Feature: MSU's Oral History Project for the Sesquicentennial

            To help preserve its history, MSU has launched an ambitious project to record the recollections of key university figures.

            Planning for MSU’s Sesquicentennial year began much earlier than 2005.  One of the groups charged with those early discussions realized that emeritus professors and retired staff at MSU since World War II were dying at a rate of 50 persons per month.  Also, several prominent, long-time administrators died in the late 1990s and, unfortunately, they were never interviewed in any systematic way.

            The university has had several key faculty in its history since the centennial in 1955 who have used oral history in their research, notably Maurice Crane, the emeritus director of the G. Robert Vincent Voice Library at MSU; the late professor Justin Kestenbaum, who taught Michigan history courses following the retirement of Madison Kuhn; labor historian Philip A. Korth, emeritus professor in American Thought and Language; and Lisa  Fine of the history department who has done creative oral history work interviewing former REO workers in Lansing.  At the same time, there has been no major formal program, until now, to record and preserve the oral histories of many faculty, staff, students and administrators at the university.

            MSU began the move toward a formal institutional oral history program when a longtime friend of President M. Peter McPherson died during the summer of 1997.  The president was concerned that with his friend’s death, a large part of the university’s institutional memory had died with him. 

            President McPherson asked the university Provost (now the current university president, Lou Anna K. Simon) to begin to explore the idea of an oral history program to be available for the 2005 commemoration.  The Provost directed the Vice Provost for Libraries, Computing and Technology, Paul Hunt, and the director of the University Archives and Historical Collections, Fred Honhart, to begin planning and assess the feasibility of the new institutional oral history project.  At the outset, there was a great concern in wanting to “do it right!” 

            The first step was to bring to campus three consultants from the Oral History Association and a day-long planning session with them in January 1998 provided a framework for beginning.  Also at this planning session were those who might be involved in any formal written histories of the institution, the university archivist, the head of the MSU press, a representative of retired faculty who would constitute many of the interviewees, and some MSU faculty with oral history experience.  This consultation with outside experts proved essential in convincing the administration that a significant oral history of the university would be a major undertaking and require a substantial commitment. 

            The untimely and unexpected death of former university president Walter Adams (a key potential interviewee) demonstrated the need to begin the MSU Sesquicentennial Oral History Project as soon as possible.  The Board of Trustees approved the project in July 1999 and we began interviews in the Fall of that year.

            The first interviews began in mid-November 1999 and there were some significant scheduling problems that we had not anticipated.  Mostly, the retirees were so active in their retirements, that it was somewhat difficult to find time for them on their busy calendars to do the interviews!  However, when they did begin, we regularly scheduled several per month in order to be on track toward completing the first phase of the interviews.  Honhart and I both conducted many of the interviews, although each of us conducted interviews independently.  Frank Manista, then an English graduate student, assisted with preliminary biographical information and research about the interviewees and his work aided in developing questions specific for each interview. 

            Instead of full life histories, we asked for summary background to start out on their personal and educational experiences and focused the rest of the interview mainly on their public career at Michigan State.  This emphasized the institutional history as much as anything and helped establish rapport with the subjects. 

            Most of the more than 100 interviews we have conducted so far have lasted between one hour and three hours with the majority closer to two hours in length. The range of interviews is between 45 minutes for the shortest and seven hours (over two days) for the longest interview.  There will be paper transcripts of the interviews along with digital copies on disk and a paginated interview index.  Eventually, these transcripts will be entered into a database that will be fully searchable and ideally all digitized in some way to provide quick and easy access to the open interviews in the MSU Archives and Historical Collections. The volume of transcripts is now almost 7,000 pages—and growing—and the number of interview tapes is expanding rapidly, presently totaling just over 350 hours of tape.

            Interesting patterns are beginning to emerge in the interviews.  Respondents recalled a vibrant and rapidly expanding place that Michigan State was in the late 1940s and 1950s.  The 1960s were a watershed in many respects marking the end of the university’s great physical expansion under President John Hannah and the rise of student activism questioning the U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War and especially the role of MSU in the U.S. intervention there and in other parts of the world. This surprised many faculty and administrators from the post-World War II era.  The status of women faculty, staff, and students changed greatly during the last 40 years as well as the increasing numbers of minority students and the addition of more international students on campus.

            The resignation of long time university president John Hannah in 1969 signaled the end of an era in many respects.  Almost all of MSU’s subsequent presidents served 7 years and then left.  Former President McPherson broke this pattern when he served 11 years. President Simon in her first 100 days in office has seen some significant events, especially in athletics when both the MSU men’s and women’s basketball teams made it to the final four in their respective NCAA tournaments. She has always been a champion of women’s athletics on campus and often attends sporting events.

            Here are the summaries of a few, typical MSU oral histories:

DR. GWENDOLYN NORRELL

            The last half century has seen many changes in women’s athletics on campus and some important interviews have documented this change in particular.  Dr. Gwendolyn Norrell was particularly candid in her interview on 22 November 2000, just a few years before she died.  She reflected on her early years in Arkansas and how she came to Michigan State as part of the Counseling Center in 1945.  She said, "One thing about the university during the early years when I was there, this was a very flexible university.  You could go into units without anybody ever worrying about am I treading on toes and all.  It was cooperative.  If it's a job to be done, let's do it!  You just never felt like there was any 'me-ism.'  At least, I never felt that."  Among her most proud accomplishments, she recounted her experiences as the author of the tests and work in the Alumni Distinguished Scholarship examination program and also in her role as a mentor for several of the early teen scholars who attended the university in the 1960s.

            In describing how she came to represent Michigan State in the NCAA, she recalled her meeting with Dr. Edgar L. Harden this way:

            "Dr. Harden was president at that time. . . .He called me one day and said he wanted to see me and would I come over.  I went over.  I've been in Ed's office lots of times, talked about lots of things, nothing very serious, but we had a lot of fun together.  And he said to me would I be interested in becoming the Faculty Athletic Representative?  'To the Big Ten?' I started laughing and I said, 'Whom have you talked with about this?'

            He said, 'How did you know I talked to anyone?'

            And I said, 'Well, knowing you, you would have, because somebody has to ease the way.'  

            These were my words, 'If you just dump me in there on these men, they're going to have a heart attack!'

            He started laughing, and he said, 'Yes', he'd called Wayne Duke, who was commissioner of the Big Ten at that time, and talked about it with Wayne Duke. . . . so Harden named me faculty athletic representative. . ..and I was the only woman [faculty representative] in NCAA in those days.

            So, now, you know, you have to learn--I told you I was always supported.  Men were always supportive of me throughout this university and always were good to me and helpful to me.  I was taught, early days, that you have to be political on campus.  People don't think a campus is political.  My god, it's the most political place that I know anything about!"

            Toward the end of her interview that day, Dr. Norell just beamed and smiled with great satisfaction when she recalled her induction in 2000 in the MSU Athletic Hall of Fame.  I asked her how she felt when she heard word of this honor and she replied:

            "Well, you know, I said to somebody, I said, 'At my age—in football lingo—I'm in overtime!'  And I said, 'To be in overtime and get a touchdown is really glorious!"  [Laughter]  I really appreciate it, and I'll tell you why.  When that was set up at the university, I said to one of the committee members who was a lady, I said, 'For god's sakes, make sure you get women in there.' And she said, 'Gwen, I'll try."  She came up to me a couple years , three years later, and she says, 'You don't know how hard it is to get a woman in there.'  I said, 'Yes, I do know how hard it is to get a woman in there!". . .Somebody was pushing me.  I don't know who it was, obviously.  I was deeply honored and very humble at receiving the award, because I never expected anything like that at all. “

DEAN GWEN ANDREW

            A native of Wisconsin, Gwen Andrew became the first female dean of the College of Social Science at Michigan State in 1975 following her service as acting dean since 1974.  In her 13 March 2000 oral history interview, I asked her about what she liked most concerning her teaching and she replied, "Oh, I like to show off, so it's always fun to teach, although teaching is hard work.  I think people who haven't done it don't realize how hard a work it really is. That's one thing, though, as a dean, I always tried to teach at least one course  a year, just so I knew what was going on.  If you didn't do that, you didn't know what was going on in the classroom.  So I used to like to do that.  I happen to think big lectures, by the way, are as good as small classrooms."

            When asked to describe MSU, she said, "I certainly think it's a good place, obviously, or I wouldn't have wanted to stay.  It did well by me, and I hope I did well by it.  It's a place that has been on the make quite a bit.  It's had a tough time because of [The University of] Michigan.  As somebody once told me years ago, every time they started to move something up at Michigan State, they'd look up a hill and it's like a sand dune, and the U. of M. is up there throwing a bucket of sand down."

BLANCHE MARTIN, D.D.S.

            Blanche Martin was born in Georgia and he was raised in River Rouge, Michigan .  A star athlete, he was recruited in both basketball and football by "Forddy" Anderson and Duffy Daugherty and played beginning in 1955.  He excelled as a student in his studies in math and physical science and chose to become a dentist as his professional career.  He went to dental school at the University of Detroit and one of his professors there was John DiBiaggio. He set up his office in East Lansing  and Dr. Martin was the first African American to be elected to the Board of Trustees at Michigan State University, taking office in January, 1969.  He served on the MSU Board for the last year of President Hannah's term, through, Presidents Adams, Wharton, Harden, Mackey and was instrumental in recruiting John DiBiaggio as president.  As Dr. Martin described it:

            "I was a prime mover for John, because he was a teacher of mine when I was in dental school. . . I introduced him to Biggie and Duffy, we had a great time. . . .  As a matter of fact, I didn't want the other board members to know, because at the time there were at least two or three of my fellow Democrats who were not happy with me about something.  I knew if they knew I was supporting him--they didn't care who it was, he was done."

            His sixteen years of service on the MSU Board of Trustees is one of the longest in university history.  At the close of his interview, Dr. Martin  mentioned an additional area where he saw significant progress while he served on the Board.  He said, ". . . .I was instrumental in trying to accomplish things to do with minority affairs.  Minority enrollment, minority hiring, and all that.  I was really involved in those kinds of things." 

FATHER THEODORE HESBURGH

            In one of the most interesting interviews in the project so far, Dr. Honhart and I had the opportunity to interview Father Theodore Hesburgh, Emeritus President of the University of Notre Dame at his office on the South Bend campus on 6 December 2000.  Although most people associate the paramount relationship between MSU and Notre Dame on the gridiron, we began the interview after the standard biographical questions with a series of questions about Father Hesburgh's close personal friendship and working relationship with President John Hannah during their service together  on the United States Civil Rights Commission.  President Dwight D. Eisenhower appointed both university presidents to serve as part of the six member commission sworn in at the White House on 2 January 1958.  Recalling their work, Father Hesburgh commented, "On the commission, John was kind of laid back, but he was very, very effective, and he was very committed to achieving civil rights opportunity.  Mainly we were focused on blacks in this country. . . .John was firmly in control. . . . John was very good with the witnesses, he was very good with the people in opposition, which were just about anybody of any power, and all white, of course, in the South.  What we were up against, we soon found out, was rather disturbing.  One, there were over six million blacks who were not allowed to vote in the South.  There  was not a single black kid in a school that had whites in it, as students or teachers, from the Mason-Dixon line South, thirteen states in the Confederacy, plus most of the border states went the same route.. . .We knew that six million of them couldn't even register to vote, which was our main role as we started out.  As time went on, John expanded our role, legitimately, because we were interested in human rights, generally.  So that we covered really the area of voting, education, housing, employment, [and] administration of justice."

            Eventually, our questions did get around to football but that day the responses to those questions just didn't seem as important as the issues we had been discussing.  Father Hesburgh's assessment of President Hannah and Michigan State was a memorable one when he said:

            "John was kind of a mentor.  We were both university presidents during this whole time.  He was a model of how to get tough things through a committee.  He probably was used to working with a committee of trustees at Michigan State.  He used to regale me with some of his problems there.  But he was a guy that had great vision, and I think he took a place that was little regarded, and in a matter of fairly short time made it one of the first-class universities so that he could stand up with the University of Michigan and say, "We're as good as you are.'  Michigan had a lot longer time in history, but by golly, I'd say today, you would have to say, there are some very close calls, if you compare the two institutions."

            The university’s sesquicentennial year has created an enthusiasm for the project right now that is very encouraging.  At the end of each interview, we come away with five or six new names of people who really can add much to the project.  We are trying to develop some strategies that will provide for a larger pool of interviewers to meet the growing demands.  It seems like the ideal venue for upper level students and graduate students to be able to assist with some of these institutional oral histories as part of their studies in state and local history or in an oral history methods class.  This may develop in the next year or two.  Recording individual voices from the university community through the sesquicentennial oral history project will provide a vocal testimony that supplements the rich written records associated with the history of MSU during the last 50 years.

Jeff Charnley, Ph.D. ’83, studied at MSU under Frederick D. Williams and is currently associate professor in the Dept. of Writing, Rhetoric and American Cultures, where he has taught since 1985.  In the last 20 years, he has taught more than 4,000 students about oral history.  He is past president of the Michigan Oral History Association and is active in the national Oral History Association. 

HOW YOU CAN HELP WORTHY INITIATIVE

            The MSU Oral History Project is a priority for the University Archives and Historical Collections in the Campaign for MSU.  You can help MSU record and preserve MSU’s history for the future by donating to the project.  Contact Belinda Cook at (517) 432-6123 x137 or cookbp@msu.edu.