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Governor’s Day 1970: A Retrospective View Interviewees: Paul Adamian, Joseph N. Crowley, Frankie Sue Del Papa, John R. Doherty, David L. Harvey, Anne Howard, Procter Hug Jr., James Hulse, Fred Maher, Bob Mayberry, N. Edd Miller, James T. Richardson, David R. Slemmons, and Lorena Stookey Interviewed: 1998-2001 Published: 2005 Interviewer: Brad Lucas UNOHP Catalog #205 Description Th e word “Vietnam” signifi es a country, a war, and for many, a historical marker for a period of cultural revolution. In the spring of 1970, the force of the larger antiwar movement came to Reno. Th e University of Nevada, Reno (UNR) faced weeks of volatile unrest and protest unlike anything it had witnessed before—and nothing else quite like it has happened in the thirty years since. On April 20, Richard Nixon announced the withdrawal of 150,000 troops from Vietnam, but ten days later he announced the invasion of Cambodia. Opposition to the war in Indochina increased, with over 500 campuses shut down across the country and with explosives or fi rebombs used against ROTC buildings. On Monday, May 4, Ohio National Guardsmen armed with bayonets and tear gas broke up a crowd of antiwar protestors at Kent State University. Th e following day, May 5, 1970, UNR offi cials decided to proceed with a military ceremony to celebrate the Governor and the university’s ROTC cadets. Th is “Governor’s Day” ceremony prompted several hundred students, staff , and faculty to march in protest of the Cambodian invasion and the campus killings at Kent State. In the days that followed the protest, media coverage of Governor’s Day began to spread, generating public hostility toward the Nevada campus and its administration. Procter Hug Jr., chairman of the board of regents, called for the investigation of two English Department faculty members, Paul Adamian and Fred Maher, whom he believed were prominent in the week’s disruption. In the end, the regents fi red Adamian from his tenured position with the university for his leadership role in the protest. Th e charges against Maher were dropped. In 1970, over fi ft y individuals related to the events of Governor’s Day were interviewed in the weeks immediately following the protest. Th ese interviews are presented in the companion UNOHP publication, Governor’s Day 1970. In the years since 1998, Brad Lucas, a UNR doctoral student doing research about the Vietnam years, located and re-interviewed fourteen chroniclers and added perspectives that were absent from the initial oral history project. Th ese more recent interviews, which are published in this second volume, Governor’s Day 1970: A Retrospective View, provide insightful perspectives from administrators, faculty members, and students who were related to events of Governor’s Day. Continued on next page. Description (continued) Undergraduate student activists were the instigators of the Governor’s Day protest, and a small group of radical students (and locals) were responsible for two fi re bombing incidents that drew statewide attention. Undergraduates recalled life at UNR from their perspectives as student journalists and political activists. Th ey recalled Governor’s Day and the Adamian aff air as insiders who witnessed the planning and execution of campus protests, theatrics, and radicalism. Interviews with faculty were likewise revealing. Political science professor Joseph Crowley refl ected on Governor’s Day from his position of president of the university. Sociology professor David Harvey provided his observations of the university as an institution hostile to political activism. Paul Adamian’s life history provides useful insight for understanding the perspective of a faculty member who was an activist well before the Vietnam era. While Governor’s Day might stand as evidence of a turbulent or “disgraceful” time in the university’s history, these oral histories serve as a testament to the importance of institutional memory, complimentary or otherwise. Governor’s Day serves as a reminder that individual acts can indeed transform a community. G ’ D 1970: OVERNOR S AY A R V ETROSPECTIVE IEW G ’ D 1970: OVERNOR S AY A R V ETROSPECTIVE IEW From oral history interviews conducted and edited by Brad Lucas University of Nevada Oral History Program Copyright 2005 University of Nevada Oral History Program Mail Stop 0324 Reno, Nevada 89557 [email protected] http://www.unr.edu/oralhistory All rights reserved. Published 2005. Printed in the United States of America Publication Staff : Director: R. T. King Assistant Director: Mary A. Larson Production Manager: Kathleen M. Coles Production Assistants: Jamie Gradick, Alberia Martinez, Pedro Oiarzabal, Linda Sommer, Allison Tracy, and Kathryn Wright-Ross University of Nevada Oral History Program Use Policy All UNOHP interviews are copyrighted materials. Th ey may be downloaded and/or printed for personal reference and educational use, but not republished or sold. Under “fair use” standards, excerpts of up to 1000 words may be quoted for publication without UNOHP permission as long as the use is non-commercial and materials are properly cited. Th e citation should include the title of the work, the name of the person or people interviewed, the date of publication or production, and the fact that the work was published or produced by the University of Nevada Oral History Program (and collaborating institutions, when applicable). Requests for permission to quote for other publication, or to use any photos found within the transcripts, should be addressed to the UNOHP, Mail Stop 0324, University of Nevada, Reno, Reno, NV 89557-0324. Original recordings of most UNOHP interviews are available for research purposes upon request. C ONTENTS Preface ix Introduction xi 1 Paul Adamian 1 2 Joseph N. Crowley 91 3 Frankie Sue Del Papa 101 4 John R. Doherty 107 5 David L. Harvey 129 6 Anne Howard 149 7 Procter Hug Jr. 163 8 James Hulse 191 9 Fred Maher 203 10 Bob Mayberry 215 11 N. Edd Miller 233 vi CONTENTS 12 James T. Richardson 247 13 David R. Slemmons 261 14 Lorena Stookey 307 Index 320 Photograph Credits 327 P REFACE Founded in 1964, the University of Nevada editorial conventions. Laughter is represented Oral History Program (UNOHP) records and with [laughter] at the end of a sentence in which collects interviews that address significant topics it occurs; and ellipses are used, not to indicate in Nevada’s remembered past. The program’s that material has been deleted, but to indicate that chroniclers are primary sources: people who a statement has been interrupted or is participated in or directly witnessed the events incomplete . . . or there is a pause for dramatic and phenomena that are the subjects of the effect. interviews. Following precedent established by While some photographs (primarily from the Allan Nevins at Columbia University in 1948, 1970s) have been inserted throughout the text, and perpetuated since by academic programs such one set of images has been placed in the center as ours, these recorded interviews and their of this volume. In the course of the interviews he transcripts are called oral histories. conducted, Brad Lucas discussed nine particular This research volume is crafted from the photographs with most of the chroniclers, and verbatim transcripts of interviews conducted by these have been placed, for easy reference, Brad Lucas, but this volume is much easier to between pages 162 and 163. They are listed as read. Remaining faithful to the transcripts’ photographs numbers one through nine, with the content, and adhering as closely as possible to numbers corresponding to those that Lucas used chroniclers’ spoken words, the manuscript was in his interviews. edited for clarity. The editor also gave it As with all of our oral histories, while we chronological and topical organization not always can vouch for the authenticity of Governor’s Day found in the raw transcript. Readers who desire 1970: A Retrospective View, we advise the reader access to the unaltered oral histories are invited to keep in mind that it is composed of personal to visit the offices of the UNOHP, where the tapes opinions and accounts of the remembered past, of the interviews may be heard by appointment. and we do not claim that it is entirely free of To add context to written representations of error. Intelligent readers will approach it with the the spoken word, the UNOHP uses certain same anticipation of discovery, tempered with viii PREFACE caution, that they would bring to government reports, diaries, newspaper stories, and other interpretations of historical information. UNOHP December 2005