UMSL @ 60 - Dr. Peter Acsay

Transcript 00:01:00Miriam Ferko (MMF)

All right. Thank you for agreeing to do this, Dr. Acsay. For the record, I'm Miriam Ferko. It is December 4th, 2023. I'm interviewing you for the “UMSL at 60” oral history project for UMSL’s 60th anniversary. And you are an alumnus of UMSL. Correct? 00:02:00Dr. Peter Acsay (PA)

I am. 00:03:00 MMF

Which program did you graduate from? 00:04:00 PA

I got a Master’s degree in history from UMSL in 1996. 00:05:00 MMF

OK, excellent. So that'll be of interest to the other history students, I'm sure. 00:06:00 PA

It comes up from time to time. Yeah, it does. [Laughter] 00:07:00 MMF

So you are from here, correct? 00:08:00 PA

I grew up in St. Louis, MO, and my parents were immigrants. They were displaced persons from World War Two, and they were settled in the Saint Louis because there was a sponsoring church, Hungarian church, that sponsored them. 00:09:00 MMF

Was that Saint Mary of Victories? 00:10:00 PA

That's correct. Yes. Yeah, it was on Chouteau [Avenue] then and now is on Gratiot. So it moved. The Choteau building got knocked down for Ross and Purina campus. Different buildings. So I grew up in

North Saint Louis and as immigrants, had three siblings and went to school, all my schooling was in one of the Saint Louis educational institutions. 00:11:00 MMF

Okay. Which ones? 00:12:00 PA

Well, I started at—well, I'll go to grade school first. You know, Nativity of Our Lord grade school in North Saint Louis. Then McBride High School in North Saint Louis, which is closed, of course. Then I went to DeAndrews High School, also in North Saint Louis, which closed. And then Florissant Valley Community College. 00:13:00 MMF

OK, still also still here. 00:14:00 PA

Two years there...No, two years at Florissant Valley. And then I got sort of a phone call out of the blue that Wash U [Washington University in St. Louis] was looking for students, I guess, to fill out as people left. And so I and I don't know, a number of other people recruited from local community colleges to spend the last two years at Washington University. 00:15:00 MMF

OK that I know they have a program like that now still, that's like on purpose. A sort of scholarship program. 00:16:00 PA

OK, I was just—yeah. And there was a scholarship attached to it, not a full ride, but there was a scholarship attached to it, which was very attractive, like if you were... 00:17:00 MMF

So you just did straight, you know—grade school, high school... 00:18:00 PA

Yeah, junior college and then...yeah. 00:19:00 MMF

...Junior College and college? Okay. No breaks, no military service, nothing like that? 00:20:00 PA

No, no military service. I was a little too young for the Vietnam era and the lottery, draft lottery. I did have to go get a draft card, though. First time I went to Clayton in my life was—that's where the draft board was. And I carried it around for a while until it dissolved. So I never burned it or destroyed it, just wore out. And what? 00:21:00 MMF

Very lawful. Do you mind if I close this? [Door was open, leading to background noise] 00:22:00 PA

Or at least halfway close it. Yeah, you know, it's against the law to close it. So I think you probably know how to take care of it. Yeah. 00:23:00 MMF

OK. Yeah, I should have. I should have thought of that at firstI wasn't sure. 00:24:00 PA

Yeah, I mean three-quarters closing it is fine, yeah. So yeah, so I never, I mean, I kind of thought...My older brother, I sort of followed to Flo Valley. I didn't. I didn't really think –I followed him to high school for that matter, I didn't really think through. Then he went to SIU Edwardsville [Southern Illinois University] after Flo Valley. And I probably would have followed him there, except I got the phone call out of the blue and said, “Yeah, Wash U sounds pretty good.” 00:25:00 MMF

How did your—so, you said both your parents were displaced persons? 00:26:00 PA

Yes.

So how did...if you could give a rundown of like, their names and your siblings’ names? 00:28:00 PA

Sure. Yeah. My father was Denes Acsay. He went by Dennis Francis Acsay. My mother was Anna Maria Hertz, from Austria and my oldest sister is Denise. My older brother is Paul. Peter, and then my younger brother is George. So that's the family. 00:29:00 MMF

Five? I’m sorry, I wasn’t counting. 00:30:00 PA

4 kids. Yeah, yeah, that's OK. Yeah, yeah. 00:31:00 MMF

And so how did they feel about how they feel about the Wash U deal? 00:32:00 PA

Oh. Uh, my sister had been working at Wash U at the time, in the serials department in the library, she chose not to go to college for whatever reason. She was born in Regensburg, Germany, in occupied Germany in ‘48, so she had to become a naturalized citizen and all this sort of thing in the US. And she did not go to college. I can't say that people were over overly impressed by going to Wash U but I think it was overall felt to be a good thing, especially we had financial straits. My father died in 1969, and so we were sort of “getting by” financially, not much more than getting by, certain things. 00:33:00 MMF

What had been his line of work? 00:34:00 PA

In the United States or in...? 00:35:00 MMF

Both. 00:36:00 PA

Oh. Well, in Hungary he was a lawyer. He went to law school and he worked in the Ministry of Justice. I think, you know, a government...You know, like, I don't know what you’d call it, the government, the, like, our attorney general's office here would be, something like that. But then here he was a receiving clerk at Katz Drug Company. Katz Drug Company had two locations in downtown Saint Louis and a couple other locations around. Around town. So he did go to night school, law school at Wash U, but it's just too many kids, too much responsibilities.... 00:37:00 MMF

Just yeah, never panned out? 00:38:00 PA

...Work called? Yeah, it never panned out. But yeah. 00:39:00 MMF

And your mom was just a homemaker? 00:40:00 PA

A homemaker, yeah. 00:41:00 MMF

A full-time homemaker or was there like cottage industry or anything like that? 00:42:00 PA

No, no. She was a full-time homemaker until my father died. She was sort of, I don't know what you if “draft” is the right word. But in World War Two she was mobilized to work at the Fliegerhorst, the local

military air base where she's from, Mittelfeld, and did—what do you call it? Sort of payroll work type of thing. 00:43:00 MMF

Okay.. Yeah. How did they—do you know how they, like, decided who was gonna work where for that or or how that process worked? 00:44:00 PA

You mean in Austria or in occupied... for a while too? 00:45:00 MMF

Oh, this was in Austria? Oh, okay, this was this was in Austria, okay. 00:46:00 PA

World War Two era, yeah. Well, actually to be—to be clear on this, actually, my mom worked at the nursery school while my dad went to night school. So she was a breadwinner for the first couple of years. 00:47:00 MMF

Okay. 00:48:00 PA

They got here in ‘51. And she was probably breadwinner for two or three years. Until then, he went, my father would work full time and she went to be a full time homemaker. After me, after I came along, the third child, I think that's how it worked out. 00:49:00 MMF

So before then, were the oldest in school, or...? So that’s how it was able to work out, basically? 00:50:00 PA

Yeah. 00:51:00 MMF

And so you said North Saint Louis. About what neighborhood was that? 00:52:00 PA

It was a Walnut Park neighborhood. 00:53:00 MMF

OK. Yeah. 00:54:00 PA

Fairly notorious today, but a real nice working-class neighborhood in that era. 00:55:00 MMF

I remember you saying before it was pretty close-knit and kids would just roam the streets and everyone knew each other. 00:56:00 PA

Yeah, it was all the things you hear. Yeah. Everybody knew each other. I don’t know if people—People were nosy. Everybody knew what you were doing. That kind of thing. It was a, you know, Catholic neighborhood, with a parish. So most social things you did, the sports, the dances, schooling, was all through the parish, so it was kind of a tight knit...It's not fair to say “ethnic” community because there was multiple ethnicities. No, no one dominated: German, Irish, Polish, Hungarian, no dominant ethnic, but an “ethnic” parish, I guess you’d call it. 00:57:00 MMF

Ethnic by the standards of the decade, I guess, in the sixties. 00:58:00 PA

Yeah. Italian, I forgot the Italians in there. Yeah, that that kind of “ethnicity,” rather than dominated by one ethnicity. 00:59:00 MMF

Are there any particular anecdotes or episodes from growing up around there that you’re tempted to share? 01:00:00 PA

Well, it is, I guess, important to note that this is—I wasn't conscious of this, but this is a period of strong segregation, even though it's after the Supreme Court rulings, our neighborhood was., you know, literally all white. By custom, by law. Well, not by law so much, but it was very homogeneous, not much like modern day Saint Louis neighborhoods where—more people from Asia, South Asia, India. Nothing like that. We were exotic as first-generation immigrants. 01:01:00 MMF

That's sort of what I was wondering, was there like---were you aware of a sense of, I guess, distinctness from, you know, WASPS? [White Anglo-Saxon Protestants] For lack of a better... 01:02:00 PA

Yeah, I mean we knew that there was other neighborhoods in Clayton and Ladue where people were Protestant, had money and controlled, you know, things. But it wasn't something you resented. You know, I was aware of the Veiled Prophet organization and aware they put on parades. But I didn't like want to get in it or anything. I felt like, “They've got their stuff. We have our stuff and...it’s fine.” 01:03:00 MMF

Was this a period of like, German-American Society? You know, like heritage organizations like that, were they active in the area? 01:04:00 PA

Those things existed, but not in my neighborhood, and there was also there was no, you know, the Irish—there's two different Irish societies, the Hibernians. We had a lot of Irish people, but no Hibernians that I'm aware of at all. So it seemed like it was...had gone beyond that strong identification, ethnically. Most of the—you have to remember, all the dads were World War Two veterans at that time. My dad was in World War Two, but in the Hungarian army, so didn't quite fit with the other dads in the neighborhood. But I think the World War Two experience had people shed a lot of that...I don’t know, “clannishness,” if you want to call it that. Irish people are proud of being Irish. Germans weren't so proud of being Germans. Irish. You know –Italians are proud of Italianness, that sort of thing. But it didn't really manifest itself through organizations. 01:05:00 MMF

Did everyone speak English, then? Everyone pretty much spoke English, even at home? Or... 01:06:00 PA

Yeah, well, my—so, when they first came over there still were German speaking people and where they first moved in Hyde Park neighborhood, there were still old Germans there, who owned, you know, confectionaries, corner stores and delis and all that spoke German, but that really was fading out at home. They spoke English because my mom didn't really speak Hungarian. And my dad spoke some German but wasn't really fluent, so English became kind of their common tongue, if you will. 01:07:00 MMF

And that was true for the whole neighborhood, basically? Okay. 01:08:00 PA

Yeah, there was an anecdote, if you have time for an anecdote. There was a confectionery a block from the house. We all had confectionaries. And it was called Joe and Ruby's and I went there a lot, like every day, to buy penny candy or what have you. And I thought Joe was kind of close-mouthed guy. He didn't talk much. Older guy, you know, owned it, and his wife Ruby. I saw him every day. He didn’t say a lot. Well, I knew the upstairs lived more of these people. They were—the family was Russo, R-U-S-S-O. And the boy told me, “Oh yeah, he didn't speak English. That's my grandfather. He doesn't speak English.” But I didn't know that he didn't. You know, it was not known he didn't speak English. Yes, he knew how to sell penny candy, since it was all about...Yeah. 01:09:00 MMF

There you go. 01:10:00 MMF

So, let's see. So your elementary school. There wasn't middle school back then? 01:11:00 PA

No, there was this elementary school that high school here. 01:12:00 MMF

And mention again where you went to high school? 01:13:00 PA

It was called McBride High School. 01:14:00 MMF

Still around? 01:15:00 PA

The building is. It was just an all-girls charter school called Hawthorne. It just closed down. 01:16:00 MMF

Okay. Is that part of the diocesan stuff, or separate? 01:17:00 PA

No, this is a private thing. Yeah, this is like a like a girls’ STEM school. And we—I went there, right as they opened, they invited and McBride alumni to come and see it. And well, like you’ve heard, it looked a lot smaller. The school looked much smaller and I, you know, we wished them all good luck. And there is a need for an all-girls STEM school in North Saint Louis. But for whatever reason, it didn't. It didn't work. It was going about four or five years, I guess, and then and then stopped. 01:18:00 MMF

And so let's see, about what year did you graduate from high school? 01:19:00 PA

Um—1973. 01:20:00 MMF

1973. Okay, the late sixties, you're in high school. Are there any, I guess any salient things about that experience that you’d like to recall or share with people, or...? 01:21:00 PA

I feel this it was just a normal experience. You know our interest was sports and girls and... 01:22:00 MMF

Soccer? Football? 01:23:00 PA

Soccer. Yeah, sports was soccer, mainly, for me, and the neighborhood was a strong soccer neighborhood, yeah. And my interest would be cars, but I couldn't afford one, so we didn't really have a lot of cars in high school. Today, I know it's pretty taken for granted that once someone's old enough to

get a license, they drive themselves to school and all that. We took the bus, hitchhiked, caught rides with other people. 01:24:00 MMF

It's starting to go away for the younger generations. Yeah, a lot of people are putting off driving. 01:25:00 PA

Is it? I agree with that. If there's a way to get to school, you know. You need transportation. 01:26:00 MMF

So, so car is this like 1960s car culture? Or...? 01:27:00 PA

Yeah, it is more or less, but really “anything that ran” culture. That was more like...Junkers, if you could and you know, I did learn a little light-weight automobile engine, you know, maintenance thing. When I eventually got my own junker. But I was really in college by that time. So I got, you know, I got around by foot, or friends, catching rides, that kind of thing. Some of my friends were more committed to getting a car as soon as they could, I was like, willing to just go along and do my little thing. It didn't bother me that much. Yeah. 01:28:00 MMF

So you're, I guess your high school cohort was...Was there an understanding that people were going to be going into the workforce or starting...? 01:29:00 PA

The first school was a so-called college prep school, okay. So that was the idea, that we're all going to college. However, as is often the case in these schools, there was not a great deal of time spent with each student to help them maneuver into the college realm. It appeared certain students gained more attention than others, let's just say that. But then again, McBride closed and I had to transfer to DeAndrews. And DeAndrew's is a little more...It was a completely integrated school. It was about half black, half white. But much less emphasis on college. It was much more emphasis on....I don't, I'm not saying it's necessarily a race based issue, but clearly DeAndres, it had a had a different orientation than McBride. McBride was a, you know, college prep school. 01:30:00 MMF

Why did McBride close? 01:31:00 PA

Low enrollments, the same story, and it the neighborhood had a bad reputation. It was on Kingshighway between Copley and Lotus, and there were incidents that happened in high school. Different incidents, racial type incidents happened. And I guess the parents just decided, “Let's not send our kids to

McBride,” sort of thing. 01:32:00 MMF

Mmm. Oh, OK. 01:33:00 PA

Yeah. So roll lower enrollment, I don't really know why enrollment dropped off, it’s the assumption. 01:34:00 MMF

Do you remember any of the incidents? 01:35:00 PA

Well, yeah. You know, just some stabbings. 01:36:00 MMF

Oh my. 01:37:00 PA

Fights, you know, the stabbings at the bus stop, yeah. 01:38:00 MMF

So word got around and... 01:39:00 PA

Yeah. Efforts at robbery, you know, type of thing, armed robbery, you know. 01:40:00 MMF

Okay. 01:41:00 PA

So it was interesting to run the gauntlet, you know, at the time, type of thing. 01:42:00 MMF

Yeah. So I guess, out of the people you hung out with in high school, how many of them ended up going to college? 01:43:00 PA

Oh, about half, I guess. 01:44:00 MMF

About half? Okay. 01:45:00 PA

Yeah. And the truth is most of them—for the first thing, girls. I didn't go to high school with girls, but I knew girls in their high schools. And I'd say way less than half of the girls went to high school. We're

right at that period when it wasn't quite required to go to college. So most of the girls wanted to get a job, buy a car, get an apartment, get married. That was for most of them. 01:46:00 MMF

The Mary Tyler Moore life. 01:47:00 PA

Yeah, kind of thing. And—but the boys, most of my friends went on some sort of sports scholarship to college. Actually, you know, except the one my only real good friend went to [University of Missouri at] Rolla because his dad was a union electrician. He had a vision of working in the in the profession of electrical engineering, not a wireman level, so I don't know. I knew him very well, but I don't know what he decided. “Yeah, I'm going to go to Rolla.” And he did and he graduated and became an electrical engineer. 01:48:00 MMF

So Rolla it was known for that, at that time as well? 01:49:00 PA

At that time it was almost all-male school. And it was just straight-up engineering. 01:50:00 MMF

The ratio of men to women at Rolla is still pretty...

Yeah, skewed.

MMF

...From what I understand, so. 01:52:00 PA

Right. But many, many more women now going and wanting to be engineers. 01:53:00 MMF

So so your first years at Flo Valley. This would have been 1974, 1975? Probably not as strong activist presence there. 01:54:00 PA

Well, the by that time they had, the moratorium was over the and the public protest. This was the era of streaking. So that was a big college fun at the time with people running naked through campus, so that if that shows you what that era was like then, but of course also would I remember extremely clearly. It's also the Symbionese Liberation Army. The assassination of Marcus Foster in Oakland, CA. Patty Hearst kidnapping and the subsequent events which—a big shootout, house burned down, Patty Hearst on the run, etcetera. That was all going on in this period. 01:55:00 MMF

Would you say there is a strong, I guess, tendency to follow current events at on campus at Flo Valley versus Wash U? 01:56:00 PA

On my case, yeah, I was. Yeah. 01:57:00 MMF

Okay, well, you were. Okay.

One thing that must be said about Flo Valley at the time: it felt like it was dominated by returning Vietnam vets. They were in on the GI Bill. The American presence was almost wound down by then, and there was a lot of them taking advantage of GI Bill and they brought their Army culture to campus. Which meant cutting classes, playing cards you know, and partying. No, it's not just that. Many of them did use it, but there was definitely a strong presence of vets on campus, and my brother hung around with them, he was there. We overlapped a little bit. He hung around the vets on campus, so I got to know a number of the of the so-called vets. 01:59:00 PA

Your brother was older than you. Was he... 02:00:00 PA

Yeah. Two years older. 02:01:00 MMF

OK, so but. But he still wasn't old enough to serve. 02:02:00 PA

No, he got lottery number. He was born 1952. OK, his lottery number was like, 310. His buddy Bob got number 2, but he joined, and ended up in Germany the whole time. Company clerk. 02:03:00 MMF

Okay.

PA

Yeah, his typing skills came in handy. Then I learned typing skills in high school. I might have been a company clerk myself one day if it would have went that way. Yeah. 02:04:00 MMF

Okay, so your brother served but wasn't... 02:05:00 PA

No, he was not even called. They didn't go anywhere near those numbers. Yeah. Yeah, he was he. 02:06:00 MMF

Oh, the friend. It was the friend who was...okay, that's right, number 2. 02:07:00 PA

He went and joined up with the number 2. 02:08:00 MMF

OK so but so for whatever, for whatever reason your older brother sort of identified with the the Vietnam vets who were there. 02:09:00 PA

He did. It was funny. He was an anti-war person. Well, listen, no...At McBride High School, he was actually leading a pro-war rally at one point, I believe. Going to either--I'm not sure if it was Flo Valley or it was SIU. The teach-in kind of things were going on, and he had a 180 turn on his support of the Vietnam War. Let's just say that, yeah, after college he became very anti-war. Not that he participated in any big protests or anything, but he was anti-war. 02:10:00 MMF

Sort of part of growing up, maybe? 02:11:00 PA

Yeah. And, you know, he turned on. You know Richard Nixon, Henry Kissinger. These are now evil people. Yeah. Yeah. May he rest in peace, yeah. 02:12:00 MMF

May he [Kissinger] rest in peace. 02:13:00 PA

He lasyed a long time. 02:14:00 MMF

A hundred years. 02:15:00 PA

Yeah, I know it's a century! [Laughter] 02:16:00 MMF

And so the opportunity comes along for you to go to Wash U. Your brother goes to SIUE. 02:17:00 PA

Yeah. SIUE, yeah. 02:18:00 MMF

What were you—So what were you planning on majoring in? 02:19:00 PA

It was, I was always majoring in history. It was always my interest, my love, my love then and my love now is history. And I had no vision for what I was gonna do with it. I didn't care about jobs or job prospect. The last thing I cared about at the time. I just want to take history classes, that's all it was. 02:20:00 MMF

I mean, was this influenced by your family? I remember you telling me your dad was sort of a buff about some things. 02:21:00 PA

Yeah, well, you know, it's interesting. It definitely was influenced by my family, my mom told—I remember vividly stories of her growing up in Austria and stories of the Civil War in Austria which took place in ‘34. And then stories of the German, you know, Anschluss. Shee was eighteen years old, I believe, at Anschluss time. Yeah. And the war itself and some very stark, interesting stories is, like, the week the war ended and how things—how German soldiers who tried to desert got shot and hung up with a sign on them saying “I tried to desert,” and this sort of thing. And very vivid memories of the Red Army tanks coming in for occupation. You know that they didn't know wh—they saw a star on a tank, a red star. They didn't—They know the Americans had a star, but it was a white star. So it was a short period of time of Soviet occupation. And stories of hiding out and all this. Sort of thing and the Mongol soldiers on ponies, you know Russian, Mongolian soldiers had little shaggy ponies they rode up everywhere. And that kind of colorful story. And of course, I grew up at a time when World War Two was, it was all about World War Two, that's what we were all about. 02:22:00 MMF

Is that what you were like, watching on TV, reading about? 02:23:00 PA

Yeah, it's everywhere. Yeah. And I'm getting a different, completely different view from her. I'm getting combat on TV and this sort of thing, you know, all the movies “Twelve O’Clock High,” , and you can go on and on. “The Longest Day.” On and on and on. 02:24:00 MMF

Let’s see. Was—I'm trying to think of TV shows, but all I can think of is M*A*S*H, which isn’t World War Two. 02:25:00 PA

Well, “Rat Patrol.” “Hogan’s Heroes” don't count. “Combat” was a TV show, don’t know if you remember that one. Vic Morrow account. That's a pretty darn good TV show for World War Two. It tried to deal with a little complexity versus the real simple version. Audie Murphy, the big hero. You know, the most decorated soldier in World War Two, American. And all this kind of stuff. 02:26:00 MMF

Yeah, that's right. That’s true. And so you found that the stories your mom was telling you were like a counterbalance? 02:27:00 PA

Well, different point of view. Yeah, I wouldn't say necessarily a counterbalance. Oh, and of course, her father was in World War One and she always liked to sort of mock a little bit when she'd have dinner. Her mother died pretty old. So Mom was, like, raised, almost motherless. Might her grandfather, my grandfather, her father, have people at the house, and they would do this thing like I'm sure you do, with taking the salt shaker. “And here we were. And then this attack took place...” Because he was on the Sudtirol, the Tyrolean front in World War One. And, this is worth more history. There is a large Russian Kriegsgefaengnis in that camp, prisoner of war camp, that when her father came back he was a, he worked on the building. He wasn't a Kommandant or anything, he was nothing. But he worked in the infrastructure of the camp. He was Holzhandlung. He was the guy who knew where to go in the mountains and get the right kind of wood for stuff. And so she's, I guess—she couldn't remember this, but she was told many stories about the Russian prisoners of war. Right in Austria there, you know...tens, I guess hundreds and then thousands of them later on. So this is really the idea of how history just takes people and moves them around and kills some of them and other people become refugees, or immigrants or....So I guess all that's in the mix that I think about it now, yeah. 02:28:00 MMF

Were either your parents, your, your mother, or your father, like was...were there enough people nearby who were from the same area that they sort of had a community? 02:29:00 PA

Or, well, not nearby. My father had a strong community at Saint Mary of Victories [Hungarian Catholic Church]. He threw himself...Why, you mentioned that before. Yeah, he threw himself strongly in the Hungarian community of Saint Louis. It was all down in Soulard, a place called Hungarian House. Used to be there. It's now Soulard Preservation Hall. But that was called Hungarian House. And Hungarians were kind of interesting because they had multiple religious traditions: Roman Catholic, Calvinist, and Jewish. But being they all spoke Hungarian, nobody else did. They all, that Hungarian House kind of brought together all the communities of Hungarians. 02:30:00 MMF

And Hungarian isn’t really like other European languages, and so you can't...Yeah, you have to find other Hungarians. 02:31:00 PA

Yeah. Easily. Yeah, to hang with. So I—yeah, I amend my earlier remarks saying that. My father was very involved in the whole ethnic situation, and he had, you know, a leadership position, if you will, in the Hungarian community in Saint Louis. 02:32:00 MMF

But it was more fraternal than activist, it sounds like. 02:33:00 PA

It wasn’t activist at all. Well, I should have mentioned too, he at the end of his life, all that, ‘68, he inherited—he became the publisher of the Saint Louis Es Videke [newspaper], which means “Saint Louis and vicinity” in Hungarian. It was a local Hungarian language newspaper. And he edited it for, I don't know, about a year or so, and we did some help. The kids helped out somewhat with it. And at that time, the Republican Party in the United States made a real, concerted effort to recruit “ethnics,” especially Poles and Hungarians, people under occupation, and Romanians too, to leave the Democratic Party and join the Republicans because the Democrats are seen as being “soft on communism” or whatever. And Republicans are more aggressive vis a vis the, what did we call them...the “captive peoples,” the captive peoples of Eastern Europe. 02:34:00 MMF

Yeah, the people from other nationalities of other Eastern bloc countries. 02:35:00 PA

...Who are now controlled by communists, yeah. So my father certainly was approached by—You know, and they did. They sent him news articles he could print in the paper that would show...The problem was, they sent them in English. So he had to translate them. They didn't have enough linguists to do, to put out all the languages necessary. I guess so that, that's all going on in the background of struggle over how “ethnics” in the United States vote because ethnics were a very strong Democrat voting base then. You know, labor unions, ethnic, type of thing, and this is the period where that's starting to break down somewhat. I guess you could say. 02:36:00 MMF

So your dad died, may he rest in peace, in 1969? 02:37:00 PA

Yeah, 1969, November, yeah. 02:38:00 MMF

So he was how old? 02:39:00 PA

It was fifty-.... He was born ‘14. So what was he? I’m bad at math. 02:40:00 MMF

1914, 1969. Fifty-five? Not very old. Oh, I’m sorry. 02:41:00 PA

Yeah, I guess that sounds about right. Yeah, not very old. Brain tumor. Yeah. Yeah. And of course we're talking...He was first, probably diagnosed or something, like...was it ‘67-ish? There's a couple of years of treatments and radiation and various things, and operations, but nothing like today obviously. 02:42:00 MMF

Where was he? Where did he go for his treatment? 02:43:00 PA

To the St. Louis, Furman- and below St. Louis University on Grand Ave. And of course, it was difficult. We didn't have a car, so it was difficult to get, to take a bus type of thing, you know? So my mom went when she could take the take two buses out the transfer and all that stuff. 02:44:00 MMF

To get there? Yeah, sort of a Saint Louis then and now question: was the medical reputation that Saint Louis has beginning to be established back then? 02:45:00 PA

Oh yeah. I think by that time you had, you know ,your Barnes and your Jewish [Hospital] and yeah, it was..Saint Louis was seen as a medical center and both universities had teaching hospitals, both SLU and Wash U had teaching hospitals, so yeah. 02:46:00 MMF

So still a pretty good place to be sick? 02:47:00 PA

Yeah, there we could discuss that in a whole separate issue: That is a teaching hospital really the best thing for someone, in the sense of what kind of care do you get? The teaching hospital can have a lot of interns, who are new, and they're going to suggest all kinds of “experimental” things, because that's what they do at the med school, so. That's something could be discussed and has come up a number of times. 02:48:00 MMF

Yeah, sort of the research and palliative care tension that goes on. I’ve heard a bit about that. 02:49:00 PA

In our life. 02:50:00 MMF

So everyone where I went to college was pre Med. And a lot of them are...Oh yeah. It's not about me, but yeah, I've a lot of people who are adjacent to that industry, so. And you said that sort of turned the finances upside down. For you to find a new situation, so you go to Wash U, your brother goes to SIUE your mother goes to work? 02:51:00 PA

Yeah, she worked part time at [1m] and Fuller out at River Roads. 02:52:00 MMF

And how old were your younger siblings? 02:53:00 PA

Well, I was about fourteen. So my little brother was twelve. And I guess my older brother was, you know, sixteen or seventeen. 02:54:00 MMF

OK, so your mom—I mean, you were all basically self-sufficient. It was a different time, so. 02:55:00 PA

Well, somewhat self-sufficient. Yeah. Yeah. You know we worked it out as a family. You know, we started working it out. Supporting each other, helping each other, drop someone, sharing cars. I got a motorcycle eventually, you know, to get around in and eventually did get a car, you know, used car, obviously, to, you know, take my mom back and forth to work and make it better. So yeah, we all kind of just pitched in to an extent, and tried to find ways to maneuver through, knowing that better days would come if we kept moving forward, right. 02:56:00 MMF

And his funeral was at Saint Mary of Victories? 02:57:00 PA

Yeah, buried in Calvary Cemetery, North Saint Louis. 02:58:00 MMF

Yeah. So that's where that's where he is. Is there a...? My husband's visited that church a couple of times. Does he have a plaque or anything? 02:59:00 PA

No, no. But we, I spent enough time there that I should have a plaque. 03:00:00 MMF

Oh really? Are you a parishioner? 03:01:00 PA

No, I'm not anymore. I mean, for a while I went to their Homecomings, and it turned out that all the people I knew were dying. You know, the people I knew were my mother and father's ages, and I didn't. And I didn't keep up with their kids, so I didn't have a relationship with their kids. But I had a great deal of affection for Joe Kish and Jane Goody family and, they’re good people. 03:02:00 MMF

Yeah, that can be depressing. 03:03:00 PA

They’re good people like to hang around and throw a beer back with them or whatever, but they're all gone, you know. So yeah, so I didn't—I missed it this year I was doing something else when they had their homecoming this year, yeah. 03:04:00 MMF

So let's see. So you'll be at Wash U in 1976, then. 03:05:00 PA

Yeah, ‘76 to ‘78. 03:06:00 MMF

So what's Wash U’s reputation like at this stage? 03:07:00 PA

Well, it was. It was known as it—Wash U used to be the streetcar school, meaning it was for Saint Louis people who weren't Catholic. They didn't have dormitories yet. What's-his-name comes. You know, the guy involved in radiation. And I'll think of his name in a minute and they build the S 40, they build the dormitories.

MMF

Seitman? 03:08:00 PA

No, no, it's he's a he's an early generation insight—I'll think of his name in a moment. And they built up dormitories. So Wash U transferred itself, by the time I got there, it was your secondary school for East Coast people who couldn't make the Ivies. Nothing wrong with that, and they really built up their science faculty, etcetera. Humanities had already been strong. They really built up science. Arthur Holly Compton was the guy who became chancellor, and he's the one that oversaw the making it into a national university. So I was there with a lot of people from New Jersey, New York and Long Island, which was cool by me. I didn't have any particular feel one way or the other, but almost all my classes are in the history department. History department was very old school, you know, very formal. 03:09:00 MMF

Sort of European continental geopolitical history? 03:10:00 PA

Yeah. And the and the topics were mainly, you know, the old school things like “Tudor England” and you know, “Germany after unification” and this kind of thing, but also the anthropology courses, took linguistic courses. It was rigorous, a lot of reading. You know. A good education, you know, and I opened

my eyes up to a lot of things, like an excellent library, that...I went to the libraries when I was a young kid at neighborhood and, you know, city of Saint Louis has good libraries. And then. You know, Flo Valley’s was okay, but Wash U’s library was like, “Wow, this is so neat.” A lot of time I just spent digging into things that interested me that weren't necessarily related to my classes type of thing, you know. 03:11:00 MMF

And you had the time to do that? You weren't working? 03:12:00 PA

Yeah, I worked on the side. I usually work in the summers. I don't. I don't remember working at all in the daytime. I guess it was at Flo Valley, I worked work study in the print shop. So I did that, but at Wash U I didn't work anything during the regular academic year, just in the summer time I was working. So it was it was the kind , in a way, an ideal. From my point of view, I try to tell our students here if you can, don't work during semester or work in the summer hard as you can as much as you can. Try to open up space in your, you know, your semesters for really getting into your studies, but. Student of course, like I lived on a, you know, nickel, dime budget. I didn't have stuff, I didn't have my own apartment, didn't have my own cell phone. 03:13:00 MMF

Are you living at home? 03:14:00 PA

Living at home? Yeah, sure. And didn't have a car for some of it, had a motorcycle and a car, you know, so it was just a decision that was made: how do I want to live? What do I want to do? And sort of buying stuff....”Let's go to school and focus on that and do as well as we can there,” you know. 03:15:00 MMF

If you don't remember, if you don't want to talk about it, that's OK, but: How much was a semester’s tuition at Wash W in 1976? 03:16:00 PA

Oh. [Laughter] I can't remember, but something like...Tremendously affordable. In the sense that I remember what wasn't covered on my whatever scholarship, I would pay out of pocket without feeling a dent. The books probably cost me more than the tuition did a semester. I know, and don't ask me why it changed. 03:17:00 MMF

I mean, yeah, yeah, this is. This is just about getting facts on the record, not... 03:18:00 PA

No, no, you're right about this. Yeah. And yeah, o this is not to disparage current students, because I guess they have to work to pay these exorbitant tuition bills. But I felt like I could manage without having to work during the academic semesters. I played indoor soccer a bunch. I guess I cut into my

postal working time at the time, you know, which I felt I needed some kind of recreation when all the reading and all the intense study, so like you know. Again, there a lot was going on in Saint Louis. You know, Laclede's Landing was happening at the time and a buddy of mine’s, uncle owned a bar down there. So instead of hanging around the Wash U circuit of parties. I was all about Saint Louis circuit of parties. Yeah. 03:19:00 MMF

Okay, so not really in the Wash U nightlife? 03:20:00 PA

No, not at all. All and you know, and they were interesting. They had a bar on campus. If you were 21, you could drink at the Unrathskeller, Umrath hall. And I thought that was a nice touch, I had to say. 03:21:00 MMF

Yeah, cause when did the 21 law kick in that? 03:22:00 PA

Oh, we always had 21. Illinois had the 18. Yeah. 03:23:00 MMF

Oh, OK. I was thinking my mom was from Nebraska and they had 18 until like for a long time. And I just transplant that to everyone. 03:24:00 PA

Different people switched all over it at that time, but Illinois was 18 when I was, you know, 17. And we went to Illinois to drink beer, you know, for what it's worth. 03:25:00 MMF

So do that at Wash U for four semesters. Any particular teachers, professors, experiences? 03:26:00 PA

Well, I mean, they were, it was different. We were invited to professors’ homes for dinner and stuff for at least, at least two of them. They all live real near campus, you know? So it was fairly straightforward to go to their houses. 03:27:00 MMF

It sounds almost like an old world experience. 03:28:00 PA

Yeah. Yeah. And something today you don't see or I have not heard of. I mean, it might happen still, but it was...They weren't very hands on, but I I guess they were. They wanted that relationship between students going through. I think it's something they wanted to do, wanted to cultivate. And I I believe for

the history faculty probably said, “hey, these are some people who are going somewhere. So let's work with them and maybe we'll see them down the road or something.

MMF

You know with the faculty, mostly like American, you know, American historians, or are there emigres? 03:29:00 PA

Let me think. I didn't have any emigres. They were all American. But I took mostly European and Chinese history courses, I don't think...Did I take one US course? I did not take one course in U.S. history. I took a course in US literature of Progressive Era and Gilded Age, which was very good. But all the teachers, none of them were European, They were there in the department, I didn't have any of them. Say I was mainly interested in, and of course I was interested in so-called classics. I took a number of classes about Rome and Greek history with People now long gone, Herbert and Welton.And they were very old-school teachers, yeah. Which was useful for me because yeah. I read lot of lot of Roman history, a lot of Greek history. In modern Europe. 03:30:00 MMF

Yeah, the heavy, or you know what used to be considered the heavy hitters, the usual suspects. 03:31:00 PA

Yeah, I mean the readings as far as they go. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, the all the all the exams are blue book and you know. “I.D., essay. Essay, I.D.” We never took any, I don’t remember any, you know, what do you call them? Some objective tests, you know, true, false, multiple choice. Nothing. This is. I still have these. These are from here. I used to do blue books here, but as you know, nobody does Blue Book anymore. 03:32:00 MMF

Oh wow.

PA

So that that was what you know you focused on and it wasn't the kind of dynamic which we encourage today, which I've adopted completely, which is weekly assignments or weekly assessments. What are you doing? How are you doing? This is all midterm-final stuff so. 03:33:00 MMF

I think even I took some blue book tests in undergrad in the Classics department, but it was it was unusual. It was. It was all, it was very unusual by then. I did my Prose Comp in blue books. 03:34:00 PA

Yeah. Well, there you go. By that time it was going out, yeah. And I took Middle East. I took—I'll think of his name in a minute—and I really got a darn good grounding in Middle Eastern History in a one- semester course. I made a chart of all the, you know, different versions of Islam and their relationships to each other and over time, you know, when t he Twelvers came out of the, you know, the whole thing,

so that was really useful for later feeling pretty comfortable dealing with things that are happening. This is during the Lebanese Civil War, I think I told you that. 03:35:00 MMF

Yeah, this was right in the middle of it, yeah. 03:36:00 PA

And we're talking about Lebanese civil war in class and it's going on right around us, yeah. And I still remember, you know, the Gemayels and the Kamil Chamoun and the Tigers and the car bombs and all that. Yeah, that one. But that was— if you needed an example of how history is important. It was like here's a civil war in Lebanon, and here we're learning about Lebanon as a multi-religious, multi society that's now falling apart because the Christian kind of hegemony couldn't go through the Palestinian refugee issue and just the whole issue of rising Muslim consciousness. I mean, all stuff you know more than me about, really. 03:37:00 MMF

So let's see. So 1978 then, you graduate Wash U? 03:38:00 PA

Yeah, one more little anecdote. 03:39:00 MMF

Oh yes. Please, sorry, I'm not trying to rush you. 03:40:00 PA

Because—no, you should rush me, I’ll go over—at that time the Shah of Iran is purchasing American F4 Phantom jets being manufactured at the Lambert Field by McDonnell-Douglas. And at Wash U we were under the flight path of the Phantoms as they took off. And so we'd sit in class, and this is Victor T. Levine, another political science guy. And we, he would say “There goes the Iranian Air Force, “sort of mockingly. But it was true. Hundreds of Iranian pilots cycled through Saint Louis, picking up and learning how to fly the Phantoms that later on, when Reagan's president, they need parts when the Iran- Iraq wars is going on and then we smuggled Phantom parts to Iran to help them fight Iraq. It's a very weird situation that I don't still can't really explain fully why we're supporting Iran against Iraq, but....geopolitics. 03:41:00 MMF

It was a different time. 03:42:00 PA

[Laughter] Yeah. There you go. That's the best way to put it. 03:43:00 MMF

So 1978, then you graduate and what are your plans at this point? 03:44:00 PA

Yeah, my plans were: I was sick of school by this time, and there was also kind of an edge of ugliness in the history profession, where either you had to be right or had to be left, and I'm not interested, then or now, in being right or left. I want to be me, I want to follow stuff where it goes. I'm not interested in ideology. Ideology is a handcuff. Ideology is a straitjacket, it's a prison to me. So my sister had married a guy from Wash U who bought a house in Lafayette Square. And it was a wreck. No roof, no back wall. So he appoints himself to be like a rehabber. He didn't know Jack about rehabbing. He'd worked the ore boats on Lake Michigan, and some of the barges on the Mississippi River, that was what he knew, you know. So he and a buddy of his from Wash U start rehabbing his house and I start volunteering on weekends to help. And soon, if they going to business together and they need labor, I'm like, “Yeah, I'm happy to work for some money tearing out plaster, pushing around wheelbarrows, carrying two by fours and then just having fun, you know, a little money in the pocket, buy a car, drink some beer.” And Lafayette Square is bustling. 03:45:00 MMF

A single guy experience. 03:46:00 PA

Yeah, Lafayette Square is really starting to hop down there. There's interesting people doing interesthing things, and art is going on and poets are down there and all the, you know, it's like the most marginal neighborhoods, like Laclede’s Landing was, like the Grove was at the beginning. Like Gaslight Square was at one time, you know that there's a feeling of something going on and young people are finding themselves or something. And so yeah, like, OK, I'll work. Rehab, what the heck? Why not? And so I worked up from being just, you know, the bottom end laborer, just doing, carrying stuff and breathing in a lot of plaster dust, to building up some skills and doing becoming kind of a carpenter and building up some skills in plumbing and building up some electrical skills and working my way up in that company. And eventually became a, you know, a foreman and a superintendent. And all this kind of stuff, you know. 03:47:00 MMF

Okay. So in like full blown construction. 03:48:00 PA

Yeah, he starts doing infill stuff. So the that partnership, people getting to know. “Oh you guys did this on your house. Can you do it for us, for money then?” Yeah. They become small contractors. Then they start doing buildings, you know, rehabbing buildings, and then the two partners have a break up. And my brother-in-law then says, hey, I want to do infill housing. 03:49:00 MMF

And this isn't like rehabbing to flip? This isn't really, that isn't really a thing yet? 03:50:00 MMF

Really a thing yet? 03:51:00 PA

Rehabbing what?

MMF

To flip. 03:52:00 PA

Well, that happens during this time, yeah. At first, it's just people contacting him to do for them. Then he says, oh, on Laclede in what's now. Kind of, I don't know what you call today maybe...It's not Central West End, Laclede and Sarah, you know, New Market Hardware? 03:53:00 MMF

That's Central West End. 03:54:00 PA

OK, there's two big old red brick has the three stories tall. They got some nice detail, but they're empty. We'll buy them, rehab and flip them. So the flipping thing starts, then it's let's do infill and like when I got picture infill around. So where there’s a lots of holes in the streetscape in Lafayette Square, this guy now says “let's build buildings inside the holes.” And so they're replicas. They're brick front with--hey, Nancy!--brick front with stone and stone. And so they fit the streetscape, but they're new. So that becomes his business. I better check with Nancy here because I—oh, man. It's my legs, not you, that's me.

[Exchange with student waiting outside the office]

Yeah, so it turns into a whole thing. 03:55:00 MMF

We haven't even gotten to UMSL yet, I’m sorry. 03:56:00 PA

That's me talking too much, are you? You're encouraging it. Yeah. 03:57:00 PA

You're not working for any intelligence agencies, right? 03:58:00 MMF

No, not right now, no. 03:59:00 PA

So, yeah. But then, I went out on my own due to conflicts with my brother-in-law, like these things happen. So I'm working on my own. I'm running my, I got my own people, crew working for me, blah,

blah, blah doing rehab. I like the rehab thing. Historical, right? Historical buildings, rehab, all that. Then I guess around 1989 is when the [Berlin] Wall falls and to me it seems like things kind of changed then, that.... 04:00:00 MMF

You're married by now? 04:01:00 PA

No, no. I was...dating. Dating. 04:02:00 MMF

OK. 04:03:00 PA

Yeah, and. And so the Wall falls. And I'm like, “Things seem different to me now, more open more, more, more possibilities for someone who wants to do history.” Also. I probably was, I probably was engaging in behavior that was long term not going to be for health, for the individual. So I thought. 04:04:00 PA

Oh, “Maybe I'll go back to school now that things have changed a little bit.” And I guess it took about two years to sort of cast around to find, you know, and that that time I’m starting to think “hey, maybe I can be a college teacher.” Just off top, you know, maybe a high school teacher for that matter. I've been reading the whole time. I collected, I was a book collector, collected books, had boat loads of books, read, read, read, read. So like, yeah, so I started looking around at where could I go. SLU at that time did not have a graduate program in history, didn't have one at that time. It's changing. Wash U was like, “I've been there already, I don't really want to go back there particularly.” Went over to SIUE, and the guy over there was a little bit snippy as far as I was concerned. About I'm like, “Okay.” I guess he wasn't used to people showing up on his doorstep, you know, that had been working a while. And I came here, right down the hall when Gertheis was chair, and sat with him and said, “hey, what do you think?” And he said “If you think you can do it, give it a shot. No guarantees. We don't know what will happen.” So I spent two years here, became a TA while I was here in 19...I came in 1992, I think. Became a TA, joined Phi Alpha Theta, the Honor Society. took classes in US and in Europe and Global. Befriended one of the professors here. You know Gillingham? We became kind of buddies. We all had read a lot of the same stuff and talked about the books we read and what have you and about like that. Throwback 2 and everything. And then it was: What do I do now? After two years here, can't get a PhD here. So where do you go? What do you do? At that time my master's thesis was on this whole Kurt von Schuschnigg and and the Austrian Staenderstadt. This is the Austrian state after the after the ‘34 uprising that was put in place, the so-called semi Fascist government or corporate state thing. So I thought, “let's go. Let's go on with that.” But then I found out that there's no future in this teaching of like, Austrian history. There's no future in it. So, SLU started back with their PhD program and I got into there, but I switched my focus completely from the, you know the Austria stuff and central Europe to US, Cold War, economic relations, Soviet Union, Breton Woods, all that sort of stuff. But I actually came back here during my time at SLU and took classes with Gillingham because it was, he would offer stuff that really worked well to complement what I was trying to do. 04:05:00 MMF

So by this time, the UMSL campus has been around for 20 years? 04:06:00 PA

Oh, well it's it. It started ‘64 so it was. 04:07:00 MMF

Yeah, ‘63, ‘64, so. 04:08:00 PA

By the time I got here in the ‘90s it had been here. 04:09:00 PA

For 30 years, 30 some years, yeah. 04:10:00 MMF

OK. And so, like, what? What's the atmosphere like? It has a reputation as a commuter school by now? 04:11:00 PA

Well, yeah, it's a. It's a commuter school and it's much smaller. Building wise, there's less buildings in the mid-nineties, but they had already bought South campus. So and it was, that, I'm sure, was a robust place with lots of students, lots of activity, somewhat crowded, almost. And the classrooms being high numbers in classrooms and the feeling of on campus is just a lot of energy and hubbub type of thing, yeah. 04:12:00 MMF

OK. So would you, would you say it was a friendly place for different kinds of unconventional students or non-traditional students? 04:13:00 PA

Yeah, by this time most of the vets had gone through. The Vietnam vets were through the system already by this time. But what UMSL got, unlike Wash U or SLU, was a lot of people who weren't with so-called, you know, standard college students 18 to 20, you know, 21 year olds. All sorts of people. We have a lot of ex military for forever, we've had an ex-military,even before the whole Gulf War One, Gulf War Two stuff, forever war thing. Returning housewives. Not that you're out. You know, housewives who got married. The kids are like in grade school middle school. They got some time, never had a degree, coming back.People in transition, as the auto plants are shutting down, you know, we had three auto plants at one time, Ford, Chevy, Chrysler, Chrysler and Ford are shutting down in the early 2000s. I guess you could say go back to school for retraining. So yeah, it was. I thought it was interesting. I never felt— came here at, Was I forty years old? Around forty? And if I felt out of place, I was unaware of it, I mean. I knew I was forty. I knew I had done this and the other, and I knew that people were younger, but ...I guess I spoke that it wasn't my problem. My issue, the issue was how am I doing in class? And as

mentioned, UMSL has always had some really hard charging students and it's also had ones that just kind of making their way through so I've. 04:14:00 MMF

Is that.. you know. It's public, right? It's less, it's on the less expensive... 04:15:00 PA

Yeah, it's a public school, which I like. The fact that it's a public school in the sense of I felt it was more welcoming to me when I came back for Master’s and certainly SIU was, which is another public school. But for whatever reason, they were not very open arms to....And there's of course there's been concern then and now about how many grad students can we take in, because how many jobs are there for them on the other end? And that's a legitimate concern. 04:16:00 MMF

And does that mean on the other end, locally or....? 04:17:00 PA

Anywhere we could. Right. So that's always an issue. Most of our students are place-bound. Our graduate students are place bound. They're going to stay in the area. I was not place-bound at that time. I wasn't married. I was, I had—my mom was here and my brothers and sister were here... 04:18:00 MMF

I was going to ask, when you were doing grad programs you mentioned all Saint Louis schools, so leaving never occurred to you? 04:19:00 PA

Yeah, because well, at that at that at that time in like ‘91 or something, it just seemed like too much of a stretch to relocate. Also I was working, I kept construction going as I was here at the beginning. 04:20:00 MMF

OK, so you're working in school you didn't leave work. 04:21:00 PA

I was running at the set guys up to do work or they had a gal work for me too. I'd set up work, come to school, go back to work. Yeah. It was like a transition thing. So had income coming in because I'm on my own. So I had an income, so I think would have been pretty tough to like, say I'm going to relocate and have no source of income whatsoever. But when I went to—before I went to SLU, I was accepted to University of Chicago. But I went up there for an interview type of thing and it just the vibe was that beautiful school love the place. But the guy, Boyer. He wrote the books about Austria. Where to go. Anyway, John Boyer. But he was a Dean of Arts and Sciences. There it is right there, red and a green one. He was a Dean of Arts and Sciences and it was pretty clear I wanted to study under him. He didn't have time for a student. So like, this is not for me and you couldn't get financial help for the first semester, was like a like a trial period. Whereas here, it was just like “you're in.” And I just happened to get a TA-

ship. I didn't. I didn't get to tell you shipped the first semester. I don't doubt that it probably took a couple of cycles, right, because I'm still running, I'm still running at work and all of a sudden once I got the TA-ship, I shut down the construction stuff. I'm like, I gotta... 04:22:00 MMF

Wow, OK. 04:23:00 PA

Yeah, I gotta. It wasn't a big outfit I had. It was two or three, four people, depending on what I was doing, but I'd like. 04:24:00 MMF

What's your position in the company at that point? OK. Oh, your own company. 04:25:00 PA

Oh, I owned. It was mine. Yeah, it was my thing. I was running by this time, my own thing. Yeah, and I shut it down. Just said, “OK, now I'm, this is the time to make that move.” 04:26:00 MMF

You know, so. So the time of year at UMSL and SLU, what were like—was UMSL having an effect on, like the neighborhood or was the neighborhood having an effect on UMSL? 04:27:00 PA

Well, I mean not to my you know that my perception, I guess you could say. UMSL seemed perfectly well situated, you know. I never had the slightest issue with UMSL's location at all. I knew North Saint Louis. I knew the area. It didn't have much impact on me at all. When they built a Metrolink which comes in in ‘92, that made it real convenient. I'm living in Lafayette Square at the time. I could hop on Metrolink. Get right up here. So it was convenient, but then it didn't open till like ‘92, ’93, something like that and. 04:28:00 MMF

Oh yeah, that would be nice. And so about, uh, was there anywhere...Does you being in school or teaching fit in with your personal life? Does it facilitate it, get in the way? 04:29:00 PA

I was still unmarried at that time, so it was my social life was much through UMSL. Another thing. Yeah. And it was a good social life. There was more, probably more people here more. And there was more. We were. We were doing things now that would be difficult to do. Like for example when. When Coral Courts closed down, cork floats—Coral Courts was a motel on Chippewa that, you know, was Art Deco. Real cool looking thing. But what it was known for: it had drive-in garages. And so it was a trysting spot right, back when people had to tryst and all that. So when it closed, we, Phi Alpha Theta, had a party at Coral Courts to like send it off, you know, kind of. And we went did stuff, go to wineries or do just we did a lot more stuff then. But we were probably more older graduate student types, too, and the professors were more open to do things. It's a different world we live in now for socializing. 04:30:00 MMF

Yeah, this is about when my parents are in grad school too, so. 04:31:00 PA

Yeah, they probably tell you same sort of stories. 04:32:00 MMF

So my mom was at SLU and my dad was at Washu in the early ’90s getting their PhD's. So I think my dad got his in 1993. 04:33:00 PA

There you go! Yeah, yeah. 04:34:00 PA

There's a certain you do get a certain closeness with your chair for your committee. Right, Nancy? I'm chair for her committee. So yeah, you do. You do build a certain closeness with your committee chair. That's part of the deal, you know? Yeah. 04:35:00 MMF

UM, so let's see. 04:36:00 PA

I mean, I do want to emphasize the fact that, you know, the fact that UMSL was a land grant university and public university is important for someone like me. 04:37:00 MMF

Yeah, definitely. It seems like it. Yeah, it seems like it was kind of more welcoming, inclusive. You know, there's more possibilities and I've heard the same from other people I've I've talked to for this project. 04:38:00 PA

And the faculty themselves are, well, are welcoming. I mean, not not everyone all the time, but nothing is ever everyone all the time. But key faculty members were more than willing to reach out and work with you, or try to understand your situation. I tried as little as possible to have any you know, reasons for not getting something done, but I had once or twice, like people do. I was late with the paper before I owned, before I knew how to use a computer. And I'm at some rent-a-computer place in Clayton writing this crap. But you know December...You know, I drop it off at the guy’s house, you know, on the way home because it was, you know, so late. But yeah, I it, I guess there was more sense that respects the right word. But understanding that not everyone is supported by their parents, who’s nineteen, and it's that we're working people here. We're all working in the direction, and the grad school at that time Masters program had a lot of teachers. So you're hanging around a lot of current high school teachers and you know all the gossip and all. Talk about what goes on in high school, how students are. So I thought it was a great atmosphere I really enjoyed it a lot. 04:39:00 MMF

Do you think it was similar in other departments? 04:40:00 PA

You know, my only contact really was history. I did serve on the student government and met some, you know, majors, other majors, and they seemed all to be sort of similar, but I never really had, I never took any course outside of History Department at UMSL, and while I was SLU I said, actually came back and took some courses at UMSL. 04:41:00 MMF

And so where were these things in this culture? Was this kind of what you were thinking about when you ended up teaching here? Or were there stops in between? 04:42:00 PA

Well, that it didn't. I mean I in my view it helped. I taught for two different semesters at SLU and I'm not. I'm not the kind of person. 04:43:00 MMF

SLU university or SLUH? 04:44:00 PA

At SLU University, yeah. When I was on my way out. I'm just finishing up the dissertation .And what in the summer, I guess both were in the summer. There's something that the lack of diversity at SLU there, you know, I feel like—a bunch of Chicago suburban Catholic kids. That's not a bad thing to be a Suburban Chicago Catholic kid. But there wasn't a great deal of diversity of thought. I’m the diversity person in the sense I want different thought and experience. I don't know if what diversity means—of course, geder diversity, you want that, you know, point of view is important. But you know, so...The thing about Wash U, sometimes, to me again. It's a lot of wealthy foreign people, you know, mostly. So you could talk about someone’s from “X” country. “We're diverse.” Well, they're pretty bouge [bourgeois]. You know, kind of like Central West End was in Saint Louis. Well, it's diverse, but it's pretty bougie because you can't live there unless you got money, yeah. 04:45:00 MMF

Lot of physicians. 04:46:00 PA

Yeah. So I did, but it wasn't. I didn't—It was a set of coincidences that brought me back here to teach. I was at SLU finishing my dissertation. And they had one of those deals that happens now and again, where a regular faculty member had gotten sick and hadn't really told anybody about it. So the class was starting in like, three or four days and I get a phone call saying, “Hey, can you do this?” So what do I say? “Oh yeah.” Even though I don't, I'm not ready for it. But just kind of jumped in and did it. And then next semester jumped in for another situation that happened. And then I'm all sudden. I'm like I'm an adjunct. And then within a year, it's like we're gonna, you know, “you're going to be like a permanent

adjunct.” And then they start this whole thing called NTT, non tenure track, which regularized the format of being not on the tenure track but being a teaching professor. But no, I mean back to the answer. I yeah, I like.I like feeling like I'm not sure if at Wash U or SLU, I'd make a difference in a student's life. Because most of them are doing pretty well anyway, and I don't know how many Wash U history students go out and go on and teach. I don't know any right now. Doctor Westhoff went there. But so I do feel like inside of me, I have a little bit of heart, I don't know, this is a little bit... I don't have that much giving back in a sense of I can make a difference. I understand—I believe, or used to believe I understood the students, and also in ways that people who are from, you know, elite institutions. And they get thrown in here. And it's kind of like “what's going on with these crazy kids? And all the things they’re doing and all the stuff they're coming up with?” I grew up here. I get, I get the craziness, I get people's backgrounds. I've had plenty of students come through who I knew, parents, grandparents, uncles, aunts...Normally didn't tell them because. So yeah, I mean. I think UMSL is and still is—maybe the emphasis moved away humanities, but UMSL still is a springboard, a tower, you know, whatever metaphor you like to use to explain how someone can move. We transform lives, right? I learned that. Yeah. 04:47:00 MMF

Yeah, upward mobility. 04:48:00 PA

Yeah! And you know, and stuff like, look at some more alumni that you hear about, like George Paz, you know? God rest his soul. The Express Scripts, guy, you know who. I don't believe in “by...”. Nobody's “by your own bootstraps.” UMSL is helping you. Nobody can. You can't lift yourself by your bootstraps. You'll fall down. But with places like this to help you, if you got some, you know. You're going to work, some luck, some sense—UMSL is the kind of place they can, you know they say, transform lives. Now it's less about history and English and more about computer science and gaming and STEM and bio and nursing. And that's all legit, you know. I've had plenty of nurses come through and they're hard working and they know what they gotta do and they do it. Get it done because they want to be a nurse at the end of it. So yeah. It's an inspiring place. What can I say? 04:49:00 MMF

Yeah! So I think that's a good note to end on. 04:50:00 PA

I figured that. I got more! I already took too much of your time. 04:51:00 MMF

No, it had to be at least an hour, so. 04:52:00 PA

Oh my gosh, I didn’t know that! Okay. 04:53:00 MMF

Yeah. So thank you. 04:54:00 PA

Well, let's chat again this semester before it's over. I gotta get to Nancy out here too, but yeah.

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