The National Museum of the Pacific War (AdmiralNimitz Museum)

Center for Pacific War Studies

Fredericksburg, Texas

An Interview with

H. James Avery B-26 Pilot

April 11,2001

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in I and ready to graduate, a guy came to our industrial design department looking for someone to teach at the University of Iowa and to start a design department there. My industrial design professor whom we all called “Coach”, said, “Avery, I have someone I want you to meet.” I went into his office and there was Dr. Longman head of the Fine Arts Department at the University of

Iowa. He told me that he wanted to start a design program at the University of Iowa and was looking for someone to take the job and who could do well with it. He said, “Your Coach here, says you are the man.” I had not planned on teaching, believe me. But, my mother had been a teacher at Wayne University in Detroit and she encouraged me to take this offer. Also, I had strong family roots in Iowa. So, I told Dr. Longman to give me a month or so to think about it.

And in the end, I did take the job. We moved to West Branch, Iowa, birthplace of Herbert

Hoover, just ten miles down the road from Iowa City, where the University of Iowa is located.

The next year, one of the professors of Art History at the University of Iowa went out to the

University of Colorado and became head of the art department out there. He soon let me know that he would like me to consider coming out there to start a design department. I had never been to Colorado and I thought I might like to go out there. When I told Dr. Longman what I was thinking he was beside himself and he kept insisting that I wouldn’t like it out there, that the mountains are too over powering and not conducive to creativity. I thought that was a lot of poppycock, and in 1948, after two years teaching at the University of Iowa, I went on to the

University of Colorado.

By that time, we had two very young sons. In 1951, seven years after my wife and I were married, she decided to leave me. She had become more interested in the theater than me. Our boys were now three and five years old and I was devastated. I was 29 years old and still an agnostic. I hadn’t been close to the church for 12years or so. But I said to myself “Avery, you have a part to play in this separation.” So, I decided to seek some help through a minister--in fact it was my mother’s suggestion that I do so. Since our Sonshad been baptized in the Episcopal

17

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