ORAL MEMOIRS OF E. E. “DUTCH” SCHROEDER A Series of Interviews Conducted 2 July – 14 July 1998 Interviewer: Marcus E. Johnson University Baylor © Baylor University Project Baylor University Institute for Oral History Copyright 2002 This material is protected by US copyright. Permission to print, reproduce or distribute copyrighted material is subject to the terms and conditions of fair use as prescribed in the US copyright law. Transmission or reproduction of protected items beyond that allowed by fair use requires the written and explicit permissionUniversity of the copyright owners. Baylor © TABLE OF CONTENTS Baylor University Institute for Oral History General Policy and Purposes iv Memoir Procedure iv Legal Status v Interview Histories v Interview No. 1 (2 July 1998) 1 Interview No. 2 (7 July 1998) 48 Interview No. 3 (10 July 1998) 85 Interview No. 4 (14 July 1998) 109 Index 147 University Baylor © BAYLOR UNIVERSITY INSTITUTE FOR ORAL HISTORY GENERAL POLICY AND PURPOSES: A member of the Oral History Association, Baylor's Institute for Oral History (BUIOH) supports and embodies the goals, guidelines, and standards of archival quality prescribed by the national professional association to ensure long-term preservation of memoirs. It is the policy of BUIOH to select memoirists whose recollections, as participants or eyewitnesses, are relevant to the institute’s chosen research topics. Their tape-recorded memoirs provide links between the immediate past and the present in a very human way. A scholarly, but relaxed, conversational atmosphere exists during the interview. To encourage completely candid recollections, the memoirist is asked to regard the oral history memoir as a highly personal journal. The transcribed historical document which the finished memoir becomes is the raw material used by historians and professional scholars. The memoirist may choose to have the memoir: 1. Accessible to the community at large 2. Access limited to portions of memoir 3. Free for use after stipulated time span 4. Accessible at discretion of memoirist 5. Sealed until death of memoirist University 6. Sealed until passage of stipulated time period after death of memoirist MEMOIR PROCEDURE: Oral history at Baylor follows a prescribed plan which may be briefly outlined: Baylor 1. Initial contract with the memoirist 2. Arrangements made for interview(s) 3. Recording© of interview(s) 4. Transcribing of tapes in the BUIOH office 5. Editing of transcript(s) by memoirist 6. Finished memoirs: one transcript for the memoirist, one transcript and tape(s) for The Texas Collection. The finished typewritten oral memoir follows the interviewee's stated wishes as reflected in his/her editing of the first transcript(s), with only minor further editorial modifications performed in the BUIOH office in preparing the completed memoir. iv LEGAL STATUS: Scholarly use of the tapes and transcripts of the interviews with E. E. “Dutch” Schroeder is unrestricted. The interview agreement was signed on 7 July 1998. INTERVIEW HISTORIES Interviewer: Marcus E. Johnson Transcribers: Bethany Henderson Mac Meadows Stephanie Ybarra Editors: Marcus E. Johnson Rebekkah Lohr Final editor: John Jurgensmeyer The tapes and transcripts of these interviews were processed in the offices of the Institute for Oral History, Baylor University, Waco, Texas. University Baylor © v ORAL HISTORY MEMOIR BAYLOR UNIVERSITY INSTITUTE FOR ORAL HISTORY Interviewee: E. E. “Dutch” Schroeder Date: 2 July 1998 Place: Marrs McLean Gymnasium Baylor University Waco, Texas Interviewer: Marcus E. Johnson SCHROEDER INTERVIEW NO. 1 MARCUS E. JOHNSON: This is Marcus Johnson. It’s July 2, 1998, and we’re in the office of Coach Dutch Schroeder, at Baylor University, in Marrs McLean Gym, room 214. We’re talking with Coach Schroeder.University It’s hopefully the first of several interviews that we’ll be discussing his career at Baylor as a player, as a student, as a coach, teacher for many years. Coach Schroeder, when were you born and where? E. E. “DUTCH” SCHROEDER: I was born in Austin, January of 1924, so you know now that I’m seventy-four.Baylor I was born one block off of what is now Interstate 35 at 900 East Seventh. Today it’s a Mexican restaurant, but in those days we weren’t born in hospitals, we were© born at home. So that’s where I was born. I grew up on East Seventh. It’s one block from the French Legation and I remember when I was four or five years old throwing rocks at the French Legation because it was a vacant building at that time, but we moved to south Austin just before I turned six years old and that’s where we lived during my growing years. JOHNSON: Can you describe any highlights you want—would like to describe of your growing up down in south Austin before you reached adolescence, anything that sticks out in your mind? SCHROEDER: I went to the Fulmore Elementary School—it’s a junior high now— for six grades, but I just lived a block from South Austin Park, it’s now called Stacy Park. The best things were the opportunities to play ball and bat games at the park. I also learned to play tennis there on my own. It prepared me to go into some sort of an athletic career. JOHNSON: Growing up, were you a pretty good athlete as a little kid growing up? SCHROEDER: I played on my first park softball team. We had a league in Austin for softball. There was no youth baseball at that time. JOHNSON: There wasn’t? SCHROEDER: No— JOHNSON: That’s surprising. SCHROEDER: —absolutely not. I’ll have to tell you they didn’t start Little League until 1939 and I was already ready to get outUniversity of high school by that time. So we did not have youth baseball, but there was softball. Of course, softball at that time was the major game of the nation during the Depression, because you didn’t even have to have a glove and bats never got broken because of the soft ball, and it was a soft ball then, not hard like it is now. Baylor JOHNSON: It’s not like it is now. Well, I did not know that. Describe your parents for us. © SCHROEDER: My father was very interested in me playing ball. JOHNSON: What was his name? SCHROEDER: His name was Emil. He was a cabinet maker. Had had to begin earning a living when he was twelve years old. His father died and he had to become the moneymaker for the family; had four sisters—three sisters, there were four of them. Began working as a lumber handler at the Beker Lumber Company, which was located at Congress Avenue at the bridge. My mother had graduated from high school, worked 2 while she was a student in high school in one of the local five and dimes, which we don’t have anymore. But as she raised her family of four boys, she never worked outside the home again. She took us where we needed to go. JOHNSON: So you have four bro—four boys? SCHROEDER: There were four boys in the family. I was the oldest. JOHNSON: Did you all do the normal sort of brother things growing up? SCHROEDER: There were no other boys on the block. There were a couple of girls, so we mostly had to learn to play with ourselves, so we did things as a group. There was six years difference between the oldest and the youngest, so we were close enough that we could do things together. We fished at the creek. We also did a little swimming in the creek, which was a taboo. JOHNSON: Is this Barton? SCHROEDER: No, this is Slaughter—no, Blum Creek. It runs near what is now Travis High School down into the Colorado River.University We did go to Barton Creek occasionally and swim at the pool, but it cost a nickel in those days and nickels were hard to come by. JOHNSON: In the information I have here about you, it said that you didn’t really begin to play—you played one year of baseball at twelve years. Is that correct? SCHROEDER: WhenBaylor I was—I believe I was eleven, Austin decided to have a youth baseball program, different from the softball program, so they got some—four teams in the city and I was© assigned to play on one of them. It was called the sub-junior league baseball. They did have a junior league for boys under eighteen, but nothing for very young boys. This is where I got my name. The second game I played, I pitched. I only walked twelve and the game ended eighteen to seventeen and I won. But in the newspaper, because there was not a lot of youth programs then, we got all of our games written up in the newspapers to help fill the sports page. There was a young fellow in our town, who was the out—one of the outstanding softball players whose name was Dutch Schroeder. So the paper writer thought I was related to him, and called me Little Dutch. 3 It stuck. I have been Dutch Schroeder since I was eleven years old. JOHNSON: So your friends and family saw that in the paper and thought, Well, we’ll call him Dutch from now on. SCHROEDER: That’s what it was. But my baseball took off from there. I played in that league the next year as a twelve year old. So, I did play two years in this twelve and under, before I began playing in the junior league. JOHNSON: How did—you know, nowadays, that would be considered a very late start in a baseball career for a little kid.