Oral History Interview
with
Cecil Wildman
Interview Conducted by Susan Wright Simpson and Karen Neurohr October 20, 2006 and August 27, 2007
O-STATE Stories Oral History Project
Special Collections & University Archives Edmon Low Library ● Oklahoma State University © 2006-07 O-State Stories An Oral History Project of the OSU Library
Interview History
Interviewer: Susan Wright Simpson, Karen Neurohr Transcriber: Jill Minahan, Amanda Carter Editor: Tanya Finchum, Juliana Nykolaiszyn, Latasha Wilson
The recording and transcript of this interview were processed at the Oklahoma State University Library in Stillwater, Oklahoma.
Project Detail
The purpose of O-STATE Stories Oral History Project is to gather and preserve memories revolving around Oklahoma Agricultural and Mechanical College (OAMC) and Oklahoma State University (OSU).
This project was approved by the Oklahoma State University Institutional Review Board on October 5, 2006.
Legal Status
Scholarly use of the recordings and transcripts of the interview with Cecil Wildman is unrestricted. The interview agreement was signed on October 20, 2006 and August 27, 2007.
2 O-State Stories An Oral History Project of the OSU Library
About Cecil Wildman…
Cecil Wildman, a native of Woodward, Oklahoma, attended Oklahoma A&M/Oklahoma State University from 1955 through 1959.
Wildman earned his bachelor’s degree in civil engineering in 1959. After serving in the Army, Wildman enrolled in OAMC and lived his first year on campus at Cordell Hall. While at OSU, Wildman was involved with the Oklahoma Society of Civil Engineers and was elected as a student council representative during his senior year.
After graduating from OSU, Wildman worked for 20 years as the state engineer for the Farmer’s Home Administration in Stillwater. He continues to work for an engineering firm in Oklahoma City. An avid OSU fan, Wildman has been a Cowboys four-sport season ticket holder since 1955, enjoying basketball, baseball, wrestling, and football.
The October 20, 2006 interview was conducted in part by his granddaughter, Susan Wright Simpson. Simpson attended OSU in 1991-92 and graduated from the University of Central Oklahoma in 1993. In August 2007, Mr. Wildman was interviewed again about his experiences working in the engineering field in Stillwater and the surrounding area.
3 O-State Stories An Oral History Project of the OSU Library
Cecil Wildman
Oral History Interview
Interviewed by Susan Wright Simpson & Karen Neurohr October 20, 2006 / August 27, 2007 Stillwater, Oklahoma
Simpson I am Susan Wright Simpson, and I’m here with Cecil Wildman. We are at the OSU Alumni Center, and it is October 20, 2006, and this project is O-STATE Stories, an oral history project of the OSU Library. Well, Cecil, tell me what years you were here at OSU?
Wildman I was here from 1955 to ’59.
Simpson Okay. So your entire college experience was here at OSU?
Wildman Yes.
Simpson And what brought you to OSU?
Wildman Well, my degree is in civil engineering. At that time, ninety percent of all the civil engineers in Oklahoma were OSU grads, and there was lots of little things happened about that time. I just got out of the Army, and in the ’50s, half the classes were military and we were all Korean War veterans [Wildman served in Germany], and the World War II veterans had kind of set the stage for us, to draw the GI Bill and go to school. I was actually giving a blood transfusion in the Shattuck Hospital and the head of the housing at Oklahoma State—it was his brother, so he asked me to come over and he would buy my lunch the following week. I came over and they took me over to the school of civil engineering, interviewed me, gave me a—what do you call it, advisor?—and went from there. It was a very easy transformation for me to come over here and he gave me a nice room in Cordell Hall.
Simpson So you went in for a blood transfusion and you got a path to college?
Wildman In effect.
4 Simpson In effect. (Laughter)
Wildman We were sitting out in the hall waiting to give his brother a blood transfusion, and he asked me what I was getting ready to do. I told him I was thinking about enrolling in college and I’d just gotten out of the Army, and he said, “Why don’t you come over and let me show you around?” He was a nice guy. His name was Mr. Thomas, and he was here all the time I was. But he also was head of Cordell Hall—gave me a really nice room in Cordell.
Simpson Now you grew up in the Woodward vicinity area?
Wildman Yes.
Simpson And so moving to Stillwater wasn’t a big change for you?
Wildman It wasn’t a big change, except I didn’t know anybody in town, (Laughter) which was not too unusual.
Simpson How old were you when you started?
Wildman Let’s see, I was in my 20’s. Got out of the Army in—I was 24.
Simpson You were 24?
Wildman Yeah.
Simpson Was that about the age of many of the students there or were you a little bit older?
Wildman I was older. The high school students, of course, were 18 in those classes, but most of the GIs were a little younger than I was.
Simpson Okay.
Wildman Most of them were 20 to 21.
Simpson And was the Vet Village still being used at that time?
Wildman Vet Village was very interesting. It was a bunch of cracker boxes. I called them houses, but it was really kind of an old barracks. They weren’t insulated. The heat ran all the time, and they weren’t air conditioned. It wasn’t the greatest place, but they had their own governing body up there. They had their own basketball team, and they represented the college. When they came to the college for something, they came as a council. There was a pretty strong entity. Well, they were
5 all veterans, and it was cheap. You could stay up there cheap…
Simpson Right.
Wildman …and, as far as I know, they were all married. It was an interesting place.
Simpson Did you live in a dorm?
Wildman I lived in Cordell Hall one year and then I moved into an apartment.
Simpson What was it like living in Cordell Hall at that time?
Wildman You know, it was a perfect thing to start to college, especially a GI, because if you needed to know anything you could find somebody over there and it was handy to get to all the classes. An interesting thing about it, they had a class for returning GIs—math class—and the math class started out with one plus one and ended up (Laughter) with heavy algebra, and it didn’t count toward engineering but it really gave you a chance to get your feet on the ground. And down at Oklahoma University I checked, and they didn’t have that class. So I went from that directly and I made “A’s” in trig and algebra from that class. That was a GI returning class.
Simpson Now what got you interested in civil engineering?
Wildman I had worked for the federal government in Woodward in the production marketing administration, and then I was in an aerial photo engineering outfit in the Army.
Simpson So how long had you been out of the army when you were enrolled?
Wildman About a year and a half.
Simpson About a year and a half? So you had a little bit of time to re-adjust before you…
Wildman But I got discharged the last of January, and I couldn’t get into school until the following year. Had a pretty darn good job, so I just delayed it till I got a car paid for and had a little bit of money.
Simpson Tell me what campus looked like at that time—what the buildings looked like, what the people looked like. Was it much different than what we see today?
Wildman I don’t think so. They were beautiful, and the Student Union had just
6 been built. The girls wore dresses or skirts and blouses. Pantsuits were not allowed. They also had a discussion at the college of whether the boys could wear jeans, and they finally decided it was okay with a nice shirt, because we had so many guys worked at the beef barn and what have you, so that was allowed. (Laughter) But they still were fairly well, you know, well-dressed. They wore sport shirts with them.
Simpson Orange and black—were those the colors then?
Wildman Yes, absolutely.
Simpson And did you see the people wearing orange like they are today? Was there a lot of school spirit?
Wildman Yeah, there was, but I don’t know. At the football games, I would say no. I think that got a little bit stronger as the years go by—more students—because Oklahoma State was about half the size as it is today.
Simpson Well, speaking of football games, it’s Homecoming this week and how many Homecoming games do you think you’ve been to in your life, Cecil? (Laughs)
Wildman Well, I’ve had season tickets since 1955.
Simpson Wow.
Wildman So how many years would that be? Fifty?
Simpson Fifty-one?
Wildman Yeah. I was telling someone (Laughter) the other day and that kind of surprised them. I’ve had season tickets since 1955 to four sports.
Simpson Wow.
Wildman Basketball, “rasslin,” football and baseball.
Simpson “Rasslin?” (Laughs)
Wildman Wrestling, yeah. My college roommate was a wrestler from Perry.
Simpson Wow.
Wildman So he insisted that I go to all of the wrestling matches.
Simpson And what was the sport that was really big when you were here?
7 Wildman When I was here, probably basketball. However, in 1959, Oklahoma State won the national baseball championship, and I knew all the players but did I mention earlier about the odd and even tickets?
Simpson Tell me about that. It was hard to get into the games?
Wildman When you enrolled in school, you had to make a decision. You could only see half the basketball games because Gallagher Hall was sold out so Mr. Iba decided half the students could go. So you made a big deal whether you got the odd or the even ticket, and then when you got that ticket, you looked up someone somewhere in town that didn’t go to the basketball games and talked them out of their ticket so you could see all of them.
Simpson So you could see all of them. (Laughter)
Wildman Since we’re on basketball, I’d like to tell a little story.
Simpson Okay.
Wildman When they played Kansas here and Wilt Chamberlain was at Kansas— you hear Eddie Sutton talk about this quite often at the ball games today. It was sold completely out, the game was, and they sold about 10,000 tickets at the school auditorium for people to see it on a large screen. And they claim if everybody in the world says they went to that game went, there’d have been 50,000 people. But I was actually there. (Laughter) And there was a reason behind all the stories. I was in the school of civil engineering, and the professor would—the hardest course you could take—and they were only gonna pass about a third of the students—was statistics. So the professor said, “I don’t want anyone going to that basketball game.” (Laughter) “You can but you’re gonna have a hard test tomorrow that will determine whether you pass or not.” Here’s the hardest course on the campus, and he’s gonna give a test the next morning. Well, I made the decision that in the rest of my life I’d see Wilt Chamberlain play, but I probably wouldn’t remember that test. (Laughter) So my roommate did not go to the game and gave me his ticket. You just couldn’t get in. So four of us went. We were all in the School of Engineering, and so when the game was over, I tore home to study for this test the next morning. Dr. Willham, the President of the college, called a holiday and none of the professors could give a test the next day. (Laughter) So the professor was very upset about that. He had to give us another week to study for that test.
Simpson How’d you do on the test?
Wildman I don’t remember (Laughter) and I knew I wouldn’t. (Laughter) But we
8 were talking about that at the coffee shop this morning. Several people remember that he decided, I think about midnight, to call a holiday the next day and here were all these guys that stayed home to study for that test.
Simpson Oh, they missed out.
Wildman We had a holiday the next day. But that was rather interesting. Mel Wright made the winning goal for that game against Kansas, and if you talk to people in the coffee shops today, they will tell you they were there and everyone in the world made that shot. Mel Wright did, and I went to a football game with him about a month ago and was talking to him. His grandson’s playing on the Stillwater High team but he made the shot and I was there.
Simpson Okay.
Wildman But Eddie Sutton’s right. If you listen to people talk, they weren’t at the game. (Laughter) But they beat Kansas, and Wilt Chamberlain played here at that time.
Simpson Well, now we have it officially.
Wildman Have officially they won it and a lot of people talk about the fact, but a lot of people didn’t realize that these professors had scheduled these tough tests the next day.
Simpson So, what were Homecoming festivities like then? Did we have the floats in the parades?
Wildman I think the difference was that there were lots of floats, and there were lots of house decorations. Now, tomorrow we’ll see about three floats maybe. It used to just be solid floats, and they’d come all the way out to the football stadium and they’d go around the stadium during the half. It was quite a deal, but of course it was smaller. But they were heavy on floats and heavy on the Walk Around, more so than today.
Simpson Did the Greek houses decorate?
Wildman Yes. Yes.
Simpson They did? And you weren’t ever in a fraternity were you?
Wildman No. Most of the GIs were not.
Simpson Right.
9 Wildman That just wasn’t done.
Simpson Did you also have a job while you were in college?
Wildman No. I worked for the federal government, the Soil Conservation Service, at that time as a student in the summer. So the day school started, I went off the payroll, and the day it was out, I went on the payroll, so I never really had to. I was on the GI Bill.
Simpson Yeah, right.
Wildman Yeah, I didn’t want to have a job.
Simpson Yeah. Well, civil engineering is such a hard subject area that I imagine you studied quite a bit…
Wildman I didn’t have a big social life.
Simpson No? What about on weekends? What did you do then?
Wildman Well, not really. Even on weekends, we studied a lot. But we used to make the statement—this is a boring story, but we would study on Friday nights and get our homework done, then we’d all go out—the group I ran around with. There was a Sonic Drive-In here, then we’d eat a hamburger on Sunday afternoon and there was a guy out here in the north end of Stillwater had a nine-inch black and white TV and we’d go watch Maverick every Sunday evening, about ten of us. That was the only time all week long we saw TV, but that’s okay. That’s okay. We enjoyed doing that. (Laughter)
Simpson So that was your big excitement, watching Maverick?
Wildman For a week, yeah.
Simpson For a weekend.
Wildman I’d like to remind you all—if you don’t realize this. They didn’t have fall and spring breaks.
Simpson Oh.
Wildman And they had some real tough math teachers, and the math teachers were so tough. I’ll tell a story about one of them so that everybody knows my age. They didn’t list the math instructors in the catalog because no one would schedule the tough ones, and so they decided, in addition to that, all the engineers had to take math on Saturday to keep them in school.
10 And I’ll tell a story that everybody knows about that was here in the ‘50s. They had a professor here when I showed up, his name was “Square Root Smith,” and the reason—if you’ve never heard of him, all of the people here in the ’50s did, he had a math class before I got here of 64 students and he passed eight. So he passed the square root of his class. So if you drew him, you couldn’t really drop him. You probably weren’t going to pass, but still if you dropped him and you were on the GI Bill, they put you a semester behind. So it was really kind of a tough deal. Well, I drew him for analytical geometry and calculus. There were sixty students, I think, the first day. Thirty of them dropped it roughly. There were fifteen showed up for the finals. He gave one “B.” He passed about eleven of us, and one of the astronauts was in that class and he got the only “B.” But I actually made a “C” in that course, and I actually passed. They had a big article in the Daily Oklahoman when he retired, about that, and they couldn’t understand why the college kept him around.
Simpson And all the students knew him as “Square Root Smith?”
Wildman Because he passed the square root of his class.
Simpson Oh.
Wildman He passed about eleven of us.
Simpson Yeah.
Wildman And he gave one “B” and about five or six “C’s” and two or three “D’s,” and the rest were “F’s.” Fifteen, I think, showed up for the final.
Simpson It sounds like classes were tougher then than they are today.
Wildman Well, they didn’t give very good grades. They told all the engineering students—and you have to realize, if anyone was here in the ’50s and was an engineering student, they were going to be offered lots of jobs. NASA was hiring, I think, 17,000. All the aircraft companies, Hughes and all of those. Most of the engineers were mechanical, with an aeronautical option, and they were literally guaranteed a job. So, for some reason, it seems as though the instructors—that they would tell you when going to a class, “We’re only gonna pass one out of three.” They would tell you that in class after class after class. And they claimed the reason for that is, why take all those courses, those math courses, then get to be a junior and flunk? Then you’ve lost all of it. So some of the instructors would, before a final exam, you’d go sit down to take it and they’d say, “Okay, I’m gonna pass one out of three. Take it or leave it.” So they didn’t give very good grades even.
11 Simpson Wow.
Wildman I personally made the highest grade in an advanced chemistry class in the Chemistry Department, and I got a “C.” They told us when we graduated, they said, “Well, now, if you’ve put up with all this stuff we gave you, anyone that hires you is pretty much convinced you’ll stay four years.” I got off subject though—that’s not a lot about Oklahoma State, but…
Simpson No, but that’s interesting that, you know. I think that because you came in after the Army and you were a little older, you were maybe a little better prepared for that situation.
Wildman Well, you learned and the engineers that I ran around with, and they were all engineers—we had a pretty much a set thing. When we came out of class, we immediately started doing homework in the evening. Then we’d take about an hour break and then, personally, I studied till about midnight and then I quit. I never did study past midnight. A lot of them stayed up pretty late, but that’s okay. They were top-notch students, and they all became very, very successful.
Simpson I want to ask you something while we’re on the subject. You work with a lot, or have been working in your career with a lot, of younger engineers.
Wildman Yes.
Simpson Do you think they’re coming out of school as prepared or as disciplined as they did at your time?
Wildman I think they’re a lot smarter than we are, (Laughter) and I think that they, as far as the computers and the bookwork stuff, they’re better. I’m with a consulting engineering firm in Oklahoma City, and our young engineers are not any good going out to the public much. And they broke in, while I was here—Dr. Willham said we had to have a major in English courses and so we had to have 20 hours of humanities and English. They quit that, and now the young engineers in our office have trouble writing, and we don’t even take them out with us to meet with the community because they’re not very good. But they’re twice as smart as we are. I don’t think they’re disciplined. I think they think, “Well, if I lose a job, I’ll go get another one.” Which it really isn’t true. (Laughs)
Simpson Were you recruited when you were graduating?
Wildman I interviewed with, I think, approximately ten different people and was offered ten jobs.
12 Simpson Oh my gosh.
Wildman Yeah, but all the other engineers were, too. There wasn’t anything special about me.
Simpson And what was the job you took?
Wildman I went to work as a planning engineer for the Soil Conservation Service.
Simpson Okay.
Wildman I really liked it and went to Oklahoma City. Didn’t stay too long with them but…
Simpson When did you move back to Stillwater?
Wildman 1964.
Simpson ’64. So you’ve been here ever since?
Wildman Working as the state engineer for the Farmer’s Home Administration.
Simpson Well, since you’ve pretty much lived in Stillwater for fifty years, I wonder what you think about how the town, how the university, has grown. Is this college town different than the college town it was when you were here?
Wildman I think so. Stillwater was kind of classified as a rural farm community when I went to school here, and the old time—oh, ranchers and farmers —they kind of controlled the downtown. I think that they became more sophisticated over the years and Stillwater kind of became a little bit more of the larger—has a little bit of metropolitan stuff to it. The college has doubled, and Stillwater has tripled in size. I don’t think you have the animosity downtown as you had back in the ’50s.
Simpson Right.
Wildman A lot of the people were born and reared here and had old businesses. A lot of them didn’t particularly like the college. They kind of thought, “Well, we’d be better off just having the old town of Stillwater be the size of Perkins.”
Simpson Right. Well, what do you think about the controversy in the past year or two over the Athletic Village expansion? Is that gonna be good for the city and the campus?
13 Wildman Personally, I think so, and I think that most of the engineers and the people I talk to in Oklahoma City think it’s a great thing. You hear a few people gripe and groan about it, but I think most of them think it’s a great thing. The engineers in our office are engineers for Wal-Mart, and we’re engineers on the new Wal-Mart store here, and they think that all that’ll do is just enhance everything, the Athletic Village—I do, too. I think it’s wonderful.
Simpson Do you think it was handled appropriately?
Wildman Well, they might have, from what I can tell—I hear people complain that they might have gone out and talked to everybody a little bit nicer from the beginning and kind of approached it a little bit better, but I think in the long run, if I talk to a one hundred people about it all over the state, there might be ten gripe and groan a little bit about it. The other ninety will like it.
I just don’t see—I think it’s wonderful. I made a comment that I have the club seats now, my football seats, and I said, “Well, the reason I did that, if Boone Pickens can afford to put that much money in, I can surely afford to buy those club seats.” (Laughter) And I think he spurs other people doing that.
Simpson Sure. Sure. So tell me about the people. Did you mostly hang out with the other GIs?
Wildman Yes. My last college roommate though was from Perry and he hadn’t been in the Army, and the draft was still on then. Just because we got out of the Army, the draft was still on. They were gonna draft those guys as soon as they got out of school. He was drafted. He was from Perry. He was a wrestler, and he and I were both civil engineers so we roomed together the last year, and he got drafted and went to Alaska of all places. And then another one that was real sharp from Ponca City, he became an engineer in Saudi Arabia.
Simpson Wow.
Wildman But the one I mentioned, my roommate, he became the base engineer for Altus Air Force Base.
Simpson And you have stayed in touch with these people?
Wildman Yeah. Yeah. We stay in touch. There for awhile, the engineers and—you might find this interesting—from the classes of ’55, ’56, ’57, ’58 and ’59, met once a year in Oklahoma City and had a big steak dinner.
14 Simpson Oh.
Wildman Neal McCaleb is one of the ones that was in—we were all—we’re all buddies. Yeah, if you go to school, like at Oklahoma State there’s not many big classes. In my graduating class of civil engineers, by the time we got down to it, probably about twenty.
Simpson Wow.
Wildman But we’re all buddies. We’ve been buddies ever since we got out of school. We’ve drank coffee together, and I’ve been pall bearer at some of their funerals and been at some of their weddings, and we’re all still very close friends. We used to always meet at Homecoming. They have a civil engineering luncheon you all—I guess you all know, tomorrow, and I’ve never missed one of those. I may tomorrow because of the parking situation. The club seats are on the north side, and I have to come clear over to the engineering school to go back over there and eat. But they still have a get together.
Simpson Yes.
Wildman I would think that would be common, and especially the engineers, now let me tell you a little bit of a story about that. There are ten OU grads in our office in Oklahoma City, civil engineering grads. They don’t go to the football games together and don’t even speak about their Homecoming. They don’t like each other I think. (Laughter) I mean, it’s kind of an interesting thing that they do not socialize…
Simpson Right, like you guys do.
Wildman …and if I was in the office today, we would be discussing if we were gonna meet up at the luncheon tomorrow, all the OSU engineers, and we’d probably all show up. But if they’re—and they’re having a Homecoming at OU, I think, tomorrow, and they won’t even get together and discuss it…
Simpson I wonder how much of that is generational, because I don’t think people my age have those lifelong friendships as much.
Wildman Well, we were all in the same boat. We were all on the GI Bill and didn’t have any money (Laughter) and going to school and studying, and it just—but when you get out in the cold, cruel world, these guys have all been in the consulting business or went somewhere. We all end up working together.
Simpson Yes.
15 Wildman I was state engineer one time for twenty years for the FHA [Farmer’s Home Administration] here in Stillwater. I had an engineers’ seminar, and I invited ninety-one consulting engineers to the seminar. Eighty-nine of them were Oklahoma State grads.
Simpson Wow.
Wildman There was one from MIT and one from OU, so you—I don’t think that they had the—well, it was just different—a lot of those guys lived in Oklahoma City and they’d commute. And here you’re stuck in Stillwater. When I was in school, you had to live here.
Simpson Right.
Wildman You couldn’t live anywhere else and go to school here. I think that’s the reason Oklahoma State people are friendlier. We were all stuck here. (Laughter) I mean, you can’t commute to Oklahoma State from Tulsa or Edmond—it’s too far, and we all lived here and were stuck here, where the Oklahoma City people lived all over Oklahoma City, Norman, Moore…
Simpson Right, commuted.
Wildman …and they weren’t on the campus. Here, you’re pretty much stuck on the campus if you live—which I think is great.
Simpson Yeah. Did you have a car?
Wildman Yes.
Simpson You did? What kind?
Wildman Of course I was old enough to have a car, but everyone had the same type car. I had a ’52 Ford, and the day I graduated I had 147,000 miles on it.
Simpson Wow.
Wildman But isn’t that common for a college student?
Simpson You got out of Stillwater occasionally then? (Laughs)
Wildman I went home. Yeah, I went back out home pretty often and then I worked in the summer, you know—job in the summertime.
Simpson Do you remember the tone of what it was like on campus when the name
16 was changed from A&M to OSU?
Wildman You know, it didn’t seem to me like that was a big deal. I went two years, I believe, at Oklahoma A&M, and I was in English class when they got to talking—everyone was real pleased that that was changed. I thought it was a great idea and everybody else that I knew thought it was a great idea.
Simpson Why?
Wildman Well, it just seemed like it was a university, and since—in the old days, you had a lot of agriculture students here. When I was in school, the largest class was mechanical engineers, with an aeronautical option, and they pretty much controlled the school. And why would you have an agriculture mechanical title when you could go to a university when most of the students were not agriculture majors—even though that’s great and the agriculture schools here are great, but it just seemed to me like—at the time I—everyone I knew was pleased. I think I was a sophomore when they changed it. I’m not sure about that but I think that was…
Simpson So your diploma says OSU?
Wildman My diploma says Oklahoma State, yes.
Simpson Okay.
Wildman The English professors used to require us to spell Oklahoma Agricultural and Mechanical College (Laughter) every morning before class started, and they said, “We don’t want you graduating from here and can’t spell the name of the college (Laughter) that you graduated from.” And it was kind of tough at first, everybody spelling that sucker out.
Simpson That’s a long thing to spell. (Laughs) Well, just tell me some more of your recollections. What are some other things that you remember?
Wildman Well, as I mentioned before, the GIs were about half the classes—that some of the professors—I like to talk, but everyone talks about ‘ole Square Root Smith. The Kansas basketball game was very interesting because of the fact people still talk about it.
Simpson Yes.
Wildman And I think I remember that the total cost for room and board at Cordell Hall was $60 dollars.
17 Simpson For a year?
Wildman For a semester.
Simpson Oh wow.
Wildman No, wait. That’s not true. $60 dollars a month.
Simpson A month?
Wildman Yeah, $60 dollars a month.
Simpson For Cordell?
Wildman I think after the first semester, it went to $66 dollars. But that’s pretty cheap. That’s room and board per month. And they had three good meals a day.
Simpson That was with your food?
Wildman That was with your food, yes.
Simpson And how much was coffee at the Y-Hut?
Wildman I’m gonna guess—we were talking about that this morning. I drank coffee with two 1957 grads this morning. They said they thought it might have been twenty cents. I don’t think it was over a quarter. I doubt if it was a quarter, but it was pretty cheap. Might have been a dime. I’m not for sure.
Simpson What do you pay today for coffee?
Wildman Well, I think over there—we drank coffee over at Red Rock [Bakery and Restaurant], and I think it’s seventy-some cents, but we give a buck. We just throw a dollar down and…
Simpson Still a bargain.
Wildman Still a dollar a cup over there, and everybody gives a tip. I think that’s about what it is. I’m not for sure. (Laughter) I was gonna say—the notes that I took were about Pistol Pete…
Simpson Tell me about Pistol Pete. You were there for the unveiling of the mascot?
Wildman Yes. We were at a Homecoming football game, and I’m almost positive
18 it was 1958, and Oklahoma State had a real good football team and they were playing the Air Force Academy. The Air Force Academy, I think, was undefeated—two of the top teams in the nation. Oklahoma State went to a bowl game that year, went to the Bluegrass Bowl. Well, I think it was at the half, here comes this crazy Pistol Pete guy out on the (Laughter) middle of the field and nobody knew what it was or who it was or why. It was a secret and it took us awhile for that to soak in that it was ‘ol Frank Eaton (Laughter) because he rode in all the parades prior to that, and that’s the unveiling of Pistol Pete as we see him today.
Simpson Oh, okay. Great.
Wildman It was quite a surprise to everybody.
Simpson Did the students like it?
Wildman Yeah, they were kind of shocked. Really, you kind of looked out there and think, “What is that fool (Laughter) coming out here with that big— but you could tell it looked like Frank Eaton—but it was a total surprise, as far as I know, to everybody.
Simpson Yes.
Wildman That happened just about the time Oklahoma State went from Oklahoma Agricultural and Mechanical to Oklahoma State University, about the time when they—and that’s when they stopped calling teams “Aggies” and pretty much went to “Cowboys,” all about that same time. Everybody was pleased with the cowboy nickname. And I think other colleges have used—Wyoming, I think, uses the same—I’m not for sure they don’t even use him. I kind of think they do. But I think that’s good that you have a mascot like that.
Simpson Well, was school spirit in the ’50s like it is today?
Wildman I think so, every bit as good. You literally, at those basketball games— there was no change. You couldn’t, if you went with someone, you couldn’t talk to them. (Laughter) Just like today, you can’t talk to whoever you go to the ballgame with. Too much noise. That’s the first time in my life I ever went anywhere that was solid noise that you couldn’t even talk to anybody. It was the same then. And the basketball—but the football games were full. I mean that was, like I said, they had a national championship baseball team that year in ’59, which was good. So it was good and the wrestling team was national champions then just like they are now.
Simpson Yeah.
19 Wildman They were national champions in ’59.
Simpson So the Y-Hut—was it a hut literally?
Wildman It was a little hut-looking thing that was very small, probably 40 feet long and 20 feet wide. It had booths on both sides and, from what I can remember and what people remind me, the guy that ran it was blind. And they had snacks in there, but it was primarily a coffee drinking place. It was right east of the Student Union between there and what would be the business school, and people would come out of the classroom building—instead of going over to the Student Union, they would stop in the Y-Hut.
There’s another thing that we all talk about and after the years—when you were freshmen, sophomores and juniors, you studied all the time. By the time we were seniors, we all learned to take a break and didn’t schedule anything, a one-hour break. We didn’t schedule class from 10:00 till 11:00 our senior year, and go over to the Student Union and drink coffee. Never did do that the first three years. We got to be seniors, we got a little bit wise about that thing.
Simpson Did the Y-Hut get torn down eventually?
Wildman I’m gonna guess and there’s some people that would know, but I was thinking he probably got in real poor health and it probably lasted another four or five years after that. And of course with expansion, they probably let him get in poor health before they bought him out and closed it.
Simpson Right.
Wildman It was probably an old, old coffee shop years before that.
Simpson Sure. Now, did the women and the men both go there for coffee?
Wildman Yeah, and professors.
Simpson And the professors?
Wildman It was real common for a professor to teach a class and go there and drink a cup of coffee because it was handy.
Simpson Yeah.
Wildman Just walk out—and didn’t have to go to the Student Union and stand in line or anything. There were probably six booths on each side.
20 Simpson Were there any women in your major?
Wildman No. I was gonna mention that earlier. I never had an engineering class, a physics class, a math class, that had a woman in it. [Wildman recollected after this interview that one math class had a woman in it]
Simpson Why do you think that is?
Wildman Well, I don’t know. There weren’t near as many women then in school. I did take one class over [in the Classroom Building], I took geography, and most of the athletes were in that class and about half were women. But at the Engineers’ Ball the year I graduated, there were three women came in and sat at the table with us at the dance—at the Engineers’ Ball they still do, I’m sure, on Saint Patrick’s Day and they [the girls that were there] were mechanical engineers. And I’d never had classes with them at all. They were very attractive, and I’m sure they got great jobs. (Laughter) I never in any of my statistics, physics, strength of material, senior classes—have a woman in any of them.
Simpson Yeah.
Wildman I think there’s probably as many women in it now as there are men.
Simpson What about black students? Were there…
Wildman I think there were about two in the whole school. There weren’t any black basketball players, and I’m sure there weren’t any black football players. That came on in the ’60s.
Simpson Right. Right.
Wildman But I think there were a couple of students here if I remember.
Simpson Do you remember that being a big deal?
Wildman Well, just that—no one even paid any attention to it. You never even thought about it one way or the other.
Simpson Well, what advice do you have for students today, whether they’re going into engineering or anything else?
Wildman Well, one thing that you talk about in the coffee shops in Oklahoma City, and even the Governor’s Water Conferences and what have you— there’s an awful lot of students that enroll in school up here today just to get in school, and they graduate and they don’t take anything, and they’ve got a degree on the wall and they can’t get a job. We kind of
21 think maybe talking—why don’t more of them take some of the sciences? Because there’s still tremendous job openings for all of those. That’s one thing I guess you just can’t help, but we kind of wonder around the coffee shops—so many students get a degree. They don’t know what they’re gonna do. And I think an awful lot of the students today—their high school teachers are their role models, so they come over here and in other colleges and they’re gonna be teachers. Then generally the teachers aren’t the highest paid people (Laughter) in the world, and we kind of feel like maybe, you know, that’s not their fault.
Simpson Right.
Wildman But…
Simpson So more math and science should be stressed to the high school…
Wildman I think there’s still a tremendous opening for anyone that goes into the sciences.
Simpson Sure.
Wildman I don’t think many people, if you come over here—I know a lot of students come over here and take engineering after the first year and quit. Now if you’re gonna study every night, you don’t have any business in there if you don’t. You’re not gonna do it. I always told my daughter, Wendy, the day she started, “It’s gonna take more guts than it is brains (Laughter) to get through that college.” And I think that’s true.
Simpson Yeah.
Wildman Just bow your neck and study and you’ll be okay.
Simpson Yeah. Yeah.
Wildman I think the students are smarter than we were, by far.
Simpson What other family members have gone to OSU?
Wildman Well, Joy has and Wendy.
Simpson And I went for one year.
Wildman And I think that—I told Chelsea, my granddaughter, that she would probably fall right into that because see Wendy was in a sorority. She’ll be asked in the same sorority, won’t she? I assume and has a chance if she wants to be.
22 Simpson Yeah. Has she talked about coming here?
Wildman Yeah. She insists on it.
Simpson How old is Chelsea now?
Wildman Let’s see. She’ll be 17.
Simpson Okay. She’s a junior?
Wildman Junior in high school. I’ve talked to her about it quite a lot.
Simpson So you would be proud to have your third generation of your family…
Wildman Yes. Why not? Well, I think it’s easy for a high school student at Stillwater to come right over here to college because you’re gonna have about ten or fifteen that was in your class, and it’s comfortable. There’s nothing gonna get you real excited about going. Come from a small town and you’re scared to death. I’ve talked to students that said, “No one talks to me. They don’t take roll in classes, and I’m just shocked.” Well, Wendy and Joy weren’t shocked at all. They just had—still running around with the same ones they did in high school.
Simpson A little easier—not so much of a culture shock, I guess.
Wildman There’s about, from five to ten OSU grads drink coffee over at Mickael’s—and the girls that work in there are all college students. Two or three of them graduate and don’t have a clue what they’re gonna do. They’ve got a degree in their hand, but they didn’t take anything, and they’re just kind of out looking for a job. Now there’s a couple went in the medical field and immediately went to work.
Simpson Do you advise young engineering students?
Wildman Absolutely. As a matter of fact, I think if you got a degree in engineering tomorrow, you could even go to work for our company in Oklahoma City. I think it’s that critical.
Simpson Really?
Wildman And they keep about twenty—they’re one of the top engineering firms in the state. They’re designing approximately twenty Wal-Mart stores today in five states, and they really have trouble—we have trouble finding a young student that will go out to a night meeting and stay in some town like Stillwater and meet with a city council building a new Wal-Mart store. They say, “I’m not gonna do that. My wife doesn’t want
23 me to travel,” and on and on and on. (Laughter) So you have that.
Simpson Different work ethic, isn’t it?
Wildman Yes, and it’s really a problem.
Simpson Yes.
Wildman We’re the engineers for a hundred towns, and we have trouble getting any of the young engineers to even go with us because they didn’t have to beat their brains out like we did, seems like. You know, their folks paid their way through school and they’ll do something else and what have you. We just kind of feel like that they’re smarter. There’s no question that they’re taking even nuclear physics and all that stuff that we didn’t even take. But that’s just the way of the world and they’ll probably all do great. (Laughter)
Simpson Well, I think we’re about to wrap up. Is there anything else you want to talk about?
Wildman Well, another thing that is discussed with all college grads, and especially OSU grads, is the fact that if you graduate from high school and you go into the workplace and then you take this guy and he goes through college, his income is gonna be 10 times what this guy that didn’t go to college—not just a few times—it’s gonna be 10 times.
Simpson It’s a million dollars over your lifetime.
Wildman Yes, what he would make by not going, and we tell everybody that. I think you can increase that a little bit more if you take some tough courses and go into the sciences. The highest priced engineers that came out of here were electrical engineers, when we were in school. Probably still are, and that’s tough. And the chemical engineers. But we tell everybody at the office that comes in there—I met with the Wal-Mart president’s kids in Oklahoma City about a month ago. The president of SMC is Tom McCaleb from Norman. He’s a Texas grad. He wanted me to meet with them and tell them what to expect, and I told them when you go to college, don’t take physics, chemistry, math, calculus—take history and English. Go into school slow where you’ll pass and you kind of get a little bit of background behind you and don’t let some advisor just load you up. I’ve seen them load them up and they flunk their first year. Take it easy. Get your feet on the ground, and then take—very slowly go into your math and your sciences.
Simpson Right.
24 Wildman And I told them for God’s sakes go to a college that they like. Don’t go where your folks say you’ve got to do this and you’ve got to do that. Select your—I’m talking to the parents, but the kids are in the conference room; none of them lived in Oklahoma. These are all Wal- Mart people out of Arkansas mostly, and I told them if the kids want to go to Arkansas University, fine. If they want to go to Missouri, fine. If they want to go to Harvard, fine. If that’s where they want to go, they’ll be better off initially. They might not like it and want to come back home, but for God’s sakes don’t let them take a whole bunch of tough math courses that first year. And I would tell anybody that.
Simpson Yes.
Wildman And I said—and I know a guy that lived in Stillwater that went clear through to his senior year in college. A bank here in Stillwater offered him a loan officer’s position if he got that degree. They didn’t care— they had to have a piece of paper on the wall. He got crossways with his girlfriend. He didn’t show up and take his finals. He’s working for a floor contractor in Texas. He got an “F” in all his classes—and he was a senior—and he had a bank job offered him. So I tell them for God’s sake get that degree and get it behind. But the people that I drink coffee with are all OSU grads and all successful. And there’s one of them an electrical engineer. One’s a geologist, and one’s a…
Simpson Wow.
Wildman …I mean, just different fields. And I imagine you feel the same way when you walked across that stage, it was a good feeling, wasn’t it— Central State.
Simpson Yes.
Wildman That’s a good feeling to have that ‘ol degree (Laughter) in your hip pocket.
Simpson So you spent a lot of time in the Library?
Wildman I spent some time in the Library. One of the interesting courses I took was Oklahoma history and political science, and Dr. LeRoy Fischer was the instructor here at Oklahoma State, and after each class—we took it Monday, Wednesday and Friday, it was a three-hour course—he required us to go to the Library and read at least thirty pages. Then when we walked into the class the next time we sat down with the Blue Book and we wrote what those thirty pages told us. (Laughter) So as a result of that, we spent a lot of time in the Library, and it was real interesting stuff.
25 I’ll give you an example. One of the assignments he gave us was to write about when Churchill and Roosevelt met in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean and decided whether the United States would declare war on Germany with England. He assigned us that, and that went on for about four weeks, and we would have to write whether we felt like that England got us into the war or didn’t get us into the war. So as a result of that, you had to spend a lot of time at the Library.
Another interesting story about it—and I was taking a graduate course in civil engineering in ’59—and they had us design a dam over the Snake River in Washington State, and the water ran over the top of the dam. [According to Wildman, this was assigned right before Christmas vacation and the class was not happy about it]. And so we were in the process of designing this dam, and we all got to thinking, “Wonder if there’s ever been one designed before?” So we go to the Library and, sure enough, in New York State they had built one like it and we were all leaving out part of the central part of that dam, and that was the trick to it. [According to Wildman, the design was wrong, but they had changed it, and could see it in the picture at the Library.] The trick to it was that if you filled the thing full of water, you designed it for that— but what happened, it was empty. If it was empty, the dam would fall forward into the river because it didn’t have any water in it. Over at the Library, it had the plans and specs on that particular dam that we looked up in New York, and we would have never got the problem worked without that. It was amazing that we had worked this problem and it was wrong, because we never dreamed of designing the dam if there wasn’t any water in the river. But now Dr. Fischer was very strong on going to the Library after every class and—imagine reading all that stuff, how much you’d get out of it because it was always different subjects.
Simpson The Library was fairly new at that time?
Wildman Well, it must have been.
Simpson Yes.
Wildman It was there and it had to be new. The Classroom Building was new. I think it was only about three years old. I don’t know when it was built. I was in the Army then, but wasn’t it about ’51 or ’52?
Neurohr ’53 for the Library.
Wildman Yeah. See this was just two years later. It was a great place to go. We enjoyed it. I always liked going over there.
Neurohr What did it look like? Do you remember?
26 Wildman Well, it was beautiful. I mean, it was just like it is today, and we went in on the first floor and had people sitting there helping you to find what you was looking for. Of course, we had to learn the system to find our own reference material and all that.
Simpson Yes.
Wildman But we didn’t study over there because—well, we were doing mostly problems and it wasn’t that type—I never studied over there at all. We’d have to get all of that stuff out of there and read it and report on it. I remember it was beautiful and we enjoyed going over there. Of course, I lived in Cordell Hall and walked right by the thing ever day and it was— like I say, to me it was wonderful. Probably still is. That would be my guess.
Neurohr Well, we’d love for you to come back and visit anytime. (Laughs)
Wildman Yes.
Simpson Well, thank you very much.
Wildman All right. I enjoyed showing up today.
------End of October 20, 2006 interview ------
Neurohr Today is August 27, 2007 and we’re here in the Angie Debo Room of the OSU Library, Mr. Cecil Wildman who graduated in…
Wildman ’59
Neurohr From Oklahoma State University…
Wildman Civil engineering.
Neurohr Mr. Wildman has agreed to come back for a second interview with us. We learned in the course of our conversations after the first interview that he’s had some interesting career experiences that were somewhat significant for the town of Stillwater and for Oklahoma State University. Could you tell us a little bit about your career in the early 1960s?
Wildman In 1962, I was given the position of the area engineer for the Soil Conservation Services in the Perry office. I was in charge of eighteen flood control watersheds in nine counties. And one of my counties was Payne County and one of the watersheds was Stillwater Creek. So every Monday morning, I would drive to Stillwater. I would pick up officials of the water association and the upstream flood control. We would take
27 maps of the projects and we’d go to the land owners to get the easements. That was the second stage. Those water shed programs were very, very popular at that time and they started in Oklahoma. The first ones were built on Washita River out by Cheyenne.
Neurohr And were they federally funded?
Wildman They were federally funded. All of them in the state, except if a city wanted additional water for a municipal water supply. About the first two in the state, I served as the engineer on them. One of the reasons I was promoted to that job was because of the Stillwell and Sallisaw projects. And then Stillwater Creek Watershed Authority wanted to put extra water in Lake McMurtry for the city of Stillwater. So the way that worked, the federal government paid for all the flood control dams in the county and all these watersheds, except in the case of Stillwater. The city had to pay extra for the amount of water that they wanted to put in McMurtry for additional water supplies for the city of Stillwater. Otherwise it was all federal money.
Neurohr Where does the water in Stillwater Creek originate?
Wildman Well it isn’t a big watershed. Lake Carl Blackwell is on Stillwater Creek. But if you go north to Meadow Park, just straight north of town, you’re not even in Stillwater watershed anymore. It’s fairly short north, it goes west past Lake Carl Blackwell and then it drains into the river near Perkins. It’s a rather small watershed, but it’s a tough one. It always flooded.
Neurohr Oh.
Wildman One of the worst flooded watersheds in Oklahoma.
Neurohr And what time of the year would be common for it to experience flooding?
Wildman April. Stillwater flooded big in 1957 in April. School was still going on. And it flooded again in ’59.
Neurohr Were you a student during that time period?
Wildman I was in ’57 when it flooded, yes. The first watershed dam built on Stillwater Creek protected the area south of the Pizza Hut that goes down through where I was showing the boy who picked me up, down around McDonald’s. Those houses were underwater. The first one built was Professor Hazen on 160 acres of land. So if you can visualize about two and a half blocks north and about two and a half blocks west of
28 Lakeview on Monroe. Can you visualize that one?
Neurohr Yes.
Wildman First one is the big one there, west of those houses. That was the first one built on Stillwater Creek.
Neurohr And that was shortly after the big flood?
Wildman Well, I was only two and a half years in Perry and I came down here every Monday in ’63 and ’64.
Neurohr And who were the people that you met with when you came down? You said you met with several officials?
Wildman Sam Meyers was the official here in Stillwater. He had married one of the Berry girls and had an office downtown. And he was kind of a big wig—he ran for Mayor a couple of times, wasn’t elected. Lawrence Hamm was a farmer. Let me back up, Lester Hamm was his brother. Lester Hamm was a farmer west of town, everybody liked him. I would take those two guys and we would meet at the county SCS office in downtown Stillwater with Bill McMurtry. Bill McMurtry was an elderly man in charge of the office. Lake McMurtry is named after him. So the four of us would go out to a landowner’s home and I’d get the maps out and we’d explain how big the dam was—the area of it, how much flood water it could hold and all that. And we’d ask them for an easement. Chilton Swank—by the way, all these people are dead now. Chilton Swank was the attorney. He was a really nice hotshot attorney. We’d take the easements to him and he’d record them. Then that would allow the planning engineers to come in and plan that lake. The construction office which was also in Perry had a construction engineer that worked for me and he came in and was in charge of building the dams.
Neurohr So, if you could clarify for me your role then, was to develop the plans and get all of the paperwork and maps and things together?
Wildman Nope, I was the, probably pretty much the public relations engineer. I was, prior to this job, a planning engineer on several watersheds. I worked out of Oklahoma City. They had an engineer, a geologist and an economist and we would go to a watershed that people would ask for us to study and we would locate the dams. The geologist would tell us whether we could build them out of the dirt that was there. The economist would say was it worth building with the government spending the money. Those maps were in a book and were sent to Congress and Congress approved the money. Then they sent those to an area office to complete.
29 Then I was promoted and I had three engineers who worked under me. But I had the authority to go to these towns and I was kind of on my own. Now, I picked these guys up, we’d eat lunch together and we’d talk about it. We’d try to get the easements and try to satisfy the people. When that was done, then the construction engineer—which there was a large office in Perry, they would take over those plans and award the contracts and supervise the construction. I was hands off at that time. I was actually administrative, pretty much, by that time.
Neurohr Okay, and then you had a story about a particular dam that we were interested in hearing about today on Hall of Fame and Western.
Wildman Yes, several people have asked me over the years about that and no one seems to know much about it. But you can understand they wouldn’t know much about it because I’m the only one living that was involved. Dr. Willham was a real popular president here and as far as I know, everybody really liked him. So one day, Bill McMurtry called me and said, “We got to meet with Dr. Willham.” I said, “Well, that’s kind of strange, meeting with the president of the college.” And he said, “Yeah, we’ve got to meet him out at the food services on the corner of Hall of Fame and Western.” Western was an old dirt road. If you remember it, it was open but it wasn’t paved and people didn’t use it much. Dr. Willham met me out there. And he said, “I want a dry dam here, I want a dam that will hold with no water.” I told him, “That’s pretty unusual.” And he said, “Well, that’s what I want.”
I thought about it later. He wanted to protect those people below there. And it really does a great job. But I told him I was going to talk him out of it. So he said, “Okay, we’re not going to walk up to McElroy and leave everybody else here.” Well it was a dirty, old windy day, dust was blowing and he had a dark suit and a tie and all that. I was trying to explain to him that it would be a nice lake. The college would own it and we’d have to build a road around Western but it would be pretty. And he said, “Well, you haven’t talked me out of anything.” By the time we got back to the corner he said, “No, it’s going to be a dry dam.” And he said, “Any problems with that?” I said, “No, if you want a dry dam it’s going to be a dry dam.”
I might explain that to people that don’t understand—if I can do this simple. Assume you’ve got a bathtub full of water and it’s flowing over the top. And you keep running the faucet in there it’s going to flow over the top. Eventually, if you turn the faucet off, it will settle down to the overflow, and it’ll settle down and then it’ll stay in that tub and go out this overflow. And you got about that much distance between that and the top. That’s the way most flood-control dams are today, they hold this, what we call the permanent pool of water. If you reach down and
30 pull the plug out of the bottom of the tub, it’s going to drain the whole thing. Well that dam hasn’t got a plug in the bottom. So it can fill up during a heavy flood, but it immediately is trying to drain out.
It takes two or three weeks, they tell me, sometimes for it to drain out, instead of all that water rushing in the creek. So it’s a good thing. I think he probably did a wise thing. It’s very interesting because today you would never have a president of a college do a meaningless job like that, would you? I mean, he’d have five staff people out there talking and probably a couple of attorneys. But he was out there himself and a nice person. I always remember that, when I go over that dam, to this day I still remember that trip we took. But that was his idea and nobody else’s.
Neurohr Did he have an engineering background?
Wildman No, I don’t think so. He was a farm guy from Randlett, Oklahoma if I remember. He was sharp, and he worked all the time. But, I’m sure he had asked some people before we got out there some of the details. All I had to do, at that particular time, was just say, “Okay, it’s going to be dry.” I had the authority to say it would be dry and then I submitted it to the design section here in Stillwater, and then the planning and the construction engineers built it.
Neurohr Were dry dams unusual for this area at that time?
Wildman Yes, there would probably be one out of fifty maybe and it would be an unusual situation because most people wanted the water. And this area, dams around here are pretty. If you’ve been around them, they’re nice lakes. Most people wanted them. It was a little unusual, there was only one on Stillwater Creek that even had a request for it.
Neurohr Well, how many dams are there on Stillwater Creek, approximately?
Wildman There’s a plan available in the SCS state office that shows all of those. And I’d just have to guess. One of the first watersheds I worked on out in western Oklahoma was Barnitz Creek, and it had 62 dams. I would guess Stillwater is down in the category of about 25. It was a smaller watershed than those big ones, but very critical to this area because Stillwater Creek flooded. There was an article in the Daily Oklahoman about a month ago that was very interesting that told how well those things had worked all over the state of Oklahoma. Did y’all read that article?
Neurohr I didn’t.
Wildman They ran a special on it. Said there wasn’t any of their dams that had
31 failed. They all worked. They’re talking about all the way from the Texas line to the Arkansas line. That historically, in these floods, the dams have worked real well.
Neurohr Why was Oklahoma at the fore front of this do you think? Did we have some legislators or politicians that were very involved in this?
Wildman Yes. There was a guy by the name of Red Mayo who was a banker in Cheyenne and he was one of the first people that got the Congressmen and the people interested in the Washita River. It was the first big watershed project in the United States. Well then, they just kind of caught a hold and there was lots of money available. If they were building them today, Congress doesn’t allocate any money. They didn’t get them all built, but they’ve dried up those funds. I think that if you went out to work on one today, the Soil Conservation Service, SCS, would hire private consultants to do whatever they needed to do. But that program, I understand, has no funding, as of today, for construction.
Neurohr Okay. Your recommendation had been to make a lake there. And you saw the benefits to this being, just the beauty or the recreation possibilities?
Wildman Yes, yes, and because most all of the rest of them wanted a lake. I even described to Dr. Willham how I thought that it would cover up Western permanently. But the SCS would build a road around the west side and it would just be a pretty thing. But he was primarily interested in flood control and I think he did the right thing. I don’t know whether people complain about that thing or not, but it works. It isn’t real pretty because out there today you’d have to mow the grass and there’s no water in it, but it sure works.
Neurohr Were you surprised when he said that he wanted to take a walk with you and discuss this a little more?
Wildman Yes, I was. Yes, and here’s the president of the college and I thought well, I’ve got all these wheels here in Stillwater standing around there and they were a little bit concerned. I think they didn’t want to tackle him with a bunch of stuff and it kind of caught me by surprise. But that’s okay, we had a good argument. I always kind of cherished the fact that I told him, “Fine, let’s build the dry dam.” You want to ask me a little bit about—or I might volunteer a little about Karsten Creek.
Neurohr Okay, one other thing I do want to ask you, though—did you have any other contact with Dr. Willham through the years? And did you and he ever discuss the dry dam?
32 Wildman I think a couple of times at receptions and places that I was invited to. I just shook hands with him and it was a short deal. I don’t think he was here too much longer. You’ve got to realize, I quit that job. I mean right in the middle of all that. I wasn’t responsible for any of the construction. I was only in Perry two and a half years and then was offered the state engineer’s job at the Farmer’s Home Administration here in Stillwater in May of ’64. We were just getting started on the construction of the Stillwater Creek and I turned it all over to other people that replaced me. I had a great job with Farmer’s Home for twenty years where I was located in the USDA building. So I got away from all of that except I drank coffee with the SCS engineers out at the USDA building. I had literally no follow-up on those flood control projects.
Neurohr Okay, I would like to hear about Karsten.
Wildman Well a lot of people don’t know a lot about Karsten. It’s not a real interesting story, but it kind of is too. Lawrence Hamm owned the land where the land is located. He was a farmer that owned that 80 acres on that corner as you drive out 51. And he told me he had purchased it from two elderly women that came to Stillwater and who wanted to get rid of that 80 acres. He told me he had to come to town to borrow the money and he had trouble doing that, but he got it bought. Well something got in his head that the lake wasn’t going to be very big. So I’m sitting in the office in Perry and he comes in there very upset. I don’t know him at that time—he’s very upset. He says, “I’m really concerned this lake is going to be a mud puddle.” And I said, “Well, Lawrence, you know we’re putting extra water in there.” You build them bigger when you’re protecting a highway, those lakes are built bigger. You also build them bigger if you can irrigate out of them. Well, he could irrigate out of that one and also Highway 51 you had to protect it. So he said, “I believe they call those Class-A structures.” And I said, “It’s bigger than the normal one and you know what the others look like.” I said, “It’s going to be a bigger dam and a bigger lake because we’ve got to protect Highway 51.”
He left and in the meantime, I’m leaving the agency for a new job. He comes back again about two weeks later and he’s real upset again. And he said, “You know, I just don’t think I’m going to like this lake.” I said, “Well Lawrence, I’ve been thinking about it” and I said, “I’ll tell you what I’m going to do. I’ve got the top inspectors in Oklahoma working for me. One of them is a local Stillwater High School graduate you’ve known all your life. I’m going to assign him as the inspector on this lake. It’s your baby and his baby to see it’s built ‘cause I’m not going to be around.” And he said, “That suits me fine.” So about two years later, I was downtown drinking coffee on a Saturday morning after the dam was built and he came up to me and said, “That’s a beautiful lake. I want
33 you to come out Sunday and we’ll drive around and show it to you.” So for ten years he told me the same thing and I never did go out there on a Sunday. I was busy and he said, “It’s just great. I want you to drive out and I want to show you that sucker.” And I never did go out. I haven’t seen it to this day.
Neurohr Oh you haven’t?
Wildman Nope. But he was very upset about that originally. He told me later that he and that inspector stayed out there and they watched that contractor. He said he built a beautiful lake. Very few people have any idea that that’s the way that even got started. He sold it and I think it was a catfish farm. Then the golf people took it over and part of that ended up being Karsten Creek. But they called it Hamm’s Lake when it was built. And you know that Boomer was part of the Stillwater Creek flood control project also.
Neurohr Boomer Lake was?
Wildman Boomer, yes, yes. So there were some pretty interesting lakes built just to protect Stillwater. I think they’ve done a pretty good job.
Neurohr Was there any community reaction, one way or the other, to any of the projects?
Wildman You know, I’m thinking at that time that the people in Stillwater and the officials thought it was a great thing. There have been some of the communities around Oklahoma that have fought that program because the landowners would not give the easements and cover up their wheat fields and whatever. Some of them have failed to go toward completion because of that. This was a popular project. Stillwater had flooded. Stillwater sits on a creek. It’s down in a hole. It’s probably one of the most volatile towns in Oklahoma for flooding. But it really wasn’t bad this summer and I’m sure these flood control dams helped a lot.
Neurohr Mm-hmm, we had a lot of rain this year.
Wildman This big one north of town, by that little golf course that they’re building on the west side, it’s one of the last ones built. Just a couple miles north on the west side, there’s a great big dam.
Neurohr Lakeview?
Wildman They have batting cages and stuff below it.
Neurohr I wonder, Whittenburg Park…
34 Wildman Yes. See, that’s one of the newest ones and then McMurtry and Karsten and Boomer—they catch lots of water and let it out easy.
Neurohr But where is the water supply for the city of Stillwater?
Wildman The big one now is Kaw Reservoir near Ponca City. Lake Carl Blackwell can serve water to Stillwater and so can McMurtry. They were both designed to serve water to Stillwater. And Blackwell did for years and years and years. They never did really develop McMurtry, so Perry comes in and gets about half the water rights in McMurtry. A lot of people are very critical of that happening. But right now they have a thirty inch, big water main to Kaw. I’m going to guess that’s about 20 years, no it’s probably about 30 years old now. In our conversations before, Bill Thomas was the mayor of Stillwater. His brother owns Thomas Ford. His dad owned Thomas Ford. Bill was going 100 miles an hour and was a great mayor. But he didn’t let anyone get in his way. He was a pushy guy and wanted to build that bad, that 30 inch water line to Kaw, that was his baby. And build the water treatment plant near Stillwater so that Stillwater would own the plant and operate it. He appointed myself and Carl Reid and the Head of the Civil Engineering Department, Vernon Parcher, as advisers to the City Council for a year. I met with the City Council for a year and I liked Bill, he liked me. But he ran the City Council meetings like a dictator, which was okay. A lot of people were opposed to the cost of the project because it raised their rates and taxes and all that stuff. But the new pipeline eliminated Blackwell and McMurtry as needs for Stillwater.
Neurohr Do you remember what year that was, approximately?
Wildman I’m going to say that was approximately 30 years ago. So what would that be? It’s ’70—I was still state engineer for Farmer’s Home and I retired from that job in ’84. So, I was still there. So maybe around ’80, 1980, ’79 maybe. That was our new water supply for Stillwater.
Neurohr And can you tell that it’s made a difference in the growth of Stillwater?
Wildman Yes, I think—and the politicians ought to be telling this story instead of me. But all of those developers and all of those big plants on Perkins, they were just starting. And they gave Stillwater an ultimatum. You’ve got to get a guaranteed water supply or we’re not going to build here. And I can’t remember who they all are—National Standard, Mercury Marine—all of those were coming in. They really pushed big time for that. I think it allowed Stillwater just to bloom. Every realtor in town was for it, voted for that vote that came out. It didn’t pass by a lot, but people wanted it bad. It’s been an assurance.
35 Neurohr And you can see the significance of that at that time?
Wildman Yes, yes I think that they gave Stillwater an ultimatum that you do something because they just didn’t want to rely on Lake Carl Blackwell and Lake McMurtry for a water supply. I argued with Bill almost every day. He’d come over here and drink coffee with me at the USDA building and I argued with him all the time about the fact, that if we built the plant at Ponca City, we could have sold water to Ponca City, Perry, Morrison and the water districts and everybody between here and Ponca. And he said, “I want the water treatment plant in Stillwater. I want the Stillwater people to run it. And that’s the way it’s going to be.” (Laughs) We argued all the time about it—friendly arguments. We used to drink a cup of coffee—I argued with him for a year about it, but it was a friendly argument.
Neurohr When you mentioned the dry dam and talking about the significance of it for the homes, what neighborhoods or streets are you talking about that you feel like that helped…
Wildman If you can visualize off of Farm Road by the Vet school. That creek goes through all those homes, going to the south end of Stillwater on Stillwater Creek. I didn’t ever live out there, but I understand that there was always a problem. This dam, I understand, it solved that problem. I never heard anyone complain. They claim it takes it two weeks, three weeks, four weeks to drain out of there after a flood. And those people just have a creek, before it would have rushed down through there.
Neurohr And many of them probably don’t know the story…
Wildman They don’t even know the dam’s there, don’t even know why it’s there, they just know it doesn’t flood. Those houses, probably half of them, have sold. And the last thing you’d even think about is, “Well there’s a flood control dam up there protecting us.”
Neurohr I see a group of students that practice archery over there on the south side of that dam when I go home a lot. And they probably have no idea. Are there any other noteworthy projects in OSU or the Stillwater area that you want to mention, that we haven’t talked about?
Wildman Well, I might want to mention something and we won’t have to go into detail at all. Well you know Stillwater is surrounded by water districts. And none of them were built prior to ’64. I was the state engineer for the whole state. I had all 77 counties and we experimented with different types of plastic pipe. The first 10 inch plastic pipe we ever decided to approve was installed west of Stillwater. We tied west of Stillwater to rural water district number three that the city now owns. We ran 10 inch
36 plastic pipe out there and that was the first time we’d ever tried 10 inch plastic pipe on a project, it works great.
Neurohr Does it?
Wildman Yes.
Neurohr Do you have photographs or anything from your work or what you were involved in?
Wildman On the watershed projects and that involved Stillwater? I left all that in Perry, of course, when I left the agency. I may have a few old ones but I have lots of photographs statewide of the rural water districts and stuff that was built, but there was no reason for me to keep any of that stuff.
Neurohr Is there still an office in Perry, then, that would have…
Wildman I’m pretty sure that construction office is still there.
Neurohr …any historical information and plans and things?
Wildman In the state office here, I would think in Stillwater, still has all those plans. And the plan book is about this—most of them have this cover, about this big, they’re not very big. And in the back of them they have all the plans of all the dams. It may be 20 pages of plans. It’s all just small scale. They would have the big ones, too, I’m sure, filed and those books are available.
Neurohr And how did your college education at OSU tie in with your career? Anything noteworthy you would want to say about that?
Wildman Well, I think I mentioned in my previous interview that when I was state engineer for the Farmer’s Home, we dealt with private consultants every day. I called a meeting, a seminar at the Student Union case study room one time, and it was by invitation only, just to consultant engineers that worked on water and sewer projects in Oklahoma. And I think I’m right that there were 81 private consultants that came to the meeting. 78 were OSU consulting engineers. There were three that weren’t, two from OU and one from MIT, I remember that. We just invited all of them. I didn’t realize till they showed up and signed their names. They were all glad to come back in Stillwater.
OSU Civil Engineering wasn’t a big school then. But there were always jobs available, they still are today. This has nothing to do with what we’re talking about but there’s a girl that’s a friend of my daughters. She’s a graduate civil engineer and she got registered last week and
37 works in Tulsa. She wanted to possibly transfer or find a job in Oklahoma City, her mother lives in Oklahoma City. I wouldn’t know her if she came in the door but I talked to her last week and set up an appointment at our office in Oklahoma City.
She interviewed last Friday and the president of the firm offered her a job on the spot. Well, she couldn’t take it. She called me last night. She’s still working in Tulsa and has a really good job and she was a little surprised that he offered her a job on the spot, says, “You can move tomorrow and you’re going to work.” Well the reason I mention that, you don’t find a lot of civil engineers running up and down the street. I mean, that’s a small class and regardless of what anyone says, that’s a tough course to take. You have to have a major in math and a minor in chemistry and minor in physics and all that to get a degree in civil engineering. So there’s not a lot of students in that, there never was. But historically, all of those guys became—what’s the word? They all became…
Neurohr Successful?
Wildman Successful, yes. And still are. Just like in this case, can you imagine her coming from Tulsa and just interviewing. I don’t even know her and I ask the president of the company to interview her, see about going to work and he offered her a job. And he was a little upset she didn’t take it. And this was Friday.
Neurohr What led you into civil engineering?
Wildman Primarily the money. (Laughs) I mean, there was lots of money available. But I had worked for the federal government, I had gone to business college and I was offered a real good job with the federal government in Woodward, that’s my home county. I’d worked there with aerophotos and when I got drafted in the Army, and in the Army, that’s what I did. When I came out, I thought well if I go to school and take civil engineering, the Soil Conservation Service will pay me over the summer as an employee of theirs. So in the summertime, the day school is out, I can go to work on Monday and work till school starts with the Soil Conservation Service on their survey crews. And it was really a good deal for me. I was on the GI Bill and so they did exactly that. When I was offered these jobs when I graduated, I told them I’d kind of like to go to Oklahoma City. The reason was I didn’t want to get stuck in some little town in the middle of nowhere. And they gave me the planning engineer’s job in Oklahoma City, that’s where their headquarters were at that time. So it was just kind of a natural fit for me.
Neurohr Was it common for people to work in the summer and to have that
38 hands-on experience like you had?
Wildman I think it was very uncommon. At the Soil Conservation, we had six of us scattered around. All six of us were veterans. They all came out of and finally finished college at different times but we were one of those crews that had about two or three students that were veterans. They had about six or seven crews around over the state. I just happened to be on one that worked out of Clinton. And the reason is because I had an apartment at Shattuck and they did everything for me, just really nice. They were even nice enough when I was offered a job as state engineer job at Farmer’s Home, the two directors of the two agencies both said they would pay my expenses to move from Perry to Stillwater. They’d welcome me to quit one agency to go to work for another one. It was all congenial, no bridges were burned.
Neurohr That’s nice.
Wildman Yes, and it was a nice move for me.
Neurohr Have there been significant things that have changed in civil engineering since you started your career in the way things are done or handled today? You mentioned, of course, the funding is different for a lot of the projects, the SCS, the watershed projects and things. Could you mention a couple of other things that you’ve seen across your years of working that are different now?
Wildman I was talking to this girl that interviewed Friday. The Farmer’s Home and the Soil Conservation Service, Congress has pretty much dried up those programs. But the Water Resources Board in Oklahoma City has picked up and they give lots of grants and loans now for water and sewer projects. So you go to a different funding agency and the Department of Commerce funds lots of projects, even in rural areas. They funded like $12 million two weeks ago. There’s about ten projects that are mine to design. I only work a couple of days a week. But the big thing is I think the school of engineering, all students must take aeronautical engineering, nuclear physics and all that stuff, I think that’s all required now and they didn’t even mention these classes to us. It’s probably harder now, and they are better educated. I would imagine a lot of students go to work for the major corporations, especially the mechanical engineers. The old civil engineers are still—the guy that’s got on a pair of boots and he’s out here staking a water line or a sewer line and it’s kind of a different animal.
They told us at the time, in college, and I imagine it’s the same today, they have a big boost nation-wide for mechanical engineers, then it’ll die down. Have a big boost for electrical engineers, it’ll die down; then a big
39 boost for chemical engineers. They said since day one, civil engineers still don’t have a boost but they are steady. Everyday there’s someone in Oklahoma—believe it or not, everyday in Oklahoma there’s a town replacing all the water lines in the town because they were built in the ‘20s. So they’re almost 100 years old. All the water towers, those old overhead water towers were built in the ‘20s and they’re being replaced. And the old engineers that did those back in the ‘30s, the company I’m with was established by an engineer in the ‘30s, did a bunch of those water projects for the WPA. Then he was replaced by a guy and that’s all he did. And then he’s replaced by another guy and, same company. But I think the younger ones, like I said before, smarter and they know a lot. They do everything on the computer. We weren’t even allowed to take a hand computer to class. We had to take slide rules. We couldn’t have walked into class with a hand computer at all.
Neurohr Do students still know how to use the slider?
Wildman I don’t think so. John Gage here in town, I don’t know whether you know John Gage or not. His dad had an old western store. He came by the coffee shop about three or four weeks ago and his dad had a hock shop back in the ’50s and ’60s. A couple students had hocked their sliders. But he had these two slide rules and he gave them to me over at the coffee shop. So I’m sitting here with these two slide rules—this was 30 days ago. I thought, “Well, what am I gonna do with them?” I took them down to the office and we put them inside the office where people sit, on a table like this. We just put them out on the top of the office table as a show thing. But none of the engineers down there know how to use them. You couldn’t go to class without one when I was in school.
Neurohr Did you have to buy your own?
Wildman Had to buy your own, and they were like $25 bucks and that was tough. That was tough. I decided I’d go to class without one, and I hadn’t bought one yet, I was a freshman. I walked in, sit down, and you had to have your trig functions before you could work the problem. I didn’t have a slide rule. I had to look up the trig functions. It was a trigonometry class, I suppose. I decided to leave and go buy me a slide rule.
Neurohr Do you still have the one that you used when you were in school?
Wildman Yes, yes, I take good care of it. I still keep it in my briefcase. And it’s really a nice one. I took good care of it. They all had leather cases. These have leather cases that John gave me but the girls took them out. I noticed yesterday, well it was Thursday when I was down there—they were still lying out there on the table. I think people pick them up and
40 look at them.
Neurohr When was the last time you used yours?
Wildman Well, I can say a long time but there’s another little story I could tell. It really doesn’t have anything to do with this stuff. But, when the computers first came out, a couple engineers and I later on, they had four engineers on staff at Farmer’s Home—they called us to Kansas City to design a pipeline north of Auburn University and had about 20 engineers in the nation there. They wanted us all to go set it up on a computer to calculate the pipe size needed. Well, Gene Womack was with me, he’s an OSU grad and he was working for Farmer’s Home at the time. We pulled our slide rules out and it took us about 10 minutes to tell them what size pipe they needed. The other engineers worked on that problem all day. They didn’t get it set up for four hours and the computer to kick it out to see what size pipe they needed. And they were a little upset at us. They gave us the problem at about 11 o’clock and at noon we were sitting in the bar and they didn’t call us back until four.
Those slide rules will actually tell you what size pipe you need with a certain flow and pressure and all that. So I still carry this kind of, as a joke. But if I’m out in the middle of nowhere tomorrow and three farmers come up to me at church where they usually meet and say, “We want to lay a pipeline over here at so and so, what size do you think it would take?” I pull out that slide rule and tell them in about two seconds. On a computer—one of our engineers for Oklahoma State, it will take him two days to set that up and actually have an accurate figure to tell him.
Neurohr Well that’s a pretty impressive story.
Wildman There’s the difference. And the reason for that is, they don’t ask you in the office, they ask you out in the middle of nowhere at church, if there’s a bunch of them. So I use it occasionally for that but that’s okay. They’re outdated. Calculators are a lot better. Every engineer carries calculators in their pocket now.
Neurohr Any other tools that they can’t live without?
Wildman Well, let’s see, I would think on a day-to-day basis, the one thing that you would need to know in the civil engineering business is hydraulics. I was the engineer for one hundred towns and water districts when I retired, if you walk into a city council meeting in any town, just name any town in Oklahoma, the first thing the council is going to ask you is, “Well, we need this, how much is it going to cost and where are we going to get the money?” The young engineers do not know where the
41 money is. I always tell them it will take about two years of traveling with all the heads of the funding agency such as the water resource board. Farmer’s Home still funds big projects. We just closed a loan last week for a new sewer system in Langston. It’s like a $7 million dollar project. Farmer’s Home funded that—they still fund some big stuff. And you’ve got to know, there’s about five different piles of money available in Oklahoma to finance a water or sewer project. Very common to get a one hundred percent grant, but you got to know where the money is. The young engineers in our office don’t have a clue. They don’t, they wouldn’t even think about going out and meeting with the community unless I went with them or one of the older guys. They wouldn’t even think about it because they wouldn’t know what to tell them.
The most important thing we probably do is we know where the money is. We know where they can find it, where the grants are, what it takes to get the grants. My partner and I, he’s about my age, and we’re both consultants and we an office in Oklahoma City. We worked about six projects six months ago and we were notified last week that all six of them are going to receive one hundred percent grants. One of them is up in, north of here in Noble county, it’s a $380,000 dollar grant. We’re going to run a pipeline from Meadow Park to Glencoe and then they want to replace all the water lines in Blackburn and all the water lines in Skedee. We applied to the Department of Commerce today. Those two grants, they were both approved. They are meeting right now in Pawnee to decide whether they want to accept the grant or not. The young engineers wouldn’t have a clue. You’ve got to know where the money is. That’s probably the most important thing we do today. And it makes sense, doesn’t it? If you were the mayor of a town, say they elected you mayor of Perkins or Ripley, you moved in. They’ve got to have a new water tower, how would you go about it? You’ve got to call somebody, you’ve got to say, “How do I go about getting a water tower free?” Because there’s grants today available. I tell people, that’s life in the slow lane today.
Neurohr (Laughs) Well the knowledge base is so important and obviously with your career and number of years that you’ve been involved with this at the state level, I’m sure that that is a very valuable skill to have.
Wildman Like I say, talking about me, if I would do it, I could give a presentation. Say 10 little towns get together somewhere and ask me to come speak at their luncheon about where the money is—I could do one a week. I was invited to do so many of them I quit doing them because I couldn’t get anything done. But that’s the thing they like to know. And the mayor may use another engineer to do it, but a lot of the younger engineers would not know it. They just don’t get hired because of they don’t know how, don’t know where. That’s the only way you can do it, you’ve just
42 got to be around it for a long time to know all the people and know where the money is.
Neurohr You mentioned the water towers and the pipes and things that were built in the ’20s and ’30s and how there’s some deterioration, if I’m using the right word. Is there anything that concerns you or that you’re aware of that you would have some concerns about in particular or you think that cities need to be more aware of or communities need to be more aware of that they need it or not?
Wildman Well, you’re all familiar with asbestos, I bet. Well prior to about 1962 or ’63, all of the major pipelines, including Stillwater, the water lines were asbestos cement. They are there today—they’re setting in the ground today. The state health department really would like to condemn all of those pipelines—they’d like to have all it replaced. So we have replaced a lot of those lines. Some those old towns were built on the flat out in western Oklahoma. They have a water tower downtown that was built prior, mostly prior to the depression. So it was built in the ’20s when times were good. The sewer systems, all those were built during the depression by the WPA. But going back to these towns, over the years most of those little towns have grown twenty percent, a lot of them, and they build on a little hill. This guy comes in to build this little old 20 or 30 or 40 acre track, build on a hill and they got beautiful homes on this hill. They’re getting higher and higher and the water tower is not any taller. So the pressure is low and they all want to say, “Hey, we got to do something here. We need a new water tower.” Well invariably, I tell them, what you’ve got to do though, in that case, you’ve got to tear this one down and build you a new one out here on this hill or you won’t have any water pressure. The towns don’t want to tear the old one down. So if you give them a choice almost invariably, they will build the new one at the same elevation. That way they don’t have to have any different pumps or anything and it will flow but it won’t increase the pressure at all. But invariably they won’t tear that old tank down and a lot of them actually operate and day-by-day a little lower pressure than they really should.
They just need to replace that stuff. There wasn’t any plastic. Plastics came on in the ’60s. The asbestos cement pipe has breaks everyday. The interesting thing that the mayor will do, once you walk in and sit down, the mayor will say, “Now the only thing I want you to know, I ran for office and my platform is I will not raise water rates. And what we need here is a new water tower, a new water treatment plant and all new water lines. But I don’t want it to cost us anything.” That’s the way they think. They’re not saying the previous 25 mayors also ran on that same platform, they wouldn’t raise the water rates. But that’s the kind of life in the slow lane. Well, we’ve rattled on quite a bit about everything in
43 the world but what we started to talk about, right?
Neurohr I think we covered quite a bit here.
Wildman Well, for my benefit to close it up, personally, I tell people you couldn’t have a much better life than I’ve had as far as jobs. That area engineer’s job at Perry was a great job. I had a lot of freedom. I just came and went from town to town, getting those easements and stuff. There had never been a water district built when I moved to Stillwater. That was a Kennedy program that Johnson took over and I got in on the ground floor of that, I was there 20 years. Then I’ve been a consulting engineer with the firm in Oklahoma City since ’84. That’s been 27 years. And now, their big thing is Wal-Mart stores. They design Wal-Mart stores and big developments and they have all that stuff. It’s all changed, probably to the better.
Neurohr I think I’ve heard Senator Kerr was instrumental in…
Wildman He was instrumental in the large lakes, like the Corps of Engineers. He was a big Corps of Engineers’ man. And he knew about the small watershed program and he backed it. They give him credit for Tenkiller…
Neurohr The Arkansas River…
Wildman Yes and all that. That was his baby but he certainly was for the small watershed dam program also.
Neurohr Do you think that the Dust Bowl in the far western part of the state and the depression played into the progressiveness of Oklahoma with these types of projects?
Wildman I would think so because they started out there. Like I say, the first one was at Cheyenne and you can’t get any further west and get more involved in the Dust Bowl. I was born and reared out there. I remember people asked me about this new book out, I don’t know whether you’ve read of it or not, but I bought it at Hastings, on the Dust Bowl. I remember in second grade, I couldn’t see across the street of my hometown. I remember standing there and I couldn’t see the businesses across the street. The people that stayed pretty much became pillars of the community and got some money. The ones that left, and there were more of them that left than stayed. But I remember people going to California.
Neurohr I would like to hear a little bit about that, if you have time.
44 Wildman You ought to read that book, have you read—it’s a new book.
Neurohr Is it Timothy Egan’s book, The Worst Hard Time?
Wildman Yes, yes. Well the couple—my hometown is Vici and the woman that they’re talking about and the child that dies and the child that was born in Boise City and all that. They live in Vici to this day. He’s an undertaker and I went out there a couple months ago, I got my picture in the paper again in Woodward for discussing living in a small town in the 1940’s. My granddad was one of the first settlers, literally, in 1892 and he dug a cave. I was born and reared in Vici.
The people in that book, I know them personally and they’re still alive. The woman that was the school teacher died about three years ago, but her son that had the sister that died with dust pneumonia lives in Vici and he’s the undertaker there. He and I were both on the panel talking about what it was like living there at that time. I was pretty young, but I remember. My grandparents and my dad and uncle all stayed during the dust bowl. Then my granddad just started buying land. I mean, after they all left, it was cheap. I just remember Mother putting sheets over the windows that were wet. I was telling someone at the coffee shop one day, you’d go to some kid’s house and no one had any money really, and they would give you bread, butter and sugar sandwiches for the kids to eat after school. I think it was a great place to be born and reared. I wouldn’t trade it.
It wasn’t unusual to go to a swimming hole and start swimming and eating watermelons in those days. The farmers would give the watermelons to you and they’d tell you to stop and get some roasting ears out of the corn patch also. When I go back to high school alumni, there aren’t any big shots. You’d look real stupid being a big shot when you were born and reared out there during the Dust Bowl. But the people that stayed became fairly well to do. I mean, land was cheap and they bought it up. It just didn’t seem like a big deal to me because I was too young, I suppose. It was hot all the time, I remember, we’d never see it rain.
Neurohr Were you aware that people were becoming ill from the dust?
Wildman No, I do remember people coughing and wheezing and all that, I remember that. But I really wasn’t paying all that much attention to it. I tell you one little story about that. I was probably 10 years old and my dad had a business in town. He had produce and all that stuff. There was a guy drove up in front of my dad’s produce—it was about eight o’clock at night. Typical Grapes of Wrath. He had on blue overalls and gray shirt, a big tall guy. And he had about three or four kids out in his
45 Model-A. He came in, my dad’s name is Charlie, and he said, “Charlie, I can’t make it.” He said, “I haven’t had a crop in two or three years.” He said, “That place has got a good well on it. I dug it by hand and why don’t you go pay the taxes on it and it’ll be yours to have? I’m heading to California.” I could draw a picture of that guy. He said, “That’s a pretty nice quarter section of land.” So I remember I asked my dad when the guy drove off. I said, “Well, how much would the taxes be?” And I believe he said about $40 dollars, maybe about $42. And we talked for a little bit about it. He said, “It’s not worth it. I’m not going to pay $40 dollars for it.” I tell people to this day, there are gas wells all over that 160 acres sitting out there. But I remember that guy and he was really down and he drove west in that old Model-A with a bunch of kids in it. I have no idea what happened to him.
Neurohr Do you remember the name, the family name?
Wildman No, I just remember later, when I got a little older, where the 160 acres was and it was out by the little town of Harmon and I do remember that. Whoever bought it, got gas wells all over it. But that’s pretty common, stories like that.
Neurohr Did you have any friends that left? Did you know people that left?
Wildman Yes. We have reunions and I go back and look at some of the first, second and third grade pictures—those kids just up and left. I remember when they left. I assume they’d had to leave. I never did know what happened to them. I just look at those little old pictures.
Neurohr I didn’t know your Dust Bowl stories.
Wildman About 25 years ago. I bought two farms in Woodward County and I just felt like from my childhood days, the people that owned the land, stayed and they had money. The renters left. Believe it or not, this one place that I bought, well I bought two, they’ve already called me in the last month to lease it for oil. I got half the royalty on both places. I didn’t give very much for them because I bought them when they were cheap.
Neurohr Great interview. (Laughs) Thank you so much.
Wildman I told the boy who brought me over here, I said, “You’ve got to learn one thing in life. Don’t ever ask an ex-GI to tell you about his life story. He’ll talk for three days and never quit.”
------End of August 27, 2007 interview ------
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