Chester Pittman

Oral History Interview

with

Chester Pittman

Interview Conducted by Jerry Gill October 22, 2010

O-STATE Stories Oral History Project

O-State Stories An Oral History Project of the OSU Library

Interview History

Interviewer: Jerry Gill Transcriber: Miranda Mackey Editors: Amy Graham, Latasha Wilson, Micki White

The recording and transcript of this interview were processed at the Oklahoma State University Library in Stillwater, Oklahoma.

Project Detail

The purpose of O-STATE Stories Oral History Project is to gather and preserve memories revolving around Oklahoma Agricultural and Mechanical College (OAMC) and Oklahoma State University (OSU).

This project was approved by the Oklahoma State University Institutional Review Board on October 5, 2006.

Legal Status

Scholarly use of the recordings and transcripts of the interview with Chester Pittman is unrestricted. The interview agreement was signed on October 22, 2010.

O-State Stories An Oral History Project of the OSU Library

About Chester Pittman…

Chester Pittman was born and raised in Wewoka, Oklahoma, the second of eight children. Farm life, with the help of dedicated parents, taught him the value of hard work. They grew a number of vegetables on their farm, and they raised hogs and cattle. Pittman raised prize- winning Duroc hogs, and he had his share of daily chores and responsibilities, of course. Neither of his parents had higher than an eighth-grade education, but they required that their children finish high school. Pittman attended Douglass High School, a school that never drew any college recruiters, but, fortunately, he played football every day after school at Wewoka High School, which was frequented by recruiters and scouts. His football skills were drawing attention, and the offers started pouring in from all over: Langston, Nebraska, OU, to name a few, and, of course, Oklahoma State University. His parents never pressured him or his siblings to attend college, simply because they couldn’t afford it, but Pittman knew that if he wanted to make his dreams come true, he needed to go. He set his sights on OSU, and thanks to a scholarship, he went.

Pittman enrolled at OSU in 1957 and was suddenly immersed in an integrated world. (His high school had just started to integrate during his senior year, but only the football team was mixed. Classes were still segregated.) Acclimating to this new environment was a challenge, but as the school would soon discover, Pittman was never one to back down from a challenge. He changed his original major of engineering to physical education, working toward certification, and lived in Bennett Hall for the duration of his college career. Because dorm life was still segregated, he had a “penthouse” all to himself since the handful of other African American students in his dorm had not made it past the first semester. He proved himself to be worth his salt on the football field, but was still forced to eat and sleep separately from his teammates during away games because of the color barrier. He earned the privilege to travel with the coach on recruiting trips, and he got to play in the one-time Bluegrass Bowl in 1958. Chester Pittman was the first African American to letter in football at Oklahoma State University.

Because he had changed majors, he needed an extra semester of classes to finish, but he graduated in the summer of 1961 with his degree and certification. He was offered a teaching and coaching position in Kansas, where he went on to achieve great accomplishments with his track students. His team competed with 4A and 5A teams, winning meet after meet, placing in state championships, and resulting in track scholarships for his protégés. He continued on to earn his master’s degree at Kansas State University, and then went into administration at the new Harmon High School in Kansas City. He enjoyed his work in the public school system for a few decades before finally retiring, and has always cherished the friendships he developed while at OSU. In 2010, Pittman came back to Stillwater when he was honored with the OSU Black Alumni Association’s Trailblazer Award.

O-State Stories An Oral History Project of the OSU Library

Chester Pittman

Oral History Interview

Interviewed by Jerry Gill October 22, 2010 Stillwater, Oklahoma

Gill My name is Jerry Gill. Today is October 22, 2010. I’m visiting with Chester Pittman on the Oklahoma State University campus in Stillwater, Oklahoma. This interview is for the O-STATE Stories Project of the Oklahoma Oral History Research Program. Chester, gosh, as the first African American to letter in football at Oklahoma State University, you have a special place in the history of OSU, and, of course, this evening, you are going to receive the OSU Black Alumni Association’s Trailblazer Award, which is very significant. We just give one a year.

Pittman Thank you.

Gill Of course, they are going to hold a reception in your honor. How do you feel about receiving this award?

Pittman Well, I’m really in awe. (Laughs) It’s really a pleasant surprise, and it’s something that I will certainly cherish because Oklahoma State is certainly dear to me, having given me the opportunity to go to school and to receive a BS degree. I think, of course, coming out of high school and not being able to attend college without the benefit of a scholarship, I think if there was any way I could’ve walked on or whatever, I would’ve tried that in able to try to be successful at that BS degree. I am so honored for the pleasure of receiving that scholarship and being able to meet people that I met, who helped me tremendously. Harry Buffington, the gentleman that recruited me, he was from east Oklahoma, somewhere in there, but he was really good to me, and I really appreciated him. He took me to Texas on a couple of recruiting trips to try to get some of the guys down there. I remember several names now, but Hollis, (we went to his family) Wardell Hollis, I believe, was one name.

Gill Wardell Hollis, yes.

Pittman Then we tried Wesley, a guy by the name of [Raymond] Wesley. We lost a guy to Michigan, Michigan State. His dad was a coach, and I’ve forgotten his name. Bubba Smith was his brother. What was his first name? Do you recall what his brother’s first name was?

Gill No, I just remember Bubba.

Pittman Oh, but I’ll tell you, I really did enjoy those trips. We’d go by plane. He’d get you on one of those two-seat Cessnas, and we’d fly by highway to Texas. We didn’t have a plan of what route to travel. We’d go by these airports down in Texas, and these jets would come up in front of you. Oh, I was scared to death! (Laughter) But Harry was one guy that would tell me, “Oh, don’t worry. We’re flying Highway-35 all the way down to Austin.” It was quite an experience for a youngster, I’ll tell you that.

Gill I want to visit with you about your OSU experience. I want to back up, first of all, though, Chester, and ask you, can you tell me a little bit about where you grew up and about your family?

Pittman Sure, sure, I’m sorry. I kind of got carried away there.

Gill No, it’s okay.

Pittman I was born and raised in Wewoka. Wewoka, Oklahoma. I was the second of eight kids. I was the only boy until my brother came along about ten years later, so I had all girls to contend with up to that time. (Laughs)

Gill You had four sisters?

Pittman I had five sisters.

Gill Five sisters, wow.

Pittman Yes, and one brother, so it was quite an ordeal growing up. My mother, she was pretty special in the church and worked in church. She made sure that we went to Sunday school every Sunday. It was something that you just looked forward to. You had to go to Sunday school. They made me a superintendent, once I got in high school, of the church. I had to do this…

Gill Superintendent when you were in high school?

Pittman Superintendent of the Sunday school is what it was. I had to review the lessons of all the adults and everything. It was something that kind of really made me want to back off, but I knew I was doing it for some

reason and for some good, and it really helped me later on in life. I will tell any youngster now, “If you get an opportunity to get up before a group or before your peers, just get yourself prepared, and then do it.”

Gill What church was it?

Pittman The Baptist church, so it was something then. No kid, I don’t think coming to high school as I was, about as young in high school, wanted to get in front of his peers and try to prove what he is. I didn’t want them thinking I was anywhere that much into Sunday school or that much superior to them or beyond what they were doing. At that time, I didn’t want to stand out. They were giving me the opportunity to learn and the opportunity to grow, but I didn’t realize that.

Gill Chester, you grew up on a farm. Is that right?

Pittman Right, right, yes.

Gill Eighty-acre farm, 160 acres, quarter-section farm, or what kind of farm was it?

Pittman It was—we grew corn. Grew corn and peas. That was something that was always stable.

Gill And you had some hogs and cattle?

Pittman Oh, yes. I was active in, at that time we had what was called the FFA [Future Farmers of America]. Well, the FFA was the white high school, and we had the NFA, the Negro Farmers of America. I raised Duroc hogs, and we would show them at the end of the summer and fall at Guthrie at the—I guess it was a sale barn. It wasn’t a sale barn, but it was FFA or NFA, whatever it was, where they had the show days, livestock show, I guess.

Gill State livestock show?

Pittman Yes, where they had the fair and so forth. We would take our fat hogs and gilts there to sell at the end of the summer. That’s what we did through junior and senior high school. In the meantime, I only lived a quarter mile from a dairy farm. I started washing milk bottles there at an early age because my older cousins did, washed bottles. After they got too old for it, then I moved in and started washing milk bottles. Then after I got out of grade school and into junior high school, I went down and helped my dad in the milk barn, and, low and behold, when he moved on, I got the job in the milk barn.

Gill And they didn’t have milk machines then, did they?

Pittman Yes, we had two.

Gill You did have milk machines?

Pittman Yes, we milked a string of about, I don’t know, I guess anywhere from twenty-five a day to thirty Guernsey cows a day. It was quite a grueling experience because I had to get up in the morning. We lived two miles from town, and I had to get up in the morning and go there about five o’clock and get started, and be through in time to catch the bus to school. Of course, there were some times when I missed the bus, when we had electrical failure or something where we had to milk by hand, so I was a couple hours late, so I had to walk.

Gill You had to walk to school? Wow!

Pittman Yes, sir! Of course, I was too big to ride a bike to school then. I was too—you know, you were too pretty to ride a bike to school when you get eighteen, seventeen years old, sixteen years old, (Laughs) so I would walk. Luckily, somebody would recognize me and give me a ride most times, which was a great thing.

Gill Going back to your showing hogs, how did you do? Did you place at some shows?

Pittman Oh, sure. I had champion Duroc. The male, the barrows, your show hogs that we were going to sell, I only placed maybe somewhere in second or third. I never got a first place on my show hog for meat, for food, but the ones that I kept for breeding, I had first-place ribbons on those.

Gill Chester, you worked hard. There must’ve been some values and principles that you learned growing up that helped you be successful later in life.

Pittman Oh gosh, I wouldn’t trade it for nothing in the world. It was hard work, but I found out if you’re going to do anything that would amount to anything, it’s going to amount to a little hard work and some work that’s going to take some input and some time. You’ve got to be pretty much happy or proud of what you’re doing to make it worth your while, to make it worth your doing something to see some results from it. So, it took a little getting used to. If you’re going to do it—my dad was like that. He was a stone mason by trade, and he built some really fabulous homes down there out of native rock. We had the big, flat rock. I don’t know what they call that particular rock, but it was a big, three- to four- inch rock. But they were big, flat rocks. He would chisel those and make

them go from the ground up. I’ve got some pictures there I got to take before they were...

Gill Mortaring them and building them.

Pittman Yes. There’s one there and not two full, but a mile and a half from home that he built that garage and barn for a guy. I want to take pictures of those and keep those. I’ve been wanting to do that, when I got back down there, for prosperity to keep and show what kind of work he did. I would take his lunch over to him in the summertime, and I’d walk across the fields. There were two fields there, which was about a mile and maybe a quarter, and take his lunch, so he’d have hot lunch. In the meantime, I’d take a little so I’d have something to eat, too. But Daddy was something really to behold. To see that now, and know my dad was able to do that, it’s just awesome to see those kinds of buildings still standing. The work in the city there, he built a wall, rock walls, along the city streets there in front of some of the doctors’ offices and hospitals, still standing.

Gill That was in Wewoka?

Pittman Wewoka, Oklahoma. It’s on 270 there, east of Seminole and Oklahoma City. Holdenville is not far from there, Mr. [T. Boone] Pickens’ hometown. (Laughs)

Gill Oh, yes.

Pittman Never met him, never met him. I’d like to meet him.

Gill Great guy. He loves Oklahoma State. Chester, you grew up in a pretty interesting time. I mean, in Oklahoma, schools were being integrated about the time you were coming into high school.

Pittman They was just beginning to integrate as I…

Gill Can you talk about that process a little?

Pittman …my last year. Yes, I never had an integrated class until I got to Oklahoma State.

Gill Chester, was it your senior year of high school that they combined?

Pittman Right.

Gill You went to Wewoka Douglass [High School]?

Pittman I went to Wewoka Douglass School. We had the oddest thing, that they thought they would combine the athletic team, the football team. That was all, and nothing else was integrated but the football team. (Laughs)

Gill Is that right?

Pittman To kind of give you an idea about education, sometimes some things would supersede others as far as what counts. (Laughs) So, all the seniors—we had about eleven at my high school, and we went to Wewoka High School to play football after school. We had to walk over there which was, oh, I guess a little over a quarter mile, a little better than a quarter mile.

Gill Were you going to class at Wewoka High School?

Pittman We were going to classes at Douglass High School.

Gill Douglass, and then walking over to practice?

Pittman Walking over to practice after that. What an ordeal. It was something new for us, but to play football, I would’ve walked two miles to play football. (Laughter) We tore up a lot of clothes out on the football field, that practice field, when we were in grade school and junior high school. It was something we just had to do.

Gill You had a pretty successful senior year, as I recall. I think you scored like fourteen touchdowns and, of course, that first year was integrated.

Pittman Right, right.

Gill Can you talk a little bit about your senior year that season?

Pittman Well, I think when you get—this is really my aspect of it. If you get kids together that have a common interest, that want to work toward a common goal, that takes care of your problems. The only problem I ever noticed is that some of the kids that were at Wewoka High School kind of had the idea that they were going to be playing this position or that position when school started, but when we came over, they found out everything was wide open, and we had some pretty fair football players, too. So, I guess, most of our players got defensive positions because they were just good football players. There were two of us that made the offense and played both ways. Played defense and offense. We were pretty successful. We lost to Ada, at Ada, in the rain. I’ll give them the advantage. They had a wet field that night. It rained the whole night before, and they had some big linemen. It was pretty hard for us to get outside, which was our game. We ran the Belly series.

Gill You ran more of a speed game?

Pittman Yes, we ran the option, outside, so they kind of had us pretty well logged in. We lost to them. I think they shut us out.

Gill Can you talk a little bit about how that helped you get your scholarship? I looked at a previous interview and you had indicated, I think, that…

Pittman I think it was Durant. I think Durant and Shawnee were the really tough games that there were. I really had super, super ordinary games where I scored multiple times. I just had good games. Of course, all of the games I scored in, I think, but the Ada game, but I had great yardage in all of the games. The wet field that night against Ada, well, they just let us cross the goal line. Yes, Jim Frazier was on that team. He was captain. Do you remember that name?

Gill Yes, played at OSU.

Pittman Yes.

Gill Did playing for an integrated school and playing against other white schools help you in terms of getting noticed and recognized, do you think?

Pittman Oh, gosh! That was God-sent. If we hadn’t integrated that team… There weren’t any colleges coming to my hometown to look at the—all the football players moving on that went to college went to Langston. They went to Langston. Let’s see, you were talking about the…

Gill We were talking about getting noticed, playing in Wewoka.

Pittman Right. We hadn’t had any scouts from any major universities, or minor universities as far as that’s concerned, that came to Douglass while I was there my junior year, so I didn’t know anything about those guys coming to recruit until I went to Wewoka High School and started playing there. Then, I started getting questionnaires from the Oklahomas and the Nebraskas, and Oklahoma States.

Gill You had several schools that were good schools interested in you, didn’t you?

Pittman Oh, yes. I’ll tell you, Eddie Crowder came to my high school and offered me a scholarship.

Gill From the University of Oklahoma?

Pittman Right. After I had already decided that I wanted to go to Stillwater. My boss that I worked for, his son Tom Orwig, he was here in Animal Husbandry because we were dairy farmers. He talked about that son all the time at Oklahoma State. That’s all I could see in my mind was Oklahoma State. That must be the place to go. Of course, I had visited Langston and certainly could have gone to Langston without any difficulty because I knew the people out there. They had already contacted me. There was Cameron Junior College that came up. Some guy came up from Cameron who wanted me to come down there, but I chose Oklahoma State, and I told Eddie, “That’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to give it a shot.”

Gill Coach Harry Buffington, is he the one that signed you?

Pittman Harry Buffington came and, of course, yes Buffington—I tell you, he was a great guy. I really did admire him. Sometime after I’d gone to work and came back home, I went through that hometown. I can’t even think of the name of it now. Can’t think of the name of his hometown now, but I stopped by and asked somebody at the hardware store. They told me just how to get there, and I went down and met him and his wife. He was kind of ailing a little bit, age-wise. I had a great visit with him and told him…

Gill Harry, he had a reputation of a pretty tough guy too, didn’t he?

Pittman Yes, but how much I appreciated him, you know, because he was…

Gill Chester, I guess the head coach was Coach [Clifton] Speegle?

Pittman Coach Speegle, yes.

Gill Speegle. Well, was there something that sort of—you had a lot of offers. Was there a story about why Oklahoma State University, you think? You had a lot of opportunities to go to other schools.

Pittman Oh, yes, other than Oklahoma State, sure. I had opportunities to go to other schools, but it wasn’t half a dozen or more. As I said, Langston University was certainly there. They’d already offered me a scholarship to come there. I’m sorry about Harry, I get a little misty-eyed. (Laughs)

Gill Don’t worry. Well, did you make a recruiting visit? Had you been to campus before you signed your letter of intent?

Pittman Yes. Yes, I came down. Of course, Buff would come up and see me at Wewoka. Then, we had a little rendezvous with some of the other guys

that they recruited from Durant and Ada, all down somewhere in eastern Oklahoma. We got together at a Mexican restaurant and had a big get- together. I really enjoyed that and met some of the guys then. It was really a big seller as far as seeing some of the guys that we played against and knowing that we could get along and talk. I never doubted that we couldn’t get along. We had some naysayers, maybe, in the community that said, “This will never work.” I found out with my playing with the neighborhood boys. We played football on the old vacant airport. It was a godsend that it was vacant because we played good, rough, hot, sock-’em football. (Laughter) We played baseball there all the time, too, so we never had any bruises or any brushes with not getting along. I think when you get a mutual respect for each other, and you say, “That guy is a tough son of a gun,” and you know what the boundaries are as far as that was concerned. We had a couple of those guys on my team. They had a couple of weight lifters on Wewoka’s team, there. We had a couple of guys that played on the line that didn’t give anybody any backup room or space. (Laughter)

Gill Didn’t cut you any slack, huh? (Laughs)

Pittman Oh, yes. Of course, the guys would come around, and they’d ask questions about, “How tough is he?” Our thing was, “He’s as tough as they come.” They’d want to know, “You think he’s a good fighter?” I’d say, “There’s only one way to find out about that.” (Laughter) Never had any fights. I’ll tell you, we never had any fights. But sure, everybody wanted to know what the pecking order is and then see where you think you stand, where you fall in, measure in. I think that’s just all a part of growing up.

Gill Chester, you enrolled in the fall of 1957 at Oklahoma State University?

Pittman Yes, 1957.

Gill What were your first impressions of the campus?

Pittman It just swallowed me up. (Laughter) You know, I’d never been out of Wewoka. (Laughter) It just swallowed me up. Certainly, it wasn’t really odd, but I know I had some limitations as far as socially-voiced. I had never been in a classroom with anything other than black boys and black girls. Anybody that says it’s not a major adjustment that you have to make to that, they’d be lying to you because there is. You’re going to feel a whole lot more comfortable—if you went to a black school, you weren’t going to feel on the top shelf. You’ve got to see where you fit in. It’s something like a pecking order, but nobody pecked you. But the thing is, you’ve got to find your comfort zone. That’s the way I guess I would put it, mostly. Find your comfort zone, and let it fit in there, and

then go from there. But the thing about getting adjusted here was getting an advisor. That’s what happened after my first semester. I got an advisor by the name of Valerie Colvin…

Gill Oh, yes, the Colvin Center.

Pittman …and she was a honey, I tell you. Just like my aunt or my grandma, telling me, “Now, Chester, this is what you’re going to take. I’m going to outline for you here for semester one, semester two, semester three,” you know, four years ahead. “This is what you’re taking, and when you get here, you’ll graduate.” I never thought about that. Never occurred to me that I could do that and get my program and everything lined up. She said, “Skipping, cutting classes, or dropping classes,” she said, “I’m going to set it up for the next three years. You take this, and you’ll be able to get out of here and graduate.” Lo and behold, it happened just that way. I only got to write her a letter and tell her how much I admired her and appreciated her. She was another—I hate to be a crybaby (Laughs) —but just good folk.

Gill She was a pretty special lady on this campus.

Pittman And my life, yes.

Gill Now, you were a physical education major then…

Pittman Right, yes.

Gill …with a teaching certification?

Pittman I came out of engineering because when I came here, everybody thought you should come here to be an engineer, and you could make some money. But I didn’t have any engineering classes or background. That was the thing that really snapped me into really focusing about what college was. You better get into something you can pass and something that you can handle. She set my program up for the next semester and the next semester. Lo and behold, when I got to be a senior, ready to go, I was ready to go. Ready, ready, ready.

Gill Well, Chester, were there very many black students on campus when you started here?

Pittman Well, when they recruited a black guy and me from Wewoka, and they brought one from Holdenville, and one from Tulsa, Booker T. [Washington High School].

Gill So there were four or five of you in your class?

Pittman Right. I tell you, at semester time it was brutal. They didn’t stay. They weren’t able to stay.

Gill So you were the only one out of five that stayed after that first semester?

Pittman Right, yes. Of course, it was through her leadership and getting me in classes, “Stay with them, pass them.” When I had chemistry and stuff like that—it was chemistry and classes when I was in engineering, I got tutors. I went to those tutors to try to make sure I stayed eligible the first semester. (Laughs) It took some, really, adjustment to get used to. Then, you had to just buckle down, get it, and do it. But Ms. Colvin certainly was a Godsend for me, getting me through school.

Gill Chester, that first class, that was the first year that Oklahoma State University recruited African American athletes in football, wasn’t it?

Pittman Right.

Gill So there was yourself, and four of them that didn’t make it.

Pittman Right.

Gill Was that a big deal in the papers? Did they write about that?

Pittman You know, I don’t recall what was ever written. I never saw a write-up about it. I certainly was interested in other kids and friends, good friends and all, but I couldn’t dwell on the other guys when I’m trying to do something, trying to make some progress, myself. I couldn’t dwell on those. I know what they did. I went in my room to sit down and burn some midnight oil, and I know some of them were going somewhere else, or did something else, and found some friends that wanted to do a little socializing. (Laughs) And that’s the difference. You’ve got to make a decision as to which is more important.

Gill Where did you live?

Pittman I lived in Bennett, four years.

Gill Four years. Did you…

Pittman East Bennett for two years, and West Bennett for two years.

Gill Did you room with—well, of course, I guess that first year you probably roomed with one of the other black athletes.

Pittman Right.

Gill Did you ever room with some of the white guys?

Pittman No.

Gill You didn’t have a choice?

Pittman Well, they didn’t give me a—black and white didn’t room together.

Gill You were the only one there after that first semester.

Pittman Yes, the last semester, I was rooming by myself. I had a penthouse. I had a guy that came up from Houston, Jesse Hurst. He was my roommate, and that’s when we met. He got sick. We went over and met Dr. [Donald] Cooper, and Dr. Cooper got him well. He and Dr. Cooper still talk, so he and Dr. Cooper are real tight. But he brought him out of it.

Gill Well speaking of that, who were some of the, at that time, not just fellow players or athletes, who were some of the guys you knew then, some of the black athletes that were in other schools?

Pittman Orlando Hazley.

Gill Orlando Hazley.

Pittman Yes, I’d get out there—I had to run in track. I went down there and talked with him and Mr. Higgins, Coach Higgins, and I decided I wanted to do a little running track there. We ran under the stadium there in the wintertime, and I ran there until the springtime. When I tried to run, Hazley kicked cinders in my face, so I decided I better go study. (Laughter) I didn’t need track. I just wanted to do something. I got a little tired. I was grazing everything up, and I just got used to being active.

Gill Was it L. C. Greenwood?

Pittman L. C. Gordon?

Gill L. C. Gordon, the black kid that played basketball?

Pittman Right, Gordon, yes. He came up, and then Fritz Greer came from Cameron Junior College, and those were the two black basketball players.

Gill Was there very much social interaction between the black football

players, the black athletes and the white athletes? Did you all hang out some together?

Pittman Oh, yes. [James] Dillard and I, Don Brewington, and those were the two. Of course, I had some other friends from—I’m trying to think where he was from. Brewington, Don Brewington was his name. Don, I think, was from Shawnee. But that guy, he was just like a brother. He and I were really—Jim and I got real close, too.

Gill Jim’s a good guy.

Pittman I had to give him some—well, we better not say that, but Carol, the girl he eventually married, she would call me and want to know if I could do something to straighten him out a little bit. (Laughs) Which, I don’t think there was anybody around could straighten Jim out if he didn’t want to be straightened out. But, anyway, I got to know him real well and get along real well with him now. I used to hear from him a little bit, but I haven’t talked with him lately.

Gill Were there coaches or older players you remember who were supportive of you and helped you grow as a player and as a student?

Pittman A guy by the name of Vernon Sewell, Tony Banfield, and those were the guys who were ahead of me. I knew the older Rundle guy [Larry Rundle]. He was ahead of me and was from Seminole.

Gill Dick Soergel?

Pittman Yes, Dick was the quarterback, and I didn’t associate much with him. But his brother, he was much older—but I did go to a party. He invited me to a party, he and some of his buddies. I went to one of his parties at night at his house, apartment, or something. I knew him real well. He was a little more approachable. Yes, you could get to him a little easier, I think. Soergel was—I think he lived outside the dorm, anyway.

Gill You talked about Harry Buffington. Was Harry probably your favorite coach on the team?

Pittman Oh, he was everything but my daddy. (Laughs) He was a great one. I really admired him. Yes, I really admired him. He did more for me than I think anybody while I was at the school. He just really looked out for me. If I needed to go in and talk with him, if I had a problem or anything, he’d straighten it up. Kept me focused and kept me on track. Took me to Houston to help him recruit. We flew down there on a plane. We went to several homes and tried to recruit some of the top athletes at the time. I think we got Raymond Wesley. Eventually he was killed in a

car wreck. We got him initially, and the other kid they really wanted, his daddy was a coach. He went to Michigan State. I forgot his last name. Wesley’s the only one I remembered. I don’t recall any that I—I do recall two that I tried to recruit and we didn’t get. We got Hollis, but the other two went to Michigan State. Bubba Smith, Smith, that’s right. Willie Ray Smith was one, and he went to Michigan, too, also, with his brother, Bubba Smith.

Gill If you look back at your playing career, you started as a sophomore, didn’t you?

Pittman Right.

Gill So your freshman year, your freshman team, was that the Bluegrass Bowl year that they won the Bluegrass?

Pittman That would’ve been my sophomore year.

Gill So you played in the Bluegrass Bowl.

Pittman Right, yes.

Gill What do you remember about that game, other than it was cold?

Pittman Oh, gosh, it was cold in Kentucky. I never knew it got that cold in Kentucky. (Laughter) That was the coldest I’d ever been because I didn’t dress for it. I was out there sitting on the sideline, freezing. I wasn’t out there playing that much, so I froze to death. That was something else. I’ll never forget that either. Gosh! Of course, the next year, I got to play quite a bit.

Gill Looking back, were there some memorable games that you think about, like outstanding games that you can think of in your mind, when you had outstanding performances?

Pittman Oh, yes. I’d have to think here. I had a couple there that really stood out. One when we played Denver. That’s when we played a couple of non- conference games. Denver, and we played—oh gosh, I didn’t think I’d ever forget those teams—Wichita.

Gill Wichita.

Pittman Yes. Gosh, they had some good players. A guy by the name of [Roland] Lakes played linebacker. Oh, that guy hit me hard! Denver, they had wrote up about a personal violation being recorded because a guy elbowed me after the play was over because I kind of stuck him during

the regular play, and he was going to get me afterwards. I just decided— I was playing corner, left corner, and he was playing left halfback. They called a pass play, and he went out toward the middle of the field. Of course, my rotation would bring me around, but it didn’t take me around to the middle of the field. It took me around so far that I had to push into the field hash mark. But I decided he was over there and I had to go get him. (Laughter) I went over there, and we had a big collision there for the ball when it was coming down, and I had no business—I was way out of position. I just—instinct took over to get him back. In other words, my pride took over. Of course, he almost hit me with an elbow, that’s what he did. They recorded a personal violation for him, didn’t put him out of the game, so that was good. I’ll see what I can do to hasten that a little bit. I went over there and popped him. Of course, when he got up, he kicked me. I got up off of him, he kicked me, so they threw him out. (Laughter) I got a chance to stay in. But that was my only really hairy situation that I got into. Otherwise, I got hit pretty hard by a lot of them. My really nightmare playing is when I had to go to Arkansas and when I had to go to Houston, when accommodations were different.

Gill Can you speak a little bit about that, because I know at that time with lodging and with restaurants there were problems.

Pittman Right.

Gill Can you talk a little bit about how you and the team handled those issues?

Pittman Well, of course, number one, they told me before we went, “Now, we’ve got some situations that are beyond our control. We can only handle it one of two ways. Either you stay home,” and after going through one-a- days, two-a-days, and practice, I wasn’t staying home. (Laughs) That was the easy way out. Anyway, they said, “This is the situation in Arkansas. You can travel with the team. You can stay at the motel with the team, but you can’t eat in the dining room.” So they set me up a table in the kitchen, and I could eat in the kitchen. Every one of those big linemen telling me, “You want me to eat with you? Tell the coaches you want us to eat with you.” Well, they knew those guys were taking care of me in the kitchen. (Laughter) They put up one of those bad tables and put nice white linen on it and set it up for me and everything. Anything I wanted, just asked for it. “You want some more? Just ask for it.”

Gill Did some of the linemen come in then and eat with you?

Pittman No, no they didn’t.

Gill It wasn’t as much, maybe, about being good sports as they wanted to

eat.

Pittman I wasn’t going to ask. I thought it was an insult for me to come in there, let alone bring somebody else in there to eat in the kitchen. That was the way they wanted to do it, and as long as I was getting the same thing the team had to eat and could have more if I wanted, it didn’t make any big difference. I wasn’t in any contest with anybody. I said, “Hey, go do what you have to do.” Then, I’d go to Arkansas the next week. “Well, you can’t even stay in this hotel, but you can come back and eat.” You know what I mean? It was just the opposite in Arkansas. I’d go stay in Philander Smith, one of the black colleges, stay there overnight. Harry would come up and pick me up, get a taxi, send a taxi up and pick me up and take me back down to the big hotel there, and I’d eat. At one, I could eat in the dining room, but I couldn’t sleep. Then I’d go to Arkansas, and I could sleep at Philander Smith and eat at Arkansas. It was just the opposite in Houston.

Gill Chester, some of the abuse you took on the field, some of the things off the field, did you ever just feel like it just wasn’t worth it, like you were ready to give up on it? What kept you going?

Pittman Well, I guess it was kind of like water on a duck’s back. (Laughs) I understood why I was at school. I knew that was my only option to get that scholarship and go to school. I knew I wanted to better myself. I knew I wanted to have a good job because I had worked all my life as a youngster. I knew what I was doing, I knew what my daddy was doing, and it wasn’t going to get me anywhere other than by, get me by. I wanted to do more than just get by. I wanted to be a homeowner. I wanted to have a family. I wanted things that I could say that I have some ownership in. It was something that I never had any inkling to say that I didn’t want it.

Gill Getting your education was important to you, I know, and we were talking about Orlando Hazley earlier, being the first African American to earn a letter at Oklahoma State University. He talked about athletics as a “means to an end, never an end in itself.” He saw athletics as a chance to get an education, and that was the end. Is that kind of how you felt about it?

Pittman Oh, certainly, certainly. I had no other way of doing so. I knew education, getting a degree, was going to be the thing to do. I had some really good teachers over at Douglass High School that most of them were scholarship teachers, or somehow they had to have help to go to school. I knew I had to have help to go to school. It was certainly a Godsend for me to be able to go to Wewoka High School and get that opportunity to be recruited because nobody came to our games and

recruited us.

Gill Your teachers at Oklahoma State University, were they generally helpful to you?

Pittman Well, I would say that when I was in engineering that first semester, that was a pretty tough road because I hadn’t had enough math or enough engineering courses or anything to really predict to do that kind of work. I just did it because my daddy was a carpenter and a rock stone mason. I knew he made pretty good money at what he did, but I didn’t know the other particulars that I had to know like drafting, design, and that, which I had none of. What I saw, I guess I had enough of a foresight to say, “This is going to keep you so busy that you won’t ever have anything to do but these one or two classes. You won’t have time for your other four or five classes to get that.” So I decided that I’d better get into something that would be a little less demanding of my time because I had football practice, and I had to do that. Even when I had those science classes where I had to go to those labs in the afternoon where you were always late for one practice, I had to do those, but I really hated to be late for practice, too, because that was why I was in school. Football was why I was in. I certainly wanted to be loyal to that. I don’t think they liked it, but they respected the fact that you had to do it. I don’t think they liked you being out of practice. I know they didn’t like it, but they had to honor it. (Laughs) So I kind of saw the handwriting on the wall, that if I stayed in those classes that demanded that much of my time otherwise.

Gill You graduated in 1960?

Pittman In the summer of ’61.

Gill The summer of ’61.

Pittman I had to do one final semester after changing classes. I changed those engineering courses, and I didn’t have any to carry over, so I finished up in the summer of ’61.

Gill Basically, you played football as a scholarship athlete, and then in four years and one semester, you got your degree.

Pittman Right.

Gill Was that a pretty proud moment for you?

Pittman Oh, my goodness! I think I could’ve did it in four years if I’d have gotten with the right program. I was the president of my class in high school, and I wasn’t the smartest, by no means. My sister was smarter

than I was. She had caught me and passed me. She had caught me, so she was the smartest one in class. I wasn’t the valedictorian. I had my friend. He was the valedictorian of the class.

Gill I want to ask you about an experience that was a little bit unusual. I forgot to ask you about when you played in the All-State football game.

Pittman Sure.

Gill Can you share a little bit about that?

Pittman Well, it’s a situation that I really regretted happening because I feel so badly for having to work so hard to get there and then don’t get any benefits of the hard work. I think it was all done in malice. That’s my personal feeling, and I wasn’t in any position to say anything about it at the time, so I kept my mouth shut.

Gill Chester, what we’re talking about is you—can you back up and explain? You made All-State, played in the All-State game. You started in practice.

Pittman I was an All-Stater. I’d had kickoff returns on kickoff. I don’t know how many touchdowns I had. They didn’t show me the stats or anything, but I would venture to say my stats were better than anybody who started on that team that night. There were just two black boys on the south, and neither one of us played.

Gill So you went to the All-Star game. In practice, leading up to the game, you were the first team.

Pittman Oh, I played with the first team, yes!

Gill So what happened then?

Pittman Everything, they were throwing passes to me, and I wasn’t ever known as a pass catcher. I was catching everything they threw out there. Yes, long passes, and I was throwing so good my coach came down one day. All the coaches were down for a coaches’ clinic, I guess, in the middle of the summer during that time, but they were all there. I can remember my coach and the coach from Oklahoma City, Douglass, sitting out there with all these other coaches. There were only two blacks. Me and Perry were the only two black kids there because he was from Douglass and I was from Douglass and Wewoka. Perry was throwing passes, fifty-yard passes, right and left. Never got off the bench.

Gill Never even played a down, I understand.

Pittman Never got off the bench. The whole time I was there I was running with the first unit. Never got off the bench. It just wasn’t my nature to go up and ask a coach, “Why this?” or, “Why that?” because I was brought up better than that. I knew better because I never would’ve thought of asking my coach, “Why don’t you let me run the ball?” or, “Why don’t you let me go in and play?” I wouldn’t have asked my coach that if they had beat me!

Gill Why do you think that was, Chester?

Pittman Well, I’m not a guy to blurt this out if I didn’t believe it, but I think it was pure, pure—well, I’ll tell you what I heard. Daily Oklahoman or the Tulsa World, it was one of the two newspapers, came to the practice when we were out there catching passes and doing all this stuff, and I had been running with the first unit the whole week. One of those overzealous reporters went back and put it in the paper that, “Pittman was looking like a sure bet at halfback,” or, “Pittman was doing this,” and, “Pittman was doing that.” It was all just glowing, glowing headline there, that “Pittman was a standout. Pittman had done all this during the regular season.” So I heard the coach, Bodenheimer, just like you and I sitting here. I happened to walk by. Of course, I didn’t see nothing. I didn’t question him, but I heard him tell somebody else, “Well, these guys, these reporters, think they’ve got all the answers. I’ll show them.” Neither one of us got in the game, never. That’s the first thing of discrimination that I’ve run into as a football player. Of course, see, nobody really thought I should go to Oklahoma State because of [Jim] Lookabaugh, that coach out there before, or one of the coaches. Oh, I guess we’ll call him Johnny Bright. You remember that incident when Johnny Bright got his…

Gill Iowa State, right.

Pittman He got his jaw broken out there.

Gill Drake. Drake University, wasn’t it?

Pittman Yes, Drake, yes. Sure was. Some of the school personnel in town there, “Oh, you don’t want to go out there. They did this, and they did that to Johnny Bright,” that kind of thing, you know. I thought, “Well, that’s Johnny Bright. That kind of stuff can’t happen to me.” (Laughs) Anyway, I didn’t give it a second thought. I knew what I was going to do. I had made up my mind. My dad, he never got into my education at all. He never told me, “You should do this,” or, “You should do that.” I can’t ever remember him ever telling me I did a good job. He was just one of those types of guys. He didn’t compliment. You just do a good

job and smile. The first thing he says whenever we’d get beat or something, he said, “Well, you guys looked like you were scared.” He just didn’t know how to talk to people and that kind of thing.

Gill Chester, where we were kind of talking earlier, I want to pick up again. When you went to [Lee’s] Summit, Kansas, a suburb of the Kansas City area there, could you kind of trace your career? You coached there and taught there and then moved to the administration. Can you talk a little bit about your career after you left Oklahoma State?

Pittman Sure, sure. I was hired over the telephone while at the swimming pool lifeguarding. I was working. My head coach was over the swimming pool, and he hired me my second year there, my junior and senior year. I was sitting there and got a phone call that I needed to get on the phone. It was a superintendent from Kansas City, Kansas. This is when superintendents at that time did most of the hiring and would even get out and shake the bushes to see if they could find somebody to fill those positions they had. They happened to be looking for a swim instructor. We didn’t have a swim team but needed somebody that coached swimming. Some of the high school principals had a rule that every youngster, young man, that came in the summer would learn to swim, so they had to have a swimming credit, have a semester of swimming on a credit in order to graduate. So everybody that came in came through swimming.

I taught swimming at the park there for the summer recreation, like they have now, so I was qualified to teach swimming, and they hired me on the phone. Somebody gave him a glowing recommendation. He said, “Well, you come highly recommended.” Back there, they had those guys from their big college, with stiff collars. They were stern. Like you’re smiling now? I never saw one of them ever smile. (Laughter) That’s when education, in the inner city was the education. They had a president or governor or something. Every kid that came to my high school that was a freshman had to take one semester of swimming, every student, every girl, every boy. That was just his rule: If you learn to swim, you will know how to swim for life. It would never be said that a kid that goes to Sumner High School would lose his life out in a creek or out in a swimming pond somewhere. That was the most fun. Those kids just ate that up, being able to swim in the wintertime, because we didn’t have an outdoor pool at all in the city. The kids, if they went swimming, they had to go swimming in one of the city lakes in town. They had those small lakes in town, and they had a couple of kids that drowned in there. So, from that point on, back before I ever got to Kansas City, he was in that area and he said that would never happen to any of his kids. I thought that was a great thing though. It sure made it nice for all those kids to learn to swim, girls and boys, and be able to teach their kids later

on in life how to swim.

Gill You coached as well, didn’t you, Chester, particularly track?

Pittman Track.

Gill You had some pretty good success, I understand.

Pittman Oh, yes. I had great success. Of course, junior high school is really—we had one junior high school feeding us, and that’s it. Those schools we were competing at had at least three to four junior high schools feeding them. We competed in 4A and 5A with them in the state of Kansas, at Manhattan and at Salina and all these places. We were able to win two state indoor track meets, and I won second, I think a second and a third in the outdoor state championship.

Gill Wow.

Pittman We had just overwhelming success and got a lot of kids in the school. Otherwise, they wouldn’t have. Many would get track scholarships. My two premier runners—of course, they weren’t the best, but at the time, that year, about ’68, I sent two to Kansas State. One was a freshman. The other was already a sophomore out there. They both made the mile relay team for two or three straight years. They won the mile relay in Texas, I think.

Gill Texas Relays?

Pittman Yes, Texas Relays. They were on Coach DeLoss Dodds’ team. He and I got to be really close. When I finished my master’s at K-State my last year out there, I came up, and I needed a place to stay. All of the dorm was empty, so he and a guy named Bill Figaro who was an assistant weight man, he was the weight assistant said, “We’ll give you a room. Can you afford a dollar a day in the athletic dorm?” I said, “I can come up with that, I think.” (Laughter) I was quite a fisherman then and enjoyed that very much, so I’d go to class, stop by and get me a sandwich, go get my fishing gear, get my car and put it in the trunk, go to the Rocky Ford, go out to Teller Creek, and fish all afternoon. It was just great.

Gill Lots of fishing, huh?

Pittman Hell of a vacation, yes. (Laughter)

Gill Well, tell me a little about your family, Chester.

Pittman Well, I married my high school sweetheart. I’ve known her since she was (gestures) that high. We even made it for about, oh—we married out of high school and had a little unfortunate incident where she got pregnant during my first year in college. Then, of course, I wasn’t around to do what I needed to do as far as take care of the family. Of course, they didn’t put any pressure on me or anything since I was in school. They gave me an opportunity to finish school, and I would come back and work in the summer and do what I could do then. Believe it or not—of course, we made fifteen dollars a month for laundry money here at the university. Well, that went home to buy some diapers for the son I had. But anyway, she stayed with her grandmother, and we were able to make it there. Yes, we were able to make it, and I was able to finish school without any situations of having to quit school, and I could get out and graduate.

Gill Did you have some children after that? You had the one child while you were in school. Did you have some other sons and daughters after that?

Pittman Yes, it was after I finished up. I had two sons.

Gill Two sons?

Pittman Yes. Well, one was right after I started to work. Then my baby boy, he came after I finished and got a job and gone to work in Kansas City. He was born in Kansas City, these last two. Then we lost John. He was the second one. I named him after a high school coach. John Pittman. He went to Manhattan and got his degree at Manhattan. He had melanoma, and we lost him at twenty-five. It was a hard thing to do, but the boy was tough. Yes, he was tough. Then, baby boy, he works for—he started out with Gateway. Then he went to IBM, programmer, and now he’s with somebody in Kansas City, there, as a programmer. He does that kind of work.

Gill So you coached for several years and taught. Then after how many years, you moved to administration?

Pittman I was asked by the principal to take a job as assistant building helper in the administration office. I came down to the office and worked for one year to learn what was going on down in the office and became assistant principal when I got certification, which was after either two summers or a summer and a half. I got certification, and then I went to K-State and got my master’s, and then moved into administration full time at Harmon High School. They opened up in ’83, I think it was. Harmon was out where the old Argentine school used to be. I don’t know whether you know anything about Kansas City, but it was one of the four high schools in Kansas City, Kansas. They closed the junior high

schools up and built two new high schools. F. L. Schlagle High School, who was the guy that hired me, they named it after him, and the other one was J. C. Harmon. He was a long-time Argentine principal way back before I ever got to Kansas City. They named those two new schools and had some open at the new Harmon High School, and I was drafted as one of the administrators out there. So I worked there enough to pass until I retired, and enjoyed that.

Gill You touched a lot of lives in your time.

Pittman Oh, gosh, did I ever. And it was something that, during the time, it made you feel pretty good because you had some kids who were receptive to the kind of criticism they needed. When they were off-line or a little bit off-base, you could kind of get them back on square one. Some of the parents were working-class people because they lived over in the industrial area where the—I guess railroad. They had a big railroad station, railroads where they made all kinds of big iron wheels or whatever they are for the railroad track. They made a lot of that kind of stuff, and then they had a lot of factories down in Fairfax. So we were in a situation where they were blue-collar workers and people who had to hit the clock at five and four in the morning. They didn’t want to have to come to school for no nonsense. As a result, most of those kids did what they had to do. That was a great thing because when you’ve got that going on you can really see education and progress there, whenever they had to fight discipline all the time. Eventually, that will happen when you lose perspective.

What you’re trying do educationally, if you get the wrong bunch of elements running the school and running the activities and whatnot in the school, they want to spend more time being in charge of nonsense than what you’re there for. It’s a battle. Once you get to standing on top of it, you’ve got to get on top of it and stay on top of it. Otherwise, you lose control. If you lose any control with this kid, then you can’t expect the other kid to toe the line if you had two or three in a fashion do this or do that. This is where they had a lot of situations before they opened this school, where they had the big walkouts over there and that kind of stuff. We never had a walkout once we opened up the new school. We never had that stuff because we had—one of the principals that ran one of the schools at the Rosedale School came over and was the building principal over there, and he drafted me. He called me the other night. He lives out in the Ozarks. I hadn’t seen him in about ten years. I got a phone call. He said, “Congratulations on your award coming up.” Oh, it just made me feel so good that I’d be coming down for this. It’s something that I never looked forward to, having something like this happen. To my wife, I said, “I don’t know whether I’d be interested or not in going down.” She said, “Yes, you are.” I said, “Well, yes ma’am.”

Gill Speaking of coming back, have you had the opportunity to come back to Oklahoma State through the years?

Pittman I’m trying to think of which football game. I came to a football game. I shouldn’t forget that. I think it was ’05 or ’06, I came down for a Texas A&M game. I planned to come to a lot more. I had a friend of mine driving with me and coming down. We went back south to drive back home after the game. We should’ve gotten a motel and stayed. A steer, broad side, right in the middle of the road. I had a brand new Oldsmobile and a big old—no, a Yukon. I had a brand new Yukon. Hit that steer, and it just knocked my whole radiator back into my fan. There I sat, side of the road, and a guy comes down for me. “You want that steer?” I said, “Well, how am I going to take him home? In a wagon?” (Laughter) He took us into town. We got a motel, and then my wife come and picked me up. My car was gone for about two months while I got the car fixed. When they told about coming down, I had a little apprehension if I’d come. I said, “I know one thing. I’ll just go in the daytime, and I’ll come back in the daytime. I’m not going to drive those farm roads at night.” (Laughs) I should’ve known better, you know, in cattle country.

Gill Speaking of coming back to the ballgame, I understand today that you got a look at some of the new facilities.

Pittman Oh, my!

Gill Boone Pickens Stadium, what do you think?

Pittman What do you mean “facilities”? (Laughter) I don’t think the NFL could beat most of that stuff! You know it?

Gill It’s like the Taj Mahal.

Pittman They’ll have to go some to top that, now. They may have the weight facilities. I haven’t seen the weight room, but I bet you they could probably make you take a second look at the weight room. The other stuff there, you can’t touch all that. Oh man, I tell you, that is great! Oh, you know, we dressed down there under the field house. Cold sometimes, and then they called it the “Pneumonia Downs” under there, anyway, running that track. I had to run that track with Hazley, yes.

Gill Oh, that dust?

Pittman Yes, yes.

Gill It’s changed. Well, Chester, have you had a chance to stay connected

with the football program over the years? Have you talked to any of the coaches?

Pittman Yes, just one guy, the one that showed us the facilities. I didn’t get his name, but he was a nice, personable guy. I was supposed to go and speak to some of the team tomorrow.

Gill I understand you met some of the ballplayers today?

Pittman Yes.

Gill That was probably pretty special, I guess, when they found out who you were, wasn’t it?

Pittman Oh, man! Kids from Texas, talking like you know them all, but, see, the first time I was here, he wouldn’t let me talk to the kids, when I came up here when I hit the steer. He wouldn’t let me talk to the kids, so I had a little…

Gill Was that Coach Gundy, or was that another one?

Pittman Yes, that was Gundy, but he was assistant, though. Stanley was here then, I believe. Gundy came into the locker room, and I was talking to [Vernand] Morency. I was a halfback, and I was glad to be back. The kids were doing well. I knew some of the coaches were sticky about kids talking to anybody during halftime or before game time. Doc—what’s Doc’s name? Doc…

Gill Cooper.

Pittman …Cooper took me in there. He said, “Come on. We’ll meet some of the guys.” You know, Coop could go anywhere, so I followed him in there. I had read a lot about Morency and had a good conversation with him because I was a halfback. We just stood there and talked, and Gundy comes in just raising hell, “Get out of here!” He was looking like he was crazy. But the thing about it is that if I was doing anything wrong, he didn’t know who I came in there with. He at least should’ve had the courtesy to ask, “Who are you, and what are you doing in the locker room?” I would’ve been more than happy to tell him, but if you come in there and tell me, “Well, you’ve got to get out of here,” I don’t have to get out of nowhere. I went to school here, too. The thing about it is, I think if you approach a man like a man, you get treated like a man. A man wants to be treated like a man. Like any athlete, it doesn’t take much for you to get some fire in your belly. (Laughs) It doesn’t mean fight, fight, fight, but it means you’ll sure stand up for yourself.

I’ve always been about that, anyway, but that’s somebody coming up and booting me where they want me to go. I almost said, “Well, I want to know why, first,” and, “What for?” You know, like he should ask me, “Well, why are you in here?” I’d have said, “Dr. Cooper brought me in here to talk to the players.” He wasn’t even the coach, but if he’d said— he had the backfield. He just said, “Well, I’d rather you not talk to players before game time.” No problem. So I haven’t spoke to the guy since. I hate it to be like that, but the thing about it is he’s the one that got first blood. (Laughs) I can get along. Always have. I could have a short fuse, but I know how to control myself, and I know when to light the fuse, and I know when to douse it.

Gill Looking back, what accomplishments and achievements in your life have given you the most pride and satisfaction?

Pittman Well, I want to say—I’m going to kind of skip a little bit ahead and say being able to go to university. I knew I was going to finish high school because that was one thing my mother wanted us all to finish high school. Being able to take part in athletics, to get fairly confident there, be able to pass enough credits to get into college, and being able to—I guess, integration, consolidation of the football teams was number one as far as getting my foot in a university. If I was at the Douglass High School where I was, nobody ever came down. They didn’t offer anybody any scholarships because they never came to watch us play. We didn’t even film. We didn’t have any film, anyway, because nobody cared whether we went to college or not, anyway, in that town. If you did, they never showed any interest. At least give us some money to film our football games so we can have something to show the recruiter that we could do this or do that. Otherwise, we’d have never been able to do that. Now, that’s a lack of insight on those in charge. You can’t do anything by being a student or a guy who’s under your supervision as an assistant principal. His job is to say, “This is what my kids need in this program,” but it didn’t happen.

Once, we got—like the lady said, the waves of integration swept into town, and then we got a chance to go over to a high school where they had everything. They had film. They had skull session. They had coaches coming in. When you say separate and equal, well, that was a case where separate and equal was a prime example of how separate and unequal it was. I don’t mind speaking out about that because it’s the truth, and I don’t mind speaking the truth.

Gill Chester, I have a couple of questions to finish up. You’ve left a great legacy at Oklahoma State University. I know you’re proud of being the first African American to letter in football at Oklahoma State University. Not only that, but you got your degree in four years and one semester.

Pittman Right.

Gill You have a lot to be proud of, and certainly a lot of legacy. What does that mean to you, having been the first African American to letter and to accomplish what you did? How do you feel about that?

Pittman Well, it has to be about the family, first, for me. My dad and mom, neither one had a high school diploma or eighth-grade diploma. My mom and dad insisted that all the kids go to school every day and at least get your high school diploma. They didn’t put no pressure at all to go to a university because they couldn’t send me to the mailbox if it cost a dime, because it cost a quarter. (Laughs) They just didn’t have the funds to do so, but they wanted us to finish high school. They were adamant about it, and did not put up with any nonsense of going to school and getting in trouble, or better not ever talk about getting sent home, or you better not talk about ever talking back to a teacher, or having a teacher have to call and tell your parent that, “This guy’s just goofing off in my class, or not making it.” You didn’t do that. They just didn’t go for that. So, as a result, they were all about education, and as far as us getting a high school diploma, that’s what we had to do. That was the expectation. When we left that house, they had the expectation that we get a high school diploma. That was all that they were requiring.

Gill Let me kind of summarize with this question a little bit, and this is a serious question. How do you hope people will remember Chester Pittman?

Pittman Well, I’d probably be a smart aleck if I say whether they remember me or not would be immature. The thing about it is that I’m more interested in how I remember people and treat people. I think if I do that, people are going to treat me like I want to be treated because of the way I treat them. In other words, that’s kind of reversed to where I want to be treated. I want to treat people like I want to be treated. In other words, I want to be fair because I’ve been unfair done to, and I didn’t like it. I still don’t like it. I don’t like people that do that kind of stuff. If you want to see if I got any Irish, then do something that would be inconsistent with fair play. If you want me to play fair, then the rules should be the same for you. See what I’m saying? I don’t have a hair trigger, but I do have some backbone. I want to be fair, number one. That’s all I want to do, is be treated fair and I can treat the next guy more fair than he has ever treated me. I believe in that. That’s what got me a long way is say, “You treat me fair, I’m going to sure be fair with you.”

I met, awhile ago, you remember Larry Rundle from Seminole,

Oklahoma, came up there, and I thought he was going to hug me to death. Now, he was from Seminole, and I was from Wewoka. We never met until we got here, Stillwater. Of course, he was senior when I was a freshman. That guy came up to me as though he was my big brother. Hugged me and introduced me to his wife. His brother was a year behind me. His brother and I were pretty close. I asked him about his brother and everything. He gave me his address, invited me to come and see him, and all that kind of stuff. This is a guy I had never even spoken to until we got to Oklahoma State. I didn’t know him in Seminole. Didn’t know him in Seminole. Met him here. He is just a fine fellow, just a fine fellow.

When people treat you like people, you can’t help but treat them like people, or you’ve got to be some kind of idiot that just isn’t fit to even be a person. If you can’t treat a person that treats you like you want to be treated, you can’t in turn pay the same thing back—and that’s kind of the way I put my life. I want to treat people like I want to be treated. If you want to laugh and joke, let’s laugh and joke. If you want to not spend any time with me, then don’t come in my face and be doing no funny business like you want to be around me, because if you’re trying to get somewhere because I got a position where I can do something for you, I don’t like that. Don’t use me. Don’t use me. (Laughs) I’ve just enjoyed life. I’ve enjoyed being able to work. I’ve enjoyed touching as many youngsters as I’ve touched. I’ve got kids in Houston, Texas, that went to my high school, and one is working for DeLoss Dodds now. He was one of two that ran on their championship relay team two years in a row. He has a daughter running track now. He sent me everything that she did in track for the last four years, as if I was her granddad or something because I had him in track in Sumner and sent him to K- State. Dodds took two of my kids, and they were one half of his track team that won the NCAA for a couple of years.

Gill He should remember you well, right?

Pittman Oh, gosh, those kids, and it just feels so good to have kids that call me Coach Pittman, Coach Pittman. I’ve been called that twenty or thirty years. (Laughs) They still call me Coach. I’ve got a guy down in Houston, a friend that I had in football when I assisted in football. He’s a minister now and does a lot in the community and does a lot of work. He does grants and a lot of home fix-ups for the older folks there. I bet he’s a millionaire now. There is a big old church down there. He called me, and he wanted to come up so bad, but it was kind of a late date for him. I had him my second or third year at Sumner, and his dad was a minister. He gave me the nickname Dr. Pittman because I had a kind of thing where I knew how to tape ankles, and I knew how to mobilize a sprain or something, anyway, to kind of keep them on the field. He’s the one

who started calling me Doc, Doc Pittman, and I have that name still to this day. Those kids who came through in ’62, ’63, I’m Doc Pittman to them. But he called, and he sure wanted to come up. He told us he wouldn’t be able to make it.

Gill Chester, again, congratulations on your Trailblazer Award, and welcome back to Oklahoma State University. We hope you’ll come back more often.

Pittman Well, I had no idea what it was, but I certainly appreciate it. I had a good time in there tonight. Yes, it was really great. I had a good time, and I enjoyed it. I have my brother and two sisters—they were able to come down, and it was just a joy, and my nephew. It kind of shows you a little bit about, I guess, the closeness of family that we had because we were together. We couldn’t help but be close in a three bedroom house with seven kids! (Laughs)

Gill Well, thank you very much. We appreciate it.

Pittman I appreciate it.

------End of interview ------