TUTT LIBRARY SPECIAL COLLECTIONS COLORADO COLLEGE ARCHIVES Ccrm ORAL HISTORY TAPE TRANSCRIPTION R25
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
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.