 Okay, great. You're awfully kind here. Is that okay? You don't mind this, do you? No, and we've got one there. You can get it from them. No, I'm going off a little later today and I just wanted to be sure we had this. I've got a few minutes here. I'll tell you why this came up. I was fascinated. Way back when I read your book about the prominence of the schools in that first part, about Eureka and the teachers you met, Mr. Fraser and Mr. Johnson, and how that touched you. Because this education issue was coming to focus, in fact, we were talking about science and how it had been required to take it. I just thought it'd be fascinating for a few minutes just to have you think back on your school system, those teachers, what they were like, both in grade school and college. School was terribly important in those early years in your community. Oh, yes. I don't know how it is still children today, but it was the major part of your growing up life. Yes, town of about 10,000 people in twice as big now. Everything about it, the whole atmosphere, the school spirit idea, that might have been contributed to with the fact that I was a voracious reader and I went to the public library about once a week and would take out a couple of books. So I went through all the books about Frank Merrill Wellett Yale and the Rover Boys and all the things, and most of those dealt with eulacology experiences and athletics and so forth and the emphasis on dying for dear little Rutgers. And you had a feeling then, occasionally there was a teacher that the students didn't like or something, not because the teacher was rude or strict, but just simply because they weren't cutting it. But basically you had a trust and faith that the teachers were a little like clergy that it was a calling with them. And respected in the community. And yes, they were there because they wanted to teach. And it was another thing that I wonder if it isn't with all of our emphasis on separation, church and state, which according to the constitutional precepts, I believe in. But I think that it has developed into, in the part of many people, a separation of not only state but people from religion. And I only say this in the context that you expected your teachers to also talk in terms of moral precepts and precepts and what was right and wrong. You mentioned B.J. Fraser. I thought of him as a kind of a new type. He came as a young man in those post-war world one days to high school. As an English teacher, he became principal before I was out of high school. Oh, I see. He went right out. But he also continued to teach. He was principal. And as the English instructor, he was also then the director of the class plays. And he was responsible for the formation of a drama club, which then also put on plays. Usually there were two plays a year, the junior class play and the senior class play. But he created this other and it put on plays, including like an evening of a series of one act plays. But he was one of the first teachers back in the days when, yes, basics were stressed, but stressed to the point that if you were doing compositions, your composition would come back great and probably more on grammar and spelling and punctuation and so forth. Then it did on content. Well, he was kind of new in that he was stressing content, usually had your imagination so forth. And I developed a great taste for writing in those days, because usually the subjects that are given you require a lot of research and so forth to find out facts and then what you do is probably you'd write an essay that was a digest of all the research that you'd done on something. And I took him at his word and I sometimes went way afield and did a humorous twist on what it was he'd asked for. And I wasn't long in noticing that he'd have several of those read in class and I noticed that I was always called about to read mine and maybe that's where the ham began in me, because I would write with the idea in mind that I was going to have to read this aloud. But I got good grades and I was in all those plays and so forth. That fellow touched you? Oh, yes. Praise her. And we stayed in contact, you might say by correspondence, down through the years and he only just recently died still in that town. He had gone through the whole school system and retired there. He enjoyed it, obviously, the whole matter of teaching. Yes. And I assume a lot of extra time. Yes, I remember a great lesson I learned once when he told me about a student without naming him that he was making a point to me in the principal's office and that this student was displaying hostility and he said to him, look, I don't care what you think of me now. I am interested in what you think of me 15 years from now. I gather, Mr. President, you also had a strong urge from your family to learn from your mother and father. Again, I go back to this matter of the school being so central to our community and it's the way up. Oh, the parents, and it wasn't just mine. Parents felt that it was their duty and you had the feeling that the parents were on the side of the teachers that the parent-teachers association really meant they were associated and my mother and father, as was typical of their generation and coming from poor families, had never completed grade school but that didn't stop them from going on in their own lives, adult lives and reading and going on. My father started out in the shoe business and landed out in the shoe business but he wasn't satisfied with just selling shoes. I remember him taking a correspondence course in literally, I guess what would be called orthopedics or something, the study of the foot manual and he felt that it was his obligation now to sell somebody a pair of shoes but if they came limping in and had some kind of a foot problem he ought to know enough to be able to do something about it and he did, and did very well. One other teacher that you mentioned was Alan Marie Johnson, who is the drama coach there. If I read your book correctly you got into a good deal then at college. Yes, she was again the English teacher and also then, it just seemed to be traditional I guess in most of education they were the ones then who also directed the plays which was extracurricular activity and she was responsible for creating a drama club and she directed the class plays, again the junior and the senior class plays and again the drama club put on plays and in both of them, B.J. Fraser and Alan Marie Johnson, there was also a kind of a custom at that time that the college or the class play, high school or college would be something that you would rent from, you'd pay what $15 royally or something and you'd get the play from the script from I think the company was called the French Company and they were in this business but the plays that I had remembered earlier from my younger days before high school and college where they'd usually get some play that would always have a comic character with a fried wig and they weren't very class and it was B.J. that said that doing a play should be educational also and so he reached out and as I say, I found myself playing a part in Philip Berry's play You and I in college the same thing we did The Taming of the Shrew in modern costume and it was Alan Marie Johnson's idea also there I played Captain Standup and Journey's End I had seen him once, the traveling company of English actors doing Journey's End and I never was so carried away in a theater in my life I was in the war as far as that play was concerned when the curtain came down and Captain Standup of course was the central role and sure enough it came up the only argument about it at the time was it was an all male cast and that meant that in that particular play none of the girls in the club could be involved but we did it and it was very successful Did you have any struggles in your academic life or your school life from kindergarten on any particular subjects or any time in that where you had difficulty so yes I school was not all that easy for me because I was so interested in all these outside things in addition to these things we're talking about in high school I was on the track team I and played football and started in basketball and my sophomore year I made the lightweight basketball team that was and then I did reach a point where I couldn't do it all and again it was B.J. Frazier who was instrumentally convincing me and that was the only time I ever gave up anything athletic I gave up basketball for so that I could that was the wrong season that's when all the plays and everything took place too you had a conflict there too how were you raised I think average or above I was more concerned with remaining eligible of course never had any problems about that I stayed eligible for all those activities but I was also I got good ones in the things I love that English course and I remember surprising myself in mathematics as a matter of fact in the algebra course the final exam I got an absolute perfect 100 what year was that in high school high school I see one year but then other things like mentioning as I have science and this is where those courses were valuable I found out that was not something I was interested in you had to take it, I took biology and I took physics but my attitude then was I did what was required did you ever get an F? no I don't think so not even grades didn't have to go to a wood shed with your father or anything like that I had trouble in grade school with the diagramming of sentences on the blackboard you know but that trouble was because at that time I didn't know I couldn't see so what was going on on the blackboard to me was a great mystery but you know honestly maybe the school nurses at that time weren't as serious as they are today I discovered by accident that's one of the reasons I love football and at the time didn't play much baseball other sides didn't play ball I always kept my left foot kind of loose when I was a bet to get out of the way because I never saw the ball that was about 3 feet from me and I didn't know that anyone else saw differently football however that was different number one you could see that ball was big enough and it didn't come as hard as a pitch and you were dealing with fellas close hand and so I fell in love with football very early we lived above the high school athletic field and every day home from school and down I went and I spent every minute both track season and football watching the athletes out there dreaming of someday being one of them I guess that was one of the real reasons you went to college too you said in your book that this fellow was one of the heroes and of course the marijuana he was the son of the minister of our church when I was a kid and he went to Eureka college and he was a big football star in high school and we went to college there just one very briefly looking back on having too much fun on that experience those years from kindergarten right up out of college a very gratifying one for you and the bonds still remain and my loyalty and feeling for that school I think that most of the things that have happened in my life started there let me if I could just take one the difference in the small school to this day I am not a fan of the great universities sometimes I think they're assembly line diploma mills and I don't mean to deprecate them but when I think of the this small college it was everything that you'd ever read about it was everything that you thought a college should be believe it or not from the Ivy Covered Wolves in a small town where the college was the biggest industry of the town but things like the faculty members that if they wanted to go someplace they'd ask you to come over and watch their children babysit would you take your girl over and the two of you would sit there in front of the fire well they would come home from whatever they were doing and then you'd sit around with them and that thing of older people particularly faculty members and maybe sometimes they they'd invite a little group to come over and you'd sit around and discuss things and argue and talk and there was as much of college there as there was in the classroom there was a professor we called him Daddy Gray he was my major was economics and sociology he was the chief professor and he was a great professor he judged you individually not as a group I remember once when I got a better grade than well as good a grade I should say as my brother did it was in the same class my brother was old in that one and my brother protested to it he said come on he said I know how much studying I did and he said I know how much less studying my brother did and he said that and the professor's explanation he said well Neil you've talked about studying law and therefore he said what you're learning in this class is going to be very important to you if you pursue that but he said your brother he just wants a diploma he said I doubt that he's ever going to use really technically what he's learning in this class and he said should I send him back in his pursuit of that diploma I see but it was a small community manageable wasn't it the size of it they took care of their own and you can't hide in a small school everyone there isn't anyone that can just as they can in a university just go to class study go and graduate in a small school everyone's got to participate whether it's the drama club or whether it's student politics or student government I should say or any of those things students that never maybe came there from high schools and you'd see them and never thought that they had anything outside of just the study and pretty soon they're drafted into doing things simply because of the need of this in a small school well great good times that's terrific precisely what I just wanted when you took the required courses and here and there there were selectives then that you could take on your own but the thing as I saw it was it was the required courses that really gave you that broad span and also led you to begin to think of what you wanted to do I knew kids that you could see them in their first class in physics and you knew that that was going to be the direction that they went it was impressive