RODMAN PUBLIC LIBRARY
PRESENTS…
Reminiscences of Dr. William M. Morgan
June 7, 1978
Interviewed by N. Yost Osborne
OSBORNE: This afternoon, June, June 6th, I'm seated in the back porch of Dr. Morgan's residence, talking with him about his association at Mount Union College, and some of the other activities that he pursued during his career here. Start off first--where you came from, Bill.
MORGAN: Well, I came from Cincinnati. I was born there and so was my wife. In fact, we both lived in the same suburb and the same doctor brought us both in.
OSBORNE: Did he?
MORGAN: We both went to the same public schools and high school there.
OSBORNE: Then you went on to Miami?
MORGAN: I went on to Miami University and I was there for two years. The second year was a sort of a hodgepodge of activity since we had the student army training corps on campus. We worked on a quarter system where we had been on a semester system, so when the war ended and the military group disbanded, I had to finish up that year with some odds and ends of
courses that, while I never made use of them, they had some worth to me, I presume. I had, of course, philosophy, which was useful. I had one quarter of a year of Spanish, which was practically wasted time. The faculty in Chemistry at that time was a one-man faculty. So at the end of my second year at Miami, Dr. Brill, who was the member of the faculty I referred to, urged me to go to the University of Illinois and finish my work there since I had had all but one course of the courses that they taught at Miami. So I migrated out to Illinois along with several other Miami students, really graduates, who were going into the graduate school at Illinois. So I wasn't alone when I got out there.
OSBORNE: Well, how big was Miami at that time?
MORGAN: When I enrolled in 1917, there were 750 students approximately at Miami, heavily loaded with women since the University had a two-year teacher training program and that was all girls.
OSBORNE: Oh yes.
MORGAN: In addition to that, we had Oxford College for women and Western College for women, so that it really was a pretty nice arrangement.
OSBORNE: Yeah, that would be.
MORGAN: Well, to go back to Illinois, when I got out to Illinois, the enrollment that fall was 10,000 students. The previous year it had been 6,000, but when the military discharged their men after World War I, many students like myself migrated from the small colleges to the big university, and the enrollment jumped. So that housing was difficult--my first room was a good mile from the campus, but in a little while I got to know the place and got a chance to live in a dormitory just· three blocks off campus, which was very nice. And to show you how the small colleges moved in there, there were more transfers in my fraternity than there were members of the local chapter.
OSBORNE: Is that right? My gosh.
MORGAN: Yes. Practically twice as many.
OSBORNE: But now, you took a master's at Illinois, did you?
MORGAN: No, I spent two years there and got a Bachelor of Science degree in Chemistry and then went over to Ohio State for my master's.
OSBORNE: I see.
MORGAN: At Illinois, I played in the concert band and had a very enjoyable musical experience there. I was first chair, second clarinet.
OSBORNE: At Illinois.
MORGAN: We had a, we had a very good band director, a man by the name of Harding, Austin Harding, and the band did considerable travel within the state of Illinois, but we did not travel to sports events as the ....
OSBORNE: Uh huh. Oh yes.
MORGAN: a lot of bands do.
OSBORNE: More of a concert band.
MORGAN: That's right. It was a concert band. We had two military bands in addition to the concert band because the university ran an R.O.T.C. program and there were two regiments in the R.O.T.C. program, so that we had a band for each regiment.
OSBORNE: Oh yes, uh huh.
MORGAN: And all first year men had to stand the June formation with the military band even though they did not play with the military band during the winter. So that we had to check out a uniform and go over to the, to the review, the military review that took place in June of the first year we played in the band. So that I did that.
OSBORNE: Well now, how did you, you got to Ohio State, how did you get with Mount Union College then?
MORGAN: Well, let's put a little interlude in there, because it involves a Mount Union man, several Mount Union men, as a matter of fact.
OSBORNE: All right.
MORGAN: At the University of Illinois, the man who headed the analytical division of the Chemistry Department was George D. Beall.
OSBORNE: Oh yes.
MORGAN: George D. Beall was a graduate of Scio College and it was Dr. Beall's urging, together with a man with whom I did a small research project, that I apply for graduate assistantships. Well, I was a little late getting in on the graduate assistantship list, but I received two offers--one from the University of Wisconsin as a graduate assistant, and that would require half-time work; and a, a University scholarship at Ohio State University which required no time. And anyhow, I was looking forward eventually toward marriage and it was a little closer to the hometown...
OSBORNE: Oh yeah.
MORGAN: than Wisconsin was, so I took the Ohio State appointment. Well, I was at Ohio State three months approximately-oh, less than that, about a month and a half, and I suffered a ruptured appendix and had to stay out of school then until the first of January. But I got a few hour's credit out of that first term. The man with whom I was doing a little research project was very gracious and helped me get all of the course work organized that I had missed. Then the, the second semester I was able to go full time and I had to stay in the summer to make up the work that I lost in the fall. Well, in the summer Ohio State went from the semester plan to the quarter plan and actually, I got my master's degree with a fraction of an hour less than the required amount because they couldn't transfer them all. Well, there were at Ohio State at that time two Mount Union men, Lorin Sebrell and Dundon, now what was Dundon's, Arthur?
OSBORNE: Merle.
MORGAN: Merle, right.
OSBORNE: Merle, yes.
MORGAN: Yes, Lorin Sebrell and Merle Dundon. And I was sharing a research lab with Merle Dundon. Dr. McMaster had· decided,(he and Dean Bowman probably had decided), that they should have an assistant in chemistry here, so Dr. McMaster wrote to Sebrell and asked him if he knew anyone at the University with a master's degree who might be interested. Well, Sebrell talked to Dundon and the two of them talked to me. And so I arranged to come on up to Alliance for an interview. Came up by train, of course, and got here at a very early hour, Don't know what it was, seven o'clock or so, and I walked up Main Street and found a restaurant open and got some breakfast. But I still had a lot of time to kill, so I asked the man that ran the restaurant where the college was and decided I would walk there. So I walked up Union Avenue to the college. Although, at first I almost turned into the Morgan Castle.
OSBORNE: Castle?
MORGAN: Because I thought that might be the campus. I'd been here before. So, I got up on the campus and Dean Bowman was out of town. But Dr. McMaster was here so we sat on the campus and chatted and later in the morning, he Dean returned from wherever he had been and as a result of the interview, they invited me to join the faculty and presented me with a contract; and Mr. Carr, who was then the business manager of the college, gave me a check for my expenses. And again I had a lot of time to kill because I was going to catch the train back to Columbus. It went in the late afternoon. So, having signed the contract and gotten my expense check, I walked back again downtown to the railroad station. On the way back, or on the way back downtown, I passed the square on Main Street and I noticed on the south end of the square the First National Bank Building. This was before the First National Bank-and the Alliance Bank combined. So, the check that Mr. Carr had given me was drawn on the First National Bank and so I thought, well, I'll just go cash this check. So I walked up to the bank and there was one man in the bank behind the counter; and I walked up to him and I said, I'm joining the Mount Union faculty and Mr. Carr gave me this check for my travel expenses; and if you want to cash it, I'd be grateful; and if you don't, I'll just cash it when I get back to Columbus. Oh, he said, endorse it, I'll cash it. That was Gus Graf.
OSBORNE: Oh yes.
MORGAN: And I've been with the First National Bank ever since 1922.
OSBORNE: My golly.
MORGAN: So...
OSBORNE: Well, that's interesting.
MORGAN: I got the train, went back to Columbus, finished up my work, then came up here in time to open the fall semester. I lived on Clark Avenue where Cunningham Hall new stands.
OSBORNE: Oh, yes.
MORGAN: The lady that owned the house was Miss Elvira Dillon. She was an elderly woman and she was suffering from cancer, although I didn't know it at that time. In the same rooming house was Dick Oppenheim, who was a member of the music...
OSBORNE: Music, uh huh.
MORGAN: faculty and he occupied the upstairs room next to the bath; and I occupied a room on the first floor. The second floor room had been occupied by Herman Carr, but Herman had gotten married during the spring of 1922 and Dick, who had had the first floor room, moved up to Herman's room and so when I came in, I got Dick's room on the first floor.
OSBORNE: Oh, I see.
MORGAN: Well, Miss Dillon died, oh, sometime about November or December, somewhere in there, and we had to find new quarters. (Turn it off.) So, after I moved out of Miss Dillon's home, I went over on, College, on Rice Street and lived with a Dr. Thomas, who was a, not an M.D., I don't really know what she was, she might have been an osteopath-I think she was an osteopath.
OSBORNE: Uh huh.
MORGAN: So I lived there most of the year, and I ate my meals with the Sigma Nu group who, at that time, lived over at the corner of College and Union Avenue.
OSBORNE: Probably where the Kentucky Fried Chicken is now.
MORGAN: Right. And then in the spring of 1923, the Sigma Nu's bought the house that they now occupy from Dr...
OSBORNE: Hoover.
MORGAN: Huh?
OSBORNE: Dr. Hoover, it was.
MORGAN: Dr. Hoover.
OSBORNE: Yeah.
MORGAN: And they moved down there. Well, I continued to eat with them through the balance of that term. Then in the summer session, I taught in what would be classed as an academy. The college had certain requirements for admission that many of the high schools did not meet, so we operated an academy in the summertime; and in the summers, the first few summers that I was here, I taught algebra, high school algebra; and high school trigonometry and high school history to these youngsters who were deficient in some of those subjects.
OSBORNE: Oh, uh huh.
MORGAN: The dean, Dean Bowman, was very strict on admissions. And one of the stumbling blocks was foreign language. Now I didn't teach any foreign language, but there were many kids who avoided foreign language in high school or else it wasn't taught in their high schools and we'd have youngsters in here in the summertime taking foreign language so that they could meet the requirements to come to college. And Dean Bowman didn't fudge on any of these requirements. He made them stick to it. I remember very distinctly in 1924, I lived on State Street and Spitz Raber and Al Beach and I think perhaps Headley, took German (I think it was German they were taking) from a Miss Greiner who lived up on State Street farther west. And I'd see them every night, they'd go up there. They took their language all summer and they came to college here. Many a student today would shop around if he...
OSBORNE: Yes
MORGAN: If he had to--if he was deficient in some requirements. But with Dean Bowman, there was no deficiency, you just had to take it all.
OSBORNE: Yes. What was, what was the chemistry department like when you came here?
MORGAN: Well, we had two, there were two of us, Professor Kiplinger taught analytical chemistry, organic chemistry, and physical chemistry. I taught all the freshmen, and we had three sections of freshmen; and I had two sections of math in addition to that. So that it was--I had two three hour sections of math and one three-hour section of chemistry, that's three courses; and two four-hour credits in chemistry. Now the three-hour course in chemistry, the three credit hour course in chemistry, was for those who were not going to take any more chemistry.
OSBORNE: Oh, uh huh.
MORGAN: The college had a science requirement. You could take chemistry, you could take physics or you could take mathematics. Now, many of them got physics and some of them got math, so I had pretty good size classes in chemistry. Now, the three
hour course did not fulfill that requirement. You took your math or your physics or your chemistry in addition to that. So the three-hour course was just sort of a descriptive course about chemistry, rather than chemistry itself. The four-hour course was a course designed to prepare the student to go on into further chemistry courses. So all of the chemistry majors took that. Those courses, and all of the pre-medic students were in those courses, and the pre-dental students. So over the years I've taught practically every doctor that ever graduated from Mount Union.
OSBORNE: Right.
MORGAN: But that made a bigger schedule than...
OSBORNE: Yeah, that would.
MORGAN: today's faculty would be...
OSBORNE: Oh boy, yes.
MORGAN: would be very pleased about.
OSBORNE: Right.
MORGAN: I had a minimum of 17 credit hours and I had five afternoons of laboratory. 'Cause the three-hour course had two classes and a lab and the four-hour course had two classes and two labs. So I had one section Tuesday/Thursday, another section Monday/Wednesday, and then the third one on Friday. So I was a busy...
OSBORNE: Well, that would be--that would be a heavy schedule.
MORGAN: Yeah.
OSBORNE: But now you were here at a time when Mount Union achieved a great reputation as--you indicated you'd taught all the doctors who've turned out from here, but chemistry and biology, combine the majors there--we were one of the, a few small colleges like this that turned out that big number.
MORGAN: We had, we had boys going into medical school at Pittsburgh, Johns Hopkins, Rochester, many schools, every year, three and four of them every year.
OSBORNE: And you had, and you had students going on in graduate work in chemistry, too.
MORGAN: That's right. That's right. The big push for graduate work in chemistry came the second or third year I was here. There was more emphasis on preparation of M.D.'s than there were on preparation of PhD's in the first couple years that I was here.
OSBORNE: Oh, yes. Uh huh.
MORGAN: When Dr. Pappenhagen came in 1925, and Kiplinger left, he and I saw eye to eye on the graduate work in chemistry, and we got boys going into graduate school. In fact, in 1926, I returned to graduate school myself to begin my doctorate. Then, that year, that fall of '26, I became ill with tuberculosis and stayed out '27, until September of '27 when I returned, was able to return, and Dean Bowman gave me a very light schedule--! had only one course in the fall of '27. And as my strength increased and my health continued to be good, my load increased until I was teaching full time again. Dean Bowman was very cooperative with me. Dean Bowman was a fine man to work for. He knew every problem that any young teacher was likely to encounter and he knew what had happened in others, with others in the same circumstances, so that if you needed any help with any problems as far as your teaching was concerned--whether it was the mechanics of teaching or your relationships with your students in your classes, you could talk to Dean Bowman and he had the answers.
OSBORNE: Well, you mentioned you had had this bout with tuberculosis--did you have any idea how this came about, was a...
MORGAN: No, I don't. We had, at Mount Union College, two people who contracted tuberculosis before I did, both of whom taught in the same building that I did, and one of them taught in the same classroom that I did. So there might have been a contact there. But I couldn't--one, one young man who developed tuberculosis came here in the fall and left at Christmas, so that his case developed fairly rapidly. I packed up all of his belongings to ship them to his home. Now whether it came from those contacts or not, I don't know.
OSBORNE: Yes.
MORGAN: Then in '26 when I went to the graduate school, I was older than practically all the boys taking courses in the graduate school that summer. Some of them had been there through the winter, but I was several years older than any of them and there might have been a little bit of egotism on my part that I wanted to do well against...
OSBORNE: Yes.
MORGAN: That, that opposition, or that competition. So that I worked very, very hard and it was a very, very hot summer. I lived in a fraternity house, a graduate fraternity house, the Gamma Alpha house. We slept on the top floor in the dormitory and you'd just wake up in the morning and you could trace your outline in the bed...
OSBORNE: Right.
MORGAN: It was perspiration that had dripped off of you in the night, you know. And so I was pretty badly run down and by Christmastime, I completely collapsed. But I couldn't tell you that...
OSBORNE: But through a program of rest and proper care, you...
MORGAN: That's right, that was the only program there was in those days. There were no specific medicines, you know.
OSBORNE: Yes.
MORGAN: And so I went to Cincinnati to my parents' home. And my wife, and we had a little girl by that time, our oldest daughter, and we lived at my parents' home. The doctor was a very strict man. He isolated me in a room with no furnishings in that room except my bed and a chair. And he wouldn't allow any members of the family except my wife to take care of me. For the first three weeks, I didn't even much as raise a finger to eat. They fed me with a spoon. But this strict regimen was a...
OSBORNE: It paid off.
MORGAN: Just what the doctor, what the patient needed.
OSBORNE: Yeah, right.
MORGAN: Well, there had been this--Yost, the man across the street who was older than I had come down with tuberculosis, had this same doctor. He went through this same course, the doctor made him well, he went back to work and was working. So my family said, if he can do it, you can do it. So between my family who were very supportive and... So I stayed in bed constantly from Christmas until about 4th of July. And then they allowed me to get up and walk around the yard and take sun baths (which of course, today, we don't do at all), but, take sun baths in the back yard. And by September I was very much overweight because they had fed me very heavily, which was part of the program--again, something we don't do today. But I was able to come back and as I said, Dean Bowman was very kind and too good care of me academically. I was able to get back to full time work after a while.
OSBORNE: Well now, you think as a result of that then you had this great interest in the Tuberculosis Association?
MORGAN: Yeah. We had a little organization in town that sold Christmas Seals and ran a small program. Norman Fetters was the chief worker there. And Norman got me to head the program in 1929 and I headed the program from there on until the local group merged into the county group in '41, '40, I guess it was '40-'41. So then after we had the county group, then I became the representative of the county group and the state group, and then I became the representative of the state group and the national group. And I served on the national board from 1945 to 1974. I don't know whether they changed the rules to get rid of me or not, but they did change the rules that you could only serve twelve years. So then I had to get out.
OSBORNE: But, but in that time you headed up that group.
MORGAN: Oh yes.
OSBORNE: Nationally and internationally, too.
MORGAN: That's right.
OSBORNE: And what were those years now?
MORGAN: 1957-58 I was the President of the National, what was then the National Tuberculosis Association, which is called now the American Lung Association. Then by virtue of my office, I was the representative from the United States Organization to the International Organization, so that I was on the finance committee of the International Union Against Tuberculosis in 1957 and again in 1958. And I served on practically every committee of the National Association. And after I left the board of the National Association, I continued on the State Association. So that I was on the State Association from 1941 to 1977, last year, and then I decided I would resign from that. But I'm still 6n the local Association and I'll continue in that as long as I'm able to. But it's been a work of great gratification. I've seen some tremendous strides made.
OSBORNE: Oh, I'll bet you have, in that. But I think it's a, you know, a fine service that you rendered too, in what you contributed to that.
MORGAN: It took quite a bit of time.
OSBORNE: That's right.
MORGAN: And I did quite a bit of travel for them, representing the association both locally and, nationally that is, and two trips abroad. But again, I enjoyed doing it. I met an awful lot of fine people.
OSBORNE: I'm sure you would. I'm sure you would.
MORGAN: Growing out of my association with Fetters on the tuberculosis work, came the work in the local government. This again involved a Mount Union person. The President of the City Council... how we doing?
OSBORNE: We're okay, we still have more on here.
MORGAN: The President of City Council was the Professor of Mathematics at Mount Union College. T. Elmer Trott.
OSBORNE: T. Elmer Trott, yes.
MORGAN: He had come to Mount from Scio. He became ill and was not able to teach or to do his work as President of Council. And he had a large family so that he really was pretty well strapped for funds. Well--the members of the City Council wanted to replace Professor Trott by someone who could actually do the work of the office. So Norman Fetters approached me. The Council then had seven members--six Republicans and one Democrat. So I said well, I would serve the balance of Professor Trott's term if the money that was being paid for the office went to him. Because he needed it desperately. So that was agreed and we went to confer with the Mayor, who was a Mount Union man, Guy Allott.
OSBORNE: Oh yes.
MORGAN: A member of the Democratic team. And it was agreed that I would take the post. Well, before the Council met, they put it in the paper, the notification that Mr. Allott had appointed somebody else. And that made the Republican members of the Council hopping mad. And so, then they got me to run for the office in the next general election. And I won, and continued for twenty-eight years.
OSBORNE: Now, this would be what, in what year? It'd be in the 1930's, was it?
MORGAN: 1934.
OSBORNE: '34.
MORGAN: To 1962.
OSBORNE: My golly.
MORGAN: So those were some interesting years.
OSBORNE: Well, those would be. Now during most of that time...
MORGAN: The Depression years were difficult ones for this community. We had about one-third of our wage earners out of work. We had quite a number of WPA projects, and one of the difficult problems for the Council was to find the money-- 10% of the cost of the project had to come from the local municipality. And we were hard put to find that 10%. In one month we had eleven meetings of the Council. Two stated meetings and nine extra meetings when we would be trying to figure out ways of getting the sponsor's share, and some of these sponsor's shares were tiny things, fifty or a hundred dollars. But that was an awful lot of money...
OSBORNE: In those days.
MORGAN: for our community to handle. Most of the WPA projects were pick and shovel jobs and not much material was involved. Now the government paid the.,. the government paid the wages for the men, but they, and most of the materials, but the local community had to find 10%, had to support 10% of the material costs. And oh, we cleaned up Silver Park and all the rest of these things, and built drainage ditches and all kinds of things of that sort. So there wasn't much materials involved but we were pretty hard put just to find even a little bit of money. The Council cut their, their pay from $25 a month to $12.50 a month. Of course, it didn't produce a great deal of money over the course of the year but,--and some of the city officials voluntarily cut their salary. But still we didn't have very much money. But I think we had a very good Council and one that worked very, very diligently to try to keep men working. And we were able to survive the Depression period in pretty good order although some people lost their homes and had very severe problems.
OSBORNE: It was, I remember--! was a student here during part of that time here. Well, now later on, by virtue of being President of Council, you were acting Mayor for a period of time, weren't you? Toward the end of your...
MORGAN: For the last year that I was in office, the Mayor was Dave Mainwaring and Rhodes was elected Governor of the state of Ohio for his first term. And now he's running for what, the third or fourth term? I think third term.
OSBORNE: Third term.
MORGAN: Well, Rhodes offered Dave the post of Motor Vehicles, now what is that post.
OSBORNE: I just know that it has something to do with that. I don't know the title.
MORGAN: Director of Motor Vehicles or something of that sort. It had to do with all of the licensing of cars and all of that sort of thing. And it was a good opportunity for Dave, and everybody was happy to see him appointed. Well, I was working full time at the college and I was not happy to have to take the job of Mayor. So we had, the man that I had spoke of as having cashed my check when I first came here, Gus Graf, was on the Council as a Councilman at Large and was President Pro Tern of Council. So it was arranged that I would resign as President of Council and Gus would take the job. Then the Council turned around and elected me as a Councilman at Large. Well, then Gus went into the Mayor's post when Dave left. That left the President of Council place open, so the President of Council is appointed by the Mayor if a vacancy exists. So Dave Mainwaring appointed me as the President of Council. This was really laughable, and there was a sort of a musical chair thing--you never knew from day to day who was the President of Council. Well that worked fine for about oh, a few weeks, six or eight weeks, and Gus had a heart attack and died. So we couldn't go through all that monkey business again, and so I went in then as Mayor and we elected a new President of Council or appointed a new President of Council, and so I served the balance of 1962. About ten months all told. Maybe a week or so more than that, but about ten months. And it was really a difficult time for me because I had all my classes at the college, and the college didn't want to release me from the teaching assignment and find somebody temporarily to take my place, because that would have been a difficult thing to do. So I commuted between the campus and the downtown, making four and five trips a day between the college campus and the city hall. It worked out all right, and I had a good Service Director who took a great deal of
the load.
OSBORNE: Who was your--was it Jack?
MORGAN: No, Jack Thorpe had once been Service Director, and when Jack died, Dave Mainwaring went in as Service Director; and then when Dave became Mayor, he appointed Paul Giovanini.
OSBORNE: Oh, Paul, yes.
MORGAN: As Service Director. And Paul's been in the City Hall in one capacity or another ever since 1962.
OSBORNE: Yes.
MORGAN: He'd be about ready to retire, I'd think.
OSBORNE: Uh huh. Yeah.
MORGAN: But he's been there. He's been Director for several Mayors. And during Walborn's term he was the Bailiff of the Court. So Me's been in the City Hall...
OSBORNE: In there.
MORGAN: In one capacity or another now for pretty near thirty years. Twenty years.
OSBORNE: Twenty years, yeah. Well now, you were in that capacity, but at the college also, because of a chain of circumstances there, you were Dean twice, at the college.
MORGAN: Well, the first time was 1937-1938 I think. Dean Bowman had had a heart attack, a sudden heart attack, just before school was to open. And then died. And Dr. McMaster asked me to step in as the temporary replacement for the Dean, an Acting Dean, until they could get a full-time man. So I served that whole year as Acting Dean of the college. There were many things that we did in those days that we don't do now, for example--Chapel was compulsory.
OSBORNE: Yes.
MORGAN: And if you didn't attend Chapel you had to turn in a Chapel excuse, if you didn't attend classes you had to turn in excuses. And the Dean had to review all of those every day and decide which were suitable and which were not, along with all the rest of his duties. Now, in addition to serving in the Dean's office, I actually conducted part of my class schedule. I taught the Organic Class and we sort of absorbed the rest of the work in the department with Dr. Pappenhagen and Faye Barker, Faye Holloway now. But it worked out pretty well. Then in 1967, I guess it was, the President then, Carl Bracy, asked me to take an active Deanship when the man who was occupying, had occupied the job had not worked out in relationship to the President the way Dr. Bracy thought he should. And so I served then for two years until my retirement in 1969. So I served the 1967-68 year and the 1968-69 year and retired in June of 1969.
OSBORNE: Well now, you started with Dr. Bracy, but he was...
MORGAN: Well, Dr. Bracy left.
OSBORNE: Yes.
MORGAN: Resigned, and Dr. Weber took over. And well, let's see, I think Bracy resigned in the spring of 1968 and Dr. Weber took over, and then, Dr. Weber, I served with Dr. Weber then until my retirement.
OSBORNE: Yes. And along the way you also were Marshall of the college for a number of years.
MORGAN: I was Marshall from 1928 until 1953. Twenty-five years. Prior to the late 20's, the commencement procedures at the college had been rather informal. And we had a new Marshall every year. About 1925 Ralph Harshman became Marshall and served about three years, and he began to make some improvement in the method of conducting the commencement week program. Then Ralph left to go into industry and Dr. McMaster asked me to take it over. And I took it over in 1928 and I was the Marshall for twenty-five years. And in that time we made a great many changes--Commencement became a much more formal activity than it had been before. The processions were formalized. The programs were better planned. Not that I did all the planning, but I coordinated the planning. With Dr. McMaster, I coordinated the Baccalaureate program because he always gave the Baccalaureate sermon. He picked out the hymns and things of that sort. With Dean Bowman, I coordinated the Commencement planning. We had several other things that I didn't have any particular part in--there were musical programs that were part of the Commencement weekend. Commencement exercises began on Friday and ran till about the next Tuesday, with class days, alumni days, Baccalaureate Sunday, a musical program on Monday and Commencement on Tuesday or maybe even Wednesday. And it was a much more relaxed thing than we have now.
OSBORNE: Yes.
MORGAN: The present format began during World War II and has continued since.
OSBORNE: Yes, that's been, been quite a change--it's bunched in all together. But one other area I want to touch on too, and that was Athletic Board of Control. You were identified with that for a period of time, weren't you?
MORGAN: Yes, in, when I came here, Intercollegiate Athletics was in the hands of the Mount Union Alumni Association, the Mount Union Athletics Association which was largely men from the town who were interested in athletics. And Guy Allott was a graduate manager. We had, the college had been members of the Ohio Athletic Conference since about 1913. I think that date is just about right. In 1932, the Ohio Athletic Conference decreed that there could be no more graduate managerships and that the control of athletics had to be in the hands of the faculty, the faculty committee, with faculty in the majority of membership; and the operation of the athletic program had to be a collegiate program and not an alumni program or anything of that sort. So the college formed the Athletic Board of Control, made up of a group of faculty people and an alumni representative and maybe we had a student representative at that time. The Chairman was Dr. Shollenberger and it was a new program getting started. And Dr. Shollenberger did practically all of the detail work himself. I was the Secretary of the Board of Control. Then in 1942, after ten years, Dr. Shollenberger decided that he didn't want to bother with all of the .work of the association. He had been in charge of passes, tickets, police protection. You name it, he'd done it. So he resigned and Dr. McMaster appointed me as the Chairman of the Board of Control. Well, in conference with Dr. McMaster then, we decided that all of the details of tickets and finance should be in the hands of the Business Manager. And all of the details of operating the games, policing and all of that kind of stuff, would be the responsibility of the Director of Athletics. All the passes would be in the hands of the Director of Athletics. So all of those many details that Dr. Shollenberger had found so onerous sluffed off to the people that I thought should be responsible, and it turned out that that was correct. So it became a much easier assignment then. So then I was Chairman of the Board of Control from 1942 until I retired in 1969. So that would be 27 years. And in that time we had a number of changes of personnel in the department. Mr. Rafeld came just about the start of World War II, I think, about 1941 he came. And before that we had a number of Directors who I don't remember the sequence that they were in. Jack Thorpe, who had been the Director of Athletics when I came here, in fact he came the same year, left in 1932. So he was never a part of the operation of the program.
OSBORNE: Was it Bob Wright, I think it was; Geltz was football coach and Bob was basketball and Director of Athletics, I guess.
MORGAN: Turn it off.
OSBORNE: Well, I think we were talking about Athletics, but you just happened to mention something else there and that was about bridge. You used to play a lot of bridge.
MORGAN: Oh yes. During the Depression, we had to find cheap ways of entertaining ourselves, and so Jack Thorpe and Ken McFall and myself, and a man by the name of _________ built a set of duplicate bridge boards. And we would play bridge once a week, the four of us. We played thousands of hands during the Depression years. It was a cheap means of entertainment and we all enjoyed it. Then Ken McFall left to go to Bowling Green and then, other members were added to the group. By death and by transfer to other communities, the group finally broke up I guess. We just couldn't find people to replace them.
OSBORNE: Now you were here during a period in the 1920's and 30's there when the faculty wasn't so large, and it was you, and in the department was Pappenhagen, and then there was Shollenberger and Scott and Eckler and Kitzmiller and then Englebert came along.
MORGAN: Yeah.
OSBORNE: There was a group there, sort of a nucleus, and I came in on sort of the tail end of that. But I always felt that there was more of a close-knittedness and a warmth than there is today.
MORGAN: I think there was, I think there was. During the Depression years, a great many of the faculty actually were salesmen for the college. We went out in the various communities and really counseled the students about going to college and getting them interested in coming to Mount Union. Eckler and I covered the Massillon area, Kitzmiller went down into Carroll County and some of the others went into other places. But we would take off after class in the evening, in the afternoon and go to these various communities and meet with students and their families in their homes and induce many of them to consider going to college after they'd finished high school. And many of them did. One year as a result of the work £hat Eckler and I did in Massillon, nine students came over from Massillon, which was an important financial matter.
OSBORNE: Oh yes.
MORGAN: And of the students that came over, two of them that I recall very well, became M.D. 's; one of them, a girl, is married and lives here in town now--her husband's a retired banker; one of them got his master's degree and went on to hold a high office in one of the food preparing outfits, the Heinz Company.
OSBORNE: When you mentioned about Massillon. In those days, they could come over by streetcar.
MORGAN: Oh yes.
OSBORNE: And this is what students today just can't visualize.
MORGAN: Well, many students came from Salem daily by Interurban
OSBORNE: Right.
MORGAN: And Bob Carey and I have often talked about that, because he was one who did. He and a man by the name of Moss, Mel Moss, who is now the Director of Research and several other important assignments for the Muscular Dystrophy group in New York. They traveled over here daily by Interurban. And they would, they would study while they were riding on the Interurban and going both ways. And I guess they carried their lunches, I don't know where they got fed. Maybe they ate here on the campus, but...
OSBORNE: Probably did carry it. And of course, they could get out right there at the Administration Building there almost. It stopped right there.
MORGAN: Yes.
OSBORNE: That was very convenient. That was a different era.
MORGAN: Of course, if you came from Massillon, you had to go from Massillon to Canton and transfer from there to Alliance. But from Salem you came right straight through.
OSBORNE: Right, right.
MORGAN: And then there may have been people who came from Lisbon or beyond Salem by Interurban, I don't know.
OSBORNE: Well that was, that was a different period.
MORGAN: We had a financial campaign in 1926, a fund raising campaign. This was not too successful and the period of payments was five years, I think. But by the time the fifth year came around, the Depression had begun and there were very few people who were paying pledges of that sort. So that the College got a number of the faculty at the close of summer school to go out through Northeastern Ohio trying to collect some of these pledges. It was not a very successful project. I remember that Tom Kepler, who was a professor of Religion and Philosophy here, and I were assigned the area around Warren and Niles and Kinsman, that whole area there. And we went over and worked that area for a week to ten days. Now this was all gratis, we got no pay for this. And I would say we hardly collected more than what paid our mileage and our meals. It was--the campaign had gone into the churches and gotten pledges and the pledges would be five and ten dollars and they were not paid. And the local barber would have
pledged $5.00, the local grocer maybe $10.00 and they were having a tough time keeping going themselves in 1932 and
thereabouts. And they would say, well, we'll try and pay you, but as I said, we collected very little. We went from Warren clear on up to Painesville, that area up there.
OSBORNE: You know, they had high hopes from that campaign, but they didn't...
MORGAN: Do the trick.
OSBORNE: Turn out too much money as a result of that. Well, during the Depression you were affected here. You talked about the community and you were talking about this campaign, but the faculty salary-wise was affected at the college as a result of that weren't they?
MORGAN: I got my doctorate degree in 1932 and my salary was cut back to what it had been when I came here in 1922. It was about a 60% cut.
OSBORNE: Boy.
MORGAN: But, there were no openings anywhere else and every body hung on to whatever job he had. And going back to what you said about the unanimity of the faculty in the earlier years. The faculty very loyally carried out all kinds of projects to assist the college in making ends meet, so to speak. We took part of our pay in local scrip. I think we took about a third of our pay in local scrip. If you needed a chair, let us say, you could go to one of the local furniture companies that owed the college money and the whole deal went through by paper transaction. You got the chair, the furniture store got the credit for it against their mortgage or
whatever it was. So a lot of things went on like that.
OSBORNE: I remember one time, Kitzie was telling me, he said, he lost his temper and he lost it, and he swore; and he lost it with Dr. McMaster, and he said he often regretted it but he went in and McMaster told him that he was going to have to cut back and Kitzie felt he had just come and just as a new person was just beginning to reach where he should be and then he was like you, he was cut back to before. You know. And he said, McMaster said, "But just think Kitzie, of all the good you're doing." And Kitzie said, "Damn it, _______ , I can't buy bread for my family on the good I'm doing."
MORGAN: Yeah, that's right.
OSBORNE: And he said afterwards, McMaster was having a hard time, and he regretted that.
MORGAN: Well, in 1932, I rented a house on Sunset Drive. We had three bedrooms, one of which I used for a study, a living room, dining room and kitchen and I paid $15 a month.
OSBORNE: $15.
MORGAN: I tell you, when the landlord raised the price to $20 a month, we really thought it was a big raise.
OSBORNE: Well, I remember when I was in college you lived in what was the old Bingham house, which is no more. You had a big garden there where East Hall is with flowers and vegetables.
MORGAN: Well, I lived in East Hall from 1928 to 1932 and most of that time we lived there so that the free rent that we got enabled me to save money so that I could go to school in the summertime. There were no such things as faculty leaves of absence with pay...
OSBORNE: Yeah.
MORGAN: Sabbatic leaves, or anything of that sort. You had to pay your own way. I did have a military discharge so that I was able to get a great many of my fees at Ohio State free. And all my tuition and my lab fees all came under the military activity. So that I simply presented my military discharge and everything was remitted except the health fee, I think, which I had to pay.
OSBORNE: Well, the very fine place that you have here on Kingsway, you moved out here at what time, Bill?
MORGAN: 1939
OSBORNE: 1939, you built this. How many--how built up was this when you came out?
MORGAN: This was the first house on the street.
OSBORNE: Is that right?
MORGAN: I was a little dubious, I wanted to build. I was not a member of the group that organized this suburb. But I wanted to have a home of my own. We were living in a rented home over there, at the time I think we were paying maybe $25 a month, so we weren't paying very much. My wife's brother-in-law, her sister's husband, was an architect and we thought, he could draw up the plans, and he did. And my father had been in the field of plumbing and heating so he was familiar with the whole building business. So with the consultation of those people, I decided to go ahead. Although I was very dubious because conditions in Europe were looking bad in '39 and in fact the war was going to break out. And my father said, you go ahead and build because you'll never do any better than you're doing right now as far as prices were concerned, and how right he was.
OSBORNE: Oh yes.
MORGAN: So I bought this piece of property here and when I think of the prices that I see they are getting from some of the other pieces of property, why, this was a gift.
OSBORNE: Yes.
MORGAN: We built, we started the house in the fall of 1939 and moved in here in the spring of 1940. It was a terrific winter, very, very cold. The men had great difficulty in working, but they got everything done. And sure enough, soon after we moved in here then things, building materials, became very scarce. Many of the things that we have in this house we wouldn't have had.
OSBORNE: That's right.
MORGAN: So he was quite right. Sara's sister's husband designed the house having seen a picture of a reconstructed farmhouse in New England, I forgot who painted it. But it was an old house that had been, a Connecticut house--it was an old house that had stood there for many, many years and had been added to. Pretty much what we've got here. We've got a living room, with sleeping quarters above it. And probably that living room was the whole living area of the family. They probably cooked and ate and everything else there. And then we built the rest of the house right onto that.
OSBORNE: Well, it's been real attractive, and the setting's so nice, the ground around here, on that.
MORGAN: Of course, this was just thick woods when we moved out here.
OSBORNE: Yeah, I remember at that time, I had just come back here and you were out chopping and cutting and grubbing, I remember that.
MORGAN: By that time, my house was in good shape.
OSBORNE: Well, I'm going to run down, I don't have enough tape. I'm going to run out on this, but I really enjoyed this very much and maybe sometime we can touch on some faculty personalities and some other reminiscences on the hill.
END OF TAPE.