TUTT LIBRARY SPECIAL COLLECTIONS COLORADO COLLEGE ARCHIVES CCRm ORAL HISTORY TAPE TRANSCRIPTION R25
William Woodson "Chief" Tyree, 1900-1988 Colorado College Professor of Speech, Drama, and Radio, 1944-1968
SIDE ONE - CASSETTE ONE
FINLEY: This is side one of tape recording number 25 of the Colorado College Archives Oral History Project. I am Judy Finley, interviewing retired Professor William Woodson Tyree, who taught speech, drama and radio at CC from 1944 to 1968. We are at Mr. Tyree's Black Forest home at 5680 Burgess Road, and the date is April 11, 1978.
A native of West Virginia, Chief Tyree, as he is commonly known, grew up in Durant, Oklahoma, received his A.B. in English from Oklahoma University in 1926, and his M.A. from the State University of Oklahoma in 1938. Before coming to Colorado College, he taught school for 17 years in Ponca City, Oklahoma. He and his wife Ruth, now deceased, raised three sons: Perry, William and Neil, all of whom graduated from CC.
While at Colorado College, Professor Tyree established the first FM radio station in the Rocky Mountain region, KRCC-FM, and produced many plays and variety shows in addition to his teaching duties.
Good morning, Mr. Tyree! I'm delighted to be out here in the Black Forest in your cozy little home out here. It's nice to see you again. This interview this morning, I hope we can just chat about your recollections of Colorado College, mainly, because that's what our project is devoted to.
But before we get into Colorado College, I think I would like to know a little bit about your background. I know you lived in Oklahoma for a long time before you came to CC, and maybe you'd tell us how you got from Oklahoma to Colorado in the first place. How did it happen?
TYREE: Well, I actually got from West Virginia to Oklahoma, and then to Colorado, and that's the only places I have been.
1 I came to Oklahoma in 1908, when I was eight, and my father was a lawyer. Well, he passed the law examination, the bar examination, in Oklahoma, after having been a Methodist minister for the early part of his married life; that was about ten years. So we came a year after statehood, and he sort of accidentally settled at Durant, Oklahoma, which is southeast Oklahoma, in the Choctaw Indian country.
And my wife, Ruth Chase, was born in Nowata, Oklahoma, which is in the northeast part of the state, and her father was a lawyer, and he had come from Arkansas, and was in the Cherokee Nation; had to get permission from the Cherokees to come into Nowata, because it was Indian Territory. So Ruth was born, actually, at Nowata, I.T.--Indian Territory. And then, of course, obviously, we met at Oklahoma University in Norman, which was, shall we say, a central location. [chuckle] And that was that beginning.
FINLEY: Then you taught school for a number of years, didn't you?
TYREE: And I got my teacher's certificate, life certificate, from what was then Southeastern Normal School, in Durant, Oklahoma. There were five normal schools established at statehood in Oklahoma. Oklahoma was very progressive in education. One on each corner of the state and one in the middle, right out of Oklahoma City. And I graduated, or got my life certificate, in 1921, which was two years in college. Our family at one time was all in that one building in Durant, Oklahoma, at one time--seven children, from grade school, high school, and two years of college. And that building is, of course, still standing, but it's the Southeastern State University now, and of course much larger.
FINLEY: And then you taught where after getting your teaching certificate?
TYREE: And then after I got my life certificate, why, I had a friend who was part Cherokee Indian, who was principal of the schools in a lumber camp town in Southeast Oklahoma, which was owned by the Dirks Lumber and Coal Company from Kansas City. And I went down and taught for him, fifth and sixth grade, for two years. Do you want any more than that?
FINLEY: Well, I'd be interested to know how you progressed up to being hired at Colorado College. How did Colorado College
2 ever hear about you, or you hear about them?
TYREE: Well . . .
3 FINLEY: Keep going! [chuckle]
TYREE: If you want me to tell it! [laughter] I've told this many times, because everything that has--I never have gotten a job on my own, and anything I have has been given to me. So that's pretty good! [laughter]
FINLEY: [laughter] That's very fine!
TYREE: I taught two years in the lumber camp, and then one summer, the second summer, '21-'22, '22-'23, I went up to Oklahoma University for summer school. And incidentally, I followed a girl up there, who was a graduate of Arkansas University, had been a teacher in the lumber camp school.
FINLEY: Uh-hum.
TYREE: Well, I don't know how much of this you want me to do, but it is a little bit crazy the way things happened, to get here, literally. And that summer, I went to summer school, and then there were a couple of young men there that had lived across the street from us in Durant, Oklahoma. Their father was in the education department of the college.
FINLEY: Colorado College?
TYREE: No!
FINLEY: No?
TYREE: Of the teachers college in my hometown.
FINLEY: Oh, the teachers college in your hometown, I see, okay.
TYREE: You see, this is very important that this be done; otherwise, the coincidental circumstances would not have occurred.
FINLEY:
4 I see.
5 TYREE: And one of the boys said, "The old man wants a manual training teacher; why don't you ask him?"
So I did, and I became a manual training teacher at Norman High School from 1923 to 1926, fulltime, thereby making it possible for me to finish my English degree for my last two years.
FINLEY: Oh, of course.
TYREE: And it took me three years to do it.
FINLEY: I see.
TYREE: Because I was going to the university parttime, six or seven hours a semester, and summer. It was the only way I could do it, but I put myself through those two years entirely. And in the meantime, I met Ruth on a dime date at the Phi Mu house, and of course, you know she's been quite a horsewoman, and when I first met her, she was in those plus- four pants, you know, knee pants--
FINLEY: Oh, britches that are riding britches?
TYREE: Britches--no, they weren't riding britches; they were those sort of old-fashioned golf britches that they wore then. Heavy wool sox, hiking shoes, and a sloppy joe sweater, and it was typified what she did the rest of her life, practically, you know! [chuckle]
FINLEY: [chuckle]
TYREE: But anyway, not to spend too much time on that. But the accident of, again, I didn't get the job myself, as you see.
FINLEY: Uh-hum.
TYREE: Well, at the end of 1925, Christmas, 26th of December, we were married, which was not being done as much in those
6 days. These college marriages, you know.
7 FINLEY: Oh, while she was still in college?
TYREE: Yeah, we were still in school.
FINLEY: I see, uh-hum.
TYREE: And she had been riding horses, and was on the rifle team at the university, also, and taught swimming, to help herself get through. Well, anyway, we started to live in an apartment, basement apartment of an old church, which was, again, located between the interurban station and the university in Norman. Now this is important. You see why you do this and why you get that all depended on my getting to Colorado College, but it's coincidental circumstances.
And about the middle of the spring I was out on the porch--stoop--just at suppertime, which I never had done before, and I never have done since. And a man came by and said, "I didn't know you were here. When are you getting out of school?"
I said, "In the summer."
He said, "Come up to Ponca City, and I'll give you a job."
Now this was important, that he be the son of a Baptist minister, and that I had roomed with his brother the first year at the university, and he was principal of a high school in Ponca City, Oklahoma. And so at the end of the summer--I went to summer school--we went to Ponca City, and he gave me a job. And economically speaking, we paid $48.50 for a one- room apartment in 1926.
FINLEY: That was pretty steep in those days, wasn't it?
TYREE: It was!
FINLEY: And what was your job in Ponca City?
TYREE: When I got to Ponca City that summer, before school started, I had a very excellent job that he gave me--I painted toilet floors! [laughter]
8 FINLEY: [laughter]
TYREE: [laughter] So this is the fact! But subsequently, in the fall, I became a teacher in junior high school of oral English for the junior high school kids. And I had about 300 a semester. You know, it was one of those two days oral English, three days music, this kind of thing that schools have done for years. And this is all important, I guess.
I helped the woman that was doing the annual school play, and you would not plan it this way, and no counselor down at Colorado College would tell an English student to be sure to take woodwork. But--I helped with the stage, and being able to build things, I helped this woman with the play for a year or two, and then she quit and got married, and I became a drama director!
FINLEY: Uh-hum! Plus the stage manager, too, I presume, and the builder of the sets and the whole thing?
TYREE: Well, this was--and at just about that time, about two years after they built a new high school out at the edge of town--which to this day is better than any high school in this city. It was modern Spanish architecture with sienna plastered outside, iron grilled windows, terrazzo floors, and fireplaces in all the classrooms on the second floor, a 1,000-seat, acoustically treated auditorium with a standard commercial stage, which no school in this town has--even at this advanced age of civilization.
FINLEY: So did you move there then, and become--
TYREE: They moved me up, and I became--they gave me--let me do some speech class, and do some play production. And this, I remind you, is about 1929, in an Oklahoma school, and they don't have much of that even here in Colorado Springs, today.
FINLEY: No.
TYREE: And they just got it at the college since I came. But anyway, this was another, just stroke of luck. And I had never put on a play in my life, and I never had any drama classes, because in the twenties, there were no schools,
9 universities, that had speech departments.
10 FINLEY: That's right; it was a new thing.
TYREE: It became, you know, when they had the government- supported theater in the Depression. I was in one of those at Iowa University, that had been written for the government, on Madame Miscovalli [???]. That was at Iowa University, and I worked on the sets and so on.
But the other thing about this particular town, to be fortunate enough to go there, which is as accidental as anything can be. The City Auditorium in Ponca City, Oklahoma, was the same kind of theater. It was a commercial state, with a 1,000-seat auditorium. It wasn't as nice as the high school's, because they elaborated the high school's pretty much. But it had dressing rooms below, and a fly gallery [??] and what we call a gridiron above the stage. The ceiling above the stage was 70 feet, where you can lift scenery, you see. It's like Armstrong Hall--
FINLEY: Armstrong is now, yeah.
TYREE: --and the Art Center. They're the only ones in town. So I learned in a place like that. But the other thing that got me to Colorado College--this really did, because I was actually being prepared to get to Colorado College.
FINLEY: Very practical experience.
TYREE: Because I had never done a play, and hadn't seen very many, because the old town I lived in was 6,000 people, and Durant had some Chautauqua--
FINLEY: But not much else--
TYREE: In those old days, and they had third-rate vaudeville, but it wasn't very classic! [laughter]
FINLEY: [laughter]
TYREE: But, of course, I started reading everything I could find on drama. The Yale 47 workshop that O'Neill was in was
11 one of the most famous at that period. But the other thing that was happening during the twenties in Ponca City; it was the headquarters of the Myron Oil Company, which is now the Continental Oil Company.
FINLEY: Plenty of money came into town, huh?
TYREE: Well, E. W. Myron was a very fine man, and he built an Italian villa in Ponca City, which is still there, that in those days cost $1.5 million, and it has now become a showplace for the city. But there were very well-to-do people for those times, and they had had, all during the twenties, New York road shows with the original cast play this theater in the town. And as soon as I got connected with doing plays, I started working every show that came to town as a stagehand.
FINLEY: I guess you learned a lot!
TYREE: Well, I learned everything!
FINLEY: Yes!
TYREE: I didn't know anything!
FINLEY: That's tremendous!
TYREE: So this is how all of these things [chuckle] went together! It was really quite a story!
FINLEY: Yes, indeed!
TYREE: And I saw how the New York people did a show; the stage manager; the organization, and I started doing them this way at the high school. I had a complete New York stage crew with every play I did.
FINLEY: Wonderful training for the kids, yeah.
TYREE:
12 Well, not the kids--for me!
13 FINLEY: [chuckle]
TYREE: And of course, the English, and the woodwork--you wouldn't believe it--
FINLEY: Fit together!
TYREE: --worked together!
FINLEY: Sure, they did!
TYREE: And I learned how to build scenery, and learned how they did it, and of course, with reading and I went to the Dallas Little Theater School one summer on a lab course, in which they told me how to make glue and how to put a cloth on a frame, and lists of one-act plays. And this man who was director down there at that time was one of the best in the whole country.
So we started doing these plays. We had a woman in town who had written, over several years, wrote five different original plays and we produced them with either school faculty or my students--originals. One of those was sold to Samuel Prince a play agent in New York. And with our cast in the book.
FINLEY: Great!
TYREE: So now this is college work, when you're doing things like that! And then I did marionettes with the kids for three or four years--not puppets, but the 24-inch marionettes. And I did all kinds of one-act plays, and four or five three-act plays a year, and had classes. And it may be of interest at this moment that I got a letter from Lew Worner, which you may know--president of Colorado College.
FINLEY: Yes, indeed!
TYREE: And he's in Arizona, and he went out to play golf the other day, and he didn't have anybody to play with, and the manager of the golf course said, "Here's a man that doesn't
14 have anyone to play with." And he turned out to be an oil man, and he turned out to be one of my former students! [laughter]
FINLEY: Former students at Ponca City! Isn't that a coincidence! [laughter]
TYREE: I had had him in Arms and the Man. His name was Wayne Morgan.
FINLEY: Is that right?
TYREE: And Lew played with him, I guess, just the other day! [laughter]
FINLEY: Amazing coincidences! [laughter] Well now tell me, were you at Ponca City then up until the time you came to Colorado College?
TYREE: We went to Ponca City in 1926, and we were there 17 years. And so that the people in the future will realize, I made a colossal salary: $1700 a year for 17 years!
FINLEY: Never got a raise?
TYREE: Well, we got a little raise, but . . . Of course, that was during the Depression.
FINLEY: Oh, yes.
TYREE: And at that time, $40 or $50 a week, I mean in your kind of a job, would be all you'd get in the Depression.
FINLEY: Oh, goodness!
TYREE: Those office jobs were about $40 to $50 a week.
FINLEY: Well now, Colorado College, of course, had Art Sharp as
15 its drama coach all through the thirties, and then he went off to some kind of wartime work, and I guess there was an interim period there in about 1942 when a man named Arch Lauterer coached the CC drama people.
TYREE: The impresario!
FINLEY: Yeah.
TYREE: From Vienna.
FINLEY: From Vienna?
TYREE: And when I came--
FINLEY: Tell me how you got here. I mean, he was there, and then Carol Truax kind of filled in; they must have been looking for somebody.
TYREE: Carol Truax filled in a great deal! [laughter]
FINLEY: [laughter] How did you get there, though?
TYREE: Okay. Well, I did all these plays there, and got a scholarship on things I had done to Northwestern one summer, and then this assistantship that I had--six months at Iowa and six months at State University at Stillwater.
Along about '42, one of my students that I had had in poetry reading and--I started radio in high school, and that's one reason we had it here, because we had a little station there. We got a line to town, and I had boys in the Future Farmers who did the morning farm program five days a week, which you hear on KOA. I had kids announcing football games. We had debates on. We did eight or ten programs a week from the high school, over that station. Having done that is the reason I started it when I came to Colorado College, and that's the reason we ended getting the first FM station in the whole Rocky Mountain area.
FINLEY: KRCC! [chuckle]
16
TYREE: KRCC! But this girl, Hazel Spore--
17 FINLEY: Hazel Spore was a student of yours, huh?
TYREE: She was a student, and she came to Colorado College because her mother had gone to Colorado College, and that was in '42 or '3. Well, anyway, she immediately got here as a freshman and got in one of Truax's plays, that Truax was sort of doing then. I forget the name of the play at the minute.
But when she came home Christmas, she said, "They are looking at Colorado College for someone to do two or three plays a year and teach a little English and do some things of this kind." And she said, "I think you could get the job, if you wanted it."
Well, when she went back, she went in and saw C. B. Hershey, acting president. So she did it!
FINLEY: Did he then write to you?
TYREE: He wrote to me and said something to the effect that "We've heard about you, and if you'd like to come up for an interview." About this time of the year--it was about April. And I did. And I was interviewed by a member of the English department and the music department, and Martha Wilcox.
FINLEY: Now who was Martha Wilcox?
TYREE: See, you're so young, you don't even remember!
FINLEY: I don't remember Martha Wilcox.
TYREE: She was the dance teacher.
FINLEY: Ohhhhh.
TYREE: And a very close friend of Carol Truax's. Well, several people interviewed me, and I brought a stack of my pictures that I'd had at the high school. And it's sad, what you've just [can't understand] What was the Vienna's name?
FINLEY:
18 Lauterer, Arch Lauterer.
19 TYREE: Lauterer. No, it wasn't Lauterer. There was another one. Lauterer was here--
FINLEY: He was from Bennington, I thought.
TYREE: Yeah, he was from Mills College.
FINLEY: There was another one?
TYREE: Well, anyway, Lauterer was first, and then there was another one the next year.
FINLEY: I don't know who that was. He was the Viennese, huh?
TYREE: He was the impresario that would sit in the auditorium when we were rehearsing and said, "I don't like this person; bring me another one!"
FINLEY: But you don't remember his name?
TYREE: I've forgotten his name.
FINLEY: Well, I'll look it up.
TYREE: Well, anyway . . .
FINLEY: Was he still there after you arrived?
TYREE: No, he was not there. But when I was interviewed, I mainly said, "Here are some of my pictures, and I've done many, many one-act plays, and many long plays. I've written a few things." I wrote two or three of our graduation addresses. That is, we didn't--the students and I would do a show of 30 minutes instead of having a speaker.
FINLEY: Sounds much more lively!
20 TYREE: Well, The Ramparts We Watched, or something in keeping, you know.
FINLEY: Uh-hum. Well, they must have been impressed with all your experience and credentials.
TYREE: Well, I said, "I've never been anywhere but in Oklahoma, and I've taught grade school, junior high, and then teach in the senior high. I don't have any name; nobody knows anything about me. I've done a lot of plays, and I think I can do an ordinary play as well as anybody, but I am not an impresario; I was not born in Vienna--" [laughter] And so on!
FINLEY: [laughter]
TYREE: Because I didn't want to oversell myself, literally, you know. I never believed in that in the first place, to say anything to get a job. But that's how I got here.
FINLEY: You were hired. So you came in the fall of '44, to start, huh?
TYREE: I came in the summer of '44.
FINLEY: Summer of '44.
TYREE: And Dr. Daehler was head of the English department at that time, and of course Mr. Krutzke and Knapp and . . . oh, what's his name . . . McCue. Those were the main people. Tom Ross came along there before long. He was a student then, I guess. And Lew had been a student not long before.
FINLEY: That's right. Well, then, you immediately started activating theater activities at Colorado College. Where were your plays held?
TYREE: Well, at first, Dr. Daehler was very kind, and quite open. And of course, Colorado College had never had--Art Sharp had done wonderful things with the Koshare, but there
21 never had been any classes.
22 FINLEY: I see.
TYREE: So I suppose that I was first to start classes in radio--not at first, but we did get credit for radio; they don't do it now.
FINLEY: But classes in drama and speech?
TYREE: Classes in drama, and a speech class, and I taught some English, and I had play production and acting--two different classes. And then I started a speech class, and then did some freshman English at first. These were established, which of course had not been before; I get that small credit. And I had my classes for three years in old Cogswell Theater.
FINLEY: In the basement of Bemis Hall.
TYREE: In the basement of Bemis Hall was a little theater, and there, in the corner, is one of the benches.
FINLEY: From Cogswell Theater, my goodness!
TYREE: From Cogswell Theater.
FINLEY: I've never been down in the basement. Is the stage down there?
TYREE: It's still in levels, but all the benches have been taken out. It was a historical little place.
FINLEY: And so that's where you put on some of your plays, too?
TYREE: Well, that's where we did rehearsing, and we put on plays in Perkins Hall.
FINLEY: Oh, sure.
23 TYREE: Perkins Hall, at that time, was still a chapel, with a very, just an eight-foot stage. And it had an organ in it. And the Women's Education Society--I forget even what year that was.
FINLEY: Well, they remodeled it.
TYREE: They rebuilt it, and made about a 500-seat theater out of it, and it was really a very good practice theater. Of course, we didn't have any loft, any space above the stage. But I did several plays in there, and a good number of variety shows, because I did the variety shows until I retired. We got those started, and used to have lots of fun with them.
FINLEY: Tell me a little bit about the variety shows. I was looking at the old programs of the variety shows, and there was one in 1961 that was billed as the 14th annual variety show, which would mean that they must have started right after the war. Were you responsible for the first annual variety show?
TYREE: Well, I don't remember whether they had had them before or not.
FINLEY: Certainly not under that name.
TYREE: Under that name. But we started them along . . . now '61? That was about '48, wasn't it?
FINLEY: '47, '48, uh-hum.
TYREE: We started them, and you can--somebody for you to get ahold of on those dates right there is Wes Bradley.
FINLEY: I bet he'd be fun to talk to.
TYREE: Because Wes Bradley and I were the ones that started them at that time.
24 FINLEY: Is that right?
25 TYREE: So you get Wes, and get a little note from him on it, because, well, you see, Orvis Grout came just about a year and a half or two years after I came, and he and I, of course, have been very, very close over all the years. He actually taught two years for me.
FINLEY: Oh, he did? At CC?
TYREE: At the college, on some acting.
FINLEY: Did you ever put on plays at the Fine Arts Center then?
TYREE: Oh, yeah, after. And we put on plays at the Art Center. But at first, we tried to do them in Perkins. I did The Glass Menagerie in Perkins, and I think Comedy of Errors. I've forgotten; I can't remember; that's too far back. Also, I was assisting in the music department, too, on the staging things, nearly everything. When Jo . . . oh, what's her name? The composer who was here for years?
FINLEY: Harris?
TYREE: Harris! Jo Harris always opened the piano concerts when the season started, and we set up--let's see. My poor production people--I think now they have to pay everybody that does anything, but my students did everything for nothing!
FINLEY: Volunteers, uh-hum.
TYREE: But we would set up the stage at the Art Center for Jo Harris, and for the musicals that were held there. And also, I helped at the beginning with two or three operas they did, with the college and the town. They did Hansel and Gretel, and I did the set for it. They did Merry Wives of Windsor was another opera that was done in the Art Center.
FINLEY: Now, Orvis was responsible for this?
TYREE: No, I was!
26
27 FINLEY: But who was the opera company?
TYREE: Well, the opera company was the music department of Colorado College, with singers in town.
FINLEY: I see.
TYREE: At that time, they worked together. Somebody else you need to interview is Lil McCue.
FINLEY: Oh, sure.
TYREE: For sure! And get ready to do a four-volume book! Because right in there was when she was most active, and she and Carol were the very best of friends, and wrote a cookbook together, and so on, you know.
FINLEY: Uh-hum, I remember that.
TYREE: And I used to cook for both of them. For Carol, I used to do smoked turkeys for her parties, because that's what she was famous for around, was throwing whing-dings.
FINLEY: Let's digress for just a moment from all your play productions, and tell me a little more about Carol Truax and her role--for posterity's sake--her role in the college and in the community. She was really something!
TYREE: Well, she was a very capable and unusual person, and was a tremendous organizer and leader in activities. Of course, she was sort of secretary of the music department for awhile, had that office up in Cutler, in the corner where Mendoza is.
FINLEY: Oh, sure.
TYREE: Well, she had come out here, as I understand, from New York, and had been sick, and was kind of bedridden for some time. And she started a bookstore downtown, their bookshop,
28 and Max Lanner's wife worked for her, right?
29 FINLEY: Uh-hum.
TYREE: You knew that?
FINLEY: Uh-hum.
TYREE: Well, anything in the social activities of all of Colorado Springs and the Broadmoor, because she was a very close friend of the Tutts--
FINLEY: Uh-hum, she was involved in all that.
TYREE: And still is. She still has come out and done the summer shows in the International Center. Now the fact is, when we came to town, she was, of course, sort of directing of what plays and activities and with Martha Wilcox and the dance, and Max in the music. And she got us our first apartment, over on Cheyenne Road, and it just had been rebuilt. It was in that park over there, at the end of Cheyenne Road.
FINLEY: Oh, Stratton Park area?
TYREE: Stratton Park, just below the chapel, that's where we lived the first year. And then she got Ruth a job at Cheyenne School, teaching under Dr. Lloyd Shaw, where she taught for 21 years.
FINLEY: Yes, indeed. Well, Carol, you said, threw a lot of whing-dings?
TYREE: Well, she--when anyone wanted a proper function performed, Carol was always in charge of it, because there was no one that could beat her on it. She knew how to do it in the finest way.
FINLEY: So had you been barbecuing turkeys before you came to Colorado?
TYREE:
30 Well, no, no. That's another story! I've got another one you won't believe! I had bought smoked turkeys from a man in Ponca City, who had--a friend of mine in the high school was a musician, and he and I used to buy these smoked turkeys from him that he did in paper bags. And he told me how to do them, before I came. And in 1945, when I first bought that place over at--
FINLEY: Mesa Road?
TYREE: Mesa Road, which is still there, I started experimenting, and I built a brick oven, and started doing this, and that's where all my parties came from. Because I used to do them with Carol and for Carol, and I'd cook turkeys for her, for some of her parties, and so she and I in that respect did those things for quite awhile. And that's when I started doing the annual August picnic for Hanya Holm, which I've done for over 25 years, and I'll have another one this summer.
FINLEY: Is that right? This will be about her 45th or 6th--I don't know.
TYREE: Or 35 or so. Of course, she was dancing at that time, and doing a full two-hour dance show.
FINLEY: All during the war, she came out, every summer.
TYREE: Oh, she came every summer.
FINLEY: Did she at that time still draw quite a few students with her?
TYREE: Oh, yeah!
FINLEY: They followed her out here, didn't they?
TYREE: Well, and then people from all over the country.
FINLEY: Yes.
31
TYREE: Teachers--they knew of her, and this has continued, you see.
32 FINLEY: Oh, of course. And where did she do those dance productions in those early days?
TYREE: [can't understand]
FINLEY: The Art Center, sure.
TYREE: Of course, she's nearly always been over at the . . . what's the small gym?
FINLEY: Oh, Cossitt.
TYREE: Cossitt, Cossitt. She's always used that gym, as long as I can remember. So it was my good fortune, too at that time to work for her, and I did the sets. They weren't as good as Klaus's, I'll say [chuckle] because no one can beat Claus [Holm] on scenery. But I learned a tremendous lot about theater from Hanya, just sitting and listening to her.
FINLEY: Oh, I'll bet you did.
TYREE: And watching her. She's a remarkable person, in her personal manner and way of getting things out of people. Never, ever raises her voice.
FINLEY: Never? Hmmm.
TYREE: Never! Stage full of people, and she says, "Now, children." [laughter]
FINLEY: [laughter] And they listen?
TYREE: They have to listen, because no one does anything, ever, out of order.
FINLEY: Total control.
33 TYREE: Total, and it's the proper kind of control, because it's respect each way.
FINLEY: Certainly, of course, she's much older now, but certainly in those days, her body, just her movement of the body--she was charismatic.
TYREE: That's right. She still does it, even as crippled as she is, to some extent. Of course, she would be right in the dances, too, and be working with them. It was a tremendous experience for me.
FINLEY: Oh, I'll bet it was. Well, you were really a jack of all trades. I mean, you were constantly going strong, weren't you, all these things were coming in the summers.
TYREE: Well, in that high school, I told those people last September at a reunion of 1933 high school students, when I had been teaching about six years--seven. Pete was about six years old. I said, "I didn't know anything at all about drama when I started doing these plays. I didn't know right stage from left."
And they said, "You had us fooled!"
And I said, "Well, you weren't too hard to fool!" [laughter]
FINLEY: [laughter]
TYREE: But that town, and the authorities, really gave me, as I look back on it, complete freedom as you could get. And that's in the twenties! And we were doing plays and one-act plays. Oklahoma had one-act play contests in the twenties. We don't have anything like that.
FINLEY: No.
TYREE: I did it at the college for the high school kids, bring in plays, or scenes out of plays, and we did radio reading, we did these things. I did plays, shows over the radio with grade school kids. One or two of the local teachers would
34 get interested, and we had, for a year or two there, or three, we had children's programs on the air.
FINLEY: You're talking about Colorado College?
TYREE: Colorado College!
FINLEY: Okay.
TYREE: That's the way it ought to be used!
FINLEY: Uh-hum. Yes. Well, there is so much that the detail of how all these things got started. Let's wait on KRCC just a moment.
TYREE: Okay.
FINLEY: Because I want to ask you all about the kind of programming. But let's go back, just for a few minutes here, to the theater and all the things that were going on connected with the theater in the late forties. Did you have as much freedom, or did you feel you could do everything you wanted under the constraints of a college, compared to your time in Oklahoma? Were you--
TYREE: No, they continued the same atmosphere. Tom Rawles-- when we got out of Cogswell, and they moved that South Hall barracks building down there, where the music building is now.
FINLEY: Yeah.
TYREE: Which was my office from then on. I was the only one on the campus that never had to change. In that period, practically all the offices were changing all over the place.
FINLEY: Well, South Hall was brought in after the war ended, right?
TYREE:
35 Well, right after, just soon after.
36 FINLEY: It was moved in as a sort of a surplus building.
TYREE: They had three of them, you know, East Hall, West Hall, and South Hall, and I had started--this gets to radio again-- but before I moved out of Cogswell, I had about six or eight people--one of them was Eldor Mainville that's in Santa Fe right now, and just retired. And he wrote a three-act play that we produced at Colorado College.
Well, there were about five or six of those fellows wrote an original 30-minute radio program, which was usually some kind of a little drama, comment, every week, and they took it down to KVOR and put it on. And we practiced it in Cogswell over a PA system.
FINLEY: And this was part of requirements for your speech class?
TYREE: No, that was not.
FINLEY: Just sort of--
TYREE: That was just impromptu.
FINLEY: I see.
TYREE: People that wanted to do something, I said, "You want to do this, let's do it."
FINLEY: So you put it over the PA system in Cogswell?
TYREE: We practiced it.
FINLEY: I see.
TYREE: See, I put a mike in one room, and the speakers in the other, just like you would be right here, and that was the beginning of KRCC. But that's what I had done in the high school, so I brought what I had been doing in high school,
37 practically everything, and did it in Colorado College, and I continued to do the same things.
38 FINLEY: So these students would take this down and do it over KVOR?
TYREE: KVOR was the only radio station in Colorado Springs.
FINLEY: And how long did that go on, that they did this over KVOR?
TYREE: I can't remember exactly.
FINLEY: But what year would this have been?
TYREE: This would have been late '46 and '7, and along in there. But when they moved the barracks in, the treasurer, Tom Rawles, lived--[can't understand] he said, "We've got the barracks building." He knew I was doing this radio. He said, "How do you want to divide it?" He asked me; that's how willing they were. So we put in this control room, see.
FINLEY: There's a picture here.
TYREE: This was in the barracks room. There was a room up front, and a room out here, and where these people are is the announce booth. This is the control room, and . . . this is when we were transmitting, because there's the transmitter.
FINLEY: But before you were transmitting, it was just kind of this little sound studio?
TYREE: Before, this studio here was a remote studio, and we had a line to KVOR and KRDO, and we did about six programs a week from South Hall as a remote studio.
FINLEY: Oh, I see; I see.
TYREE: And that's when Pete was in school; Pete was on that sometimes. And this is Kelly. Kelly, Kelly.
FINLEY:
39 The guy in the--
40 TYREE: He's an electronics engineer, like Ludd [?].
FINLEY: Well, we'll find the names later. So you had this remote studio there in South Hall, and then that must have led to your idea of your own FM station?
TYREE: Well, this is . . . '47, '8, along, because Pete helped put up the tower. He graduated in '50, so this was along in '49, and in that period, we had a kind of erector set tower, little pieces that were put together--100 feet high, right there by South Hall. But we had this going, and there was a girl from New York City, Peggy Merrle-Smith . . .
FINLEY: And she gave some money didn't she?
TYREE: Well, she was in this activity with several others, and doing programs from here, and Bud Edmonds was in school then, see. And Bud's a wizard at electronics, it just came out. I didn't particularly start it, but Peggy and Bud got to talking, and Peggy said, "Why don't we build a radio station?" And said, "I'll buy the transmitter."
So Peggy bought the transmitter, and Bud put it in. Pete built the tower, and of course, that's just before Bill and Neil were in college. Then when Bill got in--he's an electronics engineer and physicist now--and he was my engineer when he was in school, a little later on.
So all three of our boys got direct benefit out of the radio station. And somebody asked me one time, said, "How come that you were able in college to build a radio station to train your boys?" [laughter]
FINLEY: [laughter]
TYREE: Of course, it worked the other way! And I'll tell you- -put out another name--Jim Kramer.
FINLEY: Jim Kramer.
TYREE: Jim Kramer was in on this. If you'd get a few remarks from him would be good.
41 FINLEY: He was one of the early helpers there, uh-hum.
TYREE: Jim has [can't understand] Auto Parts uptown, and Jim built an FM station in Wichita right after he went out of school, and then sold it, and then moved back here. Somebody else to talk to is Kay Freyschlag.
FINLEY: Oh, sure, yeah.
TYREE: Because Kay was in my classes in Cogswell, and Don Bates was, too.
FINLEY: And they all still live here in town; sure, I know those gentlemen quite well.
TYREE: Well, I got a card right here while I was gone--look here!
FINLEY: From Don Bates! [laughter] "How come you never stay home?" Well, now, KRCC then, when you built your little tower, and got the transmitter, you had to get a license to begin broadcasting--
TYREE: Oh, yeah, you had to make application to the FCC, just like any station.
FINLEY: Well, FM was brand new, and you say this is the first FM station in the whole Rocky Mountain--
TYREE: Brand new! We were pioneers in FM, for Denver, and Boulder and the whole outfit!
FINLEY: Of course, you didn't have a very big range. How--
TYREE: Well, they only had 10 watts at first.
FINLEY: Ten watts! [chuckle]
42 TYREE: But we could cover--with ten watts you can cover quite a bit. But Peggy bought the transmitter, and also six or eight FM receivers, and we put them around in the dorms, see.
FINLEY: Oh, sure.
TYREE: It's the way we started.
FINLEY: So people could listen in the dorms.
TYREE: Yeah. And then we wired--we had an army telephone line strung from South Hall to Shove Chapel, too, put them on the telephone poles so we could run out of Shove Chapel, too.
FINLEY: So you could broadcast whatever was going on there?
TYREE: Yeah. We did some of that. Of course, it was kind of helter-skelter there for awhile.
FINLEY: I'm sure it was. Did you get cooperation from KVOR and KRDO? Did you continue to broadcast for them at all?
TYREE: Well, after we got our transmitter, why, we didn't.
FINLEY: No.
TYREE: But Harry Hoth and KRDO was most helpful, because any time we got into trouble, he'd send his engineers out and help us. [laughter]
FINLEY: [laughter]
TYREE: So when Harry Hoth, when he got his FM station, not too long ago, he was trying to get in on that frequency that they are now on, and see, we were 91.3, and he asked me if we would technically move over to 91.5 so he could get in.
FINLEY:
43 I see. So is it now 91.5; has it changed?
44 TYREE: It's 91.5, but it was 91.3, and he asked me if I would be willing to do this, and I said, "Absolutely! Just whatever you want to do, why, do it!" Because nobody helped us as much as Harry Hoth and his organization.
FINLEY: Well now, you were in South Hall all through the fifties there, with that radio station, and how many hours a day did you broadcast in those days--do you remember? It's a totally student operation.
TYREE: It's all student operated, entirely. I can't remember how many hours we were on. I'd have to go back and look at the logs.
FINLEY: [chuckle] Well, that's all right. Then tell me now how you managed to get that beautiful station in Rastall Center, and transfer everything over there. When they were planning Rastall, did you get in on the ground floor there?
TYREE: Yeah, we got in on the ground floor, and the director over there was interested in it. What was his name?
FINLEY: Of Rastall Center?
TYREE: At first.
FINLEY: Oh, gee, I should remember it, because I was in school at the time, but I don't remember.
TYREE: Well, anyway. They agreed to do that; some little discussion before we got it, and then they went over, and we went to 250 watts, and moved the transmitter, and the controls--we got a better control board and things of this kind, mechanically and technically. But that was all there was to it. And then Pete redesigned that tower. That was given to us by Harry Hoth, from the old radio station that used to be down on Cascade, where KRDO used to be, in that old hotel building, you know, down in the basement.
FINLEY: I remember that, yeah, because I used to go down there.
45 TYREE: And . . . let's see. He gave us that old tower, and Pete redesigned it as a free-standing tower. See, it had been a wire guide, and Pete made what they call an underground sort of mattress form at the back of Rastall Center there, if you go look at the base, there'll be ten or 12 feet that that's anchored, like a big foot at the bottom of the tower. So you don't have to guy it. And that's 137 feet high, and he redesigned it. Weickers brought their hoists out, and Bill Smart gave us $7,000 to do it.
FINLEY: Well, that's nice!
TYREE: Well, he--
FINLEY: Had he been a former student?
TYREE: He'd been in my class once, years ago! [chuckle]
FINLEY: [chuckle] That's nice.
TYREE: And Harry Hoth, Bill Smart, Pete, put it together, you know, in a technical--and Bill made it possible. But that's how we--but that all--the thing that's most interesting about anything is that if you don't start something, you'll never do anything. You don't wonder--you just start, however little and small it may be.
FINLEY: And it grows!
TYREE: Well, it can grow! It may not, but it can't if you don't start.
FINLEY: That's right.
TYREE: And now, starting this in Ponca City, in high school, when nobody was doing it--I don't know why I ever did it in the first place!
FINLEY: [chuckle]
46 TYREE: But one of the boys that helped build, instrumentally, build a little station in Ponca City in 1928 was Paul Rule, who was in my plays, and he was a ham operator, like my boy Bill. And Paul worked with the people that came to put that station in first, because we weren't working with it then. But Paul Rule is now in Nashville, Tennessee, and is the secretary/director of the combined radio/TV stations of Tennessee! And he's a former student of mine! [chuckle]
FINLEY: Well, as you say, you start things, and they grow! [laughter]
TYREE: [laughter] You never know where it's going, you know.
FINLEY: That's right! Well, now, you always had student managers through all those years, didn't you, that kind of did the programming?
TYREE: Oh, yeah. I tried to get out of as much work as I could!
FINLEY: Right!
TYREE: And too many times, teachers--they're not encouraged to permit this in things you can do it in, you see. I did this in high school. I had a stage manager and I worked and worked and worked on the play with him, and the night of the play, I said, "It's all yours," and I left.
FINLEY: Well, that's the way they learn. Well now, tell me about some of the special programming that you did on KRCC. I know you produced a lot of original good programs.
TYREE: Well, of course, we mainly were doing something what they are doing here.
FINLEY: Music.
TYREE: But of course, they're doing all-music, and I did as much just ordinary, everyday radio as possible. It wasn't
47 special, because if people were going--are going--to do anything in radio, you don't get too theoretical. I had Art Guiterrez reading the news, and some other fellows, and they'd come off our little announce booth and say, "You know, I can't even read!"
And this is the good of it! That it's impressed on you that you can't read! You never thought of it, but the first time you ever did. And my point about education is--I've heard profs at the college say, "I'm not doing very well this semester; I have a very stupid group of students."
And I said, "Well, that's very fortunate they're stupid, or they wouldn't need you!"
FINLEY: [laughter]
TYREE: Did you ever think of it this way? That's what you're there for. If they knew all you knew--
FINLEY: They wouldn't need you.
TYREE: --they don't need--all you know, they wouldn't need you. A school, besides learning facts, ought to be a place to try things, and that has always been my attitude toward education. It's been vocational, from my point of view. It's personal. There are two sides to education, and one of them is facts and information. And the other one is what it does to you. It's the human, personal, emotional quality of the individual. And these two are equally important to me.
FINLEY: Well certainly in your field, the kind of things the theater--
TYREE: Well, in any field, it is. I've had students say, "Well, I don't like this teacher."
I said, "I don't care whether you like the teacher or not--does he know anything? Pick his brains! You're not in there to love the teacher; you're in there to learn something!"
FINLEY: To learn, right.
48 TYREE: I have said that a good many times.
49 FINLEY: So you did--your students wrote original things, too. They wrote various--
TYREE: Well, they wrote some things like that, and I had grade schools in. I used to get--my last fifth and sixth grade would go out and they'd read a story. We'd tape it like this, and put it on, and then they could listen to themselves, and then I used to have contests, debate, oratory, and one-act plays, and radio reading, so that they'd have announcing, or spot reading, cold reading, or come in and bring something that you've read, and then we'd hand them something, see. But we did this, and I think it's good.
FINLEY: And it was certainly a novelty in that period, because television hadn't come in, and kids weren't so tuned in to the audio-visual media, and it was really a wonderful thing for them to do.
TYREE: Ed Boychuk, about seven or eight years ago, through Juan Reid, sent me a letter. "Dear Chief: Your radio class I took has helped get me in Canadian radio/television with schools."
Well, now, Ed was not one of my most prominent students, but a good many of those fellows took that. But it isn't how much you teach everybody, but they've done some of it. It's a start.
Just like Bill is rated at Dow Chemical or at the Rocky Flats now, as a Ph.D. He has a B.S. from Colorado College in physics, but he has several inventions with the company; he's done a number of original papers that have been sent all over the world on health physics and nuclear and atomic stuff. But it's--he didn't learn all that at Colorado College, or did Howard Olson.
FINLEY: No, but he certainly--the basics were there.
CASSETTE ONE - SIDE TWO
This is side two of tape recording number 25 of the Colorado College Archives Oral History project. I am Judy Finley, continuing my interview with retired Professor Woodson Tyree, who taught speech, drama and radio at Colorado College from 1944 until 1968.
50 TYREE: I think I was mentioning Howard Olson and Dr. Boucher, that the boys thought a great deal of. See, Neil had the physics degree, and so did Bill, and Pete had his in structural engineering, from Bob Koons, at that time. But I taught so long, and I have had people now coming back, just like this Wayne Morgan that shows up on the golf course! And this is an interesting thing that you can see what happened to people.
FINLEY: What they did with their education.
TYREE: What was just information, and also what was motivation, and inspiration, that I got in my school, and you have, from different teachers and situations. The learning process is the good of school--and school is to me just an incident in your education--it's not all of it. Anybody who thinks college is all you have to do is missing the point.
And there's a place for drama in high schools even more than in college, because there's something that happens to these kids at that time that I have observed, by my particular accident of my life, that . . . well, band, orchestra, glee club, opera, drama--these things are personal. Getting biological information, and chemical information--it's personal that you get it, but it's hard to teach it the same way to be personal.
FINLEY: Or to carry it through in the same--
TYREE: Well, it may carry through later, you become mostly interested in opening. And that's the good teachers today, in chemistry or physics or anything else, that he's not only teaching principles of physics, but he's teaching you the whole picture of life. And that is where inspiration comes from, for the person. And that's all there is to say about education! [laughter]
FINLEY: [laughter]
TYREE: Of course, the word education itself means to be led out of.
FINLEY: To be led out of; that's right.
51 TYREE: And a pedagogue is one that walks around and talks with you--ped. You get a different picture. It's like "poet" means a maker; one who builds, creates. A millwright, a wheelwright, is a man that builds wheels--a w-r-i-g-h-t.
Well, what else did you have planned?
FINLEY: [laughter] I'm very interested in your theories of education, because I think that's what Colorado College is all about, and after all, you taught there many years.
TYREE: I think that's been the greatness of it.
FINLEY: Yes, indeed. Now, let's go back a moment to some of the things you did in the drama department. I'm particularly interested in having you describe the variety shows, because they have fallen by the wayside; they no longer exist, and to me, that was one of the highlights of the college year, and the whole campus got involved. So can you describe to people who have no idea, who are in the future, what a variety show was?
TYREE: Well, it's really the idea of a frolic and a stunt night, and barndance kind of an atmosphere, that anybody that wants to come up and show off--and some of mine used to be pretty long, because I didn't like to cut them out.
FINLEY: You let everybody into the act.
TYREE: Somebody'd say, "Your show is too long."
I said, "There's nothing to keep you from getting up and leaving. When you get enough, go home!"
But I know in those last years I used to get about two dozen guitar players!
FINLEY: And they weren't all equally talented?
TYREE: No, but that's the point.
52 FINLEY: That's not the point; the point is everybody participates, yeah.
TYREE: I think one of the profs said that to me one time, said that my shows were kind of amateurish, and not the best. I said, "That's what we're here for. If we had professional New York actors, I wouldn't even put them in it."
And that's a criticism I have of some university places that put the profs and import actors to be in the students' plays. I never have approved of that, and never would do it. Kids are paying their money, and they ought to get the parts, if they want it.
FINLEY: Can you recall some of the most enjoyable acts and kinds of things that students put on that they seemed to get the most out of? Not just the solo acts, the guitars or the pianists, but what about--
TYREE: No. Well, we used to--we did have some good numbers in variety shows, and we had some terrible ones. But the main point of it is if you want to perform, and it's all for fun and amazement,[s/b amusement?] and for your own friends, and we did it for that reason, but every once in a while, we'd have--well, Norm Cornick nearly always came up with a good number--two or three numbers.
I always started with classic music, and Max Lanner, they would give me a piano player or you know, something like this, it would be real classic, and I would start it with that. So you didn't have to come back from what we got later on, which could get kind of foolish and funny. But we started this way, and then I tried to get as much variety as I could.
FINLEY: Now the fraternities and sororities--
TYREE: We used to build them a good deal around the fraternities and sororities to have an act. And I think the first time Pete was in a barbershop quartet in public was the Sigma Chis, and they sang in variety shows when he was in school.
FINLEY: I recall that the faculty also used to put on a faculty
53 act, which was always great fun for the students to watch.
54 TYREE: We did that--not every time, but a number of times, we did that, too.
FINLEY: I remember one--
TYREE: [Both talking at once] Amanda Ellis was in that one time, yeah.
FINLEY: Yeah.
TYREE: Well, it was a free for all in that sense. We just tried to make fun out of it, and I think that there wasn't any particular reason they should have stopped it, because there are still people that like to show off, and there's a certain amount of good to be gotten out of public appearance, because a lot of people get in positions where what they're doing depends on public relations, and your effect upon a group of people in talking to them in committees or in groups, and so on. And . . . let's see . . . what did we have? Of course, we had those some at Perkins. Were you there when we were in Perkins?
FINLEY: Yes, they were still in Perkins when I was in school, and I suppose [both talking at once].
TYREE: Well, I guess we never did go over to the Art Center with it, did we?
FINLEY: Not that I know of.
TYREE: On the variety shows.
FINLEY: Now, you said you wouldn't have had them in Armstrong?
TYREE: Well, I did.
FINLEY: You did?
TYREE:
55 I had the last two.
56 FINLEY: The last two. When was the last variety show--the year you retired?
TYREE: '68; that was the last one.
FINLEY: That's when you left!
TYREE: [laughter] It all died with me! Well, that's usually the way with departments and so on. Bill McMillen will do it his way, because when we split up, you know, finally there, I told Bill, I said, "I'll do speech and radio," and I was having five speech classes those last few years. Speech and radio was about all I did, after [can't understand]
FINLEY: Well, see, McMillen came in then about '57 or '8, right after Benezet came.
TYREE: '57 or '8, yeah.
FINLEY: And he then became more and more involved in drama, didn't he, and did most of the plays?
TYREE: Well, he wanted--that's what he did.
FINLEY: Because he was hired to be the--
TYREE: You see, then they got to get two or three other people and for those ten or twelve or so years that I did the whole thing by myself. And here they've got three or four or five people, and costumers and--we did it all--everything! And we didn't get any overtime pay, either!
FINLEY: I'll bet you didn't! [laughter]
TYREE: And . . . who was there with Bill for awhile? The stage manager?
FINLEY: Oh, not John Redmonds, no.
57 TYREE: No, before him.
FINLEY: Oh, I can't remember.
TYREE: I can't think of his name now. But I know when I was putting on a variety show one time, he came in and wanted to charge me $50 because he looked in two or three times.
And I said, "You're out of your head! I don't want to pay you anything! I used to do this for nothing! For everybody!"
And they kinda got financial in these last few years.
FINLEY: Everything sort of went professional, didn't it?
TYREE: Yeah, they went professional; everybody wouldn't do anything if they weren't paid! And we were just the opposite; we did everything and were not paid. Except, I said, "Your class work is to do what I tell you!" [laughter]
If we got a [can't understand] why, two or three of you are going to run it, because that's what we're trying to learn, is taking charge and running things, and that's the way it ought to be done.
FINLEY: Now, did Jean McMillen start her children's theater when you were still part of the faculty?
TYREE: Well, I don't remember exactly when she--of course, she started those things as soon as they got here, I think they began to do those. Of course, two summers when I was first here, the first two summers, we had a teacher in Ponca City, Christine Elrod, that I had come out, and we had, in Cogswell, children's theater, and she ran it.
And there was not anybody in the whole country that was as good as this woman was with children. She could talk a show out of kids in the most beautiful way you ever saw. She and I used to work together with children's stuff in high school. She would bring her fifth grade children's play out and put it on for the high school students.
But she had a [can't understand] Now the interesting
58 thing, that would prove what I'm saying, that those two summers that she was here, which was about '46 and '47, I think. She started helping Hanya with costumes, and Hanya Holm told me, "She is the best person with costumes that I ever saw." Now, this is New York. This Christine could just look at you and go like this, and cut out a costume.
FINLEY: Hmmmmm.
TYREE: She was a wonderful person.
FINLEY: What was her last name again?
TYREE: Elrod, E-l-r-o-d.
FINLEY: Elrod.
TYREE: Christine. But she was a very close friend of ours. She and I worked together. She and I did charity ball decorations for the Ponca City rich folks, the oil folks, and we did all kinds of things.
FINLEY: Well, now of your serious drama productions--not the variety shows, but the plays that you put on at CC, which ones are the most memorable to you?
TYREE: Well, there are several outstanding. Arms and the Man that we did in the Art Center with John Reids, who is now in professional theater in New York, and Peter Gilliland and Bob Fisher, who was here last summer, who is a director in a bank in New York and has leukemia--he stayed here about two or three days, and [chuckle] got up on the roof and helped me try to find a leak in my roof! He's a bank director!
FINLEY: Good for him!
TYREE: And this fellow was as much like he used to be as if it were yesterday. Very outgoing, fine person. But he was in that; we did that in the Art Center, and that was a good show. It wasn't anything . . . oh, world-shaking, but there was a good cast, and it was well done. That was used in it,
59 and Mary gave it to me. That was given to the college in 1906.
60 FINLEY: Oh, really, that chair. That was one of the props. What were some of the other plays?
TYREE: And then we did, of course, one of the most interesting ones we tried was Medea in Shove Chapel, with this girl right there. Peggy Merril Smith was Medea.
FINLEY: Now, Jean Jones, Jean Armstrong Jones was one of your drama students, wasn't she?
TYREE: She was not; she had just graduated.
FINLEY: Had just graduated.
TYREE: The year before. But she kept hanging around, right, and that's where she met Jerry Jones. [laughter]
FINLEY: [laughter]
TYREE: They met over at the Art Center when we were working on a play, and Jean--of course, anybody that just graduates from the school will be attracted to--even some kids way back East came back here in the summer and hung around for a couple of summers, because they couldn't get out from under the place. This is the thing, one thing that you were asking about, and I was impressed with when I first came to Colorado College, is the attraction of the former students to Colorado College. Because I don't have anything about Oklahoma University.
FINLEY: No.
TYREE: I just threw a letter in the--
FINLEY: But CC somehow--
TYREE: But it had a family, friendly, personal quality about it that was very contagious.
61 FINLEY: And of course, the town was still small enough at that point--
TYREE: The town was 35,000.
FINLEY: --that it was a very close-knit atmosphere.
TYREE: It was close with the college. The college was one of the best things the town had, and had been for years, of course. And it's an interesting, insignificant comment, that the first dinner that we ate in Colorado Springs was on Culebra at the Armstrongs' home. Mr. Armstrong--
FINLEY: He was a trustee.
TYREE: He was a trustee and he was president of the bank.
FINLEY: Yes.
TYREE: And he was absolutely a wonderful man. But that was our first meal in Colorado Springs. And we spent several days at Hersheys' cabin up Bear Creek Canyon, while we were waiting for them to finish this apartment that we went into, finally.
FINLEY: What kind of a man was Hershey? He was acting president there, and then went back into his former role in education.
TYREE: Of education, and writing the history.
FINLEY: What kind of a man was he? I don't know much about him.
TYREE: Well, he was a very formal, basically formal-type man, but very broad and understanding, and considerate in the very best sense of the word.
When I bought that place on Mesa Road, it was an old
62 farmhouse, with a tumbledown barn in the back, and Rawles lived on the Mesa, came by there when Mesa Road was open across the railroad, he came by one day in early spring of '45 and said, "I saw a For Sale sign on a house that I pass every day."
And he was instrumental in us going over there and looking at this place. It was two and a half acres and an old farmhouse. Have you been over there?
FINLEY: Oh, yes! I've been in the house.
TYREE: Well, you know how it is. And all those trees, two and a half acres, and I paid $5,300 for it!
FINLEY: [laughter] Wonderful!
TYREE: And it was an inflated price! Now this is a good economic comment here about how things have changed from 1945 to this time. [chuckle]
FINLEY: Well, you were talking about Hershey. Did he--
TYREE: Oh, yeah. He came--I went to him, because he'd done a lot of remodeling on his old cabin and built a nice living room on it, and I--it looked like an awful lot of work on that old place, and several of the college people said, "Why, I wouldn't--you had to pay $5,000 for that old place?" They said, "When the war's over, you'll be able to buy things for 15 cents a dozen." Because Mathias had bought his place on North Weber for $2500, a two and a half story house, during the Depression.
FINLEY: Yeah.
TYREE: And everybody thought that was the way it was going to be.
FINLEY: After the war, uh-hum.
TYREE: And that was, also, I was being told this. And I took
63 Hershey over there, and I said, "What do you think?"
And he looked at it, and he said, "Well, I'll tell you. If you don't mind working, it's worth the money."
64 And he was instrumental in this attitude. Of course, I never liked to do anything more than that, because that's what I did out here. Rebuilt this old place, and then we built that out of bridge timbers I got from out near Uintah, on the road. I call that architecture Late Rock Island. [laughter] FINLEY: Railroad ties! [laughter]
TYREE: Railroad ties!
FINLEY: Right.
TYREE: But after Mrs. Hershey left, you know, she went to Lebanon, Tennessee, where her sisters were, and not long after that, we visited her. We made a trip through Tennessee, and I saw this former high school student of mine, who I was telling you about, that Paul Rule. And then we stopped and spent a couple of days with Mrs. Hershey. She has since died. But they were very fine people.
FINLEY: Do you think that he wanted to be named president of CC on a regular basis?
TYREE: I don't know that.
FINLEY: You don't? Davies came back there for a little while after the war, Thurston Davies.
TYREE: Well, I don't believe it mattered to him.
FINLEY: No.
TYREE: He was a very forthright and honest and good person, in the very best sense of the word. We had him on the radio with part of his history, too.
FINLEY: At that time.
65 TYREE: We would try to get--well, Dr. Pearl was one of the most faithful ones to come over once a week or twice a week and do geology talks on radio.
FINLEY: Now, were these tapes, or just live?
TYREE: Some of them were tape; some of them were live.
FINLEY: Did they keep all those old tapes, I wonder? I'm very curious to know, because some of them would be very interesting.
TYREE: I've got some tapes in town that I'm going to just bring to you, and let you check them. I've just been about to throw them away.
FINLEY: Well, they may have some historical value, sure.
TYREE: The library might like to have them, particularly if they relate to anything about CC.
TYREE: Well, they'd be some plays that we did. We did one of the shows that I did in Oklahoma, called The Ramparts We Watched. It was a kind a Memorial Day sort of thing. We did it over KRCC, and I think I have a tape of it.
FINLEY: That would be nice to have.
TYREE: Louise Bohannan was on it, and she's living in Denver now. She was a Phi Beta Kappa. But we did the Glass Menagerie in Perkins, with Nancy Jones, and Nancy lives down the road, right where you turn. She has seven children, and they're all top rodeo performers. She's the one that Mendoza gave one of these math scholarships.
FINLEY: Oh, really? One of her--
TYREE: And I went down and told Mendoza, said, "Now we give a man that's chairman of the board over in [can't understand]
66 Basin or the Port of Entry of New York, we give him an honorary degree. And I think Nancy Jones ought to be given an honorary degree for having seven good children!" [laughter]
FINLEY: [laughter] Well, good for you! Now this, really, we could just go on and on.
TYREE: I know; this is endless.
FINLEY: It is so much fun to hear all these tales of all of your former students and colleagues, and I really don't know how to stop, because [laughter] I know there are so many more things you could tell us!
TYREE: [laughter] Well, we started the drama; we got those things going; now they've quit the speech thing, which I think they shouldn't--
FINLEY: No, they gave up the speech classes pretty much when you retired.
TYREE: They shouldn't have done it. Well, when I quit, why, some of the things that I was doing, they just--
FINLEY: They changed.
TYREE: They should establish a communication center in Colorado College, because there's just as much reason for it as the history department, and I would say more!
FINLEY: And you think for the future of CC, this would be--
TYREE: Well, the greatest invention in the history of time is radio and TV. We still, in government, and in education, are not intelligently using it. I have another long speech I could make on reorganizing the national government on a United States of America Inc., with a board of directors that are only there because of a conflict of interest.
FINLEY:
67 No, we won't go into--[laughter]
68 TYREE: No.
FINLEY: --go into all that! I can imagine!
TYREE: This is a good one!
FINLEY: I bet it is! Well, why don't you sum up, just for the record, sum up your--what it meant to you, really, to have all those years at CC? How it feels to be retired, and any advice you have for the future, besides this communication [both talking at once--can't understand].
TYREE: Well, in the first place, I want to go on record that I don't like the block system!
FINLEY: [chuckle]
TYREE: And Joe Leech, you know, just died.
FINLEY: I know.
TYREE: And Joe started that last year of his, and had his math one year--one block--and he quit. He said, "It's no good. You can't teach math in three and a half weeks the way it ought to be taught."
FINLEY: Of course, you never taught under the block system.
TYREE: I never taught under it, but I know--I was interested in getting away from the 18-week semester, which we were already cutting down to about 16, the way we did it. I think they ought to have had three or four semesters, and not have a summer school--just three semesters, with breaks between those, so that you could take off any semester you want as a faculty member or as a student, and it just goes on all the time. You come in and go long enough to get a degree. I think some of this ought to be done. But one course--Bob . . . the business manager.
FINLEY:
69 Oh, Broughton.
70 TYREE: Bob Broughton--he's a real fine person. One of his remarks that first year, he said, "The best thing, or one of the most noticeable things about the block system is that there are never any students on campus!" Which means that as soon as they get a block over, they leave.
FINLEY: They're too tired to stay around!
TYREE: No, they're not too tired! Did you ever follow any of them? They're never tired! They may not do what you want. This was my class definition of a lazy person. A lazy person I've never seen. I've seen sick ones, but not lazy, because if you follow one of those college students around, it would kill you!
But he said for that reason--and this is another thing that hurts drama and your sorority activities and your social life at the college is not helped by the block system. Because everybody takes off. I define it this way: The block system is old burgundy whiskey aged in the wood overnight!
FINLEY: [laughter]
TYREE: I know that fast study has its places.
FINLEY: Yes.
TYREE: But for the spirit of the school I think will not ever be the same again, because there is not the leisure feeling.
FINLEY: And you feel the atmosphere of leisure is important to the kind of educational experience you're talking about-- motivation, inspiration--
TYREE: I think so, and I think that was the greatest thing that Colorado College had, because anybody can teach facts. But the spirit and friendliness and comradeship straight across--I'm not older than you, I'm a person, you're a person, and we're talking. And this was the quality of Colorado College that seemed to bring people back to it--the experiences that they had. And it's got to--I told my boys,
71 I said, "You will never, ever in your life, ever again, be with as many fine people with as similar attitudes and dispositions and levels of intelligence as you are in this college. So get acquainted with people."
FINLEY: Make the most of it, right.
TYREE: Because day after tomorrow Wayne Morgan will meet the president on the golf course, and he'll give you a million dollars! And he might just do that, and Lew's not above asking him, is he? [laughter]
FINLEY: [laughter]
TYREE: Well, I want to tell you one other--you got time?
FINLEY: One more, and then I think we'll close.
TYREE: One quick thing, on this side of this thing, or two, real quick. Velma Casey, whose father taught me to cook chicken, right, and I, and we, and my family got more good out of you-all coming to our house over the years, than people could realize. They said, "Why do you go to so much trouble?"
I said, "Don't worry; I don't ever do something for nothing."
Because we were--it's not bad to meet people; you never know what they'll do to you nor for you.
FINLEY: So you enjoyed doing the barbecues and thought of it as a chance to meet people?
TYREE: Well, yeah, I [can't understand] But I did it anyway, but then this is a by-product of it.
FINLEY: Certainly.
TYREE: Velma Casey called me just before Christmas. Her name is Velma Gillich; she married her Ponca City high school
72 sweetheart. They have been 21 years in Jakarta. He is a vice president in the Exxon Oil Company. She is there right now. She has become an authority on Indonesian art and Ming china--Ming porcelain and jade. She has a shop in Denver, which you need to see later on, on Fillmore Street, at the Continental Brokers Restaurant.
FINLEY: Really?
TYREE: Full of things that she's brought from Indonesia. She gave 200 pieces of work to the Toeffler Museum before Christmas, and she has a houseful--it's just like a museum to go into her house. I had her in class, and she was telling me--I said, "That was a beautiful dress." I got a picture out that I had out here, of her, and I had it blown up to three feet, like I've done some of these of Ruth, see?
FINLEY: Uh-hum.
TYREE: And I took it up to her for a Valentine, and wrote a poem about it. And I said, "The best things you have in your shop of Ming porcelain and china and jade is yourself!"
FINLEY: [chuckle] Well, that's a wonderful feeling.
TYREE: Well, it's true!
FINLEY: And a wonderful sentiment. And I think that really sums up the essence of what you were trying to do all these years.
TYREE: But she never did go to college! She worked and put her husband through college at Stillwater, at engineering, and she told me that she had a hard time; they had about five children, and they didn't have much money, and she was--she said her dad beat on her a little bit, and I didn't know this about him.
But--she has said that this Christine Elrod, that she had in grade school, and the plays that I put her in, and we had a wonderful music in the school, she said, "I didn't have anything else to take off from but that."
73 The other one, quickly.
FINLEY: Go ahead.
74 TYREE: In 1972, I went to a high school reunion at Ponca City. I had been teaching about six years [can't understand] . A man came there that I hadn't seen in 40 years. Quickly, it turned out that I'd had him in nearly every play I did while he was in high school. He was in the state contest that won a beautiful bronze plaque, the only trophy I ever saw that was worth having, for itself. It was a Chinese play, and I wrote his part, to introduce the play. He was in two or three long plays and several short plays.
He showed up at this, and he was a tall brunette, handsome fellow that, you know, some high school kids are [can't understand] as they're going to get when they are grown. He came, and he had so changed physically, that he had gotten big, just awfully big, and had been crippled from a pole climbing accident, because he had been in electricity all his life.
These last few years he was president of the Dowser Electric Corporation at $100,000 a year. He was a millionaire. And he comes up to me and said, "I would have been here yesterday, but I had to go to court because I had a strike at one my plants in Illinois," right out of St. Louis- -"and I wanted to get an injunction, and I wanted this judge to turn me down because I had something on him."
But anyway, he said, "I came to see you."
I said, "You must be out of your mind."
But what happened over this weekend. My birthday was two days later, the 27th we were meeting--the 29th of May. Another person, I was staying in their home, a girl that I had had in high school, who was an excellent actress, good as anybody I ever had here in family-type plays.
And she and this man, boy, lived across the street from each other. Of course, in high school, it's so different. Everybody lives in town. So she was going to give me a birthday hamburger out at her little place out across the river, and got to get it closer together. [??] So I asked him if he would go, and you saw my Vega?
FINLEY: Yes.
TYREE: I had just bought a Vega, just like that one.
FINLEY:
75 Uh-hum.
76 TYREE: And he got in the Vega and we were going down the Arkansas River, to go across the bridge, and he said, "You don't realize how much good those orations and plays and those radio programs you put me in have done me in the business world."
I mean, this is just what I've been--the other side. Because he was a rough--now, he made his own beer when he was in high school, and he had this kind of job. Of course, he was the kind of man that would succeed no matter who had anything to do with him. You know, some people are like that; you just get the credit for something.
FINLEY: But--[both talking at once--can't understand].
TYREE: The experience, it's the start. He said, "When I get up to speak, nobody ever misunderstands a word I say."
And I said, "Well, Charles, I learned early in this business that I always pick smart people!"
And I did. I spent more time casting a play than anything here and there. Because--the better you are, the less work I have to do, and a suggestion is enough, you know.
FINLEY: Uh-hum.
TYREE: Well, anyway, we went and had the dinner and came back and went to his sister's house, she still lives in Ponca City. And he walked over to me that afternoon, and I was telling him about the car, you know, and he said, "I really owe you something." He threw down a check and said, "That's for your birthday!" $2600!
FINLEY: My goodness!
TYREE: I talked to him the other night, and he may come by.
FINLEY: Oh, isn't that wonderful!
TYREE: That's crazy!
77 FINLEY: Why, no! It speaks of a very rewarding life involving your relationships with people over the years, and I really have enjoyed every minute of your stories.
TYREE: But the best thing; we came to Colorado College, and it was an accident, as you say. And of course, one of the material things that we got, as I told you, was 14 years of free tuition, which usually is a major operation in anybody's family to send three or four kids to college, and we got it for nothing!
FINLEY: And a good education for all of them.
TYREE: And a good education with fine people.
FINLEY: That's wonderful.
TYREE: And it's a great place.
FINLEY: I think so. Thank you so much, Professor Tyree. It's been very enjoyable.
TYREE: The name is Chief!
FINLEY: Chief, of course!
TYREE: That came from the Marines, when they were first here, you know, they called everybody Chief.
FINLEY: Called you Chief and you stayed that way!
TYREE: Anybody they got intimate with they called Chief.
FINLEY: Well, thank you so much, Chief!
THE END
78