illinois, Aledo, Illinois, just two illustrations that had pri-
vate colleges; and, of course, by the time of the l93OTs, if they hadn't
already gone out of existence they were just about forced out. It was this
type of institution that had been encouraged to think about this thhg.
At any rate, when I entered the junior college picture in 1946,
junior colleges were a very sigdficant part of the junior colle
in Illinois; as were the private senior colleges. I believe,
enrollments still outnumbered that of the public universities.
they were sizable, and the Illinois Association of Junior Coll
association of both the public and the private; and the voices of
in the private junior colleges were just as strong as those
junior colleges, and in much of the planning and thinking and lead
that was evident between 1946 and 1962, the period we are talkSn@;

Gerald W. Smith 190
and of course, even before 1946. I use that because that is when I be-
cam aware of it.
The leadership of those private colleges was very significant in I1 Y inois.
Dr. Canar, the president of the YMCA College in Chicago, was and stall is,
a strong leader in junior colleges. Raymond Dooley, who for almost a quar-
ter of a century was president of Lincoln College at Lincoln, Illinals,
one of ow fine private junior colleges, was a strong leader. He w* pro-
bably president of that association more than once; I rernerher him ace,
but he might have been in office more than once. The president of EGendall
College, whose name slips me at the moment, was a leader among the junior
college people; I use these as illustrations of the kinds of leadership.
They participated in the total 10%-range planning for the junior colleges.
Q. me last the we talked about this, you mentioned some of the private
university people. Did you wmt to include any of them here? For instance,
last time, you spoke of President Holrnes.
A. No, Holmes was at Northern.
Q. I see. You were fishing, I guess, for the name of the president at
Bradley at the the?
A. Yes, and since then I have dug som of them out. (Pause)
Q. You were going to mention or name some of the private educators.
A. Yes. I have already named some of the junior college people. President
Van Arsdale at Bradley University, for example, was a leader in this move-
ment at the University of Chicago; he was on their college education staff.
Dr. Reavis, who was a strong voice in the junior college movernent there.
I can't think of his name right at the moment, but the Dean of the College
of Mucation at Northwestern, was frequently included in the meetings.
Again, I will try to get that name.
Q. I think you mentioned Sharvey Wmbeck?
A. Yes, Shwvey Vmbeck, presfdent of Knox College was another one of the
people who was in support of the junior college studies.
Q. We have pretty well cleaned up the period of 1946 to 1962, except for
the loose ends which we have mde note of as the session went on. Now, I
think we are ready to go on into 1962 to 1965, is there some reason why you
pfcked this period?
A. Yes, this rather short but specific time period is set up here in order
that we may address ourselves to the period in which the first mastep plan
was written by the Illinois State Board of Higher Education, which wqs the
work and the report on which the junior college act of 1965 was based. I
think therefore, that that period of time should be spoken to, speci ically
with regmd to the statute which directed the master plan, with rega to
the work on the rnaster plan and then, more p&icularly, upon the re omen-
dations that were published in the mter plan in 1964. t

Gerald W. Wth 19 1
Q. I agree, they certainly deserve a very,-.ary careful examina'cion,
*my.
A. To introduce this topic, I am going to read from the document entitled,
"A Master Plan For Higher Education In Illinois, " dated July, 1964. As
I indicated Chapter FOUT of this document details the plan for the junior
college system as it was created by the legislature in 1965, and we are
leading up to that point In this particular part of our narrative. I be-
lieve that the backpound statement of this document is a good place to
be&, and now I am going to read these statements.
Q. From what? fiom the foreword?
A. From the topic entitled, "Backgr~und,~~ and I am going to read a13 of
it. Let me point out also that this language was written by Dr. Richard
Browne and Dr. Lyman Glenny. Richard Browne was the Executive Director of
the Board of Higher Eklucation; and Dr. Glenny was his associate. "More than
a century ago, the State or Illinois made a cormitment to provide higher
education at state expense to semre the interests of the cormonwealth and
its people. In addition to providirg direct benefits to students, hi@er
education contributes positively to the cultural and physical well-being of
all the people of the state." This is a quotation &om one of their basic
asswnptions. "These goals are achieved through ~tmction, both of youth
and adults, through research aimed toward the advancement of lmowlew, and
through public semTSce activities which bring the special competencies of
higher education to the citizens in their home comities. Pursmt to
this co~trnent, the General Assembly has enacted legtslation establishing
state universities, has provided financial assistance to public two-year
colleges, the Chicago teachers colleges, for scholarships for superior
students, and has otherwise promoted the well-being of the state thmugh
higher education. During the last two decades, the legislature has emphasized
the necessity for coordination and planning. In 1943> the General
Assehly created the first of several study cormissions for this pur_aose.
Other studies were established in 1950, in 1954 and in 1957. Finally in
1961, the General Assembly established the present Board of Hi@er Elducation
as a permanent, coordinating, planning agency. The Board's statutes
specifically require the preparation of a knster plant for Illinois higher
education, taking into account the various roles that can be performed by
the public dver8Ztf es , the non-public colleges and universities, the
two-year colleges, public and private, and other educational enterprises.
The plan described is comprehensive in scope and 1s designed to point the
directions to be taken up to 1975 or later. ?he plan will be subrriltted
to the General Assembly in 1965, along with specific recomndations for
legislation to rrake it effective. The statute also provides that theiB~ard
shall, in the future, continue its planning studies and reconmend,
time to time, such changes in the master plan as we considered dgxirab3e.
In developing the master plan, an activlty which has involved the Board,
its staff, and scores of special advisors throu&out the period from the
smr of 1962 to the present, the Born was significantly aided by the
studies of the ewlier study corrsnissions, particularly the cormnission headed
by Major knox C. bhr, 1954 to 1957, and that headed by Fred W. Heitm,
Jr., 1957 to 1961. The Board was also aided by the planning experiences
of other states, especially California, Texas, Florida, Nebraska, Wisconsin,
New Youlk, New kxico, and Utah."

Gerald W. Smith
It is to the events that took place and the studies that were developed
in the period between 1962 and 1965, as spoken to in this quotation
have just entered here, that I want to address wself, with regard
1
t
participation, rny observations, and perceptions. I feel that I ne d to
do this particularly because we realize that it became an important art
of my life in 1965, as the executive officer of a state board to imp ement
the act that did occur. I would like to address myself to the thi that
happened with regard to the work of the codty college bo&, wPth regard
to the reactions of the junior colleges in the State in that intervening
period, and to make some observations with regard to the final action
of the Board of Higher Education on its recommendations.
Q. I think this is very fine, Gerry. You were getting rapidly into a
position where your perceptians, your understandings, and your knowledge
and your values could influence these developments, and therefore, it is
very fmportant that these things be brought out. Because, after all, what
we are concerned with here on these tapes, is the contribution of Gerald
Smith.
A. We may need at this point to restate n2y vantage point during that period
of time, First of all, I was the Executive Director for the Illinois Asso-
ciation of School AMnistrators, and of course, the school districts
were very much interested in what was going on. Secondly, I was providing
a state secretariat, and at least in the eyes of the Junior College Asso-
ciation, I was almost their executive director; and so I was in continuous
operation with them. Then, in addition to that, I served on one of the
study cdttees-that were invblved in this study to which-I will. speak in
a moment or two. So my vantae point was with all three of these activities.
Q. I think this is just splendid, Gerry; because as I then begin talking
with Dick Browne, Bob Berkhimer and Eldon Lichtg, then we will be getting
other perspectives on these sanze developments. !This is great.
A. To get this thing moving along, on January 1, 1962, the Board of Higher
Education created by the act of 1961, began to f'unction. They irnnediately
hired Dr. Mcharrd B m e as their Executive Director, and soon thereafter,
he selected Dr. Lyman Glenny from the University of California at Berkeley,
who had already been involved in some impofiant national studies with regmd
to higher education in this country, to come as his associate. These two
men, then, were the official staff members of the Bomd of Higher Education,
and on whose shoulders fell the talk of developing the master plan which
was mandated in the enabling act, as well as serving as the executive offi-
cers for the mard in the ongoing business of the Bard.
Q. Now Dick took office on the first of January, 1962?
A. Yes.
Q. Do you remember about when Lyman cam on?
A. I'm going to say about March; it was soon thereafter. As indicated
in the passage I just read, these two men had the master plan project in
progress by mid-summer, and so for all of the last half of 1962, all of
1963, and on up until July, 1964, when the final draf't was added, this
I
192

Gerald W. Smith
project was in motion.
In order to get the project going, these two men put together several
statewide co~ttees of selected people to work with them. One of these
was a Citizens Advisory Committee of considerable size, with a goodly n m
ber of people, some members of the legtslature, some members of the newspaper
staff, som of them heads of statewide o~anizations, etc.; a very
able group. They also put together a Faculty Advisory Cormittee repmesenting
all classes of public and private colleges in the State; that is, mainly
the universities, the colleges and the junior colleges-public and nonpublic.
They put together a Presidents Advisory Cormnittee, again representing
all facets of the higher education hierarchy in the State of Illinois.
In addition to that, they established ten rnaster plan study codttees,
mde up of people nunbering anywhere fYom seven to ten, or so. These
comnittees worked on the following subjects or fields: college enrollments,
admission and retention of students, faculty studies, collegiate program,
research, two-year colleges, extension and public services, vocatianal-tech-
nical and adult education, physical facilities, and Illinois financing of
higher education. The cormdttees in each case were chaired by an indivi-
dual who had some special expertise and unusual interest in the particular
area of study by that codttee; and then they tried to fill the cornnittees
with people who represented the various facets of higher education in the
State. Let me give you just one example. I served on the Study Commfttee--
H, whose reponsibility was vocational-technical and adult education. Our
codttee and who was the Director of the Vocational-Technical Institute -
for Southern Illinois University. The other members of ow cornnittee were
G. M. Am fmm the University of Illinois, Glenn Ayre of Western Illinois
Udvemity, Neal Duncan of the Chicago B od of Education, Kermit Johnson
who was on the cormnittee only half'way through its work, but he was the Dean
of the junior college at Bradley University, Gil Remer of the Elgin Comity
College, and Gerald Smith who came in as the Fxecutive Mrector for the
School Administrators and working Tor the cormunity colleges. The others
were much like that in composition.
Q. Simon, what was his position?
A. Ernest J. Simon was the Director df the Vocational-Techdcal InstZtute
of Southern Illinois University. He had been for maYly years, the Vocational-
Technical Director in the State Board of Vocational Education. He left
that office to become the Director of the Vocational-Technfcal Institute
at Southern Illinois University, when it was established.
Q. Am, what was he, a chemist?
A. Yes, he was in a technical field.. I have forgotten his specific title.
Q Glenn Ayre?
A. Glenn Ayre was in the vocational education program at Nestern Illinois
University; and Neal Duncan was in the central vocational education office
in Chicago. Kermit Johnson, I have already identified. Gil Remer Was
the Dean of the Elgin Community College.

Gerald W. Smith 19 4
Q. And Gerald Smith?
A. Yes, and I have already identified him.
Q. You didn't quite say, and it might be premature to go into it in $ome
depth, but as you look back now on the composition of this particulm
group which was concerned with vocational-technical education, and in view
of the developments which have occurred over the past fifteen to twenty
years, were the right view points represented on this comnittee?
A. Yes, I think the right view points were represented. By the way, each
one of the study cmnlttees submitted a docment; there is a separate report
to the Board of Higher Education under Committee A - B - C - D and under
this topic. I have occasionally read the reporSt that we wrote, and I feel
that the repolrt that we wrote was quite adequate for what the Board of Higher
Education needed. I must say that as we were doing it, I was not always
certain; sometimes I wondered if we had all of the right people on th~t
cormnjttee, but as I look at it in retrospect, I think we came up with a
pretty good report.
Q. I wouldn't want to question the report, but what I do miss here, and
I speak now as someone who was not actively involved in these matters at
that tim, but who came into them under rather different circumstances
starting in 1970 in the State of Illinois and that is that the academic
crew--the non vocational-technical and nan-technical fields, were, It seems
to me, seriously under represented; that it might have been a good Idea, in
the interest not only of preparing a report, but in the interest of educat-
ing other seglnents of the post secondary educational establishment if some
deans of arts and sciences and some big professors of English and some
philosophers and others could have been in on this?
A. Well, I suppose that was possible. You might, when you are talking
to Dr. Browne, raise that question. I think Dr. Browne would feel that
they were getting their voice into the picture on another corrmietee; md
addressing themselves to it. One of the things again, although our pwti-
cular role here now is to focus primarily on the junior colleges, you must
remember that as comoittee members, we were addressing ourselves to whole
fields of the master plan which was the junior and senior colleges, public
and private. I think Dr. Browne would rationalize that on the faculty
cormnittee, the liberal arts people were heavily rep~esented; that on the
collegiate programs, they were there.
A. I am sure they were there; but you see, the liberal &s people, the
liberal education exponents at the universities still do not how how to
talk to these technical fields.
A. It may have been I don't how; we weren't at any rate.
Q. No, I am not faulting anybody, but hindsimt is always better than
foresimt .
A. Moving ahead, then, with this kind of an organization, the studies pro-
ceeded through 1962 and 1963, with the &rafting of the tentative report in,
I believe, January or Febmary, 1964. Wng the period of the study that

Gerald W. Mth 19 5
was in progress these cormnittees met regularly. The resource people
for these study cormittees included quite a number of people. First of
all, either Dr. Glenny or Dr. Browne met regularly with these comnittlees.
They carried an enonnous load. Their staff provided the secretaria1;ser-
ace for these cormnittees, so that regular minutes of the cormnittees \were
kept and were distributed during the period of time the study was go&g
on. The cormnittees as they worked along, each of course on its own
schedule, brought before them a vwiety of people that could discuss these
subjects under study. In our cormnittee, dealing with the vocational-techni-
cal and adult education, we brought into ow cormnittee representatives
from the educational field, representatives from the occupational and voca-
tional fields themselves, people f'rom state agencies that were related to
this kind of thing, who sat in with us in our discussions and who made pre-
sentations to us.
Q. I suspect that in most of the other cornnittees followed this same
pat t em?
A. Yes, it was a similar pattern. I am sure that, given the fact tht they
each had a different chairman, the particulm direction my have been a
little bit varied. I think it was a farly common direction.
Q. It sounds to me, that it would be fa* to say that the work of tk
co~ssion and these corrnnittees really represented a depth assessment of
the thinking and wishes and ideas and concerns of pretty much all of the
people of the State of Illinois. Is that putting it a little too strongly,
you think, Gerry?
A. No, I think this is quite fair. Again, when you look at the total
make-up of all those study cormnittees, and you find people that had been
active in a11 facets of education, involved in them; e.g., I have talked in
the past about the wovlk of the Illinois Cwriculwn Program that got started
in 1947 and was gobg on. You'll find among these studies names, particu-
larly of lay persons of various corrnnunities throughout the State, appear-
9ng on the roster of these study groups. These people had all sorts of
interesting backgrounds; and so the study progressed.
In addition to that, 2. Glenny particularly, so far as the junior college
facet of this study was concerned, was meeting periodically with representa-
tives of the junior colleges, discussing w as of study that were going on
with regard to the junior colleges, cormnenting on them, rral-chg observa-
tions about them, sometimes disturbing them; he was vlsiting corrmnmity
colleges, he was attending conferences at junior colleges, he was meeting
with them in a vaety of settiw in order that he had a twc-way discussion,
hewing from them and they hearing from him. I would say that the work on
the master plan had a fairly high level of visability during its progress,
particularly among people in the educational institutions. I don't know,
since I wasn't totally a lam, how hfgh that visibility was, except let
me say that there were periiodic newspaper =ports and stories on what was
going on.
Q. I can give a little testinx,~ on this; I was back in the State of Illinois
in those years. I came back in 1959 and was in Chicago at the University
of Chicago, so I was in a good position from which to see these things,

Gerald W. Smith 1%
to get the impact of the news media, through the attendance of
of these comnittees, as Lyman Glenny or Dick hwne, of various professionalmeeti~
that occurred in Wcago and elsewhere where
The thing is that it was very vlsible on the horizon and I
pretty mch sensed the significance and the scope of what
END OF TAPE: 10 SIDE 2
Q. As I was saying at the end of the other tape, it was this high vfsi-
bility and great sense of importance that not only mst have airrated the
participants in the study or the people actively engaged in it, but the
waves of importance and the significance of what was happening here in
Illinois spilled out all over the country. All those of us who were not
dlrectly involved in it felt this, and I think this is what helped feed
the tremendous vitality that the higher education system in Illinois has
shown in these intervening years.
A. Tne Master Plan as submitted in the winter and summr of 1964 swnnarizes
the major features of the Master Plan, which has come to be known later as
Phase I of the Master Plan because there are subsequent ones with nwnbers.
It can be found on page 19 of the document entitled, "A Master Plan For
Hi@er Fducation In Illinois, The Illinois Bow of Higher Education, July
1964,'' and it would be helpful if the . . .
Q. You woUd like the transcriber at this point to insert this into the
document.
A. This swra~ary reports the total Master Plan which addressed itself to
all phases of higher education in the State-junior, senior, public, pro-
viate, etcetera--whereas from here on we will be speaking more basically to
that one section of it which had to do with the development of the junior
college. The plan was presented in draft form in Jan- of 1964 and for
the next couple of mnths, or somewhat longer-about three months, I guess--
it was the subject of a series of public hearings across the State where
mny people appeared to respond to the proposals in the report. At the
conclusion of the hearings the staff then, Dr. Glenny and Dr. Browne, re-
viewed the trawcripts from the public hearings and then submitted a re-
vised draft of the proposal to the Board of Higher Education with such
amendments as they thought were wise. I might say it is interest* that
one of the features of this document, which is a series of recomndations
in the field, include at the end of each chapter comnts by Dr. Glenny
and Dr. Browne as to ideas that had been submitted to them different from
those contained in this docment, and why they are there. By the way, in
some cases it was simply a basic rationale. It might not have been parti-
cularly different. In some cases them was a corrnnent on every idea that
had been presented, but with reasoning behind these particular ones qo that
people in reading this document even now not only see what they recornend-
ed, but they can read the comnents and be aware of some of the discu$sions
that had taken place, on what might have been different features of Uhe
plan. It is a short document, but it contains a lot of material.
i

At this point I would like to make a statement with regard to the monu-
mental task that was taken on and performed by DY. Browne and Dr. Glmny,
because the total pmfessimal staff of the Board of Higher Education in
that period of time consisted of those two men. They, with some secre-
tarial help, did the job, of course assisted by many people on the outside.
But I think that these two men need to be complimented, they need to be
cornnended, they need to be praised for a nmber of things. They need to
be praised, first of all, for the directness with whdch they went about
their task at the beginning of 1962. They need to be cmnded for the
involvement that they brought on the parts of all facets of the Illinois
comunity, educational and lay, on this project. I think they need to be
praised for the open-mindedness with which they worked and the frankness with
which they woulked. I think they need to be credited with having fo&itude,
because on those things about which they had strong convictions, they stood
their ground and, in my own ju-nt, in most cases, as I think back on the
dialogues we had a couple of times . . . I, being on the other side with
regard to them, that they were men of considerable wisdom. They had a
national perspective. !!hey had a statewide perspective that turned out to
have been a very valuable contribution to the development of a master plan
and to the recommendations which were made.
Likewise, I think the members of the Board of Higher Education deserve com-
mendation, again because they did work with patience, they did work in an
open-minded frame of mind, in an open-minded setting, and again, they were
a board that when it was time to act, acted with definite procedures and
with convictions. I just think that Illinois was very fohunate to have
had Er. Browne and DP. Glenny as the people directing this study and to have
had the Board of Higher Education that they did have at that time, and that
they always have had, really, performing this m3mmoth task and doing it well.
Q. It is splendid that you put this in here, Gem, and I thank you for
it. I was trying to recall as you were tam%, the name of the man who
was the chairman of the Board of Higher Education.
A. Ben Heineman was the chaimnan of the Bomd of Higher Educatian from its
creation in 1962 until 1969. As you know, he was a very able chairman of
the Bard. He was a brilliant man, a lawyer; he is a brillfant man in
business. He is a brilliant man, an officer, and I believe the president
of the NoY.thwestem Railroad, a leader of many public cormnittees and cow
missions, and always one who works with distinction.
Q. Well, this is the irrage that I saw, for instance, at a distance in
the work at the kard of Higher Education and the people in it, and this
was a national image that was cast. I left the State of Illinois again
in 1965 and went over to- Ohio and it was .so. obvious that this was the ten-
ter of gravity and this was where the real dynamism were. It must
been a remarkalbe experience and I have often envied you people
part of it.
Well, you and I both have been very laudatory of the work of the Bo of
Higher Education and the people servhg it. Was it really that perfe t,
Gerry? Were there no faults, no criticisms to be voiced?
d
i

Gerald W. Smith 19 8
A. The report of the Board of Higher Education that was published in
1964 grew out of debate and discussion and controversy. In laudatory
remarks I was not trying to indicate that everything had been all light
and all pretty poses, etcetera along the way. The debates had been strong
and sometimes bitter and I might say that one junior college president in
Illinois, who at that time was superintedent of a district, developed such
a strong feeling against Lyman Glenny as a person that he has never forgiven
him.
Q. Oh, really? (laughter)
A. No, I don't want to give that impression at all. There was much con-
troversy and as I say, the total Master Plan included nwrous compmmises;
especially that section that dealt with the establishnment of the state
system of community colleges. It was very controversial. I w ill point out,
for example, when we get into the narrative, that even the first draft of
the act which was written and which passed the House of Rep~esentatives
in its initial form was so much a subject of controversy as to its appli-
cability among the junior college people that, in fact, in the Senate it
was almost totally rewritten. (laughter)
Q. Well, in any event, as your narrative takes you along in the develop-
ment, it provides you an opportunity h m
time to the to comment . . .
A. It seems to ITE that rr~y observations with regard to the act and qy dis-
cussions about the various features of the act could perhaps more xnem%ng-
filly address themelves to some of the dialogue and differences that went
on.
Q. Very good.
A. . . . as we relate to them, realizing that sane of these diferences had
surfaced as early as 1962 and 1963. Byt sanehow or other I have a feeling
that it will be more meanFngful if we know what it is we a~ talking about.
Q. There Is another little aspect here and that is, you and I sitt- here
today in 1976 have quite a few yews of history to look back on in order to
make our judgments.
All right, Gerry, now introduce us to the c odty college aspects of the
Master Plan then if you would, please sir.
A. All right. I am going to do this again in two the fmmes. At thfs
point I am goirig to describe the recomeridations with regard to a state
system of junior colleges as contained in the document entitled, "A Master
Plan in 1964." When I move to the next t% frame, beginning in 1965, I
will recite the Public Junior College Act that eventually emerged based
on these recomndatione.
Q. Oh, I see.
A. And both of these will require a look at some of the arguments and
debates that took place. So at the moment, I am talking about what

Gerald W. Smith 1519
Dr. Glenny, Dr. Browne, and the Board of Higher Education produced in a
document dated July 1964.
A. With regard to recognizing the junior college-this is only once chapter
in the document, altho* I must point out, the references to the junior
college are Fn other chapters, too. What was proposed in the Master Plan
Fn 1964, in a series of recomnendations, was the creation of a state system
of junior colleges. Let me read f~om Recommendation Nwnber 30. I am
going to read part of it and paraphrase part of it for econov of time.
Reading first: "Recommendation Nmiber 30 ~f Chapter 4 Public junior colleges
be separated In an orderly fashion from the comon schools and becorw a
part of the state system of higher education. The first step to achieve
this be the creation of a new board of nine members to be known as the Illinois
Junior College Board with the responsibility for planning and coordlnation
of programs, services, and state aid for the public junior colleges."
And then under that recommendation they had subtopics dealing with the corn
position of the Bawd, the general powers and duties of the Board.
And, then, Recomendation Nwnber 31: llThere be established a new state
system of junior colleges, each to be locally initiated, and administered
under the general supervision of the Illinois Junior College Board." And
then they had subtopics in the Master Plan for the establishment of these
districts regarding the powers of the local district junior college board,
the power of the Illinois Junior College Bowd, the financhg of capttal
construction for the new junior colleges, the operational finances of the
junior colleges, and some miscellaneous comnts.
Reccomendation Nwnber 32, the third in this chapter: "Existing junior
colleges retain their existing status without penalty. l1 I might say that
was a subject of controversy--what was meant by "without penalty. " And
then, Recomendation NWer 33, the fourth in this was, "That in ord$r to
expedite the transition of existing junior colleges into the new sta e
system, the General Asserhly provide that the area conprising the cofmon
school district now supporting a junior college be a separate junior college
support, if any, and that it continue for the new district." And then they
had some conditions and ideas as to how that would be done.
Now, that was the substance of the Master Plan, actually in four single
paragraphs. They laid out a plan to create a system of junior colleges,
make them a part of the state system of higher education, divorce them then
from the comn school system, provide for state planning, coardinatm,
and to a certain extent regulating board, provide a scheme by whtch a
district should be established and financed for capital operating puqposes,
addressed to what was to happen to the existing junior colleges.
the rest of Chapter 4 dealt with their comnts with regard to the j or
colleges. These had to do with comnts on the rationale for separa ing
them f'rom the common schools and putting them in the higher educatio 1
pmposal. That was really the primry one that they saw fit to comm nt on,
although certainly that wasn't the only one in which there had been, or
was to be In the futwe, considerable controversy. T-