University of Illinois at Springfield
Norris L Brookens Library
Archives/Special Collections
Clarence W. Klassen Memoir
K666. Klassen, Clarence W. (1903-1997) Interview and memoir 7 tapes, 630 mins., 123 pp.
ILLINOIS STATECRAFT Klassen, chief sanitary engineer for the state of Illinois 1935-1970 and the first director of the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency, discusses the evolution of environmental policy and controls in the state: employment with the Department of Public Health, sanitation problems and epidemics in the state, repercussions from the 1937 Ohio River flood, creation of the Sanitary Water Board, environmental programs and measures, pollution legislation, contributions to environmental and sanitation legislation made by Illinois governors including Adlai Stevenson, Henry Horner, and William Stratton. He also recalls his family and Dutch ancestry, family life in Grand Rapids, Michigan, experiences at the University of Michigan, and his move to Springfield in 1925. He also mentions Lake Springfield, WWII homefront and military service, World Health Organization, and Peace Corps lectures.
Interview by Ida Klassen, 1981 OPEN See collateral file: interviewer's notes, photographs of Klassen throughout his career, photocopies of newspaper articles, awards, and correspondence.
Archives/Special Collections LIB 144 University of Illinois at Springfield One University Plaza, MS BRK 140 Springfield IL 62703-5407
© 1981, University of Illinois Board of Trustees Clarence W. Klassen, 1971 Preface
This manuscript is the product of seven tape-recorded interviews conducted by Ida Klassen for the Oral History Office, Sangamon State University from October through December, 1981. Linda Jett transcribed the tapes and Sandra Luebking edited the transcript.
Mr. Klassen was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan in 1903. He attended public schools in that city and graduated from the University of Michigan in 1925 with a degree in civil engineering. He accepted the position of assistant sanitary engineer in the Illinois State Health Department, thus beginning a 55-year distinguished career in environmental affairs, 45 years of which were served under ten consecutive Illinois governors. From 1935-1970 he served as the state's chief sanitary engineer, culminating in his appointment as the first director of the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency. In these positions he was responsible for the administration and technical direction of all phases of the environment. Terminating state service in 1971 he embarked on a second career as an environmental consultant to industrial corporations, engineering and legal firms, associations and agencies.
His long and illustrious career in Illinois was enhanced by a wide spectrum of activities including consultant to the World Health Organization of the United Nations with assignments throughout the world and the World Bank; advisor to numerous federal agencies; university professor; lecturer; service in the United States Army; musician and auto racing official.
Persons interested in the evolution of environmental controls as related to a career in state government will find this manuscript fascinating.
Readers of this oral history memoir should bear in mind that it is a transcript of the spoken word and that the interviewer, narrator and editor sought to preserve the informal, conversational style that is inherent in such historical sources. Sangamon State University is not responsible for the factual accuracy of the memoir, nor for views expressed therein; these are for the reader to judge.
The manuscript may be read, quoted and cited freely. It may not be reproduced in whole or in part by any means., electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from the Oral History Office, Sangamon State University, Springfield, Illinois, 62708. Table of Contents
Family Background • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • 1
Early Family Life in Grand Rapids, Michigan o •••••••••• 6
Arnold Gingrich, Author and Publisher • • o • • • • • • • •••• 11
Summer Employment in Grand Haven, Michigan. • • • • • • • • • • .15
College Education , •••••••••••••• o o • , •••• ,16
University of Michigan Band o • • • o • • • • • • • • • • • • • .19
National Sanitation Foundation. • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • .24 Faculty Appointment, University of Illinois Medical School. • • .24
First Post-graduation Employment. o ••••••••• o • o o •• 27
Introduction to Springfield, Illinois and Department of Public Health. • o • o o • • • o • • • • • • • • .28
Susan Lawrence Dana Gehrman o • • 0 • • • ~ . . • • • • • • • • .29 Harry Ferguson, Chief Sanitary Engineer, State of Illinois •••• 31
Appointment to Chief Sanitary Engineer ••••• o o ••••• , o32
Public Works Administration: Water and Sewerage Projects • • • ,34
~vernor Len Small. • o o o • , , • • o o • o • • • • • • • • • • 34
Travel by Mixed Trains •• , • o ••• o • o o o ••• o , • , •• 36
Shelton and Birger Gang • • 0 • • • • • • • • • • • • • • ••••37
Governor Lou Emmerson • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • ,38
Creation of Sanitary Water Board ••• • • • • • 0 • • • • • • • o39
Anna Wilmarth Ickes • • • • • • • • • 0 • • • • • • • • • • • • .40
i Governor Henry o • • • • • • ': Horner • • • • • • • • • • • • • •• 42 Congress Hotel Amoebic Dysentery Epidemic of 1933 • • • • • • • .43
FDR Visit to Springfield, 1936. • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • .44
Alexander Wilson and the Ohio River Flood, 1937 • • • • • • 0 • o46 Table of Contents (cont.)
Manteno State Hospital Typhoid Epidemic, 1939 •••••••••• 48
Dr. Lloyd Arnold and the University of Illinois ••••••••• 51
East Moline State Hospital Epidemic • • • • • • • • • • • • • • .54
Colonel Robert McCormick, Chicago Tribune • • • • • • • • • • • .55 Reconstruction of New Salem State Park. • • • • • • • • • • • • .57 FBI Agent Undercover Activities •••••••••••••••••59
Governor John Stelle ••••••••••••••••••••••• 60
Governor Dwight Green • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • .63
War Efforts in Illinois • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • 63 Military Service 1943-1945. • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • .64 Ohio River Valley Water Sanitation Compact. • • • • • • • • • • • 67
Governor Adlai Stevenson. • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • .69
Illinois River Commission • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • .71
Governor William Stratton • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • 74 Orville Hodge Case •••••••••••••••••••••••• 75
First Air Pollution Study • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • .76 Dresden-! Nuclear Power Plant ...... 76
,Laura Fermi • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • 77 Quarter Century Club ••••••••••••••••••••••• 78
Indianapolis 500 Affiliation. • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • .so
Paul Powell • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • .81
World Health Organization • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • .81 Wabash Valley Interstate Agreement. • • • • • • • ...... 83 Dr. LeRoy Fartheree, Director of the State Health De par taen t • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • 84
Governor Otto Kerner. • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • .85 Table of Contents (cont.)
Air Pollution Control Act • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • .86
Midwest Governor's Conference • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • .87 Advisory Appointments •••••••••••••••••••••• 88
Appointment as Sanitary District Observer • • • • • • • • • • • .90
Peace Corps Lectures ••••••••••••••••••••••• 91
Governor Samuel Shapiro •••••••••••••••••••••93
Governor Richard Ogilvie ••••••••••••••••••••• 94
Resources Development Board and Bond Vote ••••••••••••96
Environmental Protection Act ••••••••••••••••••• 96
Directorship of the Environmental Protection Agency •••••••97
Attorney General Scott •••••••••••••••••••••• 99
Abbott Laboratories • • • • ...... 100
Replacement as EPA Director • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • 104
Second Career in Private Sector • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • 107
Coal Gasification • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • 112 Advice to Prospective Environmentalists ...... 113
Illustrations between pages 72 and 73. Clarence W. Klassen, Springfield, Illinois, October 27, 1981.
Ida Klassen, Interviewer.
Q: What is your birthdate?
A: I was born November 28, 1903.
Q: Where were you born?
A: I was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan, in what would now be considered an apartment, but then it was called a flat.
Q: How long did you live at that address?
A: As I recall my parents had said that they lived there about three years after I was born. Then we moved to another area. It was a little different type of neighborhood. It was close to the schools, that is the grade school, the junior high school, and high school. It was close to church which was quite important in that area, and it was close to a playground that had tennis courts, ball diamonds and in the winter it was flooded for ice skating.
Q: How long did you live at that address?
A: I was about three years old when we moved into that particular house that my father bought in this new neighborhood. We lived there for just a few years in that house, and then he built two other houses in that parti;cular neighborhood. We lived in one about twelve years in that immediate neighborhood and then moved about two blocks away into a new home that my father had built.
Q: Was this still in Grand Rapids?
A: Yes, this was all in Grand Rapids. The town itself (Grand Rapids) in those days was sort of divided into ethnic areas. The east end of town was predominently Holland-Dutch. The northeast end of town, that is north of the Dutch area, was Polish. And across the river west was primarily Italian. It was an area south of town where there was just a very few blacks. One of the things that I recall and I remember there just was absolutely no ethnic slurs or nothing demeaning. The Dutch were called Hollakes and the Polish were Polacks and the Italians on the west side were Wops. That's how we always referred to them but I want to emphasize, everybody had the greatest respect for all of the other groups, and it was again nothing like might be interpreted now as an ethnic slur. We all grew up together and this is what we had called each other. In the neighborhood where I was born was primarily, almost a 100 percent Holland-Dutch. In the new neighborhood where we moved was probably 50 to Clarence w. Klassen 2
60 percent Dutch and the rest were English and some German and we had one Jewish family there.
Q: Why do you specify Holland-Dutch?
A: Because when you talk about Dutch many people feel that's German. There's German-Dutch and Holland-Dutch. While, there's some similarities, the language of course, is quite different.
Q: You also mentioned a river. What river separated the neighborhood?
A: This was the Grand River. The west side of Grand River was primarily industrial and this sort of separated the Dutch community from the Italian community. Each of these areas had their own high school. And of course there was bitter but good-natured rivalry between all of them. There was the Union High School on the west side of town. Creston which was on the northeast side of town which took primarily some of the Polish students. And then there was Central High School in the east end of town where it took, what they called the Silk Stocking area, and the Dutch area. And then South-High School was the south end of town. This is where the very few Negroes as we called them then, now referred to as blacks, lived. Incidentally it was South High School where Gerald Ford, President Ford, attended.
Q: Which high school did you attend?
A: I attended Central High School which took most of the near east and the far east part of the city.
Q: What was your father's name?
A: My father's name was John Cornelius Klassen. And the original family name was spelled with two A's and two S's. For no reason at all other than maybe a teenage whim after my father had died and my mother remarried I was the last of the Klassens and I just arbitrarily dropped one of the A's. But the original family name was the two A's and two S's, the Dutch spelling.
Q: When did your father die?
A: My father died in 1920 during the flu epidemic following World War I.
Q: Where was your father born?
A: My father was born in the United States in a town called Vreesland which was named after one of the Dutch provinces. His father and mother, that is my paternal grandparents, came from Holland and settled in that area. I don't know too much about my grandfather on my father's side. My father's father was drowned in an accident when he was a youngster. And his mother remarried to a Mr. Leemhouts. And so my father had some half-brothers and half-sisters. I never really knew my father's father and mother. They died before I really grew up to know them. Clarence w. Klassen 3
Q: How old were you when your paternal grandparents died?
A: I think I was about five or six years old as I remember. I knew all of my father's half-brothers and half-sisters. They all lived in the Grand Rapids area and, of course Vreesland, where they migrated from the Netherlands to Michigan [was] probably, oh, twenty, twenty-five miles from Grand Rapids. One of the things I remembered my father telling me about his father [was] that they lived on a farm and they went to town and the town was in mourning. And it was mourning for the death of Abraham Lincoln.
Q: How old was your father at that time? A: He was seven years old. And obviously old enough to recall some of the events of that time during Abraham Lincoln's death and the mourning and the various things that took place at that time. He had told me that was one of his earliest recollections of going to town and seeing some of these mourning decorations and this type of thing.
Q: Do you know the date of your father's birth?
A: Yes, he was born October 28, 1858.
Q: Why did your paternal grandparents come to this country?
A: Well, I think probably like most of the other people that migrated to this country it wasn't a question of religious oppression but they wanted new opportunities and they saw the United States here as a country where they could have those opportunities. My own personal reaction has always been this is one of the reasons that this country turned out to be the kind of a nation that it did because the people that came here came here with a progressive attitude that they wanted to better themselves and raise their family in a surrounding that had more opportunities.
Q: What was your paternal grandparents' occupation?
A: They were basically farmers.
Q: Did they engage in farming when they came to Michigan?
A: Yes, they did. And Vreesland is located not far from Lake Michigan in the Holland, Michigan area. That of course is famous now for its tulip festivals. But it was.primarily a farming area and still today specialized crops, celery and this type rather than large grain production and that kind of farming.
Q: What was your mother's maiden name?
A: My mother's maiden name was Bakker, spelled B-A-K-K-E-R.
Q: What is her first name?
A: The Holland-Dutch was Jahna which translated into English, would have called it Jane or Jennie. Her name was Jennie Bakker when she married my father. Clarence W. Klassen 4
Q: Where was your mother born?
A: My mother was born in the Netherlands, in the Zeider Zee area. And she was two years old when she came to this country with her parents and the rest of her family.
Q: Do you know the date of her birth?
A: Yes. She was born April 26, 1868.
Q: Can you describe her family background?
A: Yes. I know much more about her family background than my father's because they had a large family and one of my uncles returned years later to the old hometown and had a number of pictures taken and met some of the old family people. My great grandmother which is my mother's grandmother, lived in the Zeider Zee area and she married a Swedish captain of a ship that used to come into the Zeider Zee and his name was Peterson. And my grandmother's maiden name before she married John Bakker was Maria Peterson. So that made my mother and of course I suppose myself have a little Swedish blood in addition to the basically Dutch ancestry.
Q: Why did her family come to this country?
A: Primarily for business reasons. My grandfather, (my mother's father), John Bakker, had a large family. There was six boys and five girls. One girl was born after they came to this country. They were in the commercial fishing business in the Netherlands and when they came to this country they settled in Grand Haven, Michigan, which is on Lake Michigan, and then entered and developed a commercial fishing business with their own fish tugs going out into Lake Michigan. But soon they got out of this business and got into what they called the merchantile business with the brothers and my grandfather in Grand Haven, Michigan, they developed a series of stores. One was a grocery store, a dry good store, a shoe store, and they had a cigar making factory or store. One that was always popular with me, was a confectionary store where they made ice cream and their candies.
Q: Did any of these uncles or aunts have background training for this type of work, business?
A: No, I don't believe that they had any training. I don't believe as I hear them tell this that there was much training other than on-the-job training. My grandfather got involved in local politics. And he was now what would be termed a chairman of the county board. Where I learned of this later when I was growing up and worked in some of their stores, we had all of the county jail and the county institutions business. And I asked them one time how come we had such a monopoly as they did on this county business. And they said, "Your grandfather was on the county board." I suppose this still goes on but that happened way back then. Two of my uncles did not get into this particular family business. One started his own candy factory in Kalamazoo, Michigan. He was Walter Bakker. And another one started a bakery. But it was all in general in that line of business. Clarence w. Klassen 5
Q: Where was the bakery started?
A: The bakery was started in Grand Haven, Michigan too. But it was not a family affair. He went into partnership with someone outside the family to start this.
Q: Why did your maternal grandparents settle in Grand Haven?
A: There were several reasons. First of all the west shore of Lake Michigan was primarily settled by people from the Netherlands, principally in the city of Holland and Grand Haven. They came there because this was an ethnic community. That was the first reason. And of course they had friends there. Secondly, Grand Haven was a port on Lake Michigan and this permitted them to continue in their commerce fishing enterprises that was what they had done in the Netherlands (which they always referred to as Holland), continued this in Grand Haven.
Q: What kind of a community was Grand Haven?
A: Grand Haven at that time and it hasn't grown too much since, was a community of about 10,000 people. I would say probably 90 percent of those at that time had an ethnic-Dutch background. Their parents had come from the Netherlands. Grand Haven was and still is primarily a summer resort town. It was one of the ports that the ships from Chicago and Milwaukee plied across Lake Michigan and has beautiful beaches. Very little manufacturing. There were few industries in Grand Haven. One made refrigerators. Another one, a smaller industry, the Dake Engine Works, made marine equipment, a piano factory, a tannery. All the young fellows that grew up in Grand Haven at one time or another either worked at the refrigerator works or at another factory that made toilet seats. That was in that area because there was a lot of lumber and labor. It was basically a community that was backed up by agriculture, not too much manufacturing but a summer resort and a very delightful and well organized community.
Q: Have you any idea of the size of this community?
A: In population it was about 10,000 and in area it probably was about four or five square miles.
Q: Do you recall your mother's education?
A: Yes. It was very brief. My mother finished about the sixth or seventh grade. There was really only one of the family, my aunt that was born in this country, that finished high school. And she later served as city clerk for the city of Grand Haven. As a matter of fact I've often wondered about my mother's brothers becoming involved in local politics. Two of them served on the city council. At one time they were all very active locally. Of the six brothers, five of them played musical instruments and they all played in the Grand Haven Silver Cornet Band which gave weekly concerts. And in later years I played in the same band. But all of them were very active locally in the community. My mother among the things that she did as a young girl growing up, a lot of babysitting and she babysat and really sort of a practical nurse type of thing, she took
__j Clarence W. Klassen 6
care of the family of the county judge there who later one of the sons got to be a very prominent attorney in the railroad industry. But the education of my uncles were all from a practical business standpoint. A formal education was very limited but all of them were very successful in a business way and I would say it was a on-the-job training what we'd term it now.
Q: What was your father's educational background?
A: My father never finished high school. He finished grade school and I think probably went one year to a high school. A man by the name of Frank Irish apparently got interested in my father. As a matter of fact I still have and wear the ring that Mr. Irish gave to my father on his 21st birthday. Mr. Irish owned hotels. And my father started in as a clerk in the hotel in several towns in Michigan. Alpina was one of them, and [he] sort of grew up on the job, training in the hotel business. When I was born he was a clerk in one of the better hotels in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and rose from there to the assistant manager. And at the time of his death he was managing a hotel, one of the ones in Grand Rapids. I recall this because occasionally we would go to the hotel to have dinner with him. He never wanted me to spend any time around the hotel. He said it wasn't a place for a young growing boy, although it was a very fine hotel. I grew up with a father who didn't go to work at eight or nine in the morning, come home at five o'clock in the afternoon. He had very erratic hours. He would be home sometime in the middle of the day, be home for various meals. It gave him a little different outlook on life than my mother who was a very devout Christian, however my father was too. My mother was very active in church. My father went to church but at the hotel he saw another side of the evangelists if you want to think of an instance. My mother was a great follower of the evangelists. But my father, to kind of summarize, in lieu of a formal education he had on-the-job training and it was a broad education being in the hotel business itself. MY father was a strict disciplinarian and put the highest priority on his word, that is one of my greatest recollections.
Q: Do you know the name of the hotel in Grand Rapids?
A: The hotel was the Livingston Hotel. Like most hotels at that time it was a place, sort of a commercial hotel. Grand Rapids at that time had a baseball team in the central league, and all the baseball players and the teams stayed at the hotel. And of course that was an appeal to me. The baseball players knew me as "Little Joe." My fa,ther' s name was John but his nickname Joe. And I had a lot of discarded baseball equipment, balls and mitts and the masks and all that which sort of made me somewhat of a leader in our neighborhood for furnishing our sandlot baseball teams with equipment. It was an interesting background as far as I was concerned having my father in that particular kind of business.
Q: Did you play baseball?
A: Yes, I wasn't big enough to play baseball, football or basketball in high school. In our particular neighborhood we had one boy that was about six years older than we were who organized a neighborhood sandlot baseball team. We played baseball. We had a sandlot football team. The Clarence W. Klassen 7 church had a basketball team. And in the winter being in Michigan where we had ice skating from the middle of November until the early part of March, we also had an ice hockey team. We organized our own track meets. And this encouraged all of us to get involved in athletics. But it was primarily sandlot athletics but one of the interesting things that I mentioned about the ethnic communities in Grand Rapids, there were certain you might say neutral grounds. Housman Field was the dividing line between the Polish and the Dutch areas. And this was where we'd have our games with the baseball teams and football teams from the Polish area. We also had such an area in the neutral area for the western part. We always went there to play and it always ended up--and we looked forward to this because you'd take a crowd with you, it always ended up in a big batt.le or fight. It was a good natured thing but it was just one of those things that always took place after a game. My father was not an athletic type but it's always been interesting to me, that my father and my mother were great cyclists. They each had their bicycles and before I arrived they would take my sister with them. When I was six years old my father had a bicycle made for me. So I started riding bicycles early in life. And he always encouraged me to get involved in athletics and in sports. And this carried on over into a summer home that we bad on the lake.
Q: Did you have brothers or sisters?
A: Yes, I had one sister who was thirteen years older than I was. Her name was Catherine. And she was a petite person about five feet high. And her nickname was Tot. Incidentally in our neighborhood we all had nicknames. And they were not nicknames demeaning but sometimes very descriptive. And her name was Tot.
Q: Is your sister still living?
A: No. No, my sister died in 1919 of pernicious anemia. And that was before they knew of the nutritional aspects of liver and this type of thing. I recall that they sent all over for medication. As a matter of fact my sister spent about a year and a half in California where they thought there was some medication and cures for this. She died in the fall of 1919 and rather tragically. The day before her fiance returned from France, he was in the army, they were high school sweethearts and bad been engaged for some time. And they'd planned to be married. This was a great blow to my mother and of course our whole family.
Q: He was in World War I?
A: Yes, he was in business, owned a printing establishment. He went in the army in World War I and served in the army in France. And during that time my sister did some of his bookkeeping and took care of the business aspects. They had another man that ran the printing business. But they had planned to be married after he came back from the service.
Q: How old was your sister at the time of her death?
A: My sister was 29 when she died. I mentioned that it had an effect on my mother who was a very religious person. But she grew very bitter for Clarence w. Klassen 8 many months after this, could not rationalize how--she would say a lot of these streetwalkers walking around and living and her daughter who had already planned, made all the plans for being married was taken. Of course she got over this several months later. But it created quite a situation with her. A second blow about three months later my father died as a result of the flu epidemic. And about a month after that my grandmother died. So within three to four months my mother suffered three very tragic deaths actually in her family. And that materially changed my whole life too as I look back. I had planned to go to Annapolis. My father had already made some of the arrangements. We had a friend who was a graduate from Annapolis and I wanted to pursue a naval career. But after my father died and my sister died I had to assume--! was still in high school--a lot of the responsibilities of the family. We'd had several pieces of property and a summer home. And as I say by virtue of this, had to change some of my own plans.
Q: What was your religious background?
A: We were Dutch Reformed. And this was, you might say, not the orthodox Dutch but as the name said Dutch Reformed. It was a very strict religion. For example, they took a dim view of card playing and many of the other things. Of course, Sunday events including Sunday newspapers and comics. On Sunday you went to church several times. And there was no recreation obviously not going to any of the theaters. As I think I mentioned my mother was a very devout Christian and very active in the church. My father on the other hand had seen another side of life in the hotel business and we had what the Dutch church would call devil cards which is now the cards we play bridge with, in our home. And another thing that we always had, liquor in our home. I never, never remember anybody ever having a drink that was too much for them. But I think this was my father's influence. I recall several times the minister who lived just a few houses away would sort of infer that since I was growing up and we were active in the church maybe we shouldn't have some of these things in our house. Which my father said that this was the life style that we wanted and would continue to pursue it. I think this was probably the only argument my parents had if you want to call it that. I had a very, very happy childhood. My father and mother got along beautifully and about the only arguments I ever remember them having was over me in not participating in church activities.
Q: What were those church activities?
A: Well, one was what's known as Catechism. This was a Saturday afternoon Catechism and was a Bible study. We had a book and the minister would ask questions and you had to know all the answers so you had to do some studying. It met at one o'clock, from 1 to 1:30 and I say this because I played in the high school band and our football games started at two o'clock. And my mother thought that maybe I should be able on those Saturday football games not to attend Catechism. And my father said in as much as this was one of the activities that I was pursuing, he was great on this, and had given my word that I would continue, that I should go. This recalls there was several of us in the Catechism that played in the band and our minister was sort of long winded in his final prayer. And like 25 minutes after one he would start with his closing prayer. And we knew that • • •
END OF SIDE ONE, TAPE ONE Clarence W. Klassen 9
A: ••• he realized what we were doing. When he'd start his prayer we would get down under the pew and crawl underneath the seats to the back of the church and by the time he said, "Amen," we were in the back of the church and would rush out the door and get to the football game.
Q: Did you enjoy your Catechism classes?
A: I didn't enjoy them at the time I was going because it disrupted your Saturday activities. However, in later years when I started doing a lot of foreign travel I was very, very grateful for that early training. The first time I was in the Holy Land my Arab friend said to me, "This is Absolum's tomb." I said, "Oh, this is where Absolum was riding under the tree and caught his hair and hanged." He said, "Yes," he said, "I've noticed that you have quite a knowledge of Biblical history." And I said, ''Well, I learned in Catechism." It was a mandatory thing but I was very grateful that my father insisted and my mother too that I continue.
Q: Did religion play an important part in your life?
A: Yes, it did. I didn't realize it at the time but it was a great influence I would say. It made me not only respect religion but it gave me some kind of a foundation if you want to call it that. To me, the most important thing in your life is something that you get out of religion, that is peace of mind. When I started traveling in foreign countries and associating with Buddhists, people of the Islam religion, in Japan the Shinto religion and the Chinese friend Confuscianism. My mother said, ''You lost your religion since you've been with those heathens." And this is an indication of how the Dutch Reform considered other religions. I said, "They're not heathens." She said, "They're idol worshipers." She said, "What about Buddha?" I said, "That isn't an idol." I don't believe even at the time of her death she was ever convinced that I hadn't strayed away from some of the early religious teachings. I knew that I hadn't and it made me respect all other religions. I said this, I just happened to been born a Christian. It's the religion I know and it's the religion I will continue, but there are many, many other fine religious concepts in other religions.
Q: What instrument did you play in your high school band?
A: I played a french horn. The way I got started the high school had several instruments. They had a french horn but no player for a french horn. It was an exceedingly difficult instrument and I didn't know enough about it to know that it was difficult. And I started taking lessons and playing the french horn. And my parents when they saw that I was going to take it seriously they bought my an instrument. Then my uncles whom I mentioned five of them played instruments, gave me several of their instr~ents. Today I still have two of the instruments that my uncles gave me. As a matter of fact I used one of them when I played in the University of Michigan marching band for a while.
Q: What instruments did you uncles play?
A: One of them played a trombone. An uncle who incidentally had polio and was a cripple for many years but had a very fine jewelers trade, good Clarence w. Klassen 10
education, played the cornet or as we call it now a trumpet. Another one played a baritone. Another one played what we consider now a small tuba or a base. Another uncle played a horn in F, an F horn, which at that time was sort of an adaptation of a french horn. And I'd like to think that maybe I inherited the love of playing instruments. But it did open many, later years, many hours of good recreation. My one aunt played the piano and played an organ. And I have several cous~ins that went on to pretty professional musical careers. Probably all stemmed I think from my maternal, my mother's grandparents. My sister played the piano. And our house was a sort of a gathering place for young people in our neighborhood. And my mother and my sister both painted. They were not professionals but rather good artists. I didn't inherit any of that particular talent.
Q: What trade was your crippled uncle engaged in?
A: He had polio when he was nine years old and was a cripple all his life. He took up watch and jewelry repairing. And was one of the only ones in Grand Haven, Michigan that pursued this. And he built he a very lucrative business. This is something he could do at home. In addition to that, he self-educated himself in music and particularly in a lot of reading. Many of the ministers in that area used to come to his home where they'd have religious discussions. He was a great baseball fan and while he was of course in a wheelchair he followed all the baseball games. And when the Chautauqua Circuits would come to Grand Haven he was always there. One of the things that I remembered, one of the boys in Grand Haven had become involved in some robberies and was sent to prison. And his mother died and they brought him back for the funeral. And the prison guard that was with him came to my uncle's house and he said, "I just wanted to see who you were and what kind of a person." He said, "The young prisoner that I brought back here for his mother's funeral made one request. He said, "I want to go and see Henry Bakker. I used to sit on the porch and he used to tell us many things." And he said, "If I only had taken some of his advice I never would have gotten into this trouble." These are the kinds of things my crippled uncle did.
Q: How did you spend summer vacations while you were growing up?
A: When I was about eight or nine years old my father had built a summer home, then they called it a cottage, on Reeds Lake which was about three miles from the city of Grand Rapids. On the city side of the lake was a large recreation area, something miniature, I would say what we would now call Six Flags or Disneyland. It wasn't nearly that complex. But it had merry-go-rounds and a dance pavilion and a roller coaster and a summer theater where Keith Vaudeville played, where my mother frequently took me. Because of Ramanda (as it was called) there was streetcar transportation out there and it was also where the Central League baseball team played. There was good transportation from town to that area and then you'd cross the lake to the cottage area. We also had a motor boat for transportation and of course a row boat. We would move out there about the first of May and we were there usually until the first of October. And that is where I spent most of my summers while I was in grade school and early high school. Clarence W. Klassen 11
Q: Did you commute to school fr6m the lake?
A: Yes. I would get up in time and row across the lake or take the motor boat to the end of the streetcar line. And the streetcar, that particular line took me right past our grade school, later junior high school. And after school I would come back on the streetcar and row back across the lake. And of course spent late afternoons and evenings. It was interesting because I would very often take my school chums home with me and they would sometimes spend the weekend or spend the later afternoon and evening and go back to school with me the next morning. One of these was our neighbor where we lived in that town that later developed quite a career as a writer and a publisher of magazines. And in one of the books that he wrote many of the things that happened at the lake area and some of our experiences in that area were all used as material for his book.
Q: What was his name?
A: His name was Arnold Gingrich. He was our next door neighborhood. As a matter of fact his family bought one of the houses that my father built. My father had built three duplexes. We lived in one side of the duplex and rented the other side. And usually it happened in three instances that the tenants eventually bought the home. Arnold and I went through kindergarten, grade school, junior high school, high school and university together. And in the Depression years he started the Esquire magazine with David Smart the publisher. He was the editor and in later years became the publisher. We always maintained contact with each other. He wrote two books, one Cast Down the Laurels which had the locale in our neighborhood and the characters in the neighborhood were all in the book but of course under other names.
Q: What was the name of the other book he wrote?
A: It had a title, Toys In My Life which actually meant all of the people that he had grown up with and that he had met. This included some of the great contributors of course to Esquire. It started out, however, with an incident that actually happened in our neighborhood. As I mentioned we all had descriptive nicknames and Screech was Roger Verseput, a good Dutch name. And he had a high pitched voice. And this is why we called his Screech but never to his face. And Arnold starts out his book with a conversation with Screech which was quite amusing.
Q: He Mr. Gingrich still living?
A: No, Arnold died about three years ago and he lived in Ridgewood, New Jersey at the time.
Q: What did you do summers while you were at the lake?
A: Well, we also had a sailboat, did a lot of swimming, a lot of fishing, and I would say the normal things that you would do around the water. We had one family there. Their name was Crawford, Jack, a son, later had quite a faaous traveling dance orchestra. His folks were apparently well off. And he was the first one on the lake that had an outboard motor. Our particular motor boat had an inboard motor. One of the things that Clarence w. Klassen 12
we did, oh, maybe a half a mile from the summer home cottage area was a large picnic grove where churches and factories had their large picnics. And we would go over there during the picnics and enter some of the races and of course there were always free lemonade and sandwiches. And we spent some of our time over there participating in all of the picnic activities, you might say surreptitiously, but anyway this was one of highlights of summer's activities in addition to the water sports. I also had quite a collection of turtles. I look back at that love of lakes and the quality of water in that particular lake. There was a lot of algae that we had to kill with copper sulfate. And in my later years as an engineer in water supply development, I didn't realize it, but some of that early exposure to some of this water I think probably came into pretty good use.
Q: Where did you start to school?
A: We had a year in kindergarten and in that same school were the first seven grades. That was Congress Street Grade School. It served the area primarily in the middle east end of town. It drew from not only the Dutch community but from another area. So we had quite a mix of students with different backgrounds. I know we had two students whose father was in the rug business. They were Armenians. And several with other backgrounds and then of course the Holland-Dutch.
Q: What do you remember most about Congress Street Grade School?
A: TWo things I remember is the fact that the playground was divided by a walkway, half for the girls and half for the boys. And you never ventured over on the girls' side even if you were playing ball and the ball went over there. They had to throw it back. This was pure, I'd say, sex discrimination if you want to call it by today's name. You wouldn't think of doing anything like that now. But that was the kind of rules we played under. The other thing I remember was a Mrs. Conrad, a seventh grade teacher. She was subject to a lot of criticism but was very popular with all of us because about the last half or three-quarters of the hour every day she would read to us from some currently good book. It wasn't the classics and it wasn't trash. But such things as Jack London's White Fang and Swiss Family Robinson and during the course of a week she would read a whole book. She was criticized by some of the parents for spending that kind of time when we ought to have been studying reading, writing and arithmetic. But one of the things that she inculcated into us was a desire to want to read and most of us never lost it. And I do know from the conversations with Arnold Gingrich, this was one of the things that sort of started him on the track of reviewing literature and getting involved in books. These are the two principal things that I remember about Congress Street School and two or three of my classmates there. We all moved from there to another school.
Q: What was the name of that other school?
A: That was a junior high school. And there we went through the eighth and the ninth grade. From then we moved to the senior high school which was Central High School where we had the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth grades.
L------~~--~--~------~------Clarence W. Klassen 13
Q: Did the junior high school have a name?
A: No, it had no other name other than the junior high school. At that time it was one of the few junior high schools, the only junior high school in Grand Rapids. And it was sort of an experimental type of thing. And the students that went to Central High School all first went to the junior high school and I surmise that it was because of the crowded condition in the senior high school. One of the things that I remember in the junior high school when we had graduation from junior high school, the ninth grade, just a small ceremony, and in 1918 it had to be cancelled because of a coal shortage. Of course we thought this was great because the school had to be shut down for a few weeks because there was no coal.
Q: Did you like school?
A: Yes. I always enjoyed going to school. I wasn't the best student and I wasn't the poorest student. I would say I was probably a little above average because my father and my mother never let me for one minute consider that I was not going on to college. They didn't have the benefit of a college education, but there was never any question in my mind that this was what I was going to have to do.
Q: What was your favorite subject?
A: I think my favorite subject was English composition and chemistry and mathematics I think, or some of the sciences. We didn't have many extra curricular activities there and everything during that period in school was pretty basic. Like geography, history and mathematics, writing and the Palmer method of writing. The extra activities at the school that I could participate in, of course there was no athletics, but there was military training. This you must know, that it was in 1917-18 and 1919 during World War I. And we had military training. We called it the SATC which meant the Student Army Training Corps. We all had army uniforms. We were all issued Springfield rifles and were divided up into companies. Each high school had their own companies. And all of the high schools together formed a battalion. We had a regular army officer that trained us. It was nothing official. Had the war continued many years undoubtedly we would have been pressed into some kind of military training and duty. Rather interesting, when I later went into the army in World War II, I applied for previous military experiences based on this Student Army Training Corps and I recall the officer at the induction center just kind of laughed in my face. He said, "We don't consider that as part of the army."
Q: Were there other social clubs or activities during high school?
A: Yes, there were a number of clubs both for the girls and the boys. There were like French Club, Spanish Club. MOst of them were however purely social clubs. Some were fairly closely integrated in the school but most of them were just purely for social purposes.
Q: Were you a member of any of these clubs? Clarence w. Klassen 14
A: Yes, I was a member of what we called the Iconoclasts Club. And by definition I guess iconoclasts are people that are idol breakers or wanting to get out of the normal straight jacket of tradition.
Q: What were your activities? A: It was purely social. We just met and talked and really as I looked back we really did nothing constructive. It was the idea that we belonged to a club. That's the way most of them operated.
Q: Did you have any pets as you were growing up?
A: Yes, I always had a dog. And they were all of the same breed. I had I think I recall two or three, they were cocker spaniels with various names. Also the only other pets that I had were bantam chickens, banties they called them. They're small miniature chickens. And they were very tame. For example, eat out of your hand, and if the door was opened they'd try to get in the kitchen and stand in front of the little cupboard were we kept the feed. Those are about the only pets that I had. But remember I lived in a town and among the things that we couldn't do we couldn't fly kites because of the telephone wires, there was no shooting. None of us ever had any BB guns because they weren't permitted. And so far as pets were concerned, oh, you could have dogs and rabbits and a few chickens but in general the neighborhood took a very dim view of having any large rabbit hutches or anything of that nature. Being a Dutch community they were quite conservative and wanted to keep the community pretty clean.
Q: Where were your high school summers spent?
A: Primarily in Grand Haven and for this reason. After I started high school, my father sold our home at the lake and had planned to buy some property in Grand Haven on Lake Michigan and develop this. This did not materialize for several reasons. But during the summer vacations in high school I spent considerable time in my mother's hometown in Grand Haven first of all because it was a summer resort town and there was a lot going on there for a young fellow. And also because I was employed in one of the several stores that my uncles owned. I delivered and waited on customers. And the last year in high school, the last summer in high school, that was following the time that my father had died the previous year, my mother moved to Grand Haven. I started the first of three summers there on a construction gang of paving and laying sewers. That started the last summer that I was in high school.
Q: What year was this?
A: This was in the summer of 1921 that I started. And as I indicated my father died in 1920 and my mother sold all of our property in Grand Rapids and she moved to Grand Haven, Michigan into her old hometown and temporarily lived in the old family home with two sisters and a brother that lived there. I wanted to finish high school in Grand Rapids because of all my classmates and I wanted to have on my record the graduation from Central High School which was one of the better high schools in the state of Michigan. So for my last year in high school from actually the Clarence W. Klassen 15 fall of 1920 until I graduated in June of 1921, I lived in Grand Rapids with a family, a neighbor family, the Lillies that I grew up with their son, Bob, a few years younger. Every weekend I would commute back to Grand Haven. But in the summers I worked in Grand Haven and at that time that last summer my mother rented an apartment. And this is why officially while I was born and raised in Grand Rapids when I entered the University of Michigan in the fall of 1921 I officially designated as the address Grand Haven, Michigan. But then the city was doing a lot of paving and sewer work. And I might say even though I was kind of going into engineering, I didn't take that job for the experience in engineering because it was a pretty rough and tough kind of work. I wheeled gravel and carried cement and worked on a cement mixer. And the only reason that I was doing that was because the wages were pretty good. However, that summer and the three following summers that I worked for the same contractor and the same kind of work in Grand Haven, it was a great experience that I didn't realize until later. Because the construction gang if you want to call it or the construction crew was a typical one. And I wouldn't say it was the highest calibre of people that you want to continue to associate with. But they were pretty down-to-earth bunch.
Q: What do you mean when you say typical crew?
A: By typical I mean the make-up of the crew. First of all I was the only student first in high school and later in college that was given a job and I believe primarily because my aunt was city clerk at the time. The crew included two ex-convicts that had done time, one old man that had been a rich farmer and who had lost his wife. You hear all these things when you're sitting around on a pile of gravel eating your lunch. He answered a lonely hearts ad. The woman correspondent finally appeared on the scene as he told us. They were married and the outcome was that she filched him or secured all of his property and he ended up with nothing and she disappeared and he never saw her again. It seems that on all of those crews there's a kind of person like this. Then there are others that are strictly laborers. They used to say to me, "Fine, when the summer's over you'll go back to school, get a good education and some day you'll have a good job. This is the only thing we have to look forward to. This is the only thing I can do to keep on working like this to support my wife and family." Those made impressions on me. I had never intended to quit school but certainly when you hear this first hand from these people it gives you a little more incentive to keep on with your education and know that you're going to be assured a good job. The other interesting experience was that we were nonunion and a union organizer infiltrated if you want to call it that into our crew and started organizing us. We had a strike for about a half a day right in the midst of a project that we were pouring cement and had to finish. The contractor came out, he said, "Oh, we'll meet your demands. Everybody go back to work." And for a little while the organizer was a hero. When the job was finished that afternoon the contractor came back with the mayor of the city and said, "Everybody can go back to work at the same wages except you," and he pointed to him. He said, "If you're not out of the city by tomorrow morning we will find some reason to put you in jaiL" Of course this was many years ago. This wouldn't happen now. But the next morning he didn't show up. All of those made quite an impression of me. In addition to getting a pretty practical knowledge of construction and Clarence w. Klassen 16 concrete and inspection and all this type of work. One of the spinoffs from this was that after I had graduated the first job that I had was in Grand Rapids. I was assigned as an inspector on a construction project and when I showed up who was there but the contractor that I had worked for for three years. And I recall him saying, "Oh, not you." I said, "Yes, Chris. I know all the shortcuts." I said, "You're going to have to meet all the specifications but I will be practical because I know some of your problems."
Q: How did you decide on a future career?.
A: As I indicated when my father died there was a material change in my future because I had planned and already set things in motion to get an appointment to Annapolis. I gave that up. And a friend of mine who was a sanitary engineer in the city of Grand Rapids said to me, '~y don't you get into sanitary engineering?" I said, "What's that?" He said, "It's a branch of civil engineering that has to do with the environment." And that was the first time I had heard that word environment. And I said, "What does it involve?" He said, "Well, it involves water supply, development and waste disposal, and solid waste and sewage and this type of thing." This sounded interesting. And I had recalled when I was in high school we took a field trip to the Grand Rapids water filtration plant. They took water in Grand Rapids out of a dirty river, the Grand River, and turned it into a good drinking water. This fascinated me. And a man by the name of Walter Sperry was the head of the filtration plant and he gave us quite a pep talk on this is going to be a future thing, you always get good jobs. Rather interestingly many years later when I served as the chief sanitary engineer for the State of Illinois, Walter Sperry then was the superintendent of the Aurora Sanitary District. And I always attributed part of my influence or part of a career influence to Walter Sperry. I had anticipated then going to Michigan State primarily because my mother's cousin was registrar. I had sent all my credits to Michigan State and had been accepted. And about two weeks before I was having a dental checkup and my dentist said, "Let me give you some advice." He said, "Michigan Agricultural College (now Michigan State) is a good school but go to some school where a 100 miles from there and you mention the school name and they'll know where it is." Remember this was in 1921. And I said, "Like what?" He said, "The University of Michigan." He said, "I know a fellow that's looking for a roommate, he's going to take electrical engineering." He said, "I'll have him come over to your house." That afternoon he came over. He said, "I'm Bill Boomgaard." That was another good Dutch name. He said, "I'm going to the University of Michigan in electrical engineering and I'm looking for a roommate." And he said, "How about you going there and we'll room together?" And by that time I had already I think made the decision. I said, "Okay." And I had all my credits transferred to the University of Michigan. It wasn't too difficult to get enrolled in the university then if you had acceptable grades because they were not overcrowded. And in a short time, in a manner of a week, as I recall I had a notice of acceptance. Incidentally Bill later became chief engineer of AT&T.
END OF SIDE TWO, TAPE ONE Clarence w. Klassen 17
Q: How did you get to Ann Arbor?
A: Well, back in the midtwenties it was the accepted thing for college students to hitchhike and this was common practice. I hitchhiked with my roommate from Grand Rapids to Ann Arbor. This was on the main road to Detroit and there was much traffic. Of course, we wouldn't think of doing that today but there was no particular danger and it was another way of saving money.
Q: Were you carrying your luggage with you, all your worldly possessions?
A: Yes. We each had a suitcase. And rarely did a private automobile pick you up. There was so many opportunities to ride that you could be sort of selective. And you would select, for example if a truck or a van particularly one moving household goods would come by these were the kind of vehicles you chose to ride in.
Q: While you were at the university how did you finance your education?
A: Well, my mother gave me some money at the start of each semester. But as I previously indicated my father died when I was in high school and that materially changed some of my plans and my financial plans incidentally. I worked during the summer for money to help the tuition and my mother gave me some money. But in addition to that I financed my way by working for my board while in Ann Arbor. This was a material help. I did pay for my room.
Q: What sort of work did you do to pay for your board?
A: The common practice was to work an hour for a meal. And arriving in Ann Arbor the first thing we did was to look for a job in a restaurant. The YWCA had a cafeteria and we stopped there. We thought that might be a good place to find work. And it was. I always remembered the interview. She asked what we had done and the fact that I had worked in a grocery store for my uncles and had at least some contact with the public and with food, I got a job on the counter, the serving counter carving meat. And this was a whole new experience. I didn't tell her I had never had any experience. But my roommate who wasn't so fortunate got a job washing dishes and being the busboy. I had to look forward to playing in the university band which I had hoped to do, and therefore had to have some kind of a menial job, if you want to call it menial, that I could get somebody to take my place any time that I was going to be absent. And this mitigated against me because later when I did start taking football trips with the band I couldn't get anybody. By that time it was "assumed" that I'd been.so proficient in serving meat that I couldn't get anybody to do that. So I went back to being a busboy.
Q: How long did you have this job?
A: We had this job for one year. And then I got another job in a boarding house, one of the large boarding houses making ice cream. That was really a good job for a student because I could come there during any time of the day when I had an hour I didn't have a class and start the Clarence W. Klassen 18
ice cream mix in the machine. Just so I finished the ice cream by that evening. That gave me an opportunity to eat in a boarding house along with the·rest of the students. And this got to be sort of a social status. You were assumed that you had finances enough to eat in a boarding house. And of course you never admitted to the fact that you were working there nights or doing something else. But this was a real good job. And then the last two years I was in a fraternity. Not as a member but in the kitchen in the fraternity. And there were three other fellows that lived in our house in Ann Arbor. We all worked in a fraternity.
Q: Do you recall who were some of the fraternity members of that house?
A: Yes. It was rather an unusual set of circumstances. The steward in the house that did the hiring was a boy from home. And my companion dishwasher was my roommate, one of my roommates, who incidentally was in medical school and later became a very fine surgeon. And a third member who did some of the so-called scullery work if you want to refer to it as that, pots and pans and this kind of cleanup work. He graduated in - electrical engineering and eventually became the chief electrical engineer for Detroit Edison Corporation. So far as the people in the fraternity, the waiters and the cook were all blacks. But it was a good job. And had pretty much our own hours. And of course the food was very good. Q: How did you feel about working in the fraternity house and not being a member of the fraternity?
A: Just never was any concern at all. First of all the fraternity house that we worked in had a bunch of what, maybe we were biased, but they were a bunch of foreflushers. We knew some of them. They tried to put on social airs if you want to call it that. We never once felt that we were anyway an inferior social status to anybody in the fraternity house. As a matter of fact the steward in the fraternity house, his father and mother were fine people, and they operated a little garden tract and sold vegetables while my roommate who helped me wash dishes, his father was one of the very successful and wealthy businessmen back home. The reason he was working, his father kept him on a very strict allowance and he had to account for every penny of his money. So his folks didn't know he was working so he would have enough to engage in some social activities, which his folks took a very dim view of. And this way he stayed within his allowance but still had enough money to enjoy himself.
Q: Where did you live while you were going to school?
A: When we got to Ann Arbor, I look back at this and it was a stroke of luck if you want to call it that. After we got a job so we wanted to be sure we were going to eat that night, although we weren't that hard up, we looked for a room and we walked through some of the better residential areas in Ann Arbor and there was a very lovely house that said "rooms, references requested." And this struck us as a little different. And the lady that came to the door, very well-dressed and she didn't look like the typical rooming house lady. It turned out that she was the former wife of the president of the bank. And they had been divorced about a year before and in the settlement she got this house. It was a large home. And she had three extra bedrooms on the second floor. She Clarence w. Klassen 19 had six students in all. There were four besides my roommate and I, two in a room. It was a very good setup because we all lived there, except one of them who joined a fraternity, all the four years we were in Ann Arbor. In addition to that she had an automobile which was quite an asset and would let us drive it. And this was another incentive to keep on living there.
Q: What kind of automobile was it?
A: It was a Studebaker. This is no "dementia" against the Studebaker but after the trouble that we had with that particular car in Ann Arbor I never wanted a Studebaker in my life.
Q: Well, were you able to repair it when you had problems?
A: Well, you see the car belonged to her. And as I recall we occasionally would buy some gas but I think most of the time she paid for the repairs and the gas. As I repeat it was an excellent setup for a bunch of students.
Q: Did you have time to participate in any activities while at school?
A: Not too much. That's why I had to be rather selective in what I did. I had a very full schedule in addition to going to school. It required three hours a day to work for board. My first year especially I had not been able to take sufficient physics and history in high school and they permitted me to make this up evenings while I went to the university. But in spite of that I had hoped I would be able to eventually play in the university marching band. The director of the university marching and the concert band was the director of the ROTC, that was Reserve Officers Training Corps Band. My roommate and I joined, he played the trumpet incidentally, we joined the ROTC merely to play in the band. After we joined we found out that we had to go to drill. He continued in the ROTC because he had been in the national guard. But a very fortunate thing happened as far as I was concerned. I debated whether to drop out of the ROTC and the band because I didn't want to give the time to military drill. But a rather unusually thing happened.
Q: What happened?
A: The rule at the University of Michigan at that time was that freshmen could not participate or play in the university varsity band. You had to spend your time as a freshmen in a freshmen band or in the ROTC band. And about three weeks after school started one evening the band director called me and he said, "I realize you're a freshmen," but he said, "one of our french born players in the varsity and concert band broke a front tooth. And with the french horn that is tantamount to not playing at all." And he said, "I wonder if you consider coming down and trying out for a chair," as they called it, "in the concert band and marching in the university band." And be said, "We're almost certain that you will be accepted because there are very few french horn players." So, as a freshmen I played in the university marching band and the concert band and therefore didn't have to participate further in the ROTC. Clarence w. Klassen 20
Q: Did you find that being involved with band effected your studies?
A: No, we had a different system at the university than they do at the present ·time. We rehearsed at night on our own time and not university time. We received no credit for playing in the band. And in addition to that, following a concert tour any monies that we earned on the concert tour or any contributions that were made, tag days and whatnot, went to the band. And in as much as it was not university credit activity at the end of the season the money was divided up between all of the band players. I think I probably got as I recall the first year, the magnificent sum of about $75 which helped along. So there was an incentive to spend some of your own time and evenings in band activities.
Q: Where were the concerts played?
A: There were two bands. There was the marching band and the symphonic concert band. Each spring we would go on a concert tour. Concerts were sponsored by the various alumni organizations in different towns, usually we traveled pretty much through the middle West. Very seldom too far westward, or too far to the east coast, but we'd go on a two week concert tour during the spring break or spring vacation. We would give a concert and then that evening the alumni would of course have a party for the band. We traveled in our own Pullmans with the buggage car carrying the instruments and one of the highlights of several of our tours was our vocal soloist.
Q: Who was your soloist?
A: Well, our soloist was Tom Dewey who later got involved in politics in New York as governor and ran for president against Harry Truman, unsuccessfully. He was our soloist and traveled with us on many of our concert tours.
Q: How large was the University of Michigan band?
A: We had 75 members. And we were at that time the largest of the university bands, marching bands, football bands. And we were the first university, now remember this was back in 1921, we were the first university marching band to have formations on the football field. Our "pi~ce of rlsistance" was a "block M" for Michigan. I remember the first time that I was involved in one of those. You follow your score and your music, how many steps this way and how many steps that way and you're not too sure whether you're standing out in the middle of the field all alone playing or whether you're part of a formation. But those are some of the hazards that you had to go through.
Q: Did any of the other universities have this type of formation?
A: Yes, one of- the greatest "insults" that we suffered was from Ohio State the year after we played Ohio State with our formations. They came back to Ann Arbor to play. It was a tremendous band. And with a formation and the insult that was obviously directed to us because we had said we had the largest university band in the country. They came with a 100 people and they carried a sign in the back that said, "A 150 more back Clarence w. Klassen 21 home." Incidentally, we dedicated the Illinois stadium at the famous "Red Grange game".
Q: What year was this?
A: These were in 1924.
Q: Among your roommates you mentioned one, the fellow from home. Did you have other roommates?
A: Yes, there were six of us that lived in this house all the four years. We all considered we were roommates because we were all there together. It was an interesting collection if you want to call it that, of people. We had one Hymie Baucis from Venezuela. He was the son of, incidentally an orphan, a son of a rich cattle raiser. He was in engineering but he'd planned to go back and get into politics. And I've often looked for his name someplace in South American politics but never did find him. One of the others was a fellow from home who went on into medical school and became a physician and surgeon. An another one was a fellow by the name of Charles Kimpton. He had to drop out of high school at the beginning of his senior year, he came from an extremely poor family. After high school, he traveled for two years, before he came back to the university and entered, he traveled with the circus. And he did this for financial reasons. He had always said that it was a good financial setup because you did not need a lot of fancy clothes, you got your board arid room. And he took some entrance examinations to make up his senior year in high school. The other one was a young man from Ohio who came from a, I would say, definitely upper middle class family. His father was in business there. And he had a brother-in-law who owned a dance pavilion near Cleveland on Lake Michigan. And that's where he used to work during the summers. When we all got acquainted after we had been at school a couple of weeks in 1921 he said, "This summer we had a band playing at our dance pavilion," he said, "a couple of nice guys and they're going to play here in Ann Arbor at the theater." And he said, "Why don't we all go down? They wanted me to be sure to look them up." So we all went down and we met a Fred and Tom Waring. They said to us, "You're a bunch of college people, how do you think we sound?" And we said, "Oh, we think you're great. You know some day your band might amount to something if you keep on like this." Of course Fred Waring went on to become one of the famous band leaders and entertainers.
Q: What is the name of the young man who became an outstanding doctor?
A: That was Dr. John VerDuin. He was a surgeon, an outstanding medical man and a surgeon and rather tragically he developed multiple sclerosis, cut a brillant medical career rather short. But as of right now he is still living but not very active. Another one that came in to take the place of the one that entered the fraternity house was on the university football team. And he was a business major and went back to Grand Haven where he came from and was the vice president of one of the banks. Which incidentally the main stockholder in the bank was Dr. VerDuin who was also one of our group. Clarence W. Klassen 22
Q: And what was his name?
A: His name was Arthur Welling. He had been an all state high school end in Michigan when he played on the University of Michigan football team. q: How did you select the studies for your college years?
A: The first two years in engineering, all engineering at the University of Michigan at that time was a pretty standard curriculum of basic mathematics and English and chemistry and phyics and other science. Then your junior year you began to take some electives. Some of the electives that I took were public speaking and English essay writing and this type of thing. And then the senior year where you decided what your major is going to be then there were a number of courses, options that you could take. You didn't have too much choice once you made this decision. But you had at least two years at that time to determine what your majors were going to be.
Q: Do you remember any of the early teachers and professors?
A: Yes. I remember one in particular, two as a matter of fact. One that was teaching us public speaking and it was, you might say, a course in literature. He used to say to us, "Now this course is not going to help you earn your daily bread but it's going to make every mouthful taste a little sweeter." The other professor said, "Now you must remember in this course the more you know the less you know you know."
Q: What course was that?
A: This was a course in mathematics. Actually it was a course in decriptive geometry. But what he illustrated this he said, "If your knowledge is the size of a marble then all outside of the marble is ignorance. Then as you learn it might get to be the size of a baseball and you know more but there is more ignorance on the outside. And finally get to be the size of a basketball," he would say, "and you know infinitely a lot more than you did when you knew your knowledge was the size of a marble." But he says, "All the area on the outside of that basketball is ignorance," so the more you knew the more you knew you did not know. This he said, "I want you to always remember this."
Q: What was the name of this professor? A: This was Professor Running. Q: Was this your English professor?
A: No, no. This was the mathematics professor.
Q: And who was your English professor?
A: I'm trying to think of his name. I think it was something like Palmer. He also had another rather novel attitude. We were on the honor system at the University of Michigan at the college of engineering Clarence W. Klassen 23 that is. And if after the starting bell rang the professor did not show up within the first five minutes then you could leave. And we would sit there watching the clock and at five minutes we would all leave. One time we met him out in the hall coming. And we all herded back. And he said, "I didn't realize I had such a stupid bunch of students." He said, "This was in the same category," he said, "as buying something. You paid for this." He said, "After you pay when the clerk went back to get the change you ran out and were happy. You left what you bought there and left your money." And after that we never ran out in five minutes. We stayed because he always showed up. Another interesting professor was named Menefee.
Q: And what course did he teach?
A: He taught a course in mechanics. And he was an unusual fellow because he was basically a mechanical engineer and he had done a lot of work in helicopters. And at that time of course that was a relatively new type of aircraft.
Q: Did you belong to any fraternities while you were at college?
A: No, no social fraternities. As I indicated I was in the fraternity but in the back part, in the kitchen part. There was a sharp division at the University of Michigan between fraternities and nonfraternities. I presumed I may have considered joining a fraternity if I had had the money. But I didn't. And as I had indicated there was all six of us with the exception of one of them that left to join the fraternity and he was replaced by another person. We were altogether for four years. And in many respects we had a lot of the advantages that they had in the fraternities so far as companionship and some of our own little activities. Fraternity life was expensive. And I would say that's probably the real reason I didn't join.
Q: Did you partake in any other social activities while at school?
A: Just the normal Saturday night dances and the junior hop which was a junior dance. And of course the band had some of its own social activities. We had dances and parties. If you want to refer to this as a social activity it was primarily a place to get acquainted with people, but the churches in Ann Arbor particularly the Methodist church every weekend had social gatherings where they had activities and food. That was one of the drawing cards because this was all free. We usually used to go to what they called the Upper Room. That was the main one that most of them went to. As I look back I think one of the reasons that most of the male students went there because after surveying all of the other ones it seemed to me that they had the best looking coeds there. And I guess that was a drawing card for us plus the food.
Q: The Upper Room?
A: The Upper Room was the name of it and this was in the Methodist church. And this was designated as such because later when I traveled in the Holy Land the Upper Room was where Christ had the Last Supper with his twelve disciples.and I suppose this was kind of a religious connotation so far as the church was concerned. Clarence W. Klassen 24
A: Have you had future contacts with the university? Q: You mean contacts after I graduated?
A: Yes.
Q: Yes, several. One of the contacts was at the lOOth centennial of the college of engineering. I attended that, was an invited guest and was given a citation as a distinguished alumnus.
Q: When was this?
A: This was October 23, 1953. And this was for contributions to my particular field of engineering. Of course even in 1953 there were not too many sanitary or environmental engineers. Probably one of the most rewarding I would say in the long term contact was with the National Sanitation Foundation. This was not a part of the university but closely affiliated with the university.
Q: What is the National Sanitation Foundation?
A: It was built on the [same] concept as the Underwriters Laboratory for electrical equipment. The foundation was financed by various industries and we had a testing laboratory, or the foundation had a testing laboratory and we would develop standards and initial tests for all kinds of food machinery. For example soda fountains and dishwashers and later we got into the field of water treatment equipment, sewerage treatment equipment. It was financed by industry but controlled strictly by people in public health. We started out the foundation, I said we because I was on the board of directors for some 25 years, in the university buildings in the school of public health and then eventually the foundation built its own building.
Q: Where was it located?
A: Now the foundation is located in Ann Arbor in the northern part of the city. And it is a tremendous environmental and sanitation complex that now develops and promotes regulations. There's a lot of research and it is a testing and a seal of approval laboratory for all environmental equipment.
Q: Did you ever consider going into the academic field?
A: Not seriously because teaching never really appealed to me as a career. The same with engineering. One phase of engineering never appealed to me, that is sitting behind a drafting board and doing a lot of design work. This is one of the reasons I think I was drawn into public health. I did have two opportunities to get into the academic world. One was to become a associate professor at the University of Michigan at the college of engineering. This was in the late forties. And about the same time I had an offer to head a department of environmental engineering at New York University. I turned both of them down because I felt I had a career going in public health in the state of Illinois and decided to remain in that field. However, a few years later I received an appointment to the faculty as an assistant professor in the University of Illinois Clarence w. Klassen 25
Medical School in Chicago. That was not a teaching assignment but it was a lecture assignment. I lectured to the various categories in the medical school.
Q: What were they?
A: Well, I lectured to sophomore and senior dental students and to sophomore and senior medical students. And I don't mean to be critical of medical students but I often thought I don't know how you can conjure up anything that would be more of an obstacle than what I faced. I lectured to senior medical students on Saturday at twelve o'clock. So from twelve to one on Saturday I lectured to the senior medics. Senior medics, and this is my own personal opinion from my own observation, they know about everything there is to know at that point. And for an engineer to come and tell them some of the items in sanitation that they should know, you had to develop a technique to kind of shake them out of their newspaper reading and their sleeping in order to get them to listen to you.
Q: Was the sophomore students more receptive?
A: Much more receptive because they hadn't been indoctrinated with the idea that they were the chosen people and they knew everything there was to know at that point. But I did develop a technique that got their attention.
Q: What was that?
A: Well, when I opened the lecture I assumed the privilege that speakers have of referring to an incident that supposedly happened, this did but not in a particular context. I'd start out by saying that last week in our laboratory we received from a physician a small perfume vial filled with water with a request that we test this to see if there was any typhoid organism in it. And I'd wait. A few of the students would kind of smile, a few of them laughed a little. But most of them just sat there and not paying too much attention. Then I would come back and say, "This puts the class in my opinion in two categories. The one that smiled, students that snickered, they're the smart ones. The ones that just sat there and looked blank they are as stupid as the doctor that sent this perfume vial in." And at that point they would drop their newspapers and listen. "What's this fellow trying to tell us?" I said, "First of all and remember this. When you send a water sample in it's got to be in a sterilized bottle that's sterilized by the state health department. It's got to be at least six fluid ounces. And a routine test for a water analysis does not include a search for a specific pathogenic organism but merely for a coliform organism that inhabits the intestinal tract that serves as an indicator it could contain organism from the intestinal tract that could be pathogenic." And it worked because from then on • • •
END OF SIDE ONE, TAPE TWO Clarence W. Klassen 26
A: They listened to me and it turned out to be a very profiting experience. One experience that I had following a lecture one day a student came down from his amphitheater seat and asked me if I was a Russian Mennonite. And I said, "A Russian Mennonite? Why do you ask?" He said, "My father saw your name in the university catalogue," and he said, "our name is Klassen spelled just like yours." And said, "We are Russian Mennonites." I said, "Give me a little of your background." He said, "We were Mennonites in Holland and in Belgium and we were driven out of those countries. And we were permitted to establish a colony in Russia." And he said, ''My ancestors did this because I grew up there. That's why we call ourselves Russian Mennonites." I said, "I know my name is Holland-Dutch and there's some Belgiums by that name but I have no idea that any of my ancestors were ever Russian Mennonites."
Q: Did you follow up on this any further? A: Yes, I did and I was never able to confirm that none of our family participated in this particular religious migration to Russia.
Q: What were the years that you taught medical students, over what period of time, the dates?
A: You mean in the University of Illinois medical school? That was from about 1950 until about 1965. Q: When did you graduate from the University of Michigan?
A: I graduated in May 1925 with a degree in civil engineering and a major in sanitary engineering. Q: What did you do during your summers while you were at the university?
A: The summers I spent in Grand Haven, Michigan following my freshmen and sophomore year working on a construction gang for the same contractor laying paving and constructing sewers and constructing water mains. This, of course, was primarily done for financial reasons because the pay was good but the work was hard and you went back to school in the fall physically in excellent shape. There was one hazard to this that I learned. Following my sophomore year's work, during my junior year in school I took a course in concrete and pavement design. And the young instructor would give us figures. As an example when you're figuring reinforcing rods they must be 1-3/8 inches from the side of the shaft where the concrete was to be poured. Things highly theoretically like this which was correct. I wasn't trying to be smart-alecky but I said to him one day, "But that is not the way it is done in practice." And he said, "Maybe you would like to tell us how it is done." I said, "For example, if you're ready to pour concrete in a form and your reinforcing rod is pushed against the form you look around for a good-sized stone and you put it there. It might be two inches, it might be an inch and a half or something." Well the class all kind of snickered. He didn't appreciate this. I soon learned a lesson that I've always followed later when I've been with students, not to try and pose a threat to the instructor particularly when he is a young instructor. The end of the junior year I went to surveying camp. Clarence W. Klassen 27
Q: Where was that?
A: This was in northern Michigan about fifteen miles off the straights of Mackinac in the woods. I spent all summer there in a surveying camp which was run by the University of Michigan. This was part of the academic courses tha·t we were taking at that time. And of course following graduation I didn't pursue any of those summer things any more because I was looking for a permanent job.
Q: What was your first job after graduation?
A: Well I had made an application to Illinois state department of Public Health, through a notice on the university bulletin board the positions were opened. And I made an application and was accepted. I said I wanted to condition it that I was deficient I knew in laboratory work because at the University of Michigan part of the engineering then, not now, included very little actual laboratory analysis and the chief engineer of the state at that time said, "If you will accept this position and come to Illinois your first year we'll put you in the laboratory." That sounded good. But I was not to report until the first of August. So between graduation in May and the first of August I got a job in Grand Rapids, Michigan as an inspector for sewer and water and paving work that was being done for the city by a contractor. The interesting angle in this was that when I showed up for work as the official inspector for the city the contractor was the same one that I had worked for the last two summers. And I remember his greeting. He said, "Oh, not you." I said, "Yes, but we'll be real practical about this thing." The sanitary engineer for the city later turned out to be a professional colleague of mine, Mr. Milton Adams, and he later was head of the water pollution division for the state of Michigan. I worked there until the first of August and came to Illinois. Since I did not live in Grand Rapids, I only had a room, and I had of course to carry my lunch required having my lunch prepared which the lady where I was staying didn't do. And this particular construction project where I was an inspector was in one of the very nice sections of town. And the first day I looked around for a place to eat and the only eating establishment there was a very fancy tea room.
Q: What was the name of this tea room, do you remember?
A: Yes, it was on Cherry Street and it was named the Cherry Inn. The first day at lunch I went to the back door. The manager, a lady, looked at me. Here I was pretty dirty with cement and dirt. And I guess she thought I was looking for a handout. And I told her, I explained I was just out of the university and had a job. I was going to be the inspector here for a couple of months. I was rooming here and I was looking for a place that had good food and I was willing to pay for my food if she . would have a little place in the back kitchen. I didn't want to eat in the dining room obviously, but in the back kitchen. For two months while I was inspector on this job I ate in a fancy tea room in the kitchen. I never let the people in the construction job know where I went because they were typical construction crew, a hard-working and sometimes hard• drinking bunch. And they kind of, first of all took a dim view of a college student anyway, secondly, if they'd know where I was eating. They just knew I sneaked off at noon and came back on time. But really never knew where I went. Clarence w. Klassen 28
Q: What was your principal reason for coming to work in Illinois?
A: Well, primarily to have a job. And I wanted to get into sanitary engineering as it was called then, now environmental work. And I wanted to get in government. I had an interest in this. That was my principal reason. A secondary consideration which also helped me make up my mind was the fact that they would allow me and also suggested that I would be in laboratory for one year prior to getting into the actual engineering work. And it was primarily for those two reasons and also obviously because Illinois was one of the major states that I decided to accept the job here in Illinois.
Q: When did you arrive in Illinois?
A: I was supposed to report for duty August 1. And I arrived in Illinois by train, Chicago and Alton, the afternoon of July 29, 1925.
Q: Do you remember your first impressions when you arrived in Springfield?
A: Yes. I don't want to be facetious but my first impressions were dampening ones. When I got off the train I knew nobody, didn't even know where the business district was. The station is where it is now. I checked my suitcase which included a green alligator slicker which was the thing that students wore at that time. And I walked south on the area in front of the station and I saw the statehouse which was to the west and I had just assumed that was town. So I cut across the tracks before I got to Washington Street which I didn't know the name at that time. And there was a crossing watchman's shanty there. He operated the gates. And just as I got on the track side opposite the little shanty he opened the door and threw a pail of dirty water out that presumably he thought would go on the railroad right-of-way and I happened to be there and he threw it on me. I realized I had no business there. I should have stayed on the walk. I guess this is what you get for taking shortcuts. But I never did learn that lesson I suppose. Anyway he was mortified, apologized. My problem was here I was in a strange town, knew no one and it was a typical hot Springfield afternoon. In fact it was "boiling hot." And I had on a light summer suit that was full of dirty water. And I went back into the locker and got out my slicker and put on my slicker and asked the station agent where the nearest hotel was and he sent me to the Abraham Lincoln Hotel. And when I walked up to the desk I asked for a room and I still remember the quizzical look on his face. Here was somebody standing in front of them wearing a slicker on a hot day and hadn't had rain for days. And anyway I got a room, changed my clothes and that evening I ate in Peterson's Cafeteria which was across then from the Strand Theater. And when I walked in there was a young man sitting alone at a table and I asked him if I could share the table with him. And he said, "Sure." He was a student at the University of Illinois and there was a surveying party with the United States Geological Survey. And he wanted to know what I was doing that night. And I said, "Really, I'd only been in town a few hours." He said they were having a party at the Central Baptist Church. And he said, "There's a lot of people there. They have a lot of fun and the food is good." And he said, "Why don't you go with me?" So I went with him. Clarence w. Klassen 29
Q: Where was the Central Baptist Church located?
A: The Central Baptist Church at that time was located on the southeast corner of Capital and Fourth Street. The friendliest and the good times and I met some people there that were friends for many years. It sort gave me a pretty good impression of Springfield of being friendly people. It took away the unfortunate experience of having water thrown on me when I arrived in town.
Q: Where did you live while you were in Springfield?
A: The next day I reported for duty, which was a Saturday morning, and they only work a half a day. So that afternoon I looked for a room near the statehouse and found a sign in a window on Capital Avenue just west of College. And I took a room there. And they had a young man there who was the landlord and landlady's son and his older brother. And that evening they introduced me to one of the things for which they said Springfield was famous, chili. And we went to the Dew Chili Parlor. I lived there for about three weeks and then moved into a house that was occupied by one of the engineers and his family that I was working with and two of us from the office roomed there. This is no longer there but it was a house that was at the exposition in St. Louis. It was a Japanese house and it was just south of Monroe Street on Walnut. It was next to the historical home that is on the corner there. It was taken down in St. Louis and moved piece by piece and erected there. And Mr. and Mrs. ~Dappert lived there. Mr. Dappert was the senior engineer in the office. And one of the other engineers and I roomed there. It was a quaint place. I've always felt that it was sort of unfortunate that it was torn down. There's nothing but a vacant lot there but this would be one of the historic homes if it was still there.
Q: When was the St. Louis exposition?
A: I don't know. I really don't know. It was sometime I believe around the turn of the century. We didn't eat our meals there. But I ate at a boarding house which turned out to be a very interesting experience.
Q: Do you recall what interesting experience occurred?
A: Yes, there were six of us ate in this boarding house. The boarding house was on the southwest corner of Lawrence and Third Street, run by Mom McDonald. There were five of us there that worked in the statehouse and the sixth was, we called her Aunt Suzie. She lived directly across the street north. But she was Susan Lawrence Dana Gehrman. She built the Frank Lloyd Wright house on the corner of Lawrence and Fourth Street. But Aunt Suzie didn't live there. She lived directly west across the tracks and ate at McDonald's boarding house with the rest of us. There's several things that I remember about Aunt Suzie that was only, you could only recall this having been associated like we were in this boarding house.
Q: WOuld you like to recall one or two of them?
-·--·-- ·------·-----·--··---·-----·--·------Clarence w. Klassen 30
A: Yes. And in view of the recent purchase of the Frank Lloyd Wright by the state of Illinois it did bring back some for I think a million dollars they paid for it. It recalled some interesting experiences. Each Christmas Aunt Suzie would take a yellow cab, she did not have an automobile of her own even though she was wealthy. She had a standing contract with Yellow Cab. She would take a cab to St. Louis and buy an array of decorations and her supply of gourmet food. And for the six of us with "Mom" McDonald and her daughter, she would have dinner cooked in the Dana house. And those of us at the boarding house each Christmas would join her in the Dana house for a Christmas dinner. And this looking back was a real memorable occasion.
Q: Approximately what years were these?
A: This was about in 1927 and 1928. Another thing I remember about her that indicates her depth of sympathetic character. And this isn't the way she has been portrayed by many people. But one cold winter night, it was a night when the snow was a little crunchy and below zero. There was an elderly gentleman working at the statehouse that ate at the boarding house and during dinner the phone rang. He went to the phone and came back with tears in his eyes. And said, "I just got a call." He said, "My wife died very suddenly." And he said, "I've got to figure out how to get to Peoria." The only way to Peoria at that time was on the traction. And without any word Aunt Suzie went to the phone, called the Yellow Cab and she said, "I want you to send a cab here to my house immediately, a nice warm cab." She said, "You are to drive a man to his residence and he'll tell you where to go in Peoria." q: What were the tracks?
A: The traction was the Illinois Terminal Railroad. We used to call it the Traction or Interurban. This was like a big streetcar but it ran to Decatur, to Danville, to St. Louis. It ran to Peoria and to Bloomington. And it even had sleeping cars on it. And diners. But it had a schedule. You had to wait until the traction went. As I recall at that time there wasn't one until the next day. But this indicated one of several incidents Aunt Suzie, the kind of a person she really was. A big-hearted woman.
Q: What were your first impressions of Springfield?
A: Well, the first Sunday I was here I took a tour of the statehouse and the guide took us to the north portico looking down First Street and said, "At the end of this street is Lincoln's Tomb." And I said, "Lincoln's Tomb?" I said, "I was always under the impression that Lincoln was buried in Washington." Well that was my first impression of Springfield that Abraham Lincoln was here. And I should have known my history better than this but I didn't. The other impression was the Springfield water supply and of course I was interested in this because of my work in the health department. It was abominable. It was dirty. You drew water and it was muddy and it was not safe to drink. There had been considerable illnesses there. But the water was taken out of wells along the Sangamon River much the same as they're talking about now. And in 1926 a water purification plant was installed at the river. The water from the plant was stored in a big reservoir without a top and obviously opened to all Clarence W. Klassen 31 kinds of contamination including birds flying over. And that is where this was stored.
Q: Where was this storage area located?
A: It was where the Lanphier High School is located now. And there was much agitation at that time for a new and a more dependable source of water than the wells. And this culminated in the construction of Lake Springfield and the placing of a modern water treatment plant in operation in the mid-thirties. And for the first time a new concept in water treatment that was developed by Charles Spaulding who was then water superintendent. And this type of treatment was the first of its kind to be used any place. And of course now it is in common use throughout the United States and is considered one of the significant technical contributions to the field of water supply. 'That happened here in Springfield. A similar first occured at the Springfield sanitary district.
Q: When was that?
A: That was in the same year, 1926 that is. The Springfield sanitary district was formed ac;tually under pressure because the city had been sued for water pollution. And the district was voted and the then modern sewerage treatment plant was built on the North Eighth Street Road where one of the plants still exist. Mr. Walraven, an engineer at that time, developed a concept that was totally new. They took the sludge from the sewerage that had been settled out, put it in what they called a digester and collected the methane gas and they used this gas to drive a gas engine that had been developed especially for this purpose. This gas engine was connected to a generator. And the Springfield sanitary district was the first plant in the United States and many believed in the whole world that used sewerage gas to drive an engine that was hooked into a generator to make its own electricity. And it made the electricity for that plant.
Q: What was your contact with this?
A: Well, my boss at that time who was the chief engineer of the state health department was one of the three trustees of the district. So our office was closely tied into this. This improvement phased out when natural gas some five, ten years later became plentiful. And it's rather interesting today many people now are developing this as a source of energy use and I would say the majority particularly the newer generation thinks this is something new. Now they have another term that they call biomass but it is the same process that was used in this sewerage plant. We had two or three of them around the country. But this new cycle, we're getting around to a starting point, today where they are utilizing waste organic material to produce methane gas as a energy source had its origin here in 1926 in Springfield, Illiois.
Q: Who was your first boss here in Springfield?
A: Well the man that hired me and that I worked for a chief engineer, Mr. Harry Ferguson. He came from out east and I worked for him for ten Clarence W. Klassen 32 years before be died a very tragic death. And I look back at those ten years as I would say probably next to my parents, be bad the most influence on my way of thinking in a professional career. It was one of the most fortunate things that could have happened to a young engineer getting into government work for example, for he was a person highly competent technically and with impeccable integrity, honesty and truthfulness. He believed in saying what he thought and exactly bow be felt. And as an example the first month that I reported for duty here the call came out that we were to contribute 50 percent of our monthly salary to Governor Small's defense fund. And I asked Mr. Ferguson about this and he said, "Remember this is a personal choice. I won't tell you what to do but I am not contributing and no one here is contributing. You do as you want to." That set a pattern as far as I was concerned that lasted all of my career in government.
Q: The call came out from whom?
A: From the governor's office much like I understand it does today. Not necessarily in Illinois but in many of the other states. But I never did contribute, or make a political contribution. Although two or three times when some of the subsequent governors that I worked for, the situation got rather tense when I bad to lay my job on the line deciding not to contribute. Those are incidents that are all part of the government career. And I lay much of whatever successes that I have had professionally in Illinois and in any place, to working those first ten years for a man like Mr. Ferguson. He died of a brain tumor in 1935. And at that time I was his first assistant and because he was a younger man, he was only 45, some of the other very fine engineers that were in the second, third, or fourth positions, I was a relatively newcomer, left to take other jobs because they knew he would be there for a long time. And one by one they left and I was second in command when Mr. Ferguson died and took over as chief engineer from him in 1935.
Q: Then how long did you remain in the position of chief sanitary engineer?
A: I came to Illinois in 1925. I was chief sanitary engineer from January 1935 until July 1, 1970. Went from chief sanitary engineer in the State Health Department and I became the first director of the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency.
Q: How long did you hold that position?
A: I held that position from July 1, 1970 to February 4, 1971.
Q: What were some of your early Springfield activities?
A: One of my early activities involved playing in the Springfield Municipal Band and the Springfield Symphony Orchestra. It was a voluntary group that got together to play in the band and it finally was sort of formalized and was put up to the vote of the people whether they should have a Municipal Band that was funded by public money. And they voted favorably. I was involved in the promotion, encouragement of that vote. We played at all of ·the schools and gave a number of concerts. And the argument .for voting for this was that if we had a Springfield Municipal Band then Clarence w. Klassen 33 the students that were graduating from high school that had been involved in music, it would give them some place to go, some place to join. I later realize that this was purely a means of getting people to vote. Because after the vote was favorable and the band became a public financed institution they required that all of us join the union. I did not join the union and dropped out of the band. And of course this meant that if any student wanted to play in the band he had to join the union. I always felt that this was sort of a subterfuge that was used to get a favorable band vote. Today Springfield has a very fine municipal band but this was some of the background of this that probably has never been too public.
Q: Do you continue to play musical instruments?
A: I played in the Springfield Civic Symphony Orchestra. I began to have to travel considerable in my work and which meant that I had to be absent from various rehearsals. While not a humorous incident, I was away for the dress rehearsal when we had Rudolph Ganz who was a very famous pianist as our guest artist. I wasn't there for the dress rehearsal. I came back for the concert and during the concert had neglected to notice that they had crossed some of my music out. And suddenly during the piano concerto by the famous pianist, Rudolph Ganz, there was only two people playing. Rudolph Ganz and a certain french horn player. And I realized that something was wrong and stopped. And after the concert I went to the director and said, "I've been thinking some time I maybe better drop out because this experience indicates that I shouldn't be here." Quite frankly, I expected him to say, "Oh, no. We need you." But he said, "I'm inclined to agree with you." And I sold my french horn and bought a piano. And that was too much work and then later bought an organ.
Q: Were you involved in the Lake Springfield development?
A: Not originally but before it was finally finished I did become involved in it.
Q: How?
A: Well'when it was first started I was assistant to Mr. Ferguson, the chief sanitary engineer for the state, and of course we had to give all the permits for the development. And he died during the development of Lake Springfield before it was completed. And so my taking over, I then got involved in many of the permits that were issued by the state health department and par.ticularly the entire water system that furnished Chatham, Girard and Virden and those groups. Also we needed, I say we, the city of Springfield, needed more customers to finance it. And the public works, the Federal Public Works Program (PWA) was in progress then. And the city encouraged the satellite communities, Leland Grove, Jerome, Chatham, all of these other satellite communities to incorporate, get federal money, build water piping systems and buy their water from Springfield. · Clarence W. Klassen 34
Q: What year was this?
A: This was in 1936, 1937, along in there. Several years later Springfield water department said if it wasn't for all of these satellite communities we would have enough water and wouldn't need to expand our plant and take advantage of a new federal program.
END OF SIDE TWO, TAPE TWO
Q: What was this program?
A: It was a program that was devised by President Roosevelt to get people back to work. Works Progress Administration was WPA where the entire funds for the project were furnished by the federal government. WPA. PWA, Public Works Administration was a companion program where the government furnished 45 percent of the money for major construction projects for water and sewerage. And this particular situation the WPA money was given to the satellite communities for the installation of watermains for example. This particular program of furnishing the satellite communities that ring Springfield continued until the John Hunter administration here in Springfield when he announced that the water supply in Springfield was not sufficient to furnish all of the satellite communities.
Q: Who was John Hunter?
A: He was the commissioner of water in the city of Springfield. And this resulted in Chatham, Virden, and the communities south that Springfield had originally furnished water to in developing their own supply. And so it ended up in Springfield furnishing water to Grandview, Jerome, Leland Grove and the cities around the major city of Springfield.
Q: How long were you in state service?
A: Actually about 4~ years from August 1, 1925 until February 4, 1971.
Q: How many governors did you serve under?
A: During this time there were ten different governors that I served under.
Q: What were their political parties?
A: The way it was divided up five Republicans and five Democrats.
Q: Who was the first governor you served under?
A: Well, I came here under Governor Len Small who served from 1921 until 1929.
Q: Do you recall any particularly interesting events that occurred while you were working under his service?