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St. Patricks day seemed to be a popular time for the students as well as the
faculty to celebrate. We painted Chemung Street green and one of
our students found a bath tub on the curb that was out for junk and we painted
it green and we had a parade down Chemung Street in a green bath tub.
And that became and annual event for a few years until the local police thought
maybe it'd be better that we not do that. And the Marlin farmhouse was owned by the
college. It was part of the college property when the
land was donated by the Houghton's. That at the time was Bob Chapmins home and
he was on sabbatical in California and there was *** Slowty, Lester Rosenbloom,
and Joe Cambridge were living there.
They were all single so you know what kind of activity was going on.
They decided they'd rent it to the two of us and probably looking back they
shouldn't have. When they were building the campus here, no
matter when I came here you know there's one person that I observed walking
this campus, Mr. Fred Parsons. The gentlemen would walk this campus, he had
a big old hat with these furry flaps on it but he never had it tied under
his chin and this thing would whip around in the breeze, like so and he had a
long heavy winter coat and these black rubber goulashes over his shoes and
he'd just be traipsing all over this thing.
And you could see in this man how proud he was to see what was going on here.
After I was named library director Henry Miller's "Tropic of Cancer" was
finally printed in this country. The city of Corning was going to ban "Tropic
of Cancer" I probably guessed that ten people in the whole city had ever
even heard of the book. Dr. Jack Martin, took the bit by the horns,
he went right out and bought a copy and put it here in the library.
We had to have it because it was a censorship thing so I found someone in town
who had it and we got it. Gunars loved tennis but Gunars was a straight
arrow kinda Dean, ya know, beat the five kinda guy.
We wanted him to play tennis with us. We went into his office and I said, "Gunars
we want you to play one day a week." And he wouldn't hear of it because that would
not be the proper image for a Dean to leave half and hour early.
He said, "I have too much responsibility here." I called the president's office, Don Hagan,
and I told him that uh, Ed Herman and Joe Hannock, and I were totally unsatisfied
with the job that Gunars was doing and we wanted a meeting.
We walked in and the president said, "Oh, I'm in real trouble now.
What do you guys want?" Don sat at the end of the tabe and we started
off and we were trying to keep a straight face.
Whenever he'd see a division chair and a couple of senior faculty come in, he
begins to worry. You see the lights come on in his eyes and
he says, "You're talking about tennis." He was so glad that we were not after something
too serious he agreed to this. Don said, "Absolutely, he is going to be required
to play tennis with you." We told him we had a meeting in East Corning
at the Criminal Justice Facility, had him in the car and stole him.
That was the start of it and that was the nice part about playing with Gunars.
I mean he was my boss but ya know, it's like playing golf, ya know you get to
know people on a different level. And when you have problem you can sit down
and talk and come to a solution that's agreeable to both of you.
And I told my students, "I'm gonna fight through the snow and the ice and the
rest and I am going to be up this hill and I'm gonna be here, you be here too.
Don't come in late, be here on time, blah blah.
And especially for exams, don't you miss one of my exams because you have to
come up with some incredibly good excuses that are verifiable if you wanna
take a make-up from me, so don't miss my exams. Well, you know what happened of course the
day of an exam, eight o'clock and I overslept and I got up here about nine o'clock
and I was very embarrassed about all of that.
So I did miss a class. It was in the seventies and we were permitted
to smoke at our desk at that time. And she had emptied her ash tray and she's
sitting there working and typing and says, "Oh my gosh it's so hot in here I can't
stand it." And kept on working and pretty soon she said,
"My gosh it's hot." When all the sudden flames come shooting up
out of her waste paper basket. We made a bet on the presidential election
of nineteen sixty-eight. It was a real silly kind of a thing but the
bet was this, if Hubert Humphrey won he was going to push me around campus, wheel
me around campus in a wheel barrow. If Richard Nixon won I was going to wheel
him around campus in a wheel barrow. And of course the rest as they say is history.
Nixon won, I had to wheel him around campus in a wheel barrow and of course all
the media covered it, the newspapers took pictures and it was on the news on
television. And it rained the day we did this it was raining.
The first ever spring weekend with alcohol. The party was going to take place up on the
soccer field where we had stands we had bands coming in and it snowed.
It snowed two inches that day and we had to move everything into the Commons
where our security just fell apart. I mean people, would knowing that the beer
would be cut off at a certain time they filled trash cans with beer and hid them
in closets and in rooms and things like that so we really kinda lost control.
Probably eight o'clock Bob Fredrick came down and said okay, turn off the beer
and drain the taps. So we opened the taps up and poured the beer
out on the ground uh, over behind the gym and we had veterans and I remember
one huge guy whose last name was Kay, Marvin Kay, and he cried.
Back there in the early seventies streaking was very big on campus.
Streaking, yes, I had a very good view of a couple of people streaking across
the campus. So that was rather humorous, I think.
From a non-administrative point of view. So I came in to class that day at noon to
teach and I had the chills, I guess I had the flu and the room seemed chilly so
I went over and I slammed that sliding glass door closed and when it closed
the lock jammed on to it. Well the back door of the room opens up and
in comes this kid bare, nothing on but a bandana on his forehead and he comes
streaking across that classroom anticipating that class door is open and he
jumps over the heater and his foot slams against the glass door and one side
of his one leg is on the one side of the heater and the glass door is jammed and
he is there for the next three minutes trying to get that window open.
This had to be the longest time period in that kid's life.
My secretary walks in in the middle of a lecture and she says, "We have a
problem down stairs." And I said, "I am in the middle of a lecture
I will come down at the end." She says, "You have to come down now."
In the science building back parking lot you could get in trough the doors.
My automobile, the students had picked up my car and carried it into the
science building. To this day I don't know how they got it in
there. And he had to figure out how to get it out.
But at the time, it wasn't ramped, there were steps into the building from all
directions so he couldn't just drive it back out.
And I looked at the car and everybody's kindas standing around kind of, what's
he gonna say, what's he gonna do? And I laughed and said, "Okay, I've got another
half hour lecture, it had better be gone by the time I get back.
I taught in a prison for one year. And again, I didn't feel threatened by it
although one of the guards warned me I shouldn't leave my purse in such an obvious
place. He said, "They're not in here for cutting
Sunday School." They had the computer system down there and
kept my grades on the computer and low and behold one of the students broke in
to my gradebook and changed his grade.
The Corning Glass Works now Corning Inc. had made the two hundred inch mirror
for the Pelmar Telescope and they had it made in nineteen thirty-five a
one-tenth twenty inch telescope working model. They decided to donate it to us, specifically
Jack Anderson. And it was in boxes and it was painted hideous
blue and my wife could not understand why I was so excited over all this
junk. Without any doubt, we have the best observatory
on the Eastern Seaboard. The day in nineteen ninety-eight when I received
a phone call from the Dean of Oxford University in London, I thought it
was a joke, until I chatted with him and obviously he had the British accent and
he said that he was reading about our honors program here at Corning Community
College. Our two students Debby Dodge and Susan Dunlap
were the only students, were the first two students from a community college
to go to Oxford.