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  • Western Carolina University
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  • HL_HIST340-574_Lawrence_Thomas_2022-02-17_transcript

Thomas 1 Subject: Bob Thomas Interviewer: Bailey Lawrence Location: Forsyth County, NC (phone interview) Date: February 17, 2022 Length: 01:17:20 Western Carolina University Alumni Bailey Lawrence: Mr. Thomas, do I have your consent for this interview to be recorded? Bob Thomas: You do. BL: Okay, so can you tell me what years you were at Western? BT: Uh, I was at Western from the fall of 1976 to the spring of 1970. BL: So, ‘67 to ‘70? BT: No ‘66 to ’70. BL: Okay ’66 to ’70. Okay awesome, so were there any major changes that you witnessed during your time at Western? BT: Well, yeah. You know we were, still a relatively small school, isolated in a lot of ways, at that point in time. And western, North Carolina, the highways as you see them today didn’t exist. Interstate 40 was not completed. You know it was quite a trek over to Waynesville or certainly to Asheville. So, I remember just going back and forth to Winston-Salem, sometimes took 5 and a half to 6 hours, depending on traffic as you went through everything in town. It’s hard for you to probably imagine without a interstate, it took a lot of time. On campus, Dr. Pow, P-O-W. He, I think became president or chancellor in like 1967 or ’68, and he replaced a gentleman named Dr. Reid. Dr. Reid was much older than him and had been at the university for a long time. The school became a university, you know it was evolving. My sister went to Western Carolina, and graduated in 1962, and it was Western Carolina Teachers College. She became a teacher, and had a career in education till she retired, about 15 years ago. But I saw it turn into a university. It wasn’t, I can’t remember if the UNC System was in place at that time. You know, was it part of the UNC system, I’m just not sure. But there were a number of schools that became universities including Appalachian and East Carolina, they had been colleges and they made them universities. BL: Yeah, I think that was when Western did join the UNC system it was very similar, because APP, UNC-Asheville, and Western kind of joined all at the same time. BT: Right. Thomas 2 BL: So, as you saw this change happen from a college to a university, did you see, or did you feel any type of administration level or authority level change? Or since you were becoming this bigger entity or you’re having this new label put on your college… BT: Well, I’m sure there were things going on. I was just not aware of them, in my world. You know I just, I can’t say that I was aware. It just wasn’t visible what was changing, in terms of the curriculum or the majors offered, or master’s degree programs offered, or doctorate degree programs offered. I think that all came along with it. You know, in my world, as it revolved around my classes, my major, my social activities. Didn’t really recognize a lot of change. BL: Well, during that change did you possibly see or witness or experience any of the major student issues or debates on campus. Could you elaborate if we had any? BT: Well, I always felt like Western was a very conservative school. Actually, you know kids going to school in the sixties, (laugh) we read about a lot of things going on at other universities that really weren’t going on at Western Carolina in a lot of ways. I’ve often thought about, why is that? There was a lot of campus turmoil, specifically at the more elite and well known universities in this country. Even probably at schools in North Carolina, like UNC. But you know, I always had a theory, it was because most of the kids that came to Western Carolina probably were more conservative. And came from families that they were perhaps the first generation, and they didn’t come from privileged backgrounds. I know I certainly didn’t. We were just kinda grateful, a lot of us, to be where we were. It was a lot of activism going on, not like on a relative basis to some schools. I don’t recall there was ever a riot, a sit-in, a protest. There were people that were outspoken, most of the views were expressed through out newspaper. Not through protest. But, I was kind of a part of a different group of people, that we. (laugh) We were Greeks, we were social. We probably were more social than academic in a lot of ways. But, I think when I look at the school today and I look at colleges in general, it’s a real different environment than what I experienced. I know there has been some controversary on campus recently about the “woke movement,” which I’ll be the first to tell you I don’t quite understand it intellectually what’s going on. I say a lot of people in my generation we clung to a lot of traditional values about this country, and all of that seems to be under assault right now. BL: Would you say that was the majority of what you saw, within student demographics? Like, you obviously said it is more conservative, but did you feel like the student politics or the campus politics were more central to what was happening at Western? BT: Oh yeah. I mean we were aware. Particularly people in my major, because we took a greater interest in world affairs and what was happening through political science classes, history classes, or like a business major or someone in the sciences. It was just a very different environment than it is today. I can only imagine what it is today, with what I read. I can’t remember a protest, an organized protest. There were people that had identified themselves as, what you know back then we called hippies. But, they were usually a small group. There wasn’t any activity on their part to be activists. You know, I don’t even think I understood the word activist, it wasn’t a term we used back then. Things in our life there is more like an advanced version of our high-school experience. Thomas 3 BL: Yeah, that is really interesting that you say that. So, there was this term kind of going around or criticism type term floating about with university administration’s during this time. Which was called in loco parentis. Do you remember any form of criticism since you were in the housing government as well, you worked closely with university administration, I suppose. Do you remember anything from the student newspaper, or even your Greek life? BT: Relative to what? BL: Relative to the term in loco parentis. BT: That Latin term, could you interpret that to me? Something parental right? BL: Yeah. So, it’s basically, there was criticism that the university was like a second parent, or like the administration was like a second parent. So, there wasn’t really any freedom, or student authority over their own lives. BT: Well, I’d say that is very true. I noticed when my own kids went to college, my last one got out of college some time ago. But, the differences were stark. For one thing, during the time I was in college the sexes were separated. There were women’s dorms and men’s dorms. And it could be a very big deal if you were caught in the women’s dorm. There was no alcohol allowed on campus, in theory, and there was no alcohol certainly allowed in the dormitories. I think the degree of freedom that kids had when I was there was pretty well limited. I would say the administration did act as a second parent. You had the freedom of being away from home, your parents weren’t there all the time. It was your responsibility to study. There was no body overlooking you. You had to keep up. But relative to your social behavior, relative to how you conducted yourself it was pretty strict. I’m sure that went on for a decade or two after I got out of school. BL: Yeah, could you maybe elaborate. Because, I was astonished to know how long the separate housing… When I looked back in the archive I was very astonished to see how long the social regulations had gone on. It was like well into the ‘70s. How did those social regulations, what do you remember of those social regulations for both men and women. BT: Well, we were definitely sequestered the two genders. Men’s dorms we were up on the hill, around where old Moore dorm is now and Reynolds and they type. I can’t remember the other names, Buchanan… there were a couple of other. Most of the men lived up there. The women lived down, closer to where the newer part of the campus is today. There were no co-ed dorms, and therefore if you were going to… and I don’t recall that many women living off campus at the time. It was not unusual, obviously, for men to live off campus. Whether you were living in an apartment, living in a trailer, or living in a fraternity house. If you went to take a young lady out you had to report to the dorm, to the lobby. There was somebody sitting there, you told them who you were there for. The lady would come down and then they had a curfew, they had to get back by a certain time or they were in trouble. Thomas 4 BL: Wow, I’ve read about all of these regulations but it is so crazy to hear, you know, somebody actually talk about them. Can you, are there any other experiences that you remember, from your experiences, or friends what that dating life was like? BT: We didn’t think it was an issue. We thought it… it seems unusual today to you, but that was the way things were, there were certain rules. It wasn’t very much different from when I dated a girl at home, you know. I had to have her in by a certain time, her parents were accounting. I would be in trouble if I didn’t get her in, in time. She was in trouble if I didn’t get her in, in time. So it was just a carryover of that kind of behavior. And then you know there were dress codes as well. … I think that any kind of suggestive dress certainly by ladies, was looked upon as prohibited. I can’t recall. We even wore ties to football games. A lot of people wore a coat and a tie, to a football game. Not to basketball games, as I recall, but to football games. You don’t ever see that anymore. It was just a different era. We weren’t that far removed from the 1950s. Which is one of the most conservative times in the 20th century. I think one would also say, we were.. most of us were the children of World War II generation, the depression generation. And it wasn’t quite evident at Western Carolina but it was at a lot of places the generation was rebelling. The other thing that didn’t happen as much at Western Carolina was drugs. I think that I… I saw marijuana a couple times, when I was in college. Used it a couple of times at the suggestion of a friend. And that was my first and only experience… but you know beer and alcohol or liquor was the … you know that’s what we used. We were a part of that, in terms of our social behavior, and we were drinking underage for liquor. Now you could drink in North Carolina at that time, you could drink beer at 18. You could buy and use beer at 18 years old. I think that went away sometime in the 70s or early 80s. And still today, I guess you have to be 21 to buy beer and alcohol legally, don’t you? BL: Yes. (laugh) BT: Yeah, so you know all those things happened, but did we use them, did we have somebody buy them for us. We had friends that were older than we were, you know that happened, that happens all the time, still happens I’m sure. But, it was a conservative group that was away from home for the first time, for any period of time. There were rules in the dormitories. There were rules on campus about how you behaved. And that was one of the reasons why they had a Men’s House Government. … I think in 1968-69 I got involved in Men’s House Government. I was the treasurer of the Men’s House Government in my junior year. And in the spring of my junior year I decided to run for the president of Men’s House Government in 1969-70. I won that election. It was a campus wide election. I had to go back and look at my annual… my year book to… jog my memory from 52-53 years ago. …. We were responsible for the dormitories and the behavior in the dormitories and any violation of the Universities code, which was generally.. it came through interactions with the campus police, they would go before us. Most of it involved alcohol. Alcohol in the dorms or a man in the dorms. So we actually had trials, without the legal experience… the person would come before us as a group, we would listen to the story and we would decide if they were guilty. And there usually was a fine involved. We were not involved in expelling the kids. … I worked closely with the dean of men… Doug Davis. And he was responsible for those things at the staff level of the university. He gave us advice, and if we had a major problem … and to tell you the truth I don’t remember a major major problem. I had an office down in the student center and it was the office for the president of men’s housing. This Thomas 5 was a paid position … they paid me quarterly, I think maybe 125 dollars, maybe something like that. We were on the quarter system at that time not semesters. Fall, winter, and spring. …It was the only office in Men’s House Government, where it was paid. Nobody else got paid, but we had a vice president and a treasurer … and myself… and a secretary as 4 officers of the Men’s House Government. Then we had a number of people that participated … because I was also on the student senate. That was a whole different set of issues that they took up. Most of them had to do with new policies for or even violations of policies amongst students. BL: That’s really interesting. Do you remember since you were involved two school years … within student politics do you remember the co-op, the student and faculty cooperative government switching into two separate entities? Like, the faculty senate and the formal student government association. Do you remember that change? BT: I do not… BL: I was just curious to see what type of dynamic switch …. How did the Men’s House Government work since you were also a part of the student senate… how did the Men’s House Government function within student politics? Because there were so many different organizations… BT: Well there was also a Women’s House Government, and because we were in separate dorms, you know it was required. We trained residence advisors we were in the same. We were in the selection process for that. I remember the fall was very busy, because I had to go and address the men in each dorm, and attendance was higher in the freshman dorms than the senior dorms. I addressed them. I’d go over the codes of conduct and that kind of thing. I probably wasn’t very popular (laughter) you know I don’t know. In my fraternity we always stressed leadership and scholarship, and athletics. That was the Phi Kappa Alpha, we were scholars, students, or scholars, athletes and leaders. We were encouraged to take part in various, a lot of my fraternity brothers were involved either in the student senate or they were involved in student politics or leadership or athletics. In the university they were leaders. I don’t think I came to school there with burning desire to be in campus politics. When I got there I became a vice president of my own fraternity, like when I was a sophomore, maybe that was my junior year. And I probably could’ve been elected president my senior year but I decided to spend my focus on student politics. I just felt like that was a better place for me. It required meetings every month and dedicated several hours to it. I remember being in my office, there in the student center, probably every day for some period of time, trying to find out what was happening. I also saw all of the campus police reports. I guess that was kinds an interesting thing. I had aspirations at that time to be an attorney. I had a thought of that’s what I wanted to do. Maybe had the army not come in-between me and that I may have gone onto law school. But, I had a military obligation I had to fulfill. BL: That’s really neat … Since you worked with the Women’s House Government as well … how did you guys work together, or did you mainly work separately? Thomas 6 BT: Mainly separately, if you’ve ever looked at a yearbook you’d see that the Men’s House Government consisted of all men and Women’s House Government consisted of all women. The Senate was co-ed. BL: So the Senate was the only time that you worked together? BT: Yeah. But the Women’s House Government operated in a mirror image of us, or we were a mirror image of them. We both did the same thing. BL: That’s really neat. … Can you tell me a little more about, because the Women’s House Government had way more regulations, as I’m looking back at the student handbooks. (laugh) Had way more regulations listed than the Men’s House Government did. Could you tell me why that is? BT: What’s that? BL: Could you tell me possibly why the Women’s House Government had more regulations than the Men’s House Government? BT: Well, I don’t think women were as free in that period as men. The career opportunities for women in the 50s and 60s. You were either a teacher or a nurse, it was rare for a women to be majoring in some type of business. But, now there were people that went into the sciences and that was pretty open to men and women. I don’t think at that time we were known for our science programs. … it was the early days of computers, and very early days. So there were some people who were involved in data processing, both men and women. And a lot of times they were math majors. But, back to your original question. I think it reflected the times, Bailey, you know women just didn’t have the freedom that men had. You know the freedom to be out and about, and you know that’s just the way things were. … That probably feeds into the women’s liberation movement, but however you may want to define it. But in my mind that occurred at the beginning of the 80s. It was probably bubbling up in the 60s and 70s, but not at Western Carolina. I think you know that’s just the way things were. A lot more regulations for women than men. They would tell you, that’s to protect you. That’s to protect the women from the men. That’s the way I think they would see it today, and at that time. And maybe it was. (laughter) There was something at that time called a panty raid. Have you ever heard of a panty raid? BL: Mmm, no I haven’t please elaborate. BT: (Laughter) well, … I’m telling you this because I never participated in one, but men would storm the women’s dorm. It happened occasionally. They wouldn’t go in but they were outside probably yelling, demanding that the women throw their panties out at them. And that happened. Women you know sometimes would open the window and throw their panties out. And the guys would yell. I mean that seems pretty silly, I guess to you today. But those things did happen. BL: I’m sure that was an eventful scene. (laughter) I don’t think we are that lively on campus anymore (laughter) Thomas 7 BT: Yeah, probably not. … My impression, you know I have been involved with Western Carolina for the last 20 years on the foundation board. Now, I’m on the Brinson Honors College board. We have a zoom call tonight. My impression is that students are a lot more serious today about their studies. They are much more focused on their careers, much more focused on what they are going to do with their life than we were. I can’t tell you why. I mean you could literally go to school in the 50s and 60s and probably some part of the 70s and get a degree in anything, and probably get a job doing something not even related to it. Because you had a college degree. And you’d proven that you were smart enough to get through college. Now you really have to come out of college with some skills in order, I think, to get employed. I think because, the percentage of people with college degrees is much higher, so it’s a more competitive world than it was for me when I got out of college. BL: Oh it is. I am learning that slowly but surely. (laughter) BT: … That’s what you have to express to your employer, your potential employer. That you’ve got skills to do certain things, you have to understand where you’re going to fit into an organization. You know, its … I didn’t take many business courses in my undergraduate degree days, but I learned a lot about business after I got out of college. Both from working and studying further. I had to learn the language of finance. I had to learn marketing skills and management skills. I think I learned a lot of those, but it was a difference environment than which I went to school. And the other thing I would talk about is, a lot of us were aware of what was going on. The Vietnam war, which hit a peak in the late 1969 in terms of troops on the ground in Vietnam. It was always in the background and as long as you were a college student, up through the fall of 1969 you had what was called a 2S deferment. You know there was a draft going on. If you didn’t have that 2S deferment you were classified as 1A. If you were physically fit, you were subject to be called into the military. We always had that in the back of our mind. That if you weren’t in college you could end up in the military in a very unpopular war, that was becoming more unpopular as time went on. In the fall of 1969 Nixon was president and during that time they abolished the .. or they changed all of the rules around the selective service system. What they did, was they introduced a lottery, and the lottery was much like you see today when you’re doing the online gambling or whatever that pull ping pong balls out of it. And it had your birthdate on it and so where ever your birthday was … and it came up that was your number. I remember that evening in the fall of 1969, because it changed everything for us. If your number was less than let’s say 150 you were probably gonna have to go into the military. If it was over 150 your chances for the military were a lot slimmer. And at the same time the war in Vietnam was winding down. It took another 3-4 years to wind down. So that was looming in the background for all of the men. As unrest on campus was really really high. Not on our campus but on campuses in general. Maybe you’ve read about what occurred at Kent State University in Ohio in the spring of 1970. It was a major event there were protest going on at Kent State campus, they called in the national guard and they had live ammunition in their rifles. And they fired into the crowd. I think some 7 or 8 kids got killed. That was a big, big deal. It further gave fuel to the anti-war movement. When I finally did go into the military and I was stationed in Washington D.C. for a year, you know there were a lot of… I wasn’t involved in the protests but I would go down to be among the crowd. Just you know kids our age, and they all knew we were in the military because our hair was so short. But, it’s probably hard for you to understand right now, but the military was not looked upon very favorably. They got the brunt of what the Thomas 8 government was doing. The protestors were mad at the government and they were accusing the military of being complicit. They were baby killers. They were bad people. And it didn’t make you feel too good if you were serving your country. That didn’t change for another 20 years, attitudes toward people who served in the military completely changes. Like today I even have people who say thank you for your service. (laughter) it just kind of shocks me because my service was 50 years ago. And nobody even knows what I did, and that’s okay. They thank me for my service as if I just had been out of the military. And I find it kind of interesting. But that attitude was not from the 1970s… there were a lot of people who tried to avoid it. They left the country. I didn’t have any friends that did, the people you know they call them draft dodgers. They go to go to Canada, they leave the country, or they tried to get disqualified from the military service. There was an underlining theme of what was going on, on campus in the 60s. It affected behavior, it affected the student. It affected our psyche, you know. I guess is one way to say it. People of your generation, you don’t have to worry about that at all. If you want to go into the military fine. People might applaud you, fine. But not many people go relative to the population. There’s a small percentage that go, and they are all volunteers. That was not the case in the 60s and you went because you were under threat of being drafted to go. Or you were actually drafted. BL: Hmm, could you elaborate a little more on why you enlisted, or were you drafted? BT: Yeah, I had a very low number. I remember that night when they did the drawing. We were all gathered at the fraternity house. I was among the 2 or 3 with the lowest numbers. A lot of guys that had high numbers, knew they didn’t have to go in, and they could get on with their lives. So, when I got out of college I immediately got summoned to come to Charlotte, and go through a physical. I went down there and I was determined that I was qualified physically which put me right in the cross hairs of being drafted. So I went in. I went in with the intention of serving my couple of years, then getting out. Then I found out that you take a lot of tests when you go into the military, I’m sure you still do. They find out what your aptitudes are. … When I was in college I had taken German for a couple of years And I took Spanish in high school. Languages tended to be easy for me, for some reason. I just had an aptitude. I didn’t really peruse it in college really, you know, it was just easy. Those were easy courses for me. So, they determined that I had a high aptitude for language. So, I went to the [defense] language institute. Which was in Washington D.C. for a year. It was pretty intense, it was 6 or 7 hours a day of language training. There were only 3 people in the class. So it was total immersion. Before that I had gone to interrogation school in Fort Holabird, Maryland, and learned how to interrogate prisoners of war. And regardless of what you hear and think about that there are rules around that (laughter). Around interrogation that they don’t teach you how to torture. At any rate, that’s why I went in. I was fortunate that I didn’t ever have to go into combat and I really didn’t go to Vietnam either at that time. My military service kinda overlapped with the period where we were winding down our activity in Asia. And as I’ve mentioned, the peak of activity was in 1969. I think we had a half a million soldiers in Vietnam. When Nixon was elected in the fall of 1968 he immediately began to reduce the troops in Vietnam. BL: Wow, that’s crazy. So you talked a little bit about like your fraternity brothers getting together and watching the draft on TV. Do you remember any… was that kind of a regular thing Thomas 9 for you guys to do together? What was the state, I guess feeling for men on Western’s campus during this time because of the draft? BT: Well, as I mentioned this was always in the back of everybody’s mind that was in school at that time… you wanted to make sure that your grades were good and that you were a good enough to maintain your status as a student. I don’t know what you call it today, but we called it flunking out. We saw people flunk out, they couldn’t maintain their grade point average. Maybe they shouldn’t been in college in the first place. But they usually end up going into the military. Maybe as a draftee or maybe in a job they really didn’t want to have. This carried a lot of interest of every man on campus. I would say unless it was a really important sporting event, even sporting events were quite like they are today. You know there’s the super bowl started in 1967… everyone would gather around the tv for a lot of sporting events that they do today. I remember there were 25 or 30 of us gathered in the living room at the fraternity house, watching this on television. And watching the lottery. You know they had to pull 365 ping pong balls out, so it took a couple hours to get through that. And after that you kind of knew what the next few years of your life was going to be like. BL: Wow, that had to be a big moment. BT: Well it was and it wasn’t. I’ll tell you the truth … all of my uncles and my dad served in the military in World War II. I came from a family that had a high value in military service. It wasn’t as if I was resisting it all that much. Almost felt like, well, ok, it’s my turn to go. So, I probably would not have gone into the military had I not a low draft number or been drafted. I probably would not. But, when I look back on it I’m really very thankful I went in. primarily because, I don’t think I was the most mature guy at 21 years old. I got out of the military I was 25. I had seen parts of the world that I had never seen before. I was doing things I would’ve never done. I learned to get along with people from all socioeconomic levels. Which was different than my college experience. From that stand point there was great value in doing. I look back on it and I’m very thankful I had that experience. So, I didn’t look at it as a burden. My military experience was pretty good. Those guys that went in and they saw the worst of combat weren’t as lucky as I was. The war was so unpopular and it went on for so long… the war went on for 10 years before we extracted out of the country. Well you can say Afghanistan went on a lot longer. The war in Afghanistan was never unpopular. People were tired of it, but it was not unpopular or it felt like we were doing the wrong thing. We went in there with a purpose, and maybe we stayed too long, and it kind of morphed into nation building and all that. But still you can’t imagine how unpopular the war had become, sons were getting killed, so what’s that all about. The country was in turmoil. … Today we are polarized, then they were very polarized in the country, politically as well. It was a different time. BL: Oh.. yeah… I see some crazy correlations (laugh) between then and sometimes now with our politics. But, I had one more question, or a couple more questions about … men not avoiding the draft but protesting the draft. Um so I read somewhere, it was in the Western Carolinian, it was this guy in 1969, I don’t know if you remember this or not. But his name was J.T. Likes and he got a little column in the paper, he had got drafted and he called the president of the United States. And according to the article he actually got through and was able to talk to the vice Thomas 10 president, and he was at Western. He called from Madison residence hall. Do you remember anything from that? Or was … BT: No, I do not. He was protesting the war? BL: He had got drafted and he was a freshman at Western, and it was the fall of 1969, and he got drafted as soon as he got to Western, and he was trying to defer and they weren’t letting him defer. So he called the operator and the operator said, who would you like to be connected to. And, he said the president of the United States (laughter). And she said what? (laughter) But he was able to get through it said, as the Western Carolinian reported it. And he was able to talk to the Vice President. But that is the only article I’ve ever seen about it. So, I didn’t know if there was anything more? (laughter) BT: Well, I’ve never heard that story, didn’t know about it. But it correlates with what I was saying. Prior to the fall of 1969 if you were a student and you had a 2S deferment, and keep in mind we all had these draft cards. You ever heard of a draft card. All men had a draft card. And you had that by registering with the Selective Service at 18. You were required to do that. Well the Selective Service board would keep up with you and if you were a student you kept them informed of being a student, and you know you maintained this 2S deferment. After the lottery in the fall of 1969, all that went away. There was no such thing as a 2S deferment. You were either 1A or you were eligible for the draft. Now I was allowed to graduate, I still had 7 or 8 months of school left to graduate. But as soon as I graduated, as soon as I finished, I think they probably grandfathered us in. But as soon as I graduated I was open to being drafted and I was under threat of being drafted. When I think about college I think about that threat being over my head. It was always there it was always present among all men, that you may have to serve in the military at that time. There was a war going on that was pretty unpopular. BL: Since you kind of worked closely with the dean of men, how did he handle it? How did the administration level handle that? BT: Handle it in terms of what? BL: like supporting the men students … either supporting or not supporting. (laugh) BT: Well I don’t really know what dean Davis’s feelings were about the war. If I had to guess, based on knowing him somewhat, we probably didn’t have really firm anti-war feelings, either one of us. I think I was supportive of our government, and feeling that our government was doing the right thing. That they would in the end do the right thing. I think that opinion has changed over time, for me. You know, our government does a lot of the wrong things. But back then, keep in mind we were only 20 years removed from the end of WWII, the good war. We had a lot of people, I mean my whole family who has served in the military, they thought America was the greatest and we had done the right thing. … I would say that if you were anti-war at Western Carolina, and you were actively anti-war you were in a real minority. In the late 60s, there wasn’t just a movement of any such. Probably it was more indifference … and the question of how does this affect me? At the level of approving or disapproving of the war, I don’t think that we were real conscious of that. But I think how is this going to affect me, am I going to have Thomas 11 to go or not and serve? That was really the top of mind. That’s just the way it was. Then you saw all these other things going on, on campus how passionate, not on our campus but around the country. Particularly in the, how do you call them, more elite universities. The Ivy leagues or the west coast group, Berkley was a real hot bed for anti-war activity. You saw all that going on and you said, man I don’t know if I support that or not. I don’t support their methods, I may support what they are trying to say but, I don’t support their methods. And you had that in the back of your mind. Keep in mind that we were 20 years old, 21 years old. Our brains weren’t even fully formed. It took a while, look back on it now, and say that I wish we had probably extracted ourself from that long before. But you know that’s the benefit of looking backwards, and second guessing what happened. I don’t know Bailey. I think, we’ve talked about this a lot this hour, but I think its hard for me to separate the war going on, the unrest, the polarization in this country from my college experience. It was something that was going on, even though we may have been having a great time. The time of our life. Sometimes we were meeting out spouses, we were dating, we were doing things more social. We were also learning. We were going to school, and we were worried about this future that we weren’t quite sure. I had to delay any ambition I had for the future until I get the military out of the way. BL: So do you think this polarization of a more national political world, made student politics at Western feel more together. Like you were working towards one goal? BT: I don’t remember it being evident. I just don’t remember it being evident in my student government so much. I really don’t. Have you looked at a year book from 1969 or 1970? I’m sure you could get access to them. BL: I’ve not looked at year books. I’ve done student handbooks and the newspapers. BT: Well I think… if you look through a year book. I pulled out 1969-1970. I back on that and I look at how conservatively dressed we are. Of course there’s not much diversity there. The school, other than a few African American athletes, we were mostly white. We weren’t segregated, we just didn’t attract a lot of African American kids or minorities of any kind. Mostly white kids, pretty well dressed. Some looked preppy, some did not. You could just look at it and see the activities, and get a sense of what it was like at Western Carolina in that time. … The people you might describe as radical today, or we called hippies, long hair, not dressed very well, didn’t care about their appearance too much. That was a minority, a real minority of kids. BL: That’s really interesting. Do you think that the dress regulations from administration tried to prohibit that kind of culture forming at Western? BT: No, I think that is just the way we were brought up in our conservative southern homes. I remember my mother telling me the way I had to dress if I had to go to something formal. I’ve talked to my spouses… my first wife died of cancer. I married again, but my wife today, she went to Western Carolina. We dated in my senior year. But we talked about how our mothers and fathers expected us to behave. So I think the regulations, if a parent in 1969 of a student at Western Carolina looked at the student handbooks. They would assume yes! 100 percent they would have supported it. There would be no question, that’s what I want you to do. You see what to do and you do what they tell you to do. That’s the way we were raised. You were doing what Thomas 12 you were supposed to be doing. I don’t know where we lost that. That’s the way I was brought up and … we didn’t want to disappoint our parents and particularly if they were paying for our education. BL: Yeah that’s important. (laughter) BT: Exactly, so I hope I’ve given you a sense of… have you interviewed anybody else yet? BL: You are my first one for this project. BT: Are you going to interview anybody else of my era? BL: I am! I have several more people lined up. BT: Don’t get confused. There’s another Bob Thomas. There was a Bob Thomas who was from Bryson City and he was also active in student politics. He was the Vice President of the student government in… 1968 and 1969. I think he went on to become a teacher. So we separated ourselves, he was Bob E. Thomas, and I was Bob W. Thomas. BL: Ohh. Yeah I have a lot of correlating names… BT: Yeah BL: during this time. I have a couple more questions since we were talking about Vietnam and what was happening everywhere else on other campuses there was… or did it happen before your time. There was this thing called a moratorium I think it was during 70. But, it was basically an anti-war teach-in that happened on campus. It was more of a national movement, but Western and a bunch of other North Carolina had one as well during 1970. BT: Mhmm. Yeah there were movements like that … as I recall it wasn’t a huge event at Western Carolina. It occurred, but you know there was never any violence. I don’t recall an incident of violence or a violent protest, I should say. And violence is not the word, even animated. … When I got into the army it was in the spring of 1971, when I was stationed in Washington D.C. There was a huge protest called may day and it was on the first of May. In May of 1971. I had just gotten to Washington D.C. a few weeks before as a duty station. … They activated every soldier in the district of Washington and pushed out on the street with weapons. Unloaded weapons I might add. Because Kent state had happened less than a year and a half before. And there were protests in the streets. The object of the protest was to shut down Washington D.C. To shut it down. Shut down all traffic, all the roads. The military was there along with police to clear the road to keep them free. I had never seen anything like that. … there was violence and animation, animated protest. I think they arrested people by the thousands. And took them off to RFK stadium, which at that time in bus loads. It took years before that was all judicated and finalized. … It was kind of like January 6th but with a lot more people and a lot more activity. And one could call it an insurrection. BL: Wow… can you talk … Thomas 13 BT: If you wanted to use that word. There were no weapons except the weapons that we had. (laughter) and we didn’t even have loaded weapons, … you know people were in our face yelling at us and spitting at us and calling us names. But I mean we were out there by the hundreds trying to maintain order. BL: Wow. So what was your job that day, other than keeping the roads clear and trying to maintain order? BT: Oh, I was just a part of a group of soldiers. We were just trying to make sure they didn’t block the roads so traffic could go through. I think I was stationed around the Lincoln memorial and bridge to go across to the Lincoln memorial. And like I said they activated every military person in the military district of Washington. Including marines, air force, army, and navy. We had on full gear helmets and all that. We had unloaded rifles. BL: Why did they give you weapons if they weren’t going to be loaded? I know… BT: I think it was supposed to be an intimidation factor. We weren’t advertising that they weren’t loaded. Like I said Kent state had occurred less than a year. It occurred in the spring of 70 and this was in the spring of 1971. It was only a year after that. In that case it was the national guard case that had loaded weapons, and they were ordered to fire into the crowd. A huge mistake. And killed a number of people. So, they didn’t want that to happen again. So they didn’t give us any ammunition for our weapons. BL: That’s smart, that’s pretty brilliant. Do you remember, there obviously had to be some type of planning on the militaries end, just as it is for the protestors end. Do you remember the days leading up to this, what it was like? BT: The days leading up to? BL: the days leading up to this protest happening, because I’m sure they were planning. You know it wasn’t just an immediate action. BT: Well, yeah, it was well known that there was going to be a huge protest. There were protests going on in Washington D.C. every weekend out on the mall or wherever. Around the Lincoln memorial. Around the Washington monument. In front of the White House. There was always protest, it may not be as big as the previous or latter ones. But there was always protest of some type going on during the period I was in Washington. So everyone knew it was coming, and they advertised it, it was a whole thing to get people there. Because you were going to shut down Washington D.C. that was the whole purpose to shut down Washington D.C. Shut down all activity. So the military brought in people from the entire district. I was going to school every day from about 7:30 in the morning to 3:30 in the afternoon. … During that period of time they got us organized to be here on May 1st, ready to go. They took us out there is big military vehicles, and put us at our post and we were there all day. BL: Wow. What were your feelings throughout the day? Thomas 14 BT: Well, my feelings. Again, I can’t say I was supportive of the protestors, I thought they were going about it in the wrong way. There wasn’t a lot of unity on their part and what they were trying to protest for. Some people were just criminals (laughter). Some of the people were deeply principled. Just like all protest you get bad people mixed in with good people. My feelings were that I wish I was in class. You know rather than being there. I was never feeling threatened. I never felt that something bad was going to happen to me. I thought these people were putting themselves in jeopardy. Then a lot of them got arrested. They had to fight through that for years after probably to get all of that taken care of. They never talk about it now. Maybe its … I think protest against the war kind of looked at today as it was the right thing to do. But believe me it wasn’t universal at that point in time. Not everybody felt that way. If you were in the military you probably didn’t feel that way because you were serving your country and you were doing what your country was telling you to do. … So soldiers probably looked at it quite a bit differently than students who didn’t have an obligation or didn’t have a threat of serving. … That period tore the country apart, it took years to get over it. Years. Until even 1990 when the first Gulf War. I think that’s when, it took 20 years for the military to recover after all that. And it took 20 years for attitudes about the military to change. BL: Hmmm, and you think that’s attributed to the Gulf War? BT: Well the Gulf War was a big boost for the American military and for patriotism. Patriotism got a bad name during the 70s and 80s. Had a big boost in the 90s and I’m not sure where it is today. Attitudes change. BL: They do. They definitely do. BT: I mean, what year were you born, Bailey? BL: 1999 BT: Yeah, all this is ancient history BL: (Laugh) BT: Yeah, maybe you’ve read about it, until you lived it, it’s hard for you to understand it. I was talking to some young person about your age recently. They couldn’t believe how they were treated coming back from Vietnam. I never wore my uniform outside of when I was on duty. Because people would say the worst things to you. They might assault you. The people certainly, coming back from Vietnam and getting off the plane in San Francisco were taking their uniforms off and throwing them in the trash. They couldn’t, it was that bad. BL: Wow, yeah I’ve read about veteran affairs after Vietnam, but it’s different to hear it from somebody. … You were overseas during the Vietnam War. correct? But not… in combat? BT: I subsequently went to Asia, as a businessman, in the early 90s so 20-25 years. I spent time in Vietnam which is a lovely country. But all that happened as a civilian, as a businessman. Thomas 15 BL: Okay, hmm. Yeah, did you… so you didn’t wear your uniform? BT: Well I didn’t wear my uniform around Washington D.C. for example. You just wouldn’t do that. BL: That is really interesting. BT: And I don’t think I, this is why when someone says thank you for your service. When I got out of the military, and my enlisted friends and I we’ve talked about it amongst ourselves. We didn’t really talk about our military service. We weren’t proud of it so, because people had such mixed emotions about it. So, it was years that went by before I even told people I served in the military. BL: Wow, that is that’s a lot. Mmm. So I’m going to bring it back one more time to campus. If that’s okay? BT: Yes BL: So do you remember, were any of your friends drafted while they were at school? BT: No. BL: So everyone for the most part was drafted after or enlisted after they graduated? BT: Well… I take that back. There were some friends early in my college career that they were doing poorly in school and they flunked out. And they got drafted. I wouldn’t say they were close friends, just people that I knew. Went into the military, because they got drafted because they were doing poorly in school. BL: So, it all just attributed to grades. BT: Yeah it attributed to their status. If they were a student or a non-student. BL: Hmm that is really cool. Well that is all of my questions. My last question is, is there anything else you’d like to add? Or talk about with the Men’s House Government or your fraternity? Or anything else that we’ve talked about. BT: Well I was proud of my service in the Men’s House Government. I was proud I served my school. … I’m proud of my fraternity. We’re still, my fraternity is still pretty close. *Note: transcription stops at 01:06:08, but audio continues to 01:17:20

Bob Thomas, who attended Western Carolina University from 1966 - 1970, discusses being a member of the Men's House Government and his time and involvement in student activities on campus with the Vietnam War in the background of his experience. He also recounts his time in the U.S. military as well as anti-war protests in Washington D.C.

• Creator
  • Thomas, Bob
• Contributor
  • Lawrence, Baily
• Format
  • Sound recordings
  • Transcripts
  • Interviews
• Type
  • Sound
  • Text
• Date
  • Date interview: 2022-02-17
• Extent
  • Duration: 1:17:20
  • Pages: 15
• Subject - Topic
  • College student government
  • College students -- Political activity
  • College students -- Social life and customs
  • Draft -- United States
  • Thomas, Bob -- Interviews
  • Vietnam War, 1961-1975 -- Protest movements
  • Western Carolina University -- Students -- Social life and customs
• Location
  • Cullowhee (N.C.)
• Source institution
  • Western Carolina University
• Source Collection
  • WCU Oral History Collection - Introduction to Oral History
• Identifier
  • HL_HIST340-574_Lawrence_Thomas_2022-02-17
• Repository
  • Western Carolina University Hunter Library