 I came to Southern Oregon College in 1967 after teaching in Aurora, Colorado for eight years. I taught high school as department chair, opened up a new school there, felt that I wasn't challenged and I wanted to teach at the higher education level. So my major professor at the University of Northern Colorado called Esby McGill and said I've got a young lady that wants to teach at the four-year college. Esby called me and said you're hired and I said wait, wait, wait, wait. I've never been west of Las Vegas. I don't know if you guys are cowboys and Indians or if you're civil I know. I don't go anywhere I don't know about. So I said I would I want to come out. He says you don't have to be interviewed the job is yours and I said I want to come out. Little did I know at the time that I would have the opportunity to say would you help with the expenses? Women didn't do that sort of thing but the year later when Tom Hitzelberger and Jerry Cooper came out their way was paid. So there was there was always a discrepancy no matter what. Anyway I came out on my own it happened to be spring break for me from high school teaching, spring break here so the school of business delayed their fall summer party until I could come and could meet all of them. I loved the people I loved what I saw the weather was miserable but I thought it can be miserable in Colorado too so why not why not. So that was my introduction to Southern Oregon College. I met with that president Elmo Stevenson he was late for my interview came in right off the farm wiping off his shoes because he'd been out feeding the cattle and I thought you are such a down home boy and he was just just like a little grandfather I love that man he was just such a wonderful fair person so anyway met him met the school of business faculty just really liked the people I met and what I saw came back to Colorado and I resigned my position there and came back out here in the fall of 67. I was I had said to my major professor at University of Northern Colorado don't expect me to get a master's I was only interested in a bachelor's I graduated from high school at 16 and from college at 20 and I was teaching high school and I was teaching kids that were coming back from the service who were older than I and I thought no I don't want a master's but then I thought you know what I'd be silly not to do it so I went back in the summers and got my master's I got here and when I talked to Elm Esby I said I don't have to get a doctorate do I he said not if you don't want to go any further and I said okay so I got here the first year and I thought you know what I looked around and I thought if they can do it I can do it so that first summer I was back at Oregon State working on a doctorate the next summer I moved up to Oregon State stayed for the year they held my position because I was here for two years got my doctorate came back and continued until I finished the thesis and earned my degree okay so that was I came back in 1970 by then I had all my coursework and everything out of the way worked on my thesis while I was teaching full-time and was being department chair 68 I came back in 70 fall of 69 70 fall of 70 and I finished my dissertation in the winter of 71 but they don't grant the degrees until the next year so my degree technically says January 72 I was the department chair of what what at that time was called office administration then it was changed to office management and then it was administrative office management and business education so we had a lot of title changes we were quote a vocational program so we didn't get the accolades we didn't get the funding we didn't get the whatever that the academics would get and I kept saying to the president and to my department chair who was then I think Gary Prickett was in charge then you know what doesn't it count that our our kids our students who go out after two years they graduate they either go on to a four-year degree or they go right out to work and get some high-powered positions but they're all employed in the area in which they were trained does that mean nothing evidently not because most of them were girls so you know we we were shied away from a lot of opportunities because of that but that didn't stop us so we went ahead and we turned out some wonderful administrative assistants several of them who were administrative assistants in Churchill Hall and a lot of business ed teachers who ended up in all the high schools throughout the throughout the or the state of Oregon and a lot of them here in the valley and they've been very successful so I'm very proud of what we did with with the lack of support whether it be verbal or monetary that we got um were salaries equivalent absolutely not absolutely not because I know that I took a seven thousand dollar cut to come to southern Oregon and when Hitzelberger and Jerry Cooper came the next year they were making far more than I was and they were all the way through when it came time for promotions I had to fight tooth and nail to get mine but I got it I would apply for grants to go up to Oregon state to get money to help with the we're earning the doctorate I got not because I didn't have a family I said I'm a sole survivor and a sole beneficiary too that shouldn't make a difference but it did evidently so I didn't get any of the the benefits that way but I don't give up I thought I can do it on my own so I did I was going to school full time at Oregon state and working half time so I was teaching half time up there at Oregon state yeah so I got to stay in the perv system and I still had my health insurance only because of that Oregon state was good to me I met my to be husband he was my major advisor and he we worked on a lot of research together he was known as mr. typewriting usa and I have an article that said if if soccer has paylay we have fred winger and so I did I I did research with him and typing he wrote a lot of drills that are used across America and across Puerto Rico Mexico Canada wherever and he did a lot of out of out of state speaking as well and was with McGraw hill so we did the research and I'm proud to say that my kids surpassed his kids in Oregon state because we were on the phone constantly just checking statistics and I was so pleased and my my my faculty were pleased too that we could beat them at their own game so that was good I stayed I stayed involved with business education all the way through my career I was I stayed professional with them with the local business ed the state the national international the whole bit served on many of their committees held office with many of them who was teacher of the year with the state of Oregon and I don't think I applied for teacher of the year on the national level that wasn't that's not my forte to go out and toot my own horn if it's meant to be it'll be so anyway came back I got sick in about 90 1990 I think it was that was about the time that Taylor Hall was having the bird feces problem they had collected more feces outside of my office window than they did collectively throughout the rest of the building but nobody would listen to me that this was the cause of my immune system so I was sent up to OSU I was sent to a doctor in Eugene and they said no it's not in your head you really do have fibromyalgia and it was bird feces caused but I couldn't get administration to listen to it and I said to Fred I said you know I'm going to retire he says well you can't do that yet and I said why not he says well you can't do that you just can't do that yet you've got another couple of years to go before you are eligible for your purse and whatever at that point I didn't care so anyway we I'm going to step ahead a little bit I was sick and he and I got married in 93 and I retired in 95 I could I could not go any further than that so I missed out on about 18 years of 18 months of teaching before I got my full retirement pay I had talked to Reno I talked to him and he says oh okay and it was almost like what would it take for you to retire and I said well I need health insurance I'm not going to be 65 I talked to Nan Russell who was then the personnel manager never once did either of them mention I had been paying all these years for short term and long term disability and I was so sick I didn't think about it I could very easily have used that to carry out the next 18 months and earn my full purse salary but I didn't but that's okay so anyway I retired in January 95 and was sick but I got to spend time with Fred and so that was that was a blessing to me because he was older than I and we had seven years of marriage but of the seven years three and a half were sick years for him too and he passed away in 2000 so that's where that goes back to SOU I went through SOC I missed the SOCE I was SOC SOSC and then SOU and they SOU was good to me I loved my teaching I love the students is what I loved and I love the job I love the department I loved what I was doing and I loved what we were doing as a collective group as in the department because we saw success with our students but I was very naive you mentioned Christman earlier when I moved down in the fall of 67 he held the door open I had no idea what a professor was I had no idea that there was rank and file or anything and I thanked him and I said oh you must be I think I said one of the good old boys you're holding the door I didn't know yes he was one of the good old boys but he was a wonderful man I love that man just loved him completely I don't know what else to tell you I loved I love my teaching here I loved it I also got on with McGraw-Hill book company because I wrote typing books and shorthand books and I would speak for them but never missed a class and I'm very proud of that I would travel for them on weekends I would teach my class on my last class on Friday and I was on an airplane taught Friday night wherever I was going or taught Saturday I was back Sunday grading my papers like crazy and I was back to class prepared on Monday but I too became very famous and that that was a feather in my cap and it was a feather in Fred's cap because I know that he had a way of saying you know take a look at this young lady who who knows what she's talking about so I did typing I did shorthand and I did word processing and I'm very proud to say and I'm bouncing all over the place but as memories come back I'm very proud to say that I brought the first word processor on campus it was a CPT-8000 trained a lot of the administrative assistants so that they could do repetitive letters and things like that it then got the computer science program on the ball and they then brought in the little mini portable computers but we were there first and that was good and then moved into electronic typewriter well no we moved into electric typewriters and then into the electronic typewriters and that was all through my regimen and I again am proud of the progress that we made so we didn't stay behind we didn't stay behind at all we kept going like I said the students had fantastic jobs I am proud to say that they're now saying oh Dr. Scaff I'm retired and I said oh no no oh no no don't tell me that I earned every one of these white hairs but I loved all those kids I loved them all yeah when I first came in 67 it was secretarial science I'm going to step back even further into my memory bank it was secretarial science which was an old nomenclature for that which just said typing shorthand okay and Mary Chrisley who was dean of students also taught with us part time she taught the filing part to that as she counseled the girl she was a women's counselor as well as whatever else she did in administration um Les Robertson was there at the time he left after the second year with a heart attack and then I don't know who took it over the year that I was gone but when I came back I was department chair and we went from secretarial science to office management I became involved with the what it was called psi professional secretaries international I joined their group and got them involved with us and we did a lot of interchanges with that and decided that you know we're more than just office management because we were training administrators as well so we became administrative office management all the way through this we still had business education because the girls took the two-year program primarily and got their their technical skills and then went into the teaching aspect of it so they had they had a full four year degree the guys oh yeah yeah yeah when I got there in 67 I said you know what typing is an important part of everybody's curriculum and I said I talked to the then the department chair who was Lloyd Prickett yeah Lloyd Prickett and then he was followed by Gary Prickett but I talked to him and I said you know we need to get involved with the boys primarily the boys in business administration everybody needs to know how to type and he said really I said yes I said I'm going to recommend very strongly and I followed through with this that every business administration student male or female either pass a typing test or they take the keyboarding class but they've got to have some keyboarding skills and they had to prove to me a proficiency of typing at least 25 words a minute with accuracy and with two hands none of this hunting and pecking stuff so the boys grumbled and they grumbled and they grumbled because that's that's a sissy thing of course we're on manual typewriters too but then I would see them after they would graduate and they said you know the most important class we took was typing I said I knew that I knew that so you know that was that was a preface for keyboarding with computers and so I'm really proud of that too so we made a lot of inroads and we proved ourselves it seems to me just looking at photographs I you know I could see that progression from typewriter to electric you know electric typewriter to the word processing systems and you're in all three of those shots you know I was there I was there fighting tooth and nail we need money to do this we need money yeah interesting so when the word processing system came out it seems to me that word processors were for women and secretaries and computers were for men and computer science or the business program did you see that dichotomy oh absolutely talk to me about that absolutely there was there had always been talk about just doing away with us because we were expensive and I said how can we be expensive you don't give us money for equipment you don't pay us like everybody else gets paid how can we be expensive we're producing I traveling across the United States and putting out the name Southern Oregon College or Southern Oregon State College or whatever the cape the name was at the time I'm giving you more notoriety than you got from anybody else in the whole school of business and you're telling me that this wasn't the good thing and it didn't work and what was his name anyway they were talking about merging us with they didn't know where and so the the guy from computer science says well you can merge with us because it would be a direct fit keyboarding and computer science and I said yes but we are more than computer science you're taking us back to secretarial science typing days we're more than that so no I don't want to be merged with you so we didn't merge we made a name for ourselves the the businesses in the valley would call us when they needed secretaries or administrative assistants or whatever because we put ourselves out there we also had a work study program not a work study program a work experience program and so you know the girls and the guys had to be out there and get practical experience this is what the high schools are doing now saying if you're going to graduate you have to have some work experience or voluntary experience or whatever the kids were not paid but they were out there earning credits and they were earning experiences which became more important than credits we also were involved with I can't remember what the name of that program was but the people would come to us and they'd have work experience from years of work and they'd want college credits for it and we were we were initiative to that too so we said okay let's see what you have and let's see if we can't equate it to some of our classes and give you credits for that and whatever and so that that worked in our favor too we have a lot of history back there but we were never recognized for it in fact I'm going to backtrack again secretarial science was the predest was the predecessor to business administration secretarial science was there before they ever knew business administration existed but I didn't have anything to do with that I may be old but not that old I think actually that transition was a very real transition in the 80s it was with with with the change in computing technology I and reading the newspapers I can it's very clear to me in the 80s that so you was was meeting a regional demand for computing skills we were yeah well not just the computer but also the secretarial the administrative skills yeah but specifically computer because right the secretarial program had been around but you were training these secretaries to use the computers absolutely and that nobody could afford computers that's right very rare things that's right having these graduates with these skills was a very important part that's right well and then I would work with the ladies primary ladies in it in Churchill and I'd say you know you're sending out all these form letters how tacky is that that you mimeograph them and you just put dear mister whatever dear missus whatever send us money I said no no no that is so impersonal let's have you learn to use the computer to the cpt 8000 which probably I think the room we had it in was probably as big as this part of the patio yeah and so they were happy to do that because then they could just type in the names on the format and we taught them to program the name in the right spots and whatever and piece of cake print the envelopes and away we go we just didn't have a sealer for the envelopes it was still the old tongue yeah um no I am I am extremely proud of what we did there and I will give credit to my faculty too because I did not do it by myself I didn't yeah did you have the opportunity to hire women in your role and did were you able to influence the hiring of other women at the university um an answer to the last question no not to the university to the to my area yes in some respects business administration program begin at SU and when were you around for that it was there when I came so I don't know how it started or when it started I do know that it started with the secretarial science program though yeah when you were talking before about merging with another department was business administration not a consideration no no no we were we were the black sheep because we were we were ostracized to another building even we were in Taylor hall they were all housed in central hall we were housed in central hall one year when they were doing summary model in Taylor I don't know what it was uh but other than that no we we were housed and taught in Taylor hall so no we were never really a good fit with business administration salary wise or gender wise or any other way and I I wasn't their favorite person in Taylor hall and I know that Keith Carney would say I knew by your footsteps you were coming in and I knew what your mood was so he would say to who was the secretary then I'm not in tell her I'm not in and if the door was closed I knew he was there and I said Keith I'm still here I'm not going away and Gary Prickett and I tangle too he says you know you're out there supervising student teachers who knows what you're doing I said you want to come with me follow in my footsteps and you'll know what I'm doing I'm teaching a full load I'm supervising student teachers I'm teaching night classes I'm chairing the department we're being successful no he didn't want that either so that's where it was yeah there was an equity problem yeah how did you work with the business community you talked about interns we had a work we had two different people that worked with the co-op I started a cooperative work experience program knowing that that that the care the kids had to be out in the business they had to have that exposure to which reminds me that in our two-year program they had a two two-term office management sequence that they had to take it was on Monday night from four to seven and they had to dress for the office but not just for those three hours they had to come to work on Monday morning when they went to class dressed for the office and they couldn't get into their jeans or their sweats or their whatever until they went home we had more compliments from the social science people about your girls always look so nice and so professional and they carried that on through but I wanted them to see what the other part was like too and I got involved with the cooperative work experience through the professional secretary's international group so we set up arrangements with different employers to hire these girls and they would they would be out there four six hours a week working free gratis and then we would have um in the second term of this class that I talked about we would put put on a big banquet a professional banquet we'd have we would be responsible for the whole thing we did the decorations we planned the menu we did whatever the student union cooked it for us and we had the business people and the professional secretaries come in and to show our wares you know so we could show off and it was it was just an expense a wonderful experience yeah you talked about um uh having the students dress for work and come to class dressed for work so you were teaching deportment and presence and behavior as well as the whole thing absolutely did you run into did you did you have to talk about um forgive me this is a sexist conversation today but may not have been a commonplace conversation then but but but relationships within the office and behavior that was tolerated or not tolerated you know that never came up it was never it wasn't a part of life back in those days so it never came up I don't believe it yeah well it didn't come up with us anyway and I would have Esme Begill come in the at the end of the second quarter of that administrative office management class and do some interviews with the girls and he would ask them questions and he would enlighten them onto some of the things that could happen in an office but no I didn't I um equity so so there was a conversation then about at least touching on some of the yeah yeah but it was nothing that we initiated because we would be pointing fingers at ourselves because we were accepting it as a part of our lives if we wanted our jobs which is not a very good thing to say could you talk about um social relationships on campus like did people do things out of I don't I don't want to presage your question but I've heard from other faculty that there was a shift in how faculty related during that period of time there was there was you know what your what your observations and experiences were I used to I loved the first two years there because we didn't have a lunch room we didn't have the wonderful student union that we have now but we had a faculty room in brit where they then had the mimeograph machine and whatever and that's where we would converge at noon to eat our sandwiches so I got to know all kinds of people on the campus and more so than I ever did going down to the union because by then you're in your own little group at a little table whatever so that was crazy but um I can remember too that when I came as a freshman there was a singles group that was being started it was for single faculty people so I got to know a lot of the single faculty people and every fall we would have a singles party so we would invite the new singles people in and it was it was wonderful so we got to know everybody that way I think that we were probably pretty clicky because the the women stayed with the women and the men stayed with them in we didn't we didn't really have a lot of communication with like the sciences or whatever we communicated with the music department because we had female friends over there so there wasn't a whole lot of like going out together after work or weekends or traveling together things like that there would be with selected with selected friends yeah yeah like maybe families had more commonality no no because nobody had families you know I ran mostly with the singles group we did have school of business parties once a quarter and that that was good and then we of course had our faculty meetings so that we would be over with everybody and get to know them a little bit better too I started out on Lincoln Street there's a an apartment building there I was there for two years and then I moved up to Oregon State and I had a two bedroom apartment and I subleased my apartment this the year that I or the summer that I went up to Oregon State because I had to have a place to store my stuff so I talked owners into putting a lock on the back bedroom so I stored my stuff there and then came back and had a place to live and then the next four years I lived at the london air apartments and then I bought this so I've been here since 74 yeah a lot of faculty seem to have lived on Pennsylvania work they were in houses yeah because Bev and Ruth Bev Bennett and Ruth no Ruth Bever was up here on some place but they were they were all in houses I didn't have a house until I moved here yeah so I was always in an apartment Beth Bennett got to the university in 53 Betty Lou got there 48 I think Dorothy Stoke was there Ruth Bever Ruth Bever McCracken right floor McCracken McCracken she didn't stay very long at the university though she married what was his first name she married the guy in science and then they they started a family and then she went to the high school to teach so she was only at the university for a couple years but that was before I was there even so what do you remember about those women the those those women who were kind of there before you and strong strong committed women really dedicated to what they were doing and what they were believing in yeah really good role models really good role models I mean again I was only what 27 when I came I didn't know what I was doing I just knew I love teaching and I loved teaching high school in the office management area I love that sort of thing so it was a good fit for me but yeah it was they were just good role models when you say they were strong women in good role models what does that mean what does that mean oh I saw them standing up to administration I saw them standing up for what they believed in you know at the high school level you didn't have that opportunity or that choice and I thought wow I could do that do that yeah so they were just really solid good people yeah so Beth Bennett and I talked to Joanne with this too Joanne yeah there's another name Sally Sally yeah they you know those people in the sports program had similar problems they did as you described they did the male female racial and the male female cast them away because they're just women yeah but yet they had such a strong influence on their programs too and Betty Lou had such a strong influence on the education department yeah and Betty Lou became a dean right she became graduate dean she was yes yes do you remember the circumstances I don't I don't I just remember that she was the graduate dean yeah so when you talk about these women you talk about them similarly uh and as as a cohort almost did they eat together did they how did you that I don't know uh that I don't know I I I think of all of those women I knew Dorothy Stulp the least but I knew that she was in the theater arts area and I knew a lot about her because of Fran Medacci who was in music and Karen Schaefer who was in speech and it was just you know you just knew about these little pockets of people right I can't tell I can't tell you that I knew them well I knew them and you talk about these pockets of people it's not as if every woman on a camp on the campus was an ally it was special women right right and I you know and I don't and I don't know how we formed that bond I don't know and I'm thinking about Chella Cox now I knew her well too and but I don't remember when she started the Guanajuato group but she wasn't a part of any of the groups that I was in of course she was married and had a family at the time too I don't know it's the only woman in languages yeah yeah and look what she's done with Guanajuato and she's still doing the bird feces in Taylor Hall you talked about how Taylor Hall felt like it was a marginalized building as compared to Central Hall I wasn't really aware of the marginalization or the difference in buildings them and us and I don't really know about the birds you weren't here in the early 90s okay so you don't know what Taylor Hall was looking like Taylor Hall had pigeon holes that were about that big concrete pigeon holes to block the sun we didn't have drapes but we had the pigeon holes that would be blocking the south sun coming into the buildings no drapes those holes were big enough for the pigeons to fly in and roost and nest in the window wells and that's what that's where we had all the pigeon feces and um let me think of some other names if I can Jackie started with an s in social science um oh I can see him standing right here in front of me there were several of us that were getting sick Jackie he chose to quit and to fight it through a lawsuit and he chose whoever he was I don't remember his name now uh chose to quit and he filed a lawsuit and my friend says no you don't need to do that he said first of all you're too sick to fight a lawsuit and so I just resigned and that was it for me but it was proved that pigeon feces bird feces are more deadly to us than anything else and they kept saying oh you have Lyme disease you have this you have that I've never been in the woods I've never had a tick on my body Jackie hadn't either and neither did well the guy the guy was in geography and he would take the guys and the gals out camping and so he could have had but that wasn't his problem either so yeah that was crazy so we were compromised in that building and they kept saying they they kept coming in and saying there's nothing wrong with the air there's nothing wrong with the buildings I retired I quit in January in 95 and by the spring of 95 they were taken out the blocks they were putting in a million dollar remodel into Taylor Hall to do something with the air vent system my office was never warm it was never anything but too cold and I would have physical plant come up and adjust the thermostat and they'd say well it's okay it's working it's down here on our computer and they said it's not so I just would take my own allen wrench up there and I'd adjust the thermostat but you know it was it was never good the the Taylor Hall was never good what was your office 127 yeah and it was it was a big office there were two of us in there and we had a business ed library on one half and we had high school textbooks on the other half because my business ed kids needed to check out books when they were out there to teach and whatever and I couldn't depend on the high schools to provide them with their materials so yeah it was it was a beautiful office and we had paid Les Robertson for dividers so here was an office and here was my office and then here was another divider so here was a big waiting room with the library and study tables and it was good it was good except it was very cold and the air was very bad so you could literally see the pigeons on the other side oh absolutely and I heard them and I heard them and even before I don't know here's another name from the past arnie wolf if you ever run across that name he taught accounting and he was in business ed with me and so he was on this half of the room and I was on this half and he used to smoke a cigar and I'd say arnie no get rid of that cigar I can't stand it please it wasn't always the cigar it was the collection of pigeon poop out there so this just compounded that bad air problem in there yeah yeah so it was crazy all right so you told this funny story about open classroom teaching okay I office in Taylor 127 which was a big office I had an office made on one side I was on the other and then we had a big like a waiting room that had a business ed library and a high school library and study rooms for kids and all of that so that was my office the office the room next door to that was a big room and it was used for accounting big tables in there and then as you go down the hallway and you take a quick left there would be a little store room and then another little store room that housed all of our digital or our not digital tapes our vc what are what are those cassette tapes and other and supplies and things then there was a classroom 131 that had typewriters 132 right next to it had typewriters then there was another store room across the way and it had the mimeograph machine and surplus equipment and stuff like that well von Bornett bless his heart who was in social studies decided he didn't want to be down with social studies anymore he was downstairs and he wanted to come upstairs so he said could I use one of your rooms and I said well we use them for teaching he says well what about this room and we opened a storage room door and I said well that's a store room door and he said can I use that and I said well let me tell you some things about it there is absolutely no ventilation no heat no anything and we in the two adjacent rooms teach with open doors we do not close our doors when we teach we have typewriters going all the time or we have people reciting their shorthand drills oh that won't bother me I said okay so we moved him into that little 130 store room and Tom Hitzelberger sometimes would teach in 131 he's a six foot nine giant with a 10 foot voice and not very quiet and he also had the open door policy so von Bornett is in his little room trying to do whatever he did I'm teaching in 132 and the doors are open and von Bornett comes in and he closes the doors I immediately go to the door and I open the door and the kids would know that we have open doors you know so they'd say here he comes so we would be on the lookout for him so when von would come to close the doors either I or a student would get out and open the doors and then the volume of the recitation would go up we were onry but it was good but we had a reputation I can remember too in that same room 132 we had a flood the ceiling roof the roof leaked or the vents leaked or something but we had four inches of water on the floor we didn't miss a beat we were still reciting our shorthand we were doing what we needed to do until the bell rang and we were dismissed and that made the daily tidings even yeah we were dedicated we were good but von Bornett was not a happy camper but he stayed there he toughed it out even with our open doors yeah did he figure it out leave the doors open after a while he did he did because he got tired getting up and getting down yeah