Larry Eickstaedt Oral History Interview

Item

Identifier

EickstaedtLarry

Title

Larry Eickstaedt Oral History Interview

Date

11 August 2016

Creator

Larry Eickstaedt

Contributor

Sam Schrager

extracted text

Larry Eickstaedt
Interviewed by Sam Schrager
The Evergreen State College Oral History Project
Interview 1, August 11, 2016
FINAL

Schrager: Sam here.
Eickstaedt: Larry here.
Schrager: Happy to be here with you in your lovely house on Central Avenue.
Eickstaedt: Aw, thank you.
Schrager: Why don’t we start with a bit about your parents, and how they met, and what they did and
how you come into the picture?
Eickstaedt: I’ll start with my mother. She grew up on a farm just south of Storm Lake, Iowa. She went to
college at the local college, ended up with a bachelor’s degree, majored in mathematics. This was in the
1920s. My dad grew up in Davenport, Iowa on the Mississippi. His dad was a carpenter, laborer. One of
my mom’s cousins from down in that area asked my dad if he wanted to go up to northwest Iowa, a
little trip. So my dad came along, and that’s when my mom and dad met. It was the first time my dad
had ever ridden a horse. The story is that they didn’t cinch the saddle tight enough. So he’s trotting
along and the saddle just slid over, and he ended up on the bottom of the horse. Well everybody made
jokes about this city slicker.
Well anyway, they ended up getting married and they moved to Davenport, and had my brother
there, who is eight years older than I am. Then I was born in Davenport, and when I was less than a year
old we moved to Storm Lake. My mom was a school teacher for a while, and then she went to a little
business college in Fort Dodge, Iowa, came back to Storm Lake, and she was working for the Ford Motor
Company. And at that time Ford would deliver the cars in crates, and the guys in the garage would put it
together; you know, these are Model As at that time. My mom, one of her jobs was to go over to the
bank and make deposits and so forth. So she was well acquainted with the folks in the bank. While my
folks were still in Davenport she got a letter from the bank president. He said he remembered that one
time she indicated that they might like to come back to northwest Iowa, and he said, “I have farm that
was foreclosed”—this was at the tail end of the Depression—“and just wondered if you’d be
interested.” So, they decided to buy this farm.

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So they came back to Storm Lake. At first their plan was my dad would just get some
construction job. He was a roofer. But then they thought, gosh, you know, maybe it would be nice to live
on a farm. So they got busy and built a new house and new corn crib and new machine shed and chicken
house and so forth. There was an old barn there that was in reasonable shape. Ended up moving out to
the farm. So at 35 my dad had to learn how to farm. He didn’t know one thing about it. A couple of my
mom’s brothers lived right around there. So they were pretty good assistants to my dad, teaching him
the ropes.
So I ended up growing up on the farm. It was a hundred-and-twenty-acre farm. We raised corn,
soybean, oats, hay. We had cows and pigs and chickens. That was far enough back that it was an organic
farm because there were no chemicals then. (chuckles) That’s where I grew up. Looking back on it, it
was just a great place for a kid. There was a large grove around the farm buildings, so I spent a lot time
out in the grove climbing trees and stuff. And the machine shed had tools and stuff to work with and
play with. The barn, up in the haymow, big garden, and there was a creek that ran through the pasture,
so I spent time down there looking for critters and what not.
My brother went to a country school. He started at a country school a mile north of us, and after
that he went to the country school a mile south of us. The way it was set up was each township had its
own country school, and there was kindergarten through eighth grade. Then in ninth grade the kids had
to go into town to high school. And the year I would have started at the country school, they decided to
close the school and then bus all the kids into town. So I missed that experience of a country school. But
they had an auction at the country school, and my brother bought the entire library for twelve bucks.
And the library was one cabinet, maybe about 3 foot wide and 5 foot high, that was it. Had an old set of
encyclopedias, but then it had books for all those grade levels. So I had my own library, and I just read
these books. There was one book, an old book on natural history that I really enjoyed. So I kind of got an
early start on education at home just with that library.
That’s where I started. And then I had a younger sister, three years old. So when we weren’t
doing farm work or garden work or playing, my brother, sister and I played football, baseball, basketball,
depending upon the season. And my brother would pretend that he was announcing the game on a
radio. So it would be the New York Yankees against the Red Sox. “Okay, and here comes Ted Williams up
to bat. He hits a long one. It’s going, going, gone. It’s a home run!” Well, that meant that I must’ve hit
one over the corn crib, you know. Every game was like that. He was really a good big brother. We had a
great time.

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Schrager: The kind of jobs and work that you got into in high school and that period of time: Can you
talk about bit about that?
Eickstaedt: Yeah. Well, I guess growing up on the farm my first jobs were farm work. And my first kind
of official job was driving the tractor on the hay rope, which meant that I would pull the tractor up
toward the barn, and then they would hook on this hayfork onto a bunch of hay, or several bales of hay,
and I would back up and the rope went in and through the barn and up across to a trolley. So then the
hay would go up, and then it would go into the haymow, and then they would pull another small rope
and it would drop it. Then the guys up in the haymow would stack it, and then I’d pull up again. So that
was my job, back and forth, back and forth, you know.
Then I started to work for some neighbors, walking bean fields and corn fields, cutting out
weeds. But then my first job in town was at a little grocery store. It was a grocery store on the corner,
and it was so small that there were shelves that ran down the middle, so you came in the front door, got
your cart, went down, and then the little meat market was in the back, then you came back the other
side to the cash register—that was it. But we had everything there. And that was my first paying job,
really, in town. And then from that job then I worked right next door at a Rexall Drugstore. Did that. And
then in college: after my freshman year I worked at a YMCA camp as a counselor. Then I was working
construction, built an educational wing on a church. Then a local guy who was an insurance salesman
took me out for lunch one day and convinced me that “You probably should buy yourself a life insurance
policy.” So, here I am a young kid and I buy this life insurance policy. My folks were just, “Pssshhh.” But
later on, he asked me if I might be interested in being an insurance salesman. So I got some training and
I did that for a while. But I really didn’t like that salesman job. Then I got a job in a local hospital, working
first in maintenance, and then I went up to the third floor and became a surgical room orderly. I helped
with the preparations, and I was there for all the operations. And the chief nurse in the surgical ward,
her husband had run several restaurants, but at that time he was in charge of the bar at the local
country club there in Storm Lake, and he asked me if I could help out, so I became a bartender as well.
So I worked at the hospital and then did bartending in the evening. Those were pretty much my jobs
through school and college.
Schrager: So, college, when you went there, did you already have some idea of what you might want to
do with it?
Eickstaedt: No, I didn’t. I went to a local small church-related college right there in Storm Lake, Buena
Vista College, which now is Buena Vista University. But, I really didn’t have much of an idea, except I
thought, well, maybe I’ll be a teacher. But, during orientation we had to fill out different surveys and
3

they ask you what do you think you might want to major in or do, and I had no idea so I put down
“engineering.” And the reason I did that was because when I was in high school, representatives from
different colleges would come and give their spiel. Well there was an engineer that came up from Iowa
State University, and rather than talk about all the wonderful things at Iowa State University, he talked
about the engineering that went into the design and construction of the Golden Gate Bridge. And he
explained the mathematics involved and how large the cables had to be and how many cables, all of
that. Well, that left an impression on me, so I thought, maybe an engineer. Well, the person giving the
test came back to me and said, “Can you be more specific, what type of engineering?” (chuckles) And I
just took a shot and I thought, I think there’s something such as civil engineering, so I put down “civil
engineering.”
But then I just started in, taking an array of courses, still with no idea, really, what to do. But I
think maybe sophomore year I took a genetics class, and man I tell you, that really struck my fancy. So I
decided I’m going to major in biology. So I was doing biology and chemistry and physics and math, and
the whole thing, and then I thought, well I better do something about a career. So I took a few
education courses, and after a couple of those I decided I can’t do anymore of those, I mean they were
just awful. So I was kind of stuck. But then I was working at the hospital between my junior and senior
year, and a couple of the doctors, one of whom was our family doctor, started to talk to me, because
they knew me from working in the surgical ward, talking to me about medical school. Wow, gosh, never
thought about that possibility. So I ended up applying to medical school at the University of Iowa, and
was accepted. So. I got married between my junior and senior year in college. So we moved down to
Iowa City. I had no idea what was going to be involved in medical school, what I was going to confront. It
soon became very obvious that this was a cutthroat operation and I was up against mostly guys—there
were a few women—but they had come from other universities or colleges that had premed programs.
Intense competition to get As, and so forth. So although the subject matter was interesting, and I
enjoyed that, but I just didn’t fit in.
Well there was a guy in my carpool—we carpooled from West Branch, Iowa into Iowa City every
day, there were four of us that went to the university—he was in the zoology department. So, I was
talking to him, it’s already starting the second semester, and he said, “Well, you majored in biology,
maybe you ought to think about jumping over to the zoology department.” So in one day I dropped out
of medical school and was accepted in the zoo department. So anyway, then I stuck with that and I got
my master’s degree focusing on freshwater biology. So as you can see there’s a little bit of serendipity
here how things happen.
4

Well, then the next thing, my major advisor at the University of Iowa, one day he told me, “You
know, you won’t be a complete biologist until you spend some time at a marine station, and, if possible,
spend some time in the Artic or Antarctic.” Hmmmm. So then I started thinking about, “Well, I’ve been
in Iowa all my life.” So I applied for a fellowship and headed out to California to the Hopkins Marine
Station, Stanford’s Marine Lab down in Monterey. And at that time my intention was just to go to the
marine lab and then come back to Iowa and continue on there. But then I thought, “Well maybe it’s time
for a change.” So I applied to Stanford and was accepted. So I started at the marine lab, went up to the
main campus in Palo Alto for one year doing course work, and then back down to Hopkins Marine
Station. Continued on and finished my Ph.D. in Marine Biology. In a nutshell, that’s my educational
experience.
Schrager: So, was Old Westbury your first academic teaching job?
Eickstaedt: Yeah, other than teaching assistantships at Iowa and Stanford. And then when I was at
Hopkins, there’s a marine station just across the bay in Moss Landing, and the guy that taught marine
ecology was going on leave and they needed somebody to fill in for him, so they contacted me—I was
still working toward my degree—to see if I could fill in. So I went up there and taught there for one
quarter, which upset the people at NIH, because at Hopkins I was being supported under an NIH grant,
and they thought that was bad news that I was taking a break. But anyway, I did that, and then right
around Christmas break 1968 I got a phone call from a young woman who was from Palo Alto, and she
introduced herself: Phyllis Freeman. And she said, “I’m a student at the college at Old Westbury in New
York, and we got your name as a potential faculty candidate.” “Really?” “Yeah,” she said. “My friend
Joanie Silver and I would like to come down to Monterey and talk to you.” “Okay.” So they came down
and they were there for better part of a day. I showed them all around the marine station, told them
what I was doing, and of course they wanted to know ideas I might have for Old Westbury. And Old
Westbury was an experimental college, state supported by the University of New York, and it had been
going for I think two or three years at that time. And the provost was Byron Youtz. Anyway, after Phyllis
and Joanie interviewed me, a short time later I got a call inviting me to come back to New York. So I
went back, and I was met at Kennedy Airport by a group of about 10 or 12 young women. They said they
wanted to spend time with me before we went out to Old Westbury, fill me in on what was happening.
Well the school was on strike, and there was a big conflict about student admissions and how many
students of color they were admitting and so forth. And so, students decided to go on strike. There
were only maybe 200 students, you know. They were filling me in with all this stuff, all these rumors
and whatnot.
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So I go out there. I tell you it was the strangest experience. They were building the new Old
Westbury campus on a former, about a 600-acre estate. And that estate had belonged to a guy by the
name of Clark from Clark Threads, and he had married a woman from the Singer Sewing Machine family.
So they had this big estate; that’s where the new college was being built. The temporary campus was
over closer to Oyster Bay, and that campus was once again a huge area which had been owned by a man
by the name of Coe from the Baltimore-Ohio Railroad; and he had had a castle imported from France to
his estate, and then it was all reassembled. So that’s where the temporary campus was. All the offices
were in there, except they had some temporary buildings as well. So I was there for about three days
going from one meeting to the other. Of course there weren’t any classes going on. I was able to give a
seminar. I pretty much composed my seminar on the plane flying to New York. Of course I had to meet
with Byron. First time I’d met him, and I’m really impressed with Byron. When I met with the
president—Harris Wofford, he was a lawyer and he had been one of the top people in the Peace Corps,
when he was working for Kennedy—when I met with him, we were talking about one thing or another,
and he asked me, “If you came here, is there something that you’d really like to do that you haven’t
been able to do yet?” And I said, “Well, as a matter of fact, when I was an undergraduate I bought a set
of the Great Books.” You know, that 50-some volumes. I said, “I have never had a chance really to delve
into them. In fact I haven’t had a chance to do a whole lot of reading in the Great Books. But, if I came
here, if I had a chance, it’d be great to do something like that.” Well, his eyes lit up. Turned out he had
been a student at the University of Chicago under Hutchins and Adler. (laughing)
Schrager: So, you got the job!
Eickstaedt: Yeah, so I came back to California and a short time later got an offer for a job. So, I finished
at Hopkins. Just prior to that, on my birthday, July 20, 1969 was when they walked on the moon. I had
started college at Buena Vista as freshman when Sputnik went up. So, I kind of spanned the space age. I
defended my dissertation in the summer of 1969, and that went well. The day after, we took off for New
York. I had never been further than Illinois, you know. So I ended up at Old Westbury.
Schrager: As you told me when we were talking, this connection between Old Westbury and Evergreen
is deep.
Eickstaedt: Yeah.
Schrager: Can you lay that out?
Eickstaedt: Well, when I got to Old Westbury in the fall, and we had our early faculty meetings, it
became pretty obvious to me early on that just about everybody that was hired there had been given
the impression that if they came to Old Westbury they could do whatever they dreamed of, in terms of
6

academia. So there were all sorts of ideas being thrown around. The curriculum was just in a state of
flux. It was just fruit-basket upset. And poor Byron, it was like being a babysitter. He’s going from
meeting to meeting and trying to get some clarity...exactly how? Well anyway, in all that confusion a guy
who’d come to Old Westbury, Mervyn Cadwallader, he came from San Jose State. He talked about doing
a program at Old Westbury based on what he had done at San Jose State, which was an honors program
there. And Cadwallader had done this program at San Jose, and for a model he went back partly to the
University of Chicago, but more to Alexander Meiklejohn at the University of Wisconsin, who had run an
honors program there, very successful program, ran for several years. And then there was a guy at UC
Berkeley, Joseph Tussman, who had a similar program. So Mervyn kind of used their ideas and put
together his program at San Jose. So he said, “That’s kind of like what I would like to do at Old
Westbury.” But, he’s a sociologist, and what he was talking about was more in the social sciencehumanities. But given the options I decided I’m going to throw in with Mervyn. I’m going to take a
chance.
So I did. And turned out there were six of us, and we ran a program that year. So it was Mervyn
Cadwallader, sociology; Bob Sluss, who came from San Jose, biology; Saul Towster, he came from
University of New York at Buffalo, he was a lawyer; Phil Campeneski, lawyer, he had come from St.
John’s, and Neil—blocking his last name—philosophy, I think he may have also been at St. John’s, and
then myself. So there were six of us. We ended up with less than 40 students. (chuckles) So we got
things organized, and then it came time to decide about seminars. We did the mathematics, well that
would be a very small seminar. So we decided we’d team up. So Sluss and I teamed up, so we had a
seminar together.
We were in the temporary buildings, and there were, I forget, how many of these buildings, and
they were linked together. Some of them were dormitories. Well, some mornings when we had our
seminar some of the students would come to seminar in their pajamas. (laughing) Oh, but in spite of all
the confusion and what not, we had a good year.
My wife and my little boy John, was about four years old then, we lived on the estate where the
new campus was being built. We had an apartment in a triplex that had been servants’ quarters. So to
get there you pulled off the Long Island Expressway, got on a frontage road, and then came to a big gate
where when it was a functioning estate there was a gatekeeper there; came through there, drove up a
winding lane, and then up to where the buildings were. And then Bob Sluss lived on that estate as well.
And there was what had been the horse stables, and it was a quadrangle. It’s all out of brick, four sided,
two stories with the exercise yard in the middle; the upper stories were mainly for storing hay and grain
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and so forth. But Sluss lived in an apartment that had been the jockeys’ quarters, or the jockeys’ room.
So he and I rode to school every day, usually in his old pickup. And Mervyn lived in a little house on the
estate.
Well then about middle of the year Mervyn was hired to be one of the first deans at Evergreen.
Shortly thereafter they started having meetings every weekend here in Olympia. So Mervyn from New
York, Don Humphrey, he was at Oregon State, Charlie Teske from Oberlin, they flew here to Olympia.
And there was Charlie McCann, and Dave Barry was the provost, Jim Holly was the head of the library,
Joe Shoben was the executive vice president, then Dean Claybaugh was vice president for business. They
would hold these meetings over the weekend, laying plans. Then every Monday, I think, Sluss and I
would drive to Kennedy Airport, pick Merv up, and take him back out. And so he was kind of getting paid
both sides of the fence, because he was part time at Old Westbury. So we kept hearing these stories
about what was happening in terms of planning.
They had one big meeting one of these weekends to decide what to do about the curriculum.
So, each of those folks presented their ideas, from the president down to the three academic deans. So
Merv presented his idea. And his idea was that he wanted to set up an honors college as part of
Evergreen. It would be an interdisciplinary two-year program for freshmen and sophomores. And he
described the work he had done at San Jose and Old Westbury, back to Meiklejohn and blah-blah. When
Merv came back that time, we picked him up and his comment was, “They bought the whole thing.” We
said, “What?” He said, “Well, I presented my idea, and at the end of the day they decided, well, if it
would be good enough for a small number of students it ought to be good enough for all of the
students. So we’re going to start with interdisciplinary programs.” So that was a big decision.
And then they had to start hiring some planning faculty. So Merv talked with me. I only had that
one year of experience at Old Westbury. But, I don’t know, I guess he was impressed enough to
recommend that I apply, and I did. During that time, Old Westbury sponsored a conference for
experimental colleges and programs. So there were people from all over that came there for a weekend.
And the folks from Evergreen came. So I got interviewed for the Evergreen job while I was still at Old
Westbury. So I met Charlie McCann and Dave Barry and the three deans and so forth. Next thing you
know I had a job at Evergreen. Once again, we moved all the way across the country, so we made two
cross-country moves in less than a year.
Schrager: So, in deciding to leave Old Westbury for Evergreen, at that point you were already at a
school that was experimental. But, Evergreen sounded better.

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Eickstaedt: Yeah, it did. For one thing, we didn’t really fit in real well there in New York. But, in terms of
the plans for the future: in spite of Byron’s best efforts to get faculty organized, there was still laissezfaire sort of attitude. “I’ll do my thing and the hell with you.” Some of the faculty, they were living in
New York City and so forth, and so they were commuting out to Old Westbury maybe a couple days a
week. They did whatever they did. But there really wasn’t much of a plan of what was going to go on.
Whereas with Evergreen, for one thing it was back to the West Coast, it would be close to the water,
and it was something that I had some experience with, and I knew a little bit about how interdisciplinary
programs worked and how much fun they were. Especially the faculty seminars. That was probably the
best part of being there in New York. With that crew of people, ah I tell you, we had great faculty
seminars. Student seminars—eh, you know, the students were really…it was a pass/fail sort of
arrangement. So anyway, I came to Evergreen that first year.
Schrager: Did the faculty seminar at Evergreen, then, come from the Old Westbury faculty seminar?
Eickstaedt: I think it goes all the way back to Meiklejohn in Wisconsin, that’s the way he structured it:
that the faculty would have their seminar each week. And so Merv did that at San Jose and we did it at
Old Westbury.
So then, the academic deans had to recruit and find the planning faculty. So in the letter that we
got, we were asked to write an essay describing what sort of an interdisciplinary program we might do. I
remember in my essay I quoted Beryl Crowe, because Beryl had written a paper in Science magazine
called “The Tragedy of the Commons Revisited,” which was a response to Garrett Hardin, who had
published “The Tragedy of the Commons.” Garrett Hardin was a biologist; Beryl, a political scientist.
Beryl’s argument was that Hardin missed out really by not expanding his argument to include the social
sciences and the social dimensions of that idea of the commons. I was really impressed with Beryl’s
paper, so I quoted it in my essay. Low and behold, Beryl Crowe turns out to be another planning faculty.
The deans made it very clear that if we came to Evergreen interdisciplinary studies would be the focus:
that’s what we were buying into. We all came with at least that tacit understanding. Not everybody
bought into it a hundred percent, but anyway, we knew that was the plan.
So when I got here, I actually got here early. Dave Hitchens and I were the first two planning
faculty to arrive. He was unemployed, I was unemployed, you know. We went out to the college, and
everything was in temporary buildings. Charlie McCann’s office and some of the other business people,
they were in what had been the old slaughterhouse. The Home Meat Service used to be there, and
that’s where they did the butchering and everything. Well, that had been converted, and that’s where
they were, and there were these other temporary buildings, and one was for the faculty. And then I
9

remember one day Merv came by and he had a list of the planning faculty, and he said to me, “Well, I’m
working on assigning offices, so you have to choose an office mate. I assume you want to be with Sluss.”
I said, “Well, I don’t know, let me look at the list.” So I looked over the list, and here was: “Sid White,
Art.” I said, “You know, art is one of the things I know the least about. I want him for my office mate.” So
he was my office mate, and it was a good choice. Sid and I had a great year together, and out of that I
designed a program called, Environmental Design. One of the influences was a book by Ian McHarg that
had been published a few years before called Design with Nature. That ended up being one of the
starting programs, the Environmental Design program. I think there were something like eight or nine
programs that first year for a thousand students. All interdisciplinary programs, except Al Wiedemann
finagled and had his own little thing called Evergreen Environments, and Pete Taylor joined him. They
ended up calling it a “group contract” for lack of a better term. The name “coordinated studies,” we had
a little contest among the planning faculty and Merv said, “We need a title for what we’re doing.” So
Richard Jones came up with the idea of coordinated studies, so he won a bottle of scotch. But we
started with those programs and a thousand students.
Schrager: So what did the term “coordinated studies” mean?
Eickstaedt: Well, the first thing would be that the studies would revolve around a central focus or a
central idea. Everything would be coordinated with that. Whether it was the seminars, the lectures, the
field trips, the films, it would all revolve around that central focus, they would be coordinated. So that’s
really what it meant, you know. And then the idea of the faculty seminar was central: that it wouldn’t
just be a matter of four or five faculty getting together and each one teaching their own course, but they
would be seminaring on the books and leading seminars on literature that was out of their field. I think
in a nutshell that’s what coordinated meant to me.
Schrager: So that’s a focused way of thinking about interdisciplinary studies.
Eickstaedt: Right. So you bring all those disciplines to bear on a central idea or central focus.
Schrager: Can you talk some about this planning year and what the atmosphere was like? You already
mentioned that you were able to plan your first program. I assume that was one significant piece of
work that the faculty had to do. There are these different things that had to be figured out. And there
was also a social reality with people coming together and being around each other for some period of
time, starting this new enterprise. But it hasn’t started yet.
Eickstaedt: Right.
Schrager: It’s a very interesting moment because it’s not onstage yet, it’s all backstage.

10

Eickstaedt: Yeah. Well, let’s see, shortly after we got together we had our first faculty seminar, all the
planning faculty together. And the book we read was a book by Joseph Tussman from Berkeley called
Experiment at Berkeley. And that described what he had done. I forget what title he used, but it was a
Coordinated Studies program. And we had the seminar, and it was a pretty spirted seminar as I recall,
because for the first time, I think, several of the new planning faculty, it dawned on them, “Oh, this is
what we’re going to be doing. Whoooa. Ohh, okay. You mean we’re going to read some social science
book and I have to lead seminars? Oh, I see. Oh, I see,” But then, Tussman also laid things out in a rather
rigid manner. I remember Hitchens making a comment, “Boy, you can almost hear the jackboots in the
background.” But we had that seminar, and so that gave us a context of what to start thinking about in
terms of a program to design.
The next big event, really, was Willi Unsoeld—he was one of the planning faculty members, and
he took us out on a kind of an Outward Bound experience. We went up north of Cle Elum to Mount
Stewart and we camped there. (laughing) When we were at Old Westbury there was a student there
that lived in a teepee the whole year, through the winter and everything, and at the end of the year the
student was going somewhere, and Sluss inherited his teepee. So he strapped the poles and the canvas
and everything on top of his pickup and drove all the way across the country; so when we went on this
Outward Bound experience with Willi we took the teepee along, and several of us slept in the teepee. So
we cooked together and everything. But then Willi had us do various Outward Bound-type experiences
for community building and what not. They were really fun things. Like he’d find a big tree stump, and
we’d see how many of us we could get up on top of the tree stump. So everybody is holding on and
grabbing people and pulling them up and everything.
Another one: he strung a rope up between two trees, it must have been eight or ten foot off the
ground. The idea was you had a group of guys on one side; you had to figure out how to get everybody
up and over that rope. No ladders. So we were trying to figure out how we are going to do this. But I
think the second day he took us up the mountain. So we start up, fairly gradual climb. I remember
Charlie Teske had loafers on. And Richard Jones, psychologist, he was petrified. It wasn’t very long and
he was almost on all-fours. We went up and it just got steeper and steeper, and we ended up on a rock
ledge. It was a sheer drop-off off—you know, it’s like a fishing tale, it always seems bigger than what it
really was—but it was at least a hundred foot, maybe 200-foot drop, and we’re sitting on the rocks
behind. And Willi is standing on the edge of the precipice, on his toes. And you know, I can’t remember
how many toes he had left, most of them got frostbitten, and he lost his toes on Everest. He’s standing
out there, talking to us, blah, blah, blah. Then he says, “What we’re going to do today, men, we’re all
11

going to repel over this cliff.” (laughing) So he proceeds to rig up the ropes and stuff. “Okay, who’s
first?” So one by one we go over the edge and repel down. That’s the first time I’d ever done it. That was
great fun, just bouncing back and forth and getting to the bottom. Charlie Teske, with his loafers on, he’s
talking the whole time. He’s up there at the top, and there were several of us down below looking up.
Willi gets him all roped up. Charlie starts down, he’s talking the whole time. About halfway down he got
turned upside down. So Willi fed the rope and let him down, talking the whole time. So we got a hold of
Charlie and turned him right side up and got him off. But Dick Jones, he was sitting up kind of by himself,
and he absolutely refused, “No way am I going to do this.” So before any of us started, Willi went over
and sat beside him and talked. And it was a very quiet voice, so we couldn’t hear exactly what he was
saying, but whatever he said was a psychological miracle. He convinced Jonesy to go over the edge. And
Jones did. So all of us made it to the bottom and, whew, great jubilation when Jones came down. Oh
man, that was great.
And then the next day, I think, we went up the mountain, and there was kind of a ravine and a
ridge, a path at the top that curled around. So we started up, and then somebody down below yells up.
And Willi said, “I’ve got to go down. Okay, you guys, you have to go across there and then you can come
down the other side.” So there we are. Well on the way up, we’re going up this chute composed of all
different size rock fragments. Richard Alexander was ahead of me, his big feet: he’s digging in to get a
foothold and he’s kicking rocks back. Nobody had helmets or anything. Ah jeez, so we’re dodging rocks
and what not. So I took off and got ahead of him. We went across this thing, no guidance, and it was
narrow, I mean, pfft, we could have fallen off. Well, we got down. But that really was a great experience.
Sitting around the campfire and eating and all that, you got acquainted with people. Well then, we came
back down to Olympia and started into work.
We were planning those first programs. We had to design an evaluation system. So we worked
on that, and then we had trial runs of writing evaluations, and then we critiqued different formats. How
are we going to talk about the work in the program, and how are we going to describe what the
students did? So we came up with a dual evaluation system and so forth. And then we had to come up
with a governance plan. So that was another big job. We actually invited some students from the
University of Washington to come down, and there were a couple of students who were hired to work
with the library staff. And one of the students, he became the go-to student during the planning year. I
mean he wasn’t a student, but he was a young guy, so any time we wanted a student viewpoint we’d
call on Tim. So the governance plan, we got that worked out.

12

And then another big job: we had to hire 30-some new faculty for the first teaching year. So we
went through over 7,000 applications. It was just stack after stack. I can’t remember how many weeks
we spent going through applications. Winnowing them down to decide, okay, who are we going to invite
for interviews and so forth, and then starting the interviews. There were lots of potlucks that first year,
and parties. Oh man, we had wonderful parties. And then every time a faculty candidate came, well they
had to be wined and dined. Some faculty would go with them out to eat. And then during the day they’d
be going from office to office talking to people, and then partying at night. Then we’d get together and
compare notes and finally winnowed it down to, I think it was 35 or so new faculty hires.
There were other odds and ends that we had to work on too. We had to figure out what to do
about independent study. I was part of a crew that worked on that, and we came up with the individual
contract—the design for the contract and all that. Then internships, that was another thing that we
knew we were going to do, and there was a guy hired to be the coordinator for that. We finally were
able to get a catalog out. The first catalog. Before that, the admissions folks were going around to these
high schools and community colleges, describing this new school. And then people ask, “What are you
going to study there?” “Well, we’re going to do coordinated studies. Can you imagine mixing biology,
sociology and philosophy all together? Wouldn’t that be wonderful? You wouldn’t have these separate
classes. And we’re not going to have grades, we have evaluations.” Well, finally we got the catalog out,
whew, so then they were relieved and at least they could go out and say, “This is what we’re going to
offer.” And then of course we had students who would come by to visit and check things out.
Well then, during that time they were building the library. That was the first building. And it was
running behind schedule. So early in the summer, it was quite obvious the library was not going to be
ready in the fall of 1971. So the administrators debated back and forth: what do we do? We could delay
opening a few months. We could wait and start in January, or we could wait a whole year, wait until
everything’s ready. Charlie McCann said, “No. We’re going to start on time. And you guys were hired to
be innovators. You have to figure out where you’re going to meet your students off campus.” Yeah, so
during the summer we were all scrambling around trying to find camps or wherever. So, one of the
programs actually met in the legislative building. Another program went over to eastern Washington.
Willi Unsoeld took his program up to Mount Rainier. I found a Girl Scout camp up on Hood Canal, Camp
Robbinswold. So that’s where we went, the Environmental Design crew. We met the students on the
temporary campus in the parking lot, and then piled into cars and we’d go up there. We were there for a
week and then we came back to Olympia.

13

And we also had to find places for the students to stay: their dormitories weren’t quite ready. So
they were camping out in various places. So the Environmental Design program, we came back to
Olympia and we met at the Episcopal Church. I had gotten acquainted with Father John there. I
volunteered for a youth program, we met with kids and hung out with them and what not. I was
impressed with him.
Backtracking a little bit. Another thing we did in the planning year to promote town-gown
relationships: Joe Shoben, one of the vice presidents, organized times when we faculty members could
ride with policemen. I volunteered to do that. I did it twice. The first guy, he was an older cop, pretty
crusty, but it was good enough. I volunteered again. That time I was with a young cop, and we really hit
it off, we had a great time. I went back a second time to ride with him, and he ended up coming to
Evergreen a few years later. Oh, and then they organized these dinners where faculty and townspeople
would get together for dinners, another town-gown thing.
Anyway, back to Environmental Design. We went to the Episcopal Church and we held our first
seminars in the Sunday school rooms. We gave lectures. Phil Harding gave a lecture on drawing from the
pulpit of the church. And then we all went outside and did some sketching. First book we read for
seminar was The Little Prince. We figured that would be a nice, light introduction. Phew, had a great
seminar! At least I did. At the end of it one of the students who was older, probably in her mid-30s, she
had her associates degree, and she just broke down crying. And she said, “I don’t think I’m going to be
able to do this. This is just too much for me.” Because students were really into it, and talking about
some really heavy stuff. From The Little Prince, if you really go with it, you can get in pretty deep. Well
anyway, we calmed her down and I met with her afterwards. She ended up being probably the best
student in the program that year. It was just an amazing transformation.
During that first year we started the Cooper Point Association. We designed a park for the city of
Lacey. Phil started a project called Experimental Structures. We saved and started the Organic Farm. Our
students were going to the Board of Trustees with these proposals. We want to save the Organic Farm
and here’s why, blah, blah, blah. “Okay, we’re going to save the farm.” Because they were just going to
bulldoze the buildings and let it go back to trees. A couple of the students said no, we want to start an
organic garden. Then Phil, this Experimental Structures idea? Once again they went to the Board of
Trustees, and the idea was students would design temporary structures built on the campus where they
could live. And then after a period of time they’d take them down and other students would come
along. The Board of Trustees said yes, we will do that! (chuckling) I mean we had a dynamite year.

14

But when we started during the planning year after the new faculty had been hired, we sent out
a survey, “Which programs would you like to be part of?” Environmental Design was number one. Then
when it came time for the students to sign up, we had to fill the Environmental Design program with
first choice, second choice, third choices, maybe even some fourth choices. It was really an odd mix, but
it was a success anyway.
Schrager: You are coming into this program as a biologist.
Eickstaedt: Mmmhhhmm.
Schrager: How do you fit biology? Or did you leave it behind as you did Environmental Design? What
was the relationship? Seems like an interesting challenge for you to start.
Eickstaedt: It was. The ecology was what I drew upon, ecological principles. To do design in an
environmentally responsible manner, you really had to understand some ecology and apply that to the
design. That was kind of what I drew upon from biology. And then Carolyn Dobbs was from urban
planning, Phil Harding, architecture, and Chuck Nisbet, economics. So that was kind of the mix. I think
Chuck probably had the hardest time figuring out applying economics to that notion. But he did. During
that year he had lots of guest speakers, including Dan Evans when he was governor. We decided to
invite him out.
Another thing we had to figure out was where in the library are you going to have your
program? I looked at the architectural plans, and I saw there was a corner in the northwest corner of the
library on the second floor that had already a lounge area there, but it was surrounded by individual
offices. So I went to Jerry Shillenger, director of facilities, and I said, “What would happen if you left out
some of the walls and created four faculty seminar rooms?” “That’s great we’d love to leave out walls.”
So that’s what we did, we had our four office’s seminars around this central lounge, that’s where we did
our lectures and guest lectures: pretty much revolved around that. So Chuck Nisbet goes out to the
circle to meet Dan Evans, and he brings him in. Here we are and here’s all these hippy students, you
know, long hair, overalls, you name it, all sitting on the floor. Dogs. (laughing) But he was very gracious,
you know, and he talked about—I mean it was his idea to start Evergreen, and why he wanted
something different from any of the other colleges and universities. We talked about what we were
doing. We had a really nice visit with him. It came off okay. Oh gosh, everybody else was envious that we
had the Governor to our program. (laughing)
That was kind of my contribution. Then I was coordinator, and that was kind of a nightmare at
times. The students were all over the map, as you can imagine. I mean they were all pioneers. There
were only two upper-division programs that first year. The rest were considered, we called them “Basic
15

Programs” at that time. We had a lot of transfer students, and a lot of them had bad experiences at
other schools. There were lots of interesting issues to deal with. Lots of counseling went on.
Schrager: Was the challenge for students to form community together or was the challenge individual
psychological problems that students had? How did you see what these students were facing?
Eickstaedt: Initially it was part of building a community. It turns out it was an advantage that we started
off campus at that Girl Scout camp, because we were cooking together, camping there. We did a lot of
stuff there to start that. And then we went to the Episcopal Church for two weeks.
It took a fair amount of effort to try to get everybody more or less working together. But we had
students with psychological problems. And the counseling center that year was fairly busy. Drugs, there
were lots of issues related to drugs. And then there was also some of the students wanted to go off on
individual pathways, so trying to fold them back in, try to stay together. “Nah-nah-no, I just want to do
this.” During those first years one of the big issues was retaining students. I mean it was really tough to
recruit enough students. Getting those first thousand was pretty tough. A lot of them came from out of
state, a lot from the East Coast. I don’t know what the percentage was, but a fair percentage came from
academic families. Their parents looked at what Evergreen was doing and they thought, “Man, wish I
were teaching there! I think you ought to go there.” So that created some interesting issues. Some of
the kids weren’t very well disciplined. But in an effort to retain students I think we had to be a little bit
loose. Couldn’t be as hardnosed as you want to be for fear, “Well, they’re going to bail out.”
I think many of us in that first year ended up doing a certain number of individual contracts on
the side, because there were a group of students that just didn’t seem to fit into the programs. I
remember Charlie Teske, he was one of the academic deans, man he had students in his office all the
time who were doing individual contracts with him on all sorts of things. But everybody was pitching in.
And even the staff people were sponsoring contracts. That was another thing that developed during the
planning year was the idea that everybody on the campus was a resource. In the library they actually
had one or two people who were kind of go-to people to help students figure out: “Well, I’m really
interested in engineering.” “Well, let’s hook you up with Daryl Six in the Facilities Department.” Or,
somebody: “Ah, I really wanted to do business.” “Well, go talk to Ken Winkley over in the business
office.” So students were all over the place doing contracts and stuff. Larry Stenberg was the first what
you would call a dean of students. That wasn’t his title, but he did an amazing job of having activities
where the whole campus would get together. I remember one time we had a retreat down at
Millersylvania, and it was for faculty and staff. So it started off with a series of questions like, “Do you
consider yourself a city person or rural person? City people on this side, rural people on this side.” “Do
16

you consider yourself liberal or conservative?” And then people would switch. So it was back and forth,
back and forth. But it was a lot of activities where people got acquainted with the staff people and staff
people got acquainted with the faculty.
And then the only place to eat was on the fourth floor of the library, that’s where the cafeteria
was. So at noon time it was just a mix of everybody. And Charlie McCann, he was always there for lunch.
And he’d always sit at a table, and it would be a mixture of students, faculty, staff members. Charlie
McCann would join in. Students are asking him questions and he’s asking them questions, and back and
forth. So that cafeteria was really an important ingredient for community building for the first couple of
years.
It was a struggle all these different things with students and various issues.
Schrager: So the hierarchical relationship that we knew with students and our faculty in our
undergraduate and graduate education was changed.
Eickstaedt: Radically.
Schrager: In this relationship that the faculty at Evergreen had with students right from the beginning.
Eickstaedt: Right, we were all on a first name basis. No Dr. so-and-so, nn-nn, it was all first names. It
wasn’t President McCann. It was Charlie McCann, right on down.
I forgot to mention that the evaluation system that we came up for students, that became the
evaluation system for the whole college. So the president’s staff and the academic people, they wrote
evaluations of each other. They had their own. And that was true in the library. Everybody was being
evaluated with narrative evaluations. So that was another important ingredient in terms of a sense of
community. We’re all being treated the same. No tenure for the faculty. So can’t pull rank.
Schrager: Should we take a little break?
Eickstaedt: Sure.
[End of Part 1]

[Start of Part 2]
Just to backtrack, to talk a little bit about the curriculum and those sorts of things: During the
planning year, after we had been together maybe a month or so, talking about interdisciplinary
programs and beginning the process of that, a couple of the science faculty decided that the science
faculty should have their own retreat to talk about how we’re going to teach science. Well, Bob Sluss
and I decided not to participate, partly because we sensed the reason for the retreat was not just to talk
about planning science programs, but maybe to kind of undermine the notion of interdisciplinary
17

studies. So we didn’t go. That retreat was, I think, important in an historical sense because it did set in
motion a movement on the part of some of the faculty to think more in terms of just disciplines,
particularly the sciences. Then, during that first year of teaching, there were all sorts of questions being
raised by students and faculty and so forth about “How in the hell is this really working? Is it going to
succeed?” Many, many questions. And some folks started to get cold feet. So we had a couple of
meetings of the faculty to talk about how things were going and whether maybe we needed to do some
refinement. I remember Ed Kormondy talked about Colorado College. And Colorado College had started
doing this block program where you took one course intensively for, I forget, a month, I think three
weeks, and then you’d move onto a new course. Right away some of the faculty thought, “Let’s bail out
on this interdisciplinary idea and let’s adopt the Colorado College idea.” And then others of us were
saying, “Hey wait a minute, we’re still in the midst of experiment.” Although Charlie McCann never liked
that idea of an experiment—because Richard Jones had written a lengthy pamphlet or book called, “The
Experiment at Evergreen.” Charlie says, “This was not an experiment because we were doing things that
were based on other programs that were successful. So we’re not coming up with something brand
new.” But in any case, there was a tension there about what should we do? Should we throw everything
out and start again? Revise the whole curriculum? Fortunately, the prevailing opinion was let’s stick with
what we got going here and not change anything yet. But, once again that was a current that continued
to blossom. It’s still a tension at Evergreen of the split between folks that really are committed to
interdisciplinary studies and other folks who would rather stick more on the disciplinary side. So that has
a long history and it started way back at the beginning.
Schrager: As a science faculty, can you recall how your colleagues were thinking about this? How they
reconciled this question of science is involving sequential learning, how that can be handled in a
coordinated studies framework? I can see why for science faculty it would be difficult to rethink that.
Then you and Sluss and perhaps some others were clearly ready to do that, to rethink it.
Eickstaedt: Right. Well, let’s see: how to approach this. I think in terms of how we resolved that issue
was eventually came up with a model of coordinated studies, group contracts, individual contracts. The
idea was that all incoming freshmen would start with a coordinated studies program. And then,
gradually, they’d move and begin to focus more narrowly until they’d do individual contracts,
internships. That was kind of the model we came up with. Some folks actually argued that we should
make it a requirement that they have a year of coordinated studies. And that was one of the debates we
had during the planning year, was whether we were going to have any requirements whatsoever. Some
of us argued at the minimum we should require a year of coordinated studies. Other people said, “No
18

let’s not have any requirements.” Charlie McCann was there at that meeting, and finally he said, I think
these were kind of his words, “If a student comes here and wanst to throw pots for four years, so be it.
We’re not going to require that student do an interdisciplinary program. We will rely on good advising,
and so forth, to urge them to start that way, but we’re not going to require it.” Well of course then the
issue was, well how soon can a student start moving toward the disciplinary focus? Once again the best
we could do would be to rely on good advising. And the students, when they came to the admissions
office they knew that that was what we wanted them to do. And then later on when we started
academic advising, Kirk Thompson was the first academic adviser, I was the second one. I did it for two
years. Every student that passed through they went to admissions and then they came to see me. So we
reinforced that idea of coordinated studies, but no requirements.
In terms of how I and Bob Sluss and some other science folks resolved it within coordinated
studies was to talk about those aspects of science that fit into the theme. And then, if a student got
excited about something to do with chemistry or physics or biology, okay, next year or the year after,
you can pursue that. But for now we’re not going to teach you Biology 101 when you’re a freshman. And
some students wanted that. It was a little too wishy-washy or whatever. But for me also it was a matter
of ethics that I really base on my own experience going through college and university: was that more
and more there was less and less talk about the social, political, ethical aspects of science and what
scientists were doing. So I really felt that that was one of the things that I needed to do was to inject
those things into whatever program I was in and in the seminars. I took it as a serious matter. Some of
the faculty in the sciences they would have a little discussion each week—what did they call it? “Sanity
seminar.” They had a special term for it, but it was just a nod to doing a little bit of something different
outside of the sciences. But anyway, that was my approach, and I know Sluss felt the same way, that any
of the scientific problems that we were trying to discuss, there was a strong ethical element to it that
needed to be discussed. It wasn’t enough just to learn the facts.
Schrager: Did that mean that students who wanted to study with you in scientific areas that were your
areas of expertise it was still possible for them to do so?
Eickstaedt: Yeah, I tried as best I could, whenever I would teach marine biology from time to time—a
few times I taught freshwater biology—and in addition to the straight factual information I always tried
to inject, promote discussions, and I actually chose other reading material. And I always had seminars as
part of those programs. I remember Barbara Smith, she came for her annual review to sit in on my
seminar. I think it was a freshwater biology program. Afterwards she told me, “I never understood how
you could have a seminar on something like that, but now I understand.”
19

Schrager: So how could you have a seminar like that? What did she see?
Eickstaedt: (chuckles) Well, in addition to the subject matter, why, we were discussing the ramifications
of what we were studying, because of other stuff that I either recommended them to read or they had
on the reading list. Maybe not always a book, but maybe a paper. It might be something like “The
Tragedy of the Commons” or “The Tragedy of the Commons Revisited” to open up the discussion. And
then just one-to-one, I tried to raise those questions, and then continued to argue with other faculty.
(laughing) And then when we started the Masters in Environmental Studies, there was a push to try to
make it a Masters of Science rather than Environmental Studies, but fortunately we structured the MES
program around the model of the undergraduate interdisciplinary programs, so it was always at least
one science faculty and somebody from the social sciences, so there was always a mix on the faculty.
And so the seminars once again ranged across the map. And most of the students when they did their
thesis or their capstone project—it was called something else, it was an alternative to the thesis, they
could write a long research paper—that as much as we urged them to make it fairly broad. So it’s a good
thing that we did it that way.
Schrager: Thinking about Beryl, you mentioned him as an inspiration. Do you want to talk about him,
what you recall him being like? I have this sense of him being a very important figure among faculty and
the influence that he had.
Eickstaedt: Yeah. Just a little bit about his background. He started off in Oklahoma, and he’s partly of
Native American background. His family migrated to California, so they were part of the Okies that came
to California. They settled in Watsonville. They were involved in farming. Beryl didn’t finish high school,
he joined the Merchant Marines, and he was a radio man on Merchant Marine ships. Somewhere along
the way, he got introduced to the Modern Library books. I don’t remember if it was a crew member that
recommended it or he stumbled on it himself. But in any case, he started reading Modern Library books,
and when they’d go to port he’d find a bookstore and buy some more books. He was really a selfeducated guy. And then when he left the Merchant Marines I think he worked for United Airlines, went
to San Francisco State for a bachelor’s degree, and then he went to Berkeley for a Ph.D. program in
political science. He didn’t finish his dissertation, but he was hired at Oregon State University. So with
his background he knew a lot of literature and political theory. He just knew a heck of a lot just based on
his reading. Then in graduate school he just blossomed.
He was at Berkeley during the sit-ins and so forth, 1965, 1966, Mario Savio—he was there during
that time, and he really got involved in all that. When he went to Oregon State he was kind of a rabblerouser there. Don Humphrey, one of the first deans at Evergreen, came from Oregon State, so Beryl
20

came to Evergreen. I think Don Humphrey knew him somehow, so that’s how he ended up at Evergreen.
But while he was at Oregon State that’s when he read “The Tragedy of the Commons” and then he
wrote the response, “Tragedy of the Commons Revisited.” And then he and Garrett Hardin jointly had
lectures various places around the country, and they would argue back and forth, you know. So when
Beryl came to Evergreen, why it became obvious pretty quickly that this was a guy we’re going to have
to deal with. Because he loved to argue. Didn’t matter what the issue was or what the field was, he
would come up with an argument. Not necessarily always the best argument. During the planning year
he was going to be in charge of a program called Political Ecology. But then, I can’t remember exactly
how it happened, but Ed Kormondy was hired as one of the new faculty, and he became the coordinator
of the Political Ecology program that first year. And Beryl joined with Byron Youtz and Sid White and I
think Fred Young, and they did a program called Space, Time and Form. Really a great program. And
then the next year Beryl came up with a program called Politics, Values and Social Change with Rudy
Martin and Betty Estes, and that was a dynamite program. When we met for lunch up on the fourth
floor, the faculty and the students from that program, the discussions just continued on. I always got
involved. I just knew this was a guy I need to hang around with. Yeah, we got to be good friends.
Then two years after that, Beryl came up with the idea for a program called Marine History and
Crafts. So it was Beryl, Byron, Pete Sinclair and myself. The way we planned it was that each quarter we
would have a visiting faculty member. So in the fall we had a marine historian, in the winter we had a
boat designer, and in the spring we started building a 38 foot wooden boat. And we had a hundred-andsome students. That was just an unbelievable program. The logistics to pull that off—it was something
else. In the winter quarter the students worked on designs for a wooden vessel that would be a sailboat
but could be used for fishing under sail. And then in the spring, there was a boat builder shop here in
town, Long Boatworks. The original owner was Hank Long Sr.; he had passed away by the time we
started and his son ran the boat works. And the boatworks was on the west side just a block or so off
Division Street, tucked back in, and that’s where we started building the boat. We had to find the
lumber and all of that, and students started building a boat. A lot of the students had never handled a
hand tool. So we started from scratch in the fall, simple projects, sawing a board and all that. And then
maybe with about a month to go in the spring quarter, we had the keel laid, all the ribs in place, and we
had just begun planking the boat. And then a fire broke out in the boatworks early in the morning. A few
of our students got their early that day and they started the boiler for the steam box where we had
been steaming the ribs and then bending them, and then you’d put the planks in there to steam them,
and bend them and clamp them in and so forth. Well, a fire broke out and very quickly the whole
21

boatworks was gone, including our boat. What a devastation, especially for the students, oh man. But
anyway, that was one of the most ambitious interdisciplinary programs that I was ever involved with. It
was a mixture of some marine biology, and math, and physics, and we did literature, we read Moby Dick
and so forth, and then politics, political theory, it was all one big mix. But, Beryl was the catalyst for that,
and then Pete was the coordinator. That was the third year of the college. And I remember when Dan
Evans became president, that was one of the programs that he talked about. I remember him saying,
“Boy, if I had been a student that’s the program I would have done.” It was a great program.
I had some other good programs. Reflections of Nature, I did that one with Rob Knapp and Hiro
Kawasaki and Thad Curtz. All revolved around nature and looking at it from science, art, literature—
yearlong program. I had a student here, he came by on Monday, he was a student in that program,
Reflections of Nature. In the spring quarter, each of us decided to offer a little course on the side in
addition to the seminars and everything else that was going on. So I did a little course on Freshwater
Biology, and Joe was one of the students, and he got hooked on aquatic insects. So now he works at
Glacier National Park for the U.S. Geological Survey working on aquatic insects. (chuckles) And he’s just
having a ball. He says, “I get paid for going out in the field, going up to the mountain streams, collecting
insects.” In the winter months he works in the lab. As he was leaving, walking down the sidewalk, he
turned and he says to me, “You know, if it wasn’t for you I’d probably be pumping gas.” (laughs) That
was a great program.
One course I did I designed from scratch, and it was called Restoration Ecology, and I kind of
caught wind that there was something happening on the national scene around this idea of restoring
habitats. So I went to a conference in Chicago, the Second Annual Meeting for the Society of Ecological
Restoration. It was really an interdisciplinary conference, because there were science folks there, there
were folks from the humanities, there were Native Americans that came. One of the people that showed
up was Barry Lopez. And when I got there I looked at the list of the participants—they had them all on
the board, you know—and I saw Barry Lopez, and I knew his book Artic Dreams. So maybe the second
evening of the conference I was sitting in a little lounge there, and I was writing in my notebook, and
here sitting across from me was Barry Lopez. Do I talk to him or not? So anyway, I struck up a
conversation, and we ended up talking for probably an hour. And I asked him, “What’s your interest of
being here?” He said, “Well, I’m really interested in the idea of restorying the landscape.” Then we
talked about that. Then I remember coming back and I think I was telling Pete about that, that I saw
Barry Lopez and he introduced this idea to me about restorying the landscape. Well as you know, then it
took off from there.
22

One of the field trips I went on during that conference was to the Fermi Lab, which is south of
Chicago. At that time they had the biggest cyclotron in the world. We went out there, and it’s quite a
large area, and it was built on farmland. The cyclotron is about a mile in diameter. If you could look at it
from the air it’s like a giant donut that has been plunked down on the farm land. There is this mound
that’s a big tunnel with all the magnets and everything, and then there’s a pond around the outside
continuously circulating water to cool the magnets. And then on the edge is this big building, about 13,
14 stories tall, kind of a shape like a big A. And then if you walked inside to the atrium you looked up and
you could see all of the offices and labs had glass, so you were looking inside, and then on the top floor
was where the director was. Well there were a couple of botanists from back there, and they had
started collecting seeds from prairie plants from old railroad right of ways and old cemeteries. And they
went to the director of the Fermi Lab and asked the director if it would be possible for them to start a
small chunk of prairie inside the ring of the cyclotron. It was just all former farm fields. Well he said
okay. So they started with 12 acres, and they scattered the prairie seeds. The first year the weeds just
took over. And they went back out there in the summer and, “Oh man, this is going to be a failure.” But
then they looked down and they could see these little prairie plants underneath all the big weeds. In the
fall they did a burn, they burned off the dry weeds. Next year the prairie plants started to grow. And
then they started harvesting seed from that and expanded. I was there in 1989, I think, they were up to
over 200 acres of prairie inside the ring of the cyclotron, and we got to go out there. So here you are,
standing on this prairie where they’re trying to take something back several thousand years, and then
looking at the building, and here these guys are splitting the atom, you know. (chuckles) God, I tell you,
what an experience.
Then I went on a field trip up to the University of Wisconsin, and Aldo Leopold had been there at
the University of Wisconsin, and when they dedicated the arboretum he gave a talk, and he said he
thought it would be wonderful if they could start a plot of prairie as part of the arboretum. This was
during the Depression, and there were a group of I think a couple hundred CCC workers camped there
outside of the university, and they were prepared to do projects. Well, they got them involved, and they
started a prairie there in the arboretum. I got to walk on that original prairie with the guy who had been
in charge of it, this old guy, his name was Ted Sperry, and he was up in his 80s. We’re walking along,
“This is where we experimented with this, and then we did this.” I came back and put together a
program on Restoration Ecology, and I offered it first in the MES program. Phew, man I tell you, what a
great, great program. It was really a course, but it was an interdisciplinary course.

23

Anyway, those are some of the highlights. I can cap it off. I can talk a little bit about what I’ve
done since then.
Schrager: I think we should have another session.
Eickstaedt: Should we? Okay. That would be fine with me.
End of Interview

—Transcribed by Lori Larson

24


Larry Eickstaedt
Interviewed by Sam Schrager
The Evergreen State College Oral History Project
Interview 2, August 25, 2016
FINAL
Schrager: Okay, so let’s start with what you were wanting to pick up on.
Eickstaedt: I just wanted to fill in a few things from the first interview. Going back to my early
educational experience, I wanted to mention my second-grade teacher, Miss Gleason. She is still my
favorite teacher, and I’m still in touch with her. She’s in her 90s. She’s in a rest home back in Maryland,
but I call her every once and a while and keep in touch. In second grade, she was really interested in
natural history. We started a bird club. We had a set of shelves in the back of the room. We were
bringing in nests and eggshells and feathers and stuff. Then we’d go out looking for birds and what not.
Then she got leaflets from the Audubon Society and from the Field Museum of Natural History in
Chicago, and we kept those in a little three-ring binder.
But one event really captures, I think, not only my educational experience but my orientation.
We were in an old school that had the old sash windows that you could raise. It was in the winter time,
and in the afternoon it started to snow, big flakes coming down. And Miss Gleason essentially said,
“Well, we’re going to stop what we’re doing, we’re going to do something else.” She had some fruit jar
lids, and she set those out on the sill of the window and then closed the window. And then after they
cooled down enough, the snowflakes started to land in the jar lids. I think she borrowed a microscope
from the high school class, had it there in the classroom. Then we would bring the snowflakes in--we
also put slides out there to get them cold—and then under the microscope we’d look at these
snowflakes, and it just blew my mind, I couldn’t get enough of it. But while I was watching these
snowflakes, all of a sudden they started to disappear, one after another, just poof, nothing there. I called
Miss Gleason over and I said, “What’s happening here? The snowflakes are disappearing, but there’s no
water left behind.”
She said, “Well, you have observed sublimation.”
“What’s that?”
She says, “Well, that’s when a solid becomes a vapor without the liquid phase in-between.”
And it’s a common thing that can happen, you know, depending on the atmospheric conditions
and stuff. Sublimation. And many years later I thought about that, holy mackerel, here I am a second
1

grader learning this big word and understanding what it means because I saw it with my own eyes. So,
her interest in science and natural history, that really had a strong influence on me.
Then later on, I was thinking back about where my interest in seminars came from. Well, when I
was a freshman in college I took an introductory sociology class. It was a large class; I would guess there
were maybe 40 of us. But the professor, Dr. Sampson, he ran it as a seminar. He never lectured. He
would come in and he’d ask a question or talk about something, then, “What do you think?” Then pretty
soon the class is involved in this big discussion, you know. I had a great time in that class, I just loved it.
Then the next semester he was teaching an advanced class in criminology. Well, I probably didn’t have
any reason to try to take that class except that I really liked him, and sociology was interesting. So I went
to him more than once in his office. At first he said, “Well, you have to have these prerequisites first.
This is an advanced class and it’s mostly seniors.” But I just persisted and finally he said, “Okay, I’ll let
you in, but it probably won’t work out.” And he ran that class the same way, seminar, smaller, a lot of
pre-theological students in there for some reason. But anyway, I handled things reasonably well.
Then another class I had as an undergraduate was in Christian Ethics. And it was taught by a
former minister, a Presbyterian minister who had been a missionary in Africa. And we had a textbook to
read, but then when we met it was always a seminar format. Once again he didn’t lecture. And I felt that
I really got a good grasp of ethics. Even though it was called Christian Ethics, why the principles can
apply universally. Once again, it was a lot of pre-seminary, pre-theological students in there. But in any
case, had a great time.
Then, two books that were critical. One was the Sand County Almanac. That still is probably my
number one book as an excellent introduction to ecological ethics. And then, 1962, Silent Spring was
published. Silent Spring, one of the big messages there is that science and technology, not only they do
not have all the answers, but they often don’t consider the ramifications of what they’re doing. So, Sand
County Almanac and Silent Spring, they kind of became my bibles I guess you would say.
I know last time we talked about the teaching of science at Evergreen. While I recognize the
necessity to have a strong science curriculum for students that are interested, for me it should be
science with a heart. That there should be ethics involved in the teaching of science. That really caused
me to move more and more towards natural history, and books like Sand County Almanac.
Now, I understand that it’s possible for freshmen students at Evergreen to start with a program
like Matter in Motion, which is strictly science. There’s no emphasis on writing, no emphasis on politics,
social problems, on and on, it’s just strictly science. Given the fact that there aren’t any requirements, all

2

you can do is depend upon good advising. But anyway, that’s what we’re left with, and I worry in the
long term about students who don’t get a more well-rounded liberal arts education.
Schrager: Natural history seems to have been a real emphasis in environmental studies at Evergreen
from the beginning. That seems one of the most distinctive areas at the college, offering a broader way
of thinking about science. Did faculty identify themselves as being interested in natural history? Are
there a group of faculty? Can you talk about how that developed at Evergreen?
Eickstaedt: I think one of the key people would be Steve Herman. He taught ornithology and
mammalogy. The one thing that he brought was the use of the field journal, a systematic way to keep a
field journal. And so quite a few other faculty have adopted the field journal as part of what they’re
doing, whether it’s marine biology or whatever it is. Well, I know when I taught in ecological agriculture
program with Mike Beug, I modified the field journal so it could be used in agriculture, but much the
same way: that there would be a section that would be a day-by-day account. And then, instead of
species accounts, as is true in a natural history journal, I had the students keep accounts of specific
plants, so that they would, over time, build up a record of carrots and broccoli, how they grow, how they
germinate, what kind of pests they had, that sort of thing. But, Steve and then Al Wiedeman, they
taught together frequently, did the Evergreen Environment program. A few of the science faculty
referred to it as the “Bugs and Bunny” program. As if it’s not quite legitimate science?
For me, one slant on the natural history approach: typically, when a student takes a beginning
biology class in college, they start with chemistry. And then you go from chemistry and you move up a
line—chemistry, molecules, cells, tissues, organisms, and then, way at the end, you start talking about
ecology and natural history. Well, I’ve always thought that that’s really backwards, that the first
encounter people have with nature is not with chemistry. They have an interaction with plants and
animals, just like your observation of the otters the other day. Well, why not start with that and then
from there work backwards asking questions? And then eventually you’ll get down to the level of
chemistry. And for a student, whatever they’re going into in the liberal arts, I think it’s much more useful
to have a background in natural history rather than a little biology, a little chemistry, a little physics.
Because if they’re working in counseling or teaching or business, whatever it is, they can carry that with
them throughout their life, that interest in natural history. And then combining that with all of the
environmental problems that we face, that background in natural history and ecology I think really gives
you a better understanding to understand politics and legislation and so forth as it relates to the
environment. So, that’s kind of in a nutshell, I think.

3

One other little thing that I wanted to put in here: I talked about the faculty seminar last time,
and then faculty leading seminars with students. One of the issues that comes up is: How can a faculty
member, let’s say, who’s trained as a chemist lead a seminar that has to do with history? Aren’t the
students getting short shrift? But I’ve always looked at the seminar, the role of the faculty leader, as
being a model of an active learner. That even though you’ve got all this training in field X, you can still go
into a new field, a new book, and by asking questions and probing and so forth demonstrate to the
students that, well, you can still be a lifelong learner. You don’t have to stay in one box, you can
continue to ask questions, and be a role model. That was just one thing that I wanted to mention with
respect to the seminars.
Schrager: Along those lines, we talked a little about learning by teaching with other faculty. I was
wondering if you’d want to talk some about faculty like Herman, like Pete Sinclair, that you learned from
by teaching with them, and that you may have influenced as well. What sorts of broadening did you get
in your own thinking about what matters, beyond your own training, by teaching with faculty? Who
were they and what did you learn together? To me it seems really crucial to what Evergreen offered that
other schools didn’t.
Eickstaedt: Well, I could go back to the first year. And although I didn’t teach with him, I learned a lot
from Charlie McCann. I may have mentioned that, during the first couple of years, the cafeteria was on
the fourth floor of the library, and at noon time it was a gathering place. Charlie was always there, and
he would always join a table that had usually some students with faculty having lunch. He didn’t always
say a great deal in the discussions that were going on, but he always asked excellent probing questions.
Then the fact that after his presidency ended, when he came back to Evergreen, he went back to the
faculty and taught excellent programs in the Great Books and literature. I regret that I never had a
chance to teach with him. I wish I had. But he was a real role model, and a great role model in terms of
administration. I could probably sum that up with one of Charlie’s statements about how he wanted to
do business. He said, “No chicken shit.” He didn’t want to have extraneous stuff going on, he wanted to
get down to business, get the job done, no chicken shit.
In terms of faculty, probably the most important one in the first year was Phil Harding. He and I
taught together in the Environmental Design program. I learned a great deal from him about design,
architecture, but probably most of all the creative process. He was a very creative guy. He really liked
being challenged with a perplexing problem related to design or building, or whatever, and then
thinking through. I remember him saying one time that, when you’re trying to solve a complex problem,
it’s kind of like a bowl of spaghetti, and what you want to do is search for a free end, and then you start
4

to unwind, kind of work through it, but try to find a free end first. In other words, find something you
can latch onto that you understand, and then work back from there. In my observations of him, that was
usually the way he approached teaching the students. He didn’t like to lecture at all. But asking a few
questions, and then letting the students stew and swim, and help them along, and then hopefully they’d
come up with a solution. He was a great model for me.
Schrager: You talked about this Environmental Design program some last time. I’m thinking how this is
the first time that you’re teaching at Evergreen. Is this the first time you were team teaching as well and
putting together anything like a full-time program of inquiry?
Eickstaedt: I had the experience of teaching in New York with Merv Cadwallader and the other folks in
that program. But that was my first experience of starting from scratch. With Sid White, my officemate,
with his help, talking things through, and then finally getting a focus that it all revolved around issues of
the environment and design and ecological design. And then being involved in helping to hire the first
faculty, and Phil Harding was one of the people that was hired specifically to teach with me. And then
that first year it was really a challenging experience to try to carry this off with a very diverse group of
students. We as a faculty, we all came from different disciplines and so forth. But it was a great
experience and really reinforced the notion that you can really tackle these things in an interdisciplinary
way and have a good deal of success.
Schrager: What do you remember of the students from this pot they were thrown into? Was there a
sense that everyone was in this together and exploring together…you’re doing this for the first time.
Eickstaedt: I may have mentioned that when the students signed up for programs, Environmental
Design had a relatively small number of students that selected that for their first choice. So we had to fill
it in with second, third and fourth choice students. So not everybody was entirely happy that they were
there at the beginning. That was a big issue right from the start: How do we fold these folks in? But early
on we started talking about potential things that we could look at in the way of projects. And really got
the students involved in thinking about that. Then from that we developed various projects that I talked
about. And all of them were quite successful. And the students really carried the load, once they were
given the opportunity and I guess made to feel like, “You can do it. You can do it.” And they did, they
came through big time.
Let’s see, other faculty: of course Merv Cadwallader was a big influence on me because of his
ideas and philosophy about interdisciplinary teaching. Once again, the only chance I had to teach with
him was in New York, and when he came to Evergreen he was a dean, so he wasn’t teaching then. But I
stayed in close contact with him in those early years. He was very much aware of what was going on in
5

the various programs, what problems were coming up and what successes and so forth. He was a big
influence.
Then of course Bob Sluss: he and I became fast friends in New York, primarily because we were
both biologists. We both came from somewhat a similar background, a poor background, we both had
to work our way through school, college, and so forth. He was interested in bugs and I was more
interested in marine and freshwater critters. Then he was committed to interdisciplinary teaching, and
during his career of Evergreen the vast majority of his teaching was in programs. The only time I
remember him teaching by himself: he was going to do a group contract in, I think it was just called
Natural History. He was not the best administrator. So students would come to get his signature to sign
in, and he never kept track of how many people he was signing up. Well, he ended up with 40-some
students! And I said, “I’ll help you out.” So I joined forces with him, and I ended up teaching essentially
half-time with him and whatever I was doing full-time--went on field trips and everything. We just had a
wonderful time teaching together.
Another thing I learned from Sluss--I learned a lot about ecology and bugs and so forth—but,
when it came to critiquing students’ papers, Sluss was not a writer. I can remember at times when he
would be giving a lecture, and he would spell the same word, two or three times differently each time
on the chalkboard. He just couldn’t spell. He didn’t know grammar. But what he did, when the students
wrote a response to a book and handed it to him, he didn’t try to critique their writing, he wrote a
response to them. He wrote his own mini-essay. Which was I think a great idea, rather than fumbling
around and trying to look for prepositions or correct punctuation. By writing a response to the students,
I’m sure they said, “Wow, somebody really paid attention to what I was saying! Now I’ve got something
more to think about!”
I did teach with him three or four times. Probably the best one was when he and Pete Sinclair
and I did a program called “Vancouver and Puget.” As part of that program we built four longboats, the
type of boat that would have been aboard Vancouver’s ship when he came. Well, the ship was anchored
in upper Puget Sound, and then the crews would go down in these longboats to map southern Puget
Sound. And that’s where the name Puget Sound came from. One of the crewmembers on his ship, I
think his name was Peter Puget. We held our faculty seminars onboard Bob’s boat. We would go out
into Budd Inlet and watch birds and discuss the book. That’s when Dan Evans was president, and he
came with us one time, out on the boat. We spent some time talking about the book, but a lot of it was
he wanted to get more acquainted with us and find out more about this program, Vancouver to Puget.

6

And he said at one point, “Boy, if this had been available when I was a college student, boy, it would
have been my first choice.” (laughing) So Sluss was a great influence.
Then I’d say: Pete Sinclair and Rudy Martin--that really broadened my knowledge and interest in
literature. They each had their own approach to how they taught literature, but I learned a lot from both
of them. Of course Rudy was part of the planning faculty, and so we became friends early on. And in
addition to literature, the whole issue of race relations: we spent a lot of time talking about that, and
then how to do it at Evergreen. And then of course when you and I and Pete taught together: so then
from you I developed a really new interest in folklore and cultural history and so forth. And then with
Pete we continued on with the literature. I remember when we were trying in our faculty seminar to
discuss Ulysses. I was hoping that Pete would offer some explanation, that he would give a little lecture
or something, because, I dunno, I was kind of bamboozled by it. But I remember in that faculty seminar,
I remember him sitting up on his chair, seated on the back of the chair, kind of perched, and basically, he
just let us struggle, searching for whatever answers we could come up with. And I know when he ran
student seminars, his approach was to sit off to the side and let the students run the seminar, and then I
guess, once in a while he would interject and try to steer them back or something. I still remember that
one, struggling with Ulysses. Oh man.
Two more people that had an influence on me, pretty strong influence, were Marilyn Frasca and
Susan Aurand, in terms of art. I only taught with Marilyn once, and that was when we did a summer
institute. It was called “Drawing from the Landscape,” and it was focused on this region, and David
Whitener joined us, so the three of us worked together. It was kind of a mixture of natural history,
drawing, Native American history. It was a weeklong institute. We spent two nights, three days out on
Squaxin Island. David was able to arrange that, because normally you can’t go, you certainly can’t camp
on Squaxin, and you’re not supposed to even set foot on the island because it belongs to the Squaxin
Tribe. So, when we went out there, we spent our whole day drawing, just whatever we wanted to draw
from the landscape. And when we came back to campus, Marilyn had arranged that we would have the
space in the gallery in the library, and so we had a show of our work. It was a mixture of sketches,
finished drawings and writing. We filled up the place, and that was so much fun. I remember she got Bill
Ramsey, a printmaker, to come over and help us lay things out. I remember he stretched a sightline, I
can’t remember exactly how, but it’s about the height that your eye would meet the middle of the
drawing or photograph or painting. We stretched that out and then divided, “Okay you’ll have this much
space, you’ll have...” It was a great show. Lots of people came to it. We didn’t have an opening or
anything like that, with champagne, but anyway...
7

The other thing was, a couple different times I did the Progoff Journal workshop with Marilyn.
Although I haven’t kept up with keeping a journal that way, that approach still sticks with me kind of in
terms of sorting things out and keeping track of things the way you do in the Progoff Journal.
Schrager: Can you say a bit about that?
Eickstaedt: The journal technique was developed by a psychologist by the name of Ira Progoff, back on
the East Coast. I believe he was working as a psychiatrist in a hospital. He started having patients keep a
journal. And then as time went on, he gradually developed this journal technique so that there were
different sections to the journal, quite a large number. There was one that was called “The Daily Log,”
which would just be the events of the day. Everything was dated, so when you made an entry you had
the date there. Let’s say you’re writing along something that happened that day, and you’re reminded of
your father. Well then there’s a section devoted just to I think it was “Relatives.” Then you’d go to that
section, date it, and then you’d write what you want to about your father. Well, maybe in the process of
writing that you’d think, “Ah, this kind of relates to my work.” Well, then there’s a section about Work.
By doing that you can track through the journal how your thought process went. Then there was
another section called “Dialogue.” So you could actually set up to have a dialogue with your father, with
your sister, with a student, or a dialogue with work, even. It’s a very rich way to keep a journal. If a
person were really religious about it, whew, you could spend a lot of time. Anyway, Progoff started
doing these writing gatherings in one place in this hospital, one wing, and then over time more and
more other patients from other parts of the hospital would come. They heard about it, and they’d came
to join in. They’d come in their wheelchairs and walkers, however they could get there. He found that it
was a very effective tool for counseling, for working out problems and so forth.
And then Marilyn trained with him to become a certified teacher. So she taught, she did this
more than once at the college. It was open to whoever wanted to sign up. But then she used it as part of
her teaching when she was teaching art. She found that when students got stuck at some point with
their artwork by writing in their journal, they were often able to figure out what the problem was and
how to overcome it.
And then Susan: I never taught with Susan, I always admired her work. She was one of the folks
that came on the Drawing from the Landscape institute that we did. And she was very prolific. When we
came back from Squaxin Island, she must have had a dozen completed new pieces of work, all in pastel.
When I was recovering from when I had surgery, one day outside our door, when we lived on Madrona
Beach, was a package, and here was one of those pieces that she gave me. It’s a beautiful piece. I have it
downstairs.
8

One person that I don’t want to forget, that would be Larry Stenberg. He wasn’t a member of
the faculty, but he was here right at the beginning. He was what would be called the Dean of Students, I
think, other places. He was in charge of counseling, admissions, financial aid. He did a great deal in the
way of community building when we first got together. He organized various workshops and so forth.
Sometimes he ran them, other times he had other people come in. He was really a genius when it came
to organizing things. And he was the one who came up with the idea for Super Saturday as a celebration
for the larger community to come out to Evergreen and have some fun. Then as you remember it grew
to be the biggest one-day event in the state of Washington. I don’t know, like 25,000 people would
descend on the campus. And it was always held graduation weekend, so that families could come and
everything.
Then I got to work with him when I worked as the academic advisor, so he was my boss then. I
learned quite a bit about how to be a good administrator from him. Every week he had a visit with the
various areas that he was in charge of. He would come see me, and we’d talk about how things are
going, any problems coming up, any idea for workshops, stuff like that. And then when it came to work
on the budget, each of us were in charge of coming up with requests for the next biennium. Then we’d
have a meeting, we’d all get together, and everybody would present what they thought they needed,
and then everybody would vote. Whoever came out number one got the most votes—okay--and so
forth. It was a very democratic way to handle divvying up the budget. But we all got to hear the
rationale from each area. He became a really good friend of mine too. We actually then went into
business at one point together, we ran a restaurant. But that’s another thing. (laughing)
So anyway, those were some of the people.
Schrager: That’s great. I was thinking about the shift as the college got going, the first five years, in the
‘70s If you want to talk about how things developed and the issues that became prominent. The hopes
of that faculty had about what the college could be. Whatever those visions were that started it and
how they unfold in those first years. Did the college become whatever blueprint people had in mind?
Obviously it became something else. But that tension is a really interesting one to me. How faculty dealt
with the realities of actually teaching this.
Eickstaedt: Well, let’s see. One thing that still amazes me is how closely the curriculum still matches
what we had in mind originally. And that is I think still interdisciplinary programs are still the heart of
Evergreen. Even now, I visit with quite a few students and former students, mainly through the coffee
shop I go to. I’m always amazed that when I talk to them about their experience, more likely than not,
9

they talk about one or maybe two programs that just transformed their lives. I’m amazed at that, that
that still holds true, because there certainly were times where it felt like maybe they’re just going to
throw the whole thing out and start from scratch. Maybe go back to a traditional school or something.
Let’s see. One of the big issues that came up in the early years was enrollment. We had quite a
bit of trouble getting enough students. We actually fell below the target different times. One of the
things that grew out of that was the faculty decided we needed to have an advising system. Now prior to
that, right from the beginning, as part of doing the program, the idea was that each student would keep
a portfolio of their work. And so the portfolio would contain the program descriptions, faculty
evaluations, the student’s self-evaluations, and examples of their best work. The original notion was that
each time a student went to a new program they would present their portfolio to their new faculty
seminar leader, so that there would be an ongoing thing. There were some faculty, Richard Jones for
example, would tend to write his evaluations to the next faculty member the student was going to work
with. Because that was another thing that we were expected to do in the program, was that toward the
end of the program, you’d talk with the students, “What are you going to do next?”, and give them
advice. “You ought to check out this program, or this program, or better yet, go see this faculty
member.” So often times, you knew that, next year, these students would be going on to these
programs. So like I say, Richard Jones would write the evaluations, to maybe Sam, you know. But in any
case, the portfolio was going to be kind of an ongoing thing, and the idea was the faculty would be
heavily involved in advising. Well, it became obvious after those early years that it wasn’t working very
well. A lot of students were getting lost. I don’t remember the year, but Kirk Thompson was chosen to
be the faculty advisor, and then there was a small number of faculty who volunteered to be the guinea
pigs: that we would start a formal advising system. So that when the students were admitted to the
college they would be assigned an advisor. The first year it was a small group of students and a small
group of faculty to test it out. Kirk did that for one year. And then I was chosen to be the advisor the
next year, and that was the year all faculty would be involved, and all students. During the latter part of
the summer, we had to put together the academic records and prior evaluations and get them to
whoever the faculty advisor was going to be. And then during orientation week the students would find
out who their advisor was, and they’d go see the advisor, and the advisor would work with them to help
them decide on their first program. Fortunately I had a great assistant. I don’t even like to use the word
secretary, because she was an assistant. We were able to get that off the ground. Then Stenberg lobbied
the deans to have me continue a second year as academic advisor. And that helped a great deal in terms
of student satisfaction and making better choices. But like any system, some faculty took it very
10

seriously. Some faculty, during orientation week, they weren’t to be found. These poor students, you’d
tell them, “Okay your advisor is so-and-so, here’s the office number.” and they’d come wandering back
to the advising office and say, “I sat around for an hour and nobody showed up.” Then I would be stuck
with helping out. But it did help, and it did have an impact on enrollment and retention.
That was the other thing that was a big issue, retention. It was around that time that Dan Evans
was named president. An ongoing issue for the college had been, prior to that, almost every time the
legislature came to town there would be at least one bill introduced to either close Evergreen or to
change Evergreen into something else. So when Dan Evans came in he told the faculty, “Look, I can
handle the legislature. I’ll take care of the off campus work.” He said, “What you folks are doing is great,
and I’ll predict that in not too many years, people from other places, other schools, colleges and
universities, will be coming here to find out how you do it.” He said, “You keep doing what you’re doing,
try to do it better. I’ll take care of the off campus stuff.” And he was just a consummate politician. There
was a great story: he went to, I don’t know if it was the local Kiwanis or Rotarians, to give a noontime
talk. The issue of enrollment came up. And he said that they had increased the enrollment of students
from Thurston County by 100 percent. Well, one of the people in the audience said, “Well, how many
students was that?” And Arnoldo Rodriguez, the head of admissions, was there so Dan Evans turns to
him, “Arnoldo, do you remember?” And Arnoldo says, “Ah, off the top of my head I don’t remember the
precise numbers.” Well it had gone from one to two. (laughing) But anyway, they got around that issue.
One to two. Well, that’s a hundred percent! (laughing)
Trying to think of other issues that came up. I think another issue that gradually became more
and more important was the old issue of faculty evaluation, faculty retention, since there was no tenure.
All the faculty were supposed to keep their own portfolios with evaluations from their colleagues and
evaluations from their students. Then, in terms of faculty retention it was left up to the deans. Each year
they would have a meeting with each faculty member, they would exchange portfolios. The deans kept
their own portfolios, President McCann kept his own portfolio. But anyway, then you’d have a meeting.
All the deans could rely on was what was in the portfolio. Then I think it was maybe toward the end of
the time I was there, they finally instituted that new plan where there would be a team of faculty that
would sit down with a faculty member and really do the evaluation and then make whatever
recommendations. But that was an ongoing issue, because some people didn’t feel folks were doing
their share in terms of interdisciplinary teaching. There were all sorts of these issues. You couldn’t talk
about salary, because the salary was set, you couldn’t argue, “Well, the dean gave him a hundred dollars
more,” but you could debate about the merits of one faculty or another.
11

Schrager: Was this usually at the team level, writing evaluations of one another.
Eickstaedt: Sometimes. Then some folks taught primarily with the same people, so it wasn’t a very
broad spectrum of evaluation you were getting.
Schrager: Being able to write an honest evolution of students and colleagues seems to be the challenge
of the evaluation system narrative. Was that a part of the structure from the beginning that faculty
evaluated one another?
Eickstaedt: Yeah, very much so. And as I mentioned, everybody in the college at the beginning kept a
portfolio, even the people outside of the academic realm. The people in the business office took that up.
Everybody was getting evaluated, and on up the line. The vice presidents, they would have a meeting
with the president, exchange portfolios. The deans would have an evaluation with the provost. People in
the library kept portfolios. But that’s pretty much disappeared, I think.
Schrager: I remember you started your evaluations, “Collegial evaluation of…” when I taught with you.
It’s something I picked up from you was the way you headed your evaluation “collegial evaluation,”
that’s how you titled it—of, by. What was that like to you, to be evaluating your colleagues and to be
evaluated by them as a teacher?
Eickstaedt: Hm, well initially it was a struggle in much the same way as writing those first student
evaluations, because it was a new experience. And so when it came to writing faculty evaluations, it
took a while for me to figure out, I guess, what to pay attention to, what points should be covered. But
over time I think I came up with a reasonable approach to that.
I’m glad you brought that up about collegiality because for me that was extremely important.
That we were all in this together. We were all colleagues. We were all equally responsible to each other
and especially to our students. So that the faculty evaluation, among other things, should be helpful
giving some constructive criticism, how a person could improve. But it took time to develop an approach
to that.
Schrager: And with students, evaluating them, what about that side?
Eickstaedt: Once again I gradually developed what I hope was kind of a holistic approach to student
evaluations. So it was not only talking about the quantity of their work, the quality of their work, but
also how well they worked with others, their participation in seminar, whether they were an active
listener.
(NOTE: At this point, the recorder ran out of memory space—and the interview had to stop. Larry’s
stories continue in the third session, the following week.)
12

—Transcribed by Lori Larson

13


Larry Eickstaedt
Interviewed by Sam Schrager
The Evergreen State College Oral History Project
Interview 3, September 1, 2016
FINAL

Schrager: Here we are at Evergreen.
Eickstaedt: Here we are! First time in a long time. First time in a very long time to be up on the third
floor. Where the power is. (laughs)
Schrager: Do you have a place you want to start or do you want me to?
Eickstaedt: One event I thought would be worthwhile talking a little bit about would be the very first
meeting of the planning faculty with the new faculty to get ready for the first teaching year. After those
new faculty were hired, then those of us who were coordinators of the first programs were in touch
with people primarily by mail, then, some phone calls. But, the deans decided it would really be a good
idea if we got together before the students arrived. So we had our get together up at Pack Forest, which
is the University of Washington’s forestry field camp. I don’t know if they use it very much for that
anymore, but in years back the forestry students would come there and spend I think the better part of
a quarter and get hands-on experience with forestry. It’s up near Eatonville in the forest. That’s where
we went, and it was in the spring of the year. Three, four days, maybe, we stayed right there, ate right
there. During the day, each of the groups for the first programs got together to talk about plans. And
then in the evening there was a lot of socializing going on and so forth, chance to get acquainted with
people.
So I was in charge of the Environmental Design program. Phil Harding, Carolyn Dobbs, Chuck
Nisbet, and I gathered each day. There was kind of a porch attached to the cottage, and it was open on
the sides. There were screens, but you could look in. So we started. I went there without a set plan of
exactly what we were going to do, more of an overall blueprint, and then just open it up. We started off
with really good discussions before we even got down to deciding upon first books for the fall quarter
and those sorts of things. And I think it might have been the second day. We were in the midst of our
discussions, and Jean Tourtellotte, who was one of the first trustees, happened to come by, and she was
standing on the outside of the cottage, kind of listening in, she was just curious what’s going on, and so
we invited her in. And pretty soon, why she was part of the discussion. We were asking her questions,
she’s asking us questions. And before we left for Pack Forest I had been talking with Dave Carnahan in
1

the library, and he came up with a brilliant suggestion. He said, “You know what you could do, you could
record your discussions, have them on tape—cassettes, of course, back in those days—and then once
the students sign up for the program, then you can send them a letter along with the cassette, so they
can hear the four of us talking. So we did that, we recorded those conversations. I used to have several
copies of the cassette. But a number of years ago I took one out and tried to play it, but it was more or
less blank. Too old, I guess. I don’t know if the library still has any of those.
So that was the start.
One of the interesting things about that retreat: Richard Jones had designed a program in
human development. So when he and his team arrived at Pack Forrest and they had their first meeting
he had everything laid out, the books that were going to be read, assignments, the whole thing. So they
had a brief discussion, and the rest of the time people on his team were free to hang out, wander
around, whatever. All the other groups were busy having discussions and we pretty much filled up our
time there. Then the last night we were there, a whole bunch of the Evergreen folks—not only the
faculty, but the early staff—came up to Pack Forest, and we had a party up there. I have seen some
photographs from that in the archives. Charlie McCann was there the whole time, as I recall. So he
would kind of wander around sit in on discussions, mainly just listen in. Then, of course, those new
faculty hires went back to wherever they were, and then during the summer we continued to keep in
touch and make plans. Then, as I’ve talked about before, when time came to start, the buildings weren’t
ready and we ended up at a Girl Scout camp for the first week or two. That was one big event. Very, very
important. Lots of good memories.
Another thing I wanted to talk about was one of my more memorable teaching experiences. I
had mentioned before about my colleague Beryl Crowe. The second teaching year he was in charge of a
program called “Politics, Values and Social Change.” One of the students in that program, her name was
Sally Mendoza. In the spring of the year the students had to write a major paper. So she finished her
paper, and I think Beryl was her seminar leader. He told her that her paper was excellent, but she really
needed to flesh out the biological information, because, he told her, it would be a much stronger, well
rounded paper. And he said, “You ought to go talk to Eickstaedt, and see if maybe you could work with
him this summer.” So she came to see me, and she told me what Beryl had said. I said, “Well, let me
take a look at your paper.” I did, and next time I saw her I said, “Yeah, let’s do it. We’ll do an individual
contract.” So maybe a week or so later, she came back to see me, and she said, “Well, I’m not going to
be able to do it.” She was going through a divorce, she didn’t have the money for tuition, so she said, “I
guess it’s off.”
2

I said, “I’ll tell you what, it sounds interesting to me. How would it be if we do it unofficially? No
contract, no credit. We’ll just see what happens.”
“Okay.”
So, we decided to go ahead. In our first meeting, I took a sheet of paper, and I put one question
in the middle of the paper—and I don’t remember what it was, Sally still has the paper somewhere in
her files. And then I said, “Well, to understand that, you’re going to need to know this. And to know that
you’re going to have to know this. And then that’s going to be connected to this.” We ended up I had
the paper filled with arrows going all over the place. And I said to her, “Well, that will be our curriculum
this summer.” (laughs) So, we just started in. So every week was different. Sometimes we were talking
about fairly basic biology, and other times advanced topics in biology. I’d send her to the library to read
research papers, and she was doing reading all over the map. We just had great discussions. Somewhere
along the way she mentioned to me that she had spent two years at Washington State University, and
she had flunked biology twice. But now she was really interested in biology. And so she had one more
year left here at Evergreen and she said, “I really would like to pursue this, looking more broadly.” It was
basically cycle biology that she was interested in.
And that fall Ed Kormondy sent me to a conference in St. Louis. It was a group of science
educators, I think. He thought it would be good for me to go there and spread the word about
Evergreen, and if I had a chance, to talk about the college. Well, they had a couple of speakers, and one
of them was from Stanford University. He was a psychologist; he worked in the medical school at
Stanford. And he described their research. Well I came home, and I contacted Sally and I said, “I think I
found a place for you.” She said, “How would I ever get into Stanford?” “Well,” I said, “you’re going to
have to do some very serious biology this next year. And the only way you’re going to get in is if you go
down to Stanford, meet with the people there.” Because they had just started an interdisciplinary
graduate program, a combination of biology, psychology, a number of different things. There might have
been seven or eight faculty that were going to be the team. I told her, “What you need to do is go down
there, meet with as many of those faculty as you can, take your paper with you.” She decided, “Okay,
I’m going to give it a try.” She went down there. I can’t remember how long she waited, but she got an
acceptance letter. I found out later from talking to I think it was Don Kennedy, chairman of the biology
department that I knew, he was part of the team. I guess when the team of faculty had their meeting to
pick the first students, of course they went down the line, and they had applicants from Harvard and
Berkeley, Yale, places like that. So they were just about to the end, and Don Kennedy said, “I think we’ve
got a sleeper. It’s that Mendoza gal from Evergreen.” Levine in the medical school piped up, and he said,
3

“I agree, and I’ll take her in my lab.” So she got in, by the skin of her teeth. She came back and set up a
contract with Willie Parsons, and Beryl and I were part of the team. And so for her senior year she was
doing a lot of biology and so forth. We had weekly meetings, and they really turned into seminars. She
went to Stanford and she had a really tough first quarter. Then things fell into place, and she ended up
getting her Ph.D., and then she moved to U.C. Davis, and eventually she became chairman of the
psychology department. And just a few years ago she retired. I think she’s my first student that got a
Ph.D. and retired. Made me feel extra old. It was one of the highlights of my teaching! And she didn’t get
any credit for that summer’s work, and I didn’t get any money, but it was terrific.
Another thing I jotted down was: Somewhere in those early years there was an opportunity to
apply for a National Science Foundation grant. It was to support teaching, not just in science. There was
a crew of faculty that got together and started to bat ideas around. We submitted a proposal for a
summer program where faculty in the sciences would team up with a partner in social sciences, or
humanities, or art, and it was an each-one-teach-one arrangement. And we got the money. I can’t
remember how many teams there were. But I was paired up with Rainer Hasenstab. And so my job was
to teach him ecology and natural history, and his job was to teach me more about architecture. So we
met every week. Sometimes I’d send him to the library. I can remember one time he took me on a little
field trip in the South Capitol neighborhood and the Capitol, to look at examples of different styles of
architecture. The columns on the Temple of Justice and so forth: I’ve forgotten now, but they’re
Corinthian and Ionian, how they’re not the same diameter all the way from top to bottom, but they’re
purposely structured so to the eye they look like they’re straight but in reality they’re not quite. Then he
took me past some Victorian homes, and he said that those homes came from Sears Roebuck. At that
time Sears Roebuck had catalogs of different house designs, so you could pick a design and then all the
materials would show up on a railcar, and then craftsmen here would put it together for a new house.
But it was a completely prefabricated structure. I’m sure that now, when people drive around the South
Capitol neighborhood and look at some of those beautiful old homes they think, “Ah, boy, there were
some really great craftsmen here in Olympia.” But it was Sears Roebuck!
Schrager: Did you ever reach with Rainer then?
Eickstaedt: I never taught with Rainer, no, but I’m kind of responsible for him coming to Evergreen.
During the planning year he was at the University of Washington teaching a class there, a large class in
the School of Architecture. And he invited me to come up to talk about Evergreen and the plans for
Evergreen. Then we kept in touch, and he applied. But at the same time he also applied to State
University of New York at Buffalo. And he weighed the pros and cons and decided to go to Buffalo. Then
4

after he was there not too long, he’d realized he’d made a mistake. I don’t remember what. I know that
he and the chairman of the department there didn’t get along. So then he reapplied to Evergreen, and
then he came in the fifth or sixth year, and he found a house out on Gravelly Loop Road. And he’s in
Buffalo, so I actually went there when they were doing the inspection; I went out there another time to
supervise some repair work for him. After he came we remained really good friends, but I never taught
with him.
One of the things we did do together: Mary Hillaire, who was among the first new faculty hired,
and she was at Pack Forrest for that meeting. She was planning to be here for the first teaching year. But
then, during the summer, she was asked to come to Washington, D.C. for some government position. So
she went there. I think she was there for maybe a year, and then came to Evergreen. Then after she was
here for a few years—I can’t remember if she made the offer to all the faculty, or whether it was by
invitation—but anyway, Rainier and myself and few other people met with Mary, on a regular basis, and
she would talk about Native American history and problems and so forth. So we were together in that.
And then Rainier ended up spending a fair amount of his teaching career in the Native American
program. I keep in touch with him not as often as I used to, he’s up in Seattle, and he used to come
down fairly often, but I haven’t been up to Seattle and he hasn’t been down here, so I haven’t seen him
for a couple years. Anyway, he’s doing well.
I mentioned that I had served as academic advisor following Kirk Thompson, and that was the
year we expanded to include all the faculty serve as faculty advisors. So I did one term, and then I was
asked to come back to serve a second term. I think that’s when we had real problems with enrollment.
So the job of serving as academic advisor was a little more strenuous. Then I served two different times
as the faculty librarian, I had a great time doing that. It was just such an eye opener to me.
Schrager: Can you talk about that?
Eickstaedt: Well, up until that time, I mean all of my interest in the library was focused on science and
biology. Pat Matheny-White, Sarah Rideout, Ernestine Kimbro, Frank Motley, they trained me how to
use the reference materials. Whoa, at first I was overwhelmed. I remember thinking, “Man, if a student
comes in to ask a question about that, where will I go?” But I caught on finally, and was able to actually
answer a lot of questions in other fields. I did the library exchange twice, and I think during the second
one—I don’t know if this is something that they ask all the faculty librarians to do—but they asked me to
do some sort of a project while I was there. I’d always had a strong interest in nature writing, so I
decided I’d tackle that and put together a bibliography of nature writing. When I wasn’t at the desk, I
had a little office there in the library, so I was working on that, tracking down leads and so forth. I
5

compiled a pretty lengthy bibliography. That introduced me to a tremendous amount of literature that I
hadn’t even been aware of. So somewhere in the library, I think there’s still a copy floating around, I
don’t know. (laughs) But I had a great time. Then the reference librarians, one had to be there on the
weekend. They finally agreed that I could handle it. Then I got to be the person that took my turn being
there on the weekend, all by myself. It was a big challenge. Sometimes I’d have half a dozen students at
the desk waiting to ask questions. I had a really good experience, and I formed a really tight relationship
with Ernestine. She was so interested in teaching and exploring new ideas. So whenever she and I were
at the desk together, and if there was a slack time, we were always talking stuff. Then after I went back
to the faculty we’d get together fairly often and have breakfast or coffee and talk ideas, and she’d tell
me about what she was teaching, and so forth. That continued right up to the very end. I was in the
hospital when she passed away. That all started really from me being in the library and having that
opportunity to get to know her.
Schrager: That’s how I remember Ernestine. Great curiosity.
Eickstaedt: In many ways she should have been a full time faculty member, because she just loved
doing programs and venturing into new areas. Very, very smart woman.
Schrager: My first DTF that I was on was for the library dean, and you chaired it.
Eickstaedt: That’s right. That was an interesting experience, indeed. (laughs) I’ve often told Bill Bruner
that I felt that that was one of the best decisions a DTF I had been on had made. When I was in the
library serving on the reference desk, there was a lot of conflict and hard feelings among the library
staff. I remember going to the meetings of the library staff, and there were a fair number of folks who
wouldn’t even attend, and the discussions often were very strained. But it wasn’t long after Bill took
over, I went back for some reason and sat in on a meeting for a while, and it was just completely
different. Most everybody was there, happy, discussions were lively, got the work done. I think he was
really a good choice.
But that kind of gets into another thing that I think is worth talking about. I think when Dave
Marr, when he was interviewed, talked about this. That was the Olander presidency. I was rethinking
that. I remember when the candidates for president that time, when they came around to do interviews
and so forth: My first impression of him was that he was a phony, and I was flabbergasted when he was
selected. But, I figured, well, you don’t always get your first choice. As time went on things got worse. I
can remember, mornings, we lived out on Madrona Beach at that time. My routine in the morning
would be I’d get up, put the tea kettle on, walk out the lane to get the paper, come back in, make my tea
and read the paper. It got to the point I was dreading going out to get the paper for fear that there’d be
6

another article about Evergreen and Olander. It was really awful. Fortunately, people like Dave Hitchens
and Betty Estes were able to finally uncover the fact that he had plagiarized his dissertation. It wasn’t
too long after that that the Board of Trustees bought him out, and he went off. And then ended up at a
small college in Iowa, not too far from where I grew up. I don’t know the details, but I think that college
eventually disappeared, went under. I don’t know if it was because of him. I thought at the time, “I
thought those Iowans had more sense than that.” (laughs)
Schrager: Can you talk about what happened with him as the president? What he did in terms of the
college that was wrong? How things changed?
Eickstaedt: One of the things that happened was that when he took over there were several people
that got fired from the administrative staff. One of them being my good friend Larry Stenberg, who lost
his job. From my perspective, some of the people that he brought in were simply “yes” men, and didn’t
work out very well. That was one of the problems. I never really got the impression that he was primarily
interested in Evergreen, more interested in advancing himself. I remember him pulling stunts: like I
remember, one time, when they went down to the legislature, to the budget meeting, he had himself,
and I forget how many of the staff, dressed up as gangsters. They went down to the meeting and walked
in as if they were Al Capone and the mob from Chicago. I guess it caused lots of laughs and so forth. But
there were things like that that happened. I remember him bragging one time in a speech that he gave
maybe to the faculty that one of the big decisions he had made was—the drinking fountain outside the
president’s office was set that the water was too strong and that it went on the floor—well, he got that
corrected so that water fountain ran correctly now, you know. It was kind of a joke. But, I don’t know.
And then the various things that he did filtered down, and it caused a lot of problems among the
faculty. Because there were a sizeable number of faculty that were growing more and more dismayed at
what he was doing. There was a small group of defenders, and they attacked the folks that were raising
questions, and then they attacked back, so it turned into kind of a big argument back and forth. But I
think it was really one of the lowest points for the college while he was here. It was really quite a sad
time.
Schrager: So the talk about shutting the college down, which was, as you said earlier, was part of the
pressure in the early years. In the face of that, it wasn’t as bad for the faculty in a way as Olander was.
You talk about your work as student advisor the second time it being more pressured. That was tied to
the enrollment?
Eickstaedt: That was the primary issue, we were just having difficulties getting enough students, so it
was really critical to enhance the advising all the way around and help students make good first choices,
7

and then be there to help them each step along the way. It did begin to turn around during that time,
but that was a big worry.
Schrager: So it’s something that I’ve heard from faculty about faculty over the years, that sense of
maybe there was a misfit between what the college offered, what kind of education we give, and the
students that were drawn to the college. I don’t know how you thought about it then or now.
Sometimes it seems like it was an elite kind of concern. If we had more better prepared students like the
private liberal arts colleges, that that would be better for the college.
Eickstaedt: Right.
Schrager: And the other side: that we can educate anybody who is interested in this kind of an
education. What about that? Did you see that as an issue here in the way faculty approached their
teaching?
Eickstaedt: Yeah, I did, because that did come up from time to time, faculty members saying just exactly
what you said. Well, we have to beef up our admission requirements, we’re getting too many poor
students, and we can’t teach them, or they don’t want to learn, those sorts of things. I think as I
mentioned in one of the previous talks we had, was that my philosophy was, that if Evergreen’s
philosophy was going to work, it wouldn’t be hard to do that with an elite group of students. The real
challenge would be if you could take students from where they’re at and turn them into scholars. But
there were other folks that wanted to start with a big advantage: let’s get those top ranked students,
and then my problems will be less as a faculty member, and the college will be better off. Well, I’ve
never bought that.
But one of the things that has cropped up recently in my talks with some faculty is the concern
about the preparation of students. That they can’t write very well, they’re not really committed to
getting an education in some cases. I don’t know exactly what’s happening now at the college in the way
of helping students with basic skills. But, my thought is, that if you’re going to accept students that have
deficiencies, I think you’re morally obligated to help them out with skill development, which means that
there have to be people outside the faculty to work with the faculty with that, with reading and writing
skills and other types of skills. It is a tremendous job for a faculty member that’s got 20-some students in
a seminar, and if you’ve got a student that’s very deficient in writing how are you going to find enough
time to really help them out? You can try as much as you can, but I think the college probably needs to
devote more resources and attention, for more backup. I’ve also picked up from talking not just to some
faculty here, just keeping track of what’s going on nationally, that it seems to be a problem that’s fairly

8

widespread, that even at the elite institutions, they’re having the same type of problems. That’s kind of
where my thinking is right now. It’s easy being an outsider now and making recommendations.
Last time we were together, as we were wrapping things up, you mentioned maybe it would be
good to talk about my farming experience. So, after growing up on a farm in Iowa, that’s, as they say,
“You can take the boy off the farm, but you can’t take the farm out of the boy,” well, that’s very true
with me. When we first came to Evergreen, we lived in a small house on the Westside near L.P Brown
School. During the summer between the first and second teaching year, we found a little farm up by
Shelton, a 13-acre farm, and decided to move there. It was an old farm. The house had originally been a
log house, that had been remodeled, so there was siding on the outside and sheetrock on the inside. So
the walls were almost a foot thick. Had a wood burning furnace in the basement, two good size garages,
what became a chicken house, another shed, an old barn, pasture. But it was pretty run down. So I went
to work and started being a farmer again. (laughs) Put in a great big garden. Then after a few years I
built a treehouse for the kids, next to a big fir tree. We had cattle on the pasture, hogs, chickens. We
even had pet goats. Geese. So anyway the farming was great. I was able to buy an old tractor, an
International Harvester, small tractor with some implements, a plow, and disk, and mower. The farming
part was great, and it was like two different worlds: coming to work, and then when I drove home it was
going back to a different world. Oftentimes people would ask me, “How many miles is it that you drive
each day?” I never could tell them because I always forgot to check the odometer. On the way home I
was thinking about what I’m gonna do at home, and on the way to school I was thinking about what I’m
gonna do at school.
But, the other good thing about living up there was that I got to be close friends with loggers.
My neighbor across the road worked for Simpson Timber Company, and he worked with the lowland
road building crew. He ran a Caterpillar. His family, my family, we would go out, we’d usually start in the
spring of the year, and he knew all these places where they were putting new roads in where there was
a really good stand of alder. So we would just drive out with our pickups and cut down the trees, drop
them right across the road, buck them up. Let’s see, sometimes we split them there, sometimes we
brought them home and split them. That’s how we got our firewood. We probably burned around five
cords of wood each winter. And then his father was vice president for Simpson Timber Company. And
his father was an old time logger. He had gone to the University of Washington, actually, and played
football. But he was a big guy, and his son Mark was a big guy, about 6 foot 8. Mark’s dad, Max—I’m
trying to think now, it may have been his dad or his father-in-law—was the superintendent of Camp
Grisdale, which became the last operating logging camp in the United States. He had so many terrific
9

stories to tell about the old days of logging. He would go out with us sometimes when we cut our
firewood. Then when he came along it was a three-way proposition—took wood to his place as well. But
through that, then I got acquainted with quite a few other loggers in the area, as well as other folks that
lived in Shelton and outside of Shelton. I just consider it part of my education, to be able to do that. So I
wasn’t living in town and hanging out with the same sorts of folks every day. Of course I got lots of
questions about Evergreen, and had to justify what we were doing, explain what we were doing, why it
was different, why we did things so differently, and all of that. But that was good. Sometimes there
were still questions on their faces when I got through, but that was okay.
Schrager: So the kids grew up there. And your first wife was from a farm?
Eickstaedt: Yeah, she was from a farm family back in Iowa. She was an elementary teacher. Actually,
when we were first out there on the farm, she and a couple of other women decided they wanted to
start a preschool. And they ended up at the original Squaxin Island headquarters, which was where the
casino is now. There had been a public school there, but it closed. So there was a gymnasium and some
other buildings. The tribe had their offices there, and then they would hold meetings in the gym. They
had powwows there, invite other tribes. But my former wife, they were able to get a space there to start
the preschool. They did that for a couple of years, and then she got a teaching job in Shelton,
elementary school, and taught there for the rest of her career. Because of that, I got introduced to lots
of the teachers in the school system and other people. All three of my kids went through the Shelton
schools. So, it was an interesting community in many ways. It was a very interesting place to live.
Schrager: Does that have to do with how you met Joan, through teaching?
Eickstaedt: No, the way I met Joan, my wife now—Joan had moved up here from California. Her first
husband passed away. Joan had two young daughters, and during a span of a little over a year—this was
down in San Jose—her husband passed away, one of the grandpas passed away, there were several
people passed away. And she just felt she needed to find a new place, especially for her girls. It had a big
impact, especially on her oldest daughter. And she was friends with Sandy Nisbet. They had been
students together at San Jose State, in the drama department. And then Joan got to know Chuck, of
course, and Joan would come up here once in a while for a visit. She let them know she was thinking
about moving, and Chuck found a place on Madrona Beach Road that she might be interested in. She
ended up buying the house and moving up here with no job and no real plan at that time of how she
was going to survive. But she did have enough money from the sale of the house in San Jose to do that.
So I was a bachelor. My first wife and I were divorced, I was living by myself. And one Saturday I
got a call from Sandy Nisbet. She said that Peter Robinson was in town. Well Peter Robinson had been
10

on the faculty for maybe three years in the early days. He was an Englishman: red hair, very jolly guy, a
lot of fun. She said he was back in town and they were going to have a little get together at their house,
and Peter asked Sandy to make sure I’d be there. So I went over there that evening, and it was all
Evergreen folks, and all the talk was Evergreen business. Well, Joan was there. They’d always invite Joan
to come over any time they had a gathering. And Joan and I started talking. And we talked for quite a
while. That’s how a new romance got started. It was because of Sandy Nisbet. And Joan and I got
married on their deck, later on. So I’m always indebted to Sandy Nisbet.
Schrager: We touched a bit on women faculty at Evergreen. The program you taught the second year,
Sex Roles was it?
Eickstaedt: “Sex Roles in Society” was the title.
Schrager: That program and then what it was like for women joining the faculty in the beginning.
Eickstaedt: Of course when we as the planning faculty were looking at files for doing the hires for the
new teaching faculty to join us, we had a very clear message that we had to search for some good
women (chuckles), since there were all men on the planning faculty. So for the first teaching year, I can’t
remember exactly how many women were part of that crew, but a good percentage were women. Once
we started with the first students, why the women had a very significant impact right away. One of the
new women that came, Llyn De Danaan—at that time she was Lynn Patterson—background in
anthropology: they selected her to be the coordinator of one of the very first programs, Human
Behavior program, that she taught with Richard Alexander, Steve Herman, Ted Gerstle, might have been
somebody else. That was a good indication, I think, of what was going to happen, that a woman took
over as a coordinator that first year. I think it was in the spring of that year, some of the women
organized a conference here at Evergreen. It was oriented toward women. I decided to go to it. I was
one of the only men who showed up. But there were women that came from many other places, a fairly
large gathering.
So during the first teaching year, we had to get busy right away and plan programs for the next
year. I mean it was unbelievable that we could pull it off, really. And it was critical that we did that fairly
quickly to get the catalog out, because all of the programs were going to be brand new programs. So
Nancy Allen started planning a program that eventually became called “Sex Roles in Society” or
“Female/Male Roles in Society”—went by both titles—and I decided to join her. It was a challenging
program in many ways, because that was in the very early days of the strong women’s movement. I
don’t remember the percentage, but I would say that it was more than 50 percent young women in the
program. And we were talking about all of the issues, many of the same issues that are still being
11

debated today and talked about. Well, somewhere along the line, the title Founding Fathers: I don’t
know if it was first used in a positive sense, but the women very quickly said it in a negative sense, “Well
the founding fathers, said this, or the founding fathers did this.” It always caused laughter and so forth.
But we had to grin and bear it because a lot of it was true. We needed to have the women’s
perspectives on a lot of those issues, and they brought it to the forefront.
Schrager: Do you think that at least some number of the male faculty were shaped by the male oriented
reality of higher education coming in, to have a negative view of what women as faculty could offer?
Eickstaedt: Very much so. When we did that program, Sex Roles and Society, I took a fair amount of flak
from my male colleagues. First of all, for me making the decision to even do the program. And then, all
sorts of snide comments about, “What are you going to study?” Then there would be a joke attached to
it. Or, “That’s not really legitimate stuff.” Anyway, there was a fair amount of resistance. I’m sure some
of the faculty might have wished that we had never even done that program, that, I don’t know, it might
reflect badly on the college, or what. But there was a fair amount of resistance and some outright
hostility. I know some of the women in that program, why they caught a fair amount of flack. “Women’s
rights, what are you going to do, burn bras in that program?” Those sorts of things. But, yeah, I think all
of us males were shaped by our own experience. A large part we were taught by male faculty members,
the last time we had a female teacher was probably in grade school. All of us had a lot of learning to do
in reorienting our ideas.
Schrager: Do you think there’s a parallel with gender and race in that way? It seems like when Rudy was
teaching, that his first multicultural program, that also there wasn’t maybe the kind of readiness for
other faculty to take it as important kind of work.
Eickstaedt: Very much so. And looking back on it, during the discussions the planning faculty had about
what are we going to offer the first year to our students, there was no talk about women’s issues. And it
was kind of at the last minute—Rudy was the only minority member of the planning faculty—really it
was kind of a last minute thing that somebody said, “Hey, wait a minute, what are we going to do for
minority students?” So Rudy was put in charge of planning a program, Contemporary American
Minorities. But I think part of the attitude was, “Well, okay, so the minority students are going to be in
that program, so that takes care of it. We don’t have to worry. We have a program for you.” I mean
Rudy really bore the brunt of it. But some of those students then the next year joined other programs,
and many of them were outstanding students and really started, what would you say—Well, then I think
people started to realize, “Hey, wait a minute, if we’re going to do things in political economy or
whatever, we got to think about these issues. We can’t just depend on Rudy to do it.” I remember early
12

on, I can’t remember which year, but we had some sessions on racial sensitivity. I can remember when
those were being planned, some of the faculty said, “Why are we going to hire some outsiders to come
in? Rudy can lead the discussions.” (laughs) “We have our own man here!” Looking back at the planning
year, both of those issues, the minority students and the female students—well, not female students,
but female issues—were really not considered. And today, gosh, I don’t know, I’d probably have to say
that the racial issues are still neglected. I’m not sure about the women’s issues; I think they’re more fully
integrated. And the young women now I don’t think they’d stand for a lot of the stuff that went on in
the ‘70s or ‘80s. You couldn’t get away with it.
Schrager: You mean for women students in terms of what’s taught in the curriculum?
Eickstaedt: I think so. Yeah, what’s taught and how’s it’s taught. How much sensitivity male faculty have
to women’s issues. I’m thinking back to Sally Mendoza. When she was at Washington State University,
when she went there she wanted to major in mathematics. She was very good at mathematics. But
while she was there in either her first or second year, one of the faculty members told her, “You know
you’re very good at mathematics, but you have to think about your career. There aren’t going to be any
job openings for you in mathematics.” This was around 1970. That wouldn’t happen these days, I hope,
that somebody would tell a young woman that you can’t find a job doing what you really want to do.
Schrager: So did you have much sense of how the young women as students fared at Evergreen in those
first years in relation to the young men? In seminar and then their intellectual and social relations?
Eickstaedt: I’ll have to think a little bit about that. Off the top of my head I would say that the young
women who came to Evergreen in those first years were in a sense pioneers. They were risk takers. I
think in terms of treatment, I think it was more or less equal. Those young women were very outspoken,
many of them, very tough, so I don’t think the young guys could have got away with derogatory
comments in seminars. I mean if the faculty member didn’t catch it, those young women would. And
they were well aware what was happening nationally in terms of the women’s movement and so forth.
And I think a lot of them had read some of the early literature that was coming out. So I don’t think that
was a big issue. At least I never sensed it.
Schrager: Should we take a little break?
Eickstaedt: Okay. I wonder where the closest—maybe Joe Olander’s fountain is still working and I can
go get a drink.
[End of Part 1]

[Start of Part 2]
13

Schrager: I mentioned to you that when Pete Sinclair and I were planning Restorying the West, I was
asking about Western literature and he said, “You know, really, you should ask Larry about this.” So I
did, and you sent me a list of Western literature, some of the titles of which we used. The whole list
really impressed me with how broad your knowledge of Western literature—nature writing, fiction,
essays—is. I’m curious about how you acquired this depth of knowledge, and how that affects your
outlook as a biologist. What you’ve become is a thinker about nature and the West.
Eickstaedt: As I said previously, my interest in nature started first growing up on a farm. Then, when I
was in second grade, Miss Gleason: I told the stories about her impact on me. Then when I was in
graduate school at the University of Iowa in the Department of Zoology, I spent two summers at a
freshwater biological station that was run jointly by the three universities in Iowa. It’s a small station up
in northwest Iowa on a beautiful lake, called Lake Okoboji, Native American name. The station, Lakeside
Lab, is right on the edge of the lake. There’s a dock, and we had a boat, and we’d go out on the lake if
that was part of what you were studying. But it was quite a large camp, really, I can’t remember how
many acres. Trees. Most of the buildings were built during the Depression by Civilian Conservation Corps
workers. And they were built out of cobblestone from that surrounding area. So the walls were big, thick
walls, and even in the midst of an Iowa summer it was always cool in those buildings because the walls
were so thick. So that’s where the various classes were, in these buildings. Of course we all ate together
in the mess hall. It was, for me, just a wonderful change from being at the university, to be out there just
surrounded by nature. And we went on lots of field trips around the area. And then when I went to
Stanford I spent almost all of my time there at the Hopkins Marine Station, once again a relatively small
place right on the border between Pacific Grove, Monterey, on the edge of Cannery Row. We were right
on the water, so you were just surrounded by the ocean every day. All of those of those things
contributed to a very strong love of nature.
I really ended up with a strong emphasis in marine biology and ecology. When I was at the
University of Iowa I took an ecology course. It was the only ecology course offered in the entire
university, and it was just one course for one semester, and there may be 12 students, that was it.
Nobody thought much about ecology then. There was one textbook we used. But that was about it in
the way of textbooks. I took that class in 1965 or ’66. Then ’69 was the first Earth Day. So between that
time when I took the ecology class and Earth Day, the interest in ecology and environmental problems
just mushroomed. So then everybody was interested in ecology. And quite a few people that had
backgrounds in other areas, all of a sudden they were giving lectures listing themselves as an ecologist.
And I knew for a fact that many of them had never had an ecology course in their life! But it was a
14

popular thing to do, and it attracted crowds. Paul Ehrlich was at Stanford; he published The Population
Bomb in the ‘60s. He ended up on the Johnny Carson show, traveling all around the country giving
lectures, for big money. I don’t know how much he got, but it was a lot of money, talking about gloom
and doom, basically.
In terms of my teaching, the longer I was at Evergreen the more I moved away from strict
biology and strict ecology towards natural history. And part of that was because of my own interest, but
also, in the context of providing a liberal arts education, I felt that everybody with a liberal arts
education should be exposed to natural history. Because I thought, no matter what they ended up doing
in terms of career, they always have access to nature, and they can take advantage of it, they can
interact with nature in a more intelligent way. Rather than just going for a walk or a hike, they can pay
attention to their surroundings and maybe even identify some plants, or identify some birds, or pay
attention to behavior—whatever.
So, with those things in mind, I started to drift more and more to paying attention to nature
writing. Not just natural history. I mean there were a lot of books that you could find on the natural
history of the wasp, or the natural history of the bumble bee, things like that. Which is great, it’s great
reading—but I was interested in the type of literature that was more accessible to a wider range of
people. I remember somewhere, it may have been somebody like Robert Michael Pyle, who’s the great
naturalist, wonderful writer. Somebody said, “How can you expect people to protect nature if they don’t
have a love for nature?” In reading strict natural history, you can learn a lot about, let’s say, a wasp, and
it’s very fascinating. But, doesn’t necessarily mean that you’ll love nature. More like: it’s interesting to
learn how a wasp makes its living. But, writers—well, Aldo Leopold. His background was in wildlife
biology, and he taught one of the early courses in wildlife biology at the University of Wisconsin. But
when he wrote Sand County Almanac, there’s hardly any technical information in there. There’s great
stories about nature, but when you’re reading Sand County Almanac, I think if you’re paying attention,
pretty soon your interest goes up, and if you kind of take advantage of what Leopold is saying, maybe
the love of nature will come through. That book is, I think, one of the most influential books in terms of
environmental literature in turning things around.
You can preach all you want to about environmental problems, but after a while, talking about
problems can get pretty depressing. And I found that true when I was teaching at Evergreen because I
was part of the environmental faculty, that specialty area. So there was an expectation on a regular
basis I would teach in that area. But for the most part a lot of it was just gloom and doom, and it was
very depressing. But when I read nature writing it was uplifting. It was almost day and night feeling. It’s
15

the same feeling I get when I go to McLane Creek Nature Trail. I do that regularly. When I go there and
just sit, and watch, and listen, I’m not thinking about the world’s problems, I’m not thinking about
environmental problems, I’m just there to appreciate nature and there’s a real love there. I always come
home uplifted from that experience.
So anyway, as I started to do more and more reading in nature writing, from that I started to pay
more attention to Western literature, and people like Wallace Stegner, who, once again, was not an
ecologist, not a scientist at all, but one of the great Western writers, very much grounded in a respect
for nature, a love for nature and protecting what we have.
Another thing I started doing was going to Seattle to Elliot Bay Book Company. I would pay
attention to the writers that were coming there. Before the traffic got so bad, I probably averaged
almost once a month I went to Elliot Bay to hear a writer. So that’s where I first heard Barry Lopez. One
time there was a group from the University of Montana that was coming to Elliot Bay, William Kittredge
was one of them. They had published an anthology of literature from Montana. I remember getting
there, this is in the old Elliot Bay downstairs where they held the readings. And the table was set up with
a little lectern, and sitting on the table were these books that looked like a bunch of Bibles. I was
shocked when I looked at it and thought, “Is that just for show?” The literature from Montana—not in
that book! Well, it turned out it was! A lot of it is Native American literature stories, they went way back
and started there. There was Kittredge there, Annick Smith was there, and then there were other folks
not at the University of Montana but who had been there or had connections. Boy, it was a wonderful
evening.
And then I got well acquainted with Rick Sieverson, I think. He was an early Evergreen student;
he studied with Sandra Simon, with Josie Reed. He was up in Seattle after he graduated, and as I
remember the story, he just happened past when they were just getting Elliot Bay started. They were
looking for people. He ended up getting a job there, and then he ended up being the guy who organized
all the readings. I didn’t know him when he was a student here, but after a number of visits up there,
why, we chatted and found out we had Evergreen in common. He must have a terrific memory. I
remember one time I showed up there, not for a reading, it was in the daytime. I was just scanning the
books, and he saw me, and he came over and said, “Larry, I’ve got a book for you. I know you’ll love it.”
It was Terry Tempest Williams’ Refuge. I mean, how did that guy remember all that, you know? But he
hit the nail on the head. And I heard Terry Tempest Williams there for the first time at Elliot Bay. Well,
with Lopez and people like Terry Tempest Williams, there were others: very quickly my interest in
Western literature just mushroomed, I started following those leads. So that’s how I ended up doing
16

that bibliography when I was in the library. So, when you asked me for recommendations, they were
close at hand. (chuckles)
Schrager: So, you left as a pretty young man, relatively speaking. Most people hit their early 60s. But’s
it’s hard, the work. What was it?
Eickstaedt: A couple major events. In the fall of 1994, I was all set to teach a program with Pete Taylor
on salmon. Starting in the summer time I just wasn’t felling up to snuff. I had a number of doctor’s visits,
and they couldn’t find anything wrong. Finally, early in the fall, my doctor’s nurse suggested, “I wonder if
maybe we should do a CAT scan?” so they sent me up to Tacoma, I had an ultrasound and a CAT scan,
and it turned out they saw something in my kidney. They said, “Well, it just might be a cyst.” Well, it
turned out it was cancer, and so I had to have my right kidney removed. I had to take a leave, I wasn’t
teaching in the fall. In addition to being a real wakeup call, it was also additionally tough because my
wife had had breast cancer twice, so we had gone through that already, and then here I am with cancer.
Fortunately they removed my kidney, and since then I haven’t had any problems. In fact the surgeon
that operated on me, we would have regular meetings. At first it was like every three months, and then
every six months, and I had to do a CAT scan again. But when I went to see him, each time he would
greet me, “How you doing professor?!” And I’d say, “How you doing doc?!” And then we’d sit down and
tell stories and jokes, you name it. Then finally he would say, “Well, I guess I better check your blood
chemistry results.” And he’d go down the line, “Boring, boring, boring, boring, boring. Everything’s okay.
CAT scan’s okay.” Then finally after oh I don’t know how many years of seeing him, finally one time he
said, “Well, I really enjoy visiting with you each time you come in. But something else is going to get you
besides another cancer of the kidney. So,” he said, “I guess we’ll have to call it quits.”
After my kidney cancer I lost my good friend Beryl and Sandra Simon. There were some other
events that took place. I came back teaching, and in the fall of 1995 I was getting set to teach a really
exciting program with Matt Smith. It was on the Pacific Northwest. It was really going to be a lot of fun.
Once again I was just not feeling very good. Turned out by that time my doctor was an Evergreen
graduate, and she was a student that I had the first year of Evergreen. So she knew me very well. And I
met with her, and after talking she said, “I’m going to recommend that you see a psychiatrist.” I did, and
well it turned out I was suffering from clinical depression. It was really a black, dark period for me. I took
a leave of absence. But I came back to teach in the spring, that was the spring of 1996. I was still doing
the same routine: I’d get up in the morning, put the tea kettle on, go out get the paper, come back, drink
my tea, read the paper. And one morning I came back with the paper and I was just standing by the
stove. I was waiting for the tea kettle to boil, and it came to me that I had all of these ideas and projects
17

that I wanted to do someday, but I was putting them on the back burner, and I thought to myself, “The
damn stove is overflowing with ideas, and I may never get to them.” It was not much longer I decided
I’m just going to retire early. And I didn’t have a real plan. But I did that, I retired spring of 1996.
Since that time I got involved with a couple of things that I had no intention of ever doing. One
of them was, I saw a little announcement in the local paper about a stone sculpture class that was going
to be offered, a six-week class one night a week. So I checked it out and signed up. I’d always enjoyed
working with my hands and working with tools, but I had no background, really, in art. But after the first
night I was hooked. I just fell into it, I just loved chiseling stone and working in three-dimensions. And
that opened up a whole new hobby, or almost a career, of doing stone sculpture. I joined the Northwest
Stone Sculptors Association shortly after that. Turned out to be one of the most interesting and
generous groups of people that I’ve ever been with. Many of these folks in the association were
professional sculptors. Some of them had been doing it for 25, 30 years. They would share every bit of
knowledge they had with a newcomer like me. Nothing held back. We still have two major symposia
each year. At first I would go to both of them, the one in the summer, the one in the spring. The one in
the spring was strictly for hand sculpture; the one in the summer was a combination, some people doing
by hand, other people using power tools. But these symposia were just a wonderful time to learn new
stuff, meet new people, to get acquainted with new types of rock, try out new tools. We were at a camp
up near Mt. Vernon, out in the country. We were there for a week, we ate together, partied together,
spent the whole day working on stone, making dust. I’ve continued doing stone sculpture since then.
Another thing that happened was, I got acquainted with a couple of homeless people downtown
Olympia after I retired. I kind of got in the habit of spending time at various coffee shops. Well, there
weren’t that many back then, there are a lot more now. I got acquainted with what was happening
downtown during the day. One of the homeless people I got acquainted with was a veteran from
Vietnam. I can’t remember if he was part Native American, or perhaps Filipino, but he was a sniper
during the war. And he was an alcoholic. But he would spend time sitting on the street outside of the old
Batdorf & Bronson, and while he was sitting there he was sketching, just using typewriter paper, and he
made these beautiful drawings. Some of them were war related; others were really mostly about
nature. And I got to be fairly good friends with him. I would stop and chat with him. He always had these
laying out on the sidewalk around him. So, I asked him, “How much do you charge?” He said, “I don’t sell
them. If you’d like one take it. If you want to leave a little bit, that’s fine.” So I bought some of his
drawings. And then every once and a while I’d get an extra coffee at Batdorf & Bronson and bring it out
to him. He lived underneath the dock down by the waterfront with a couple of other guys. His
18

appearance put off a lot of people. He smelled, of course. I don’t know where he got showers.
Everybody called him “Sarge.” That’s what he called himself, “Sarge,” he’d introduce himself.
Then there was a black woman. First encounter with her: I went down to the Spar to have
breakfast with a couple of friends. When I was approaching the Spar, there was a woman with a
shopping cart, and the cart was piled high with her stuff. I went in and had breakfast, and when I came
out the cart had moved down the street about a half a block, and there was this big mound over the top
of the cart. And I looked and I thought, “Well where did she go?” And then I looked closer and I saw two
legs. Here she was, bent over with blankets and a sleeping bag over the top of her, and she was sleeping
on top of the cart, leaned over. And she would do that for hours at a time. And then at night she would
find a store front, and she’d spend the night sleeping that way, standing. But anyway, I got acquainted
with her. She was hard to talk to. She had, obvious, some psychological problems and so forth. I never
did quite get a clear answer as to what her name was.
Those two people caused me to sit at Batdorf & Bronson one day, and I was feeling very
emotional. I always had my little notebook with me. And I started to scribble a poem. And for some
reason I decided, well, maybe I’ll try some more of this, and I did. I think it might have been Kate Crowe,
I was talking to her, and she said, “Do you know about Centrum up at Fort Worden? They have a writer’s
workshop up there. Maybe you ought to check into it.” So I did, and I ended up going up there. Signed
up for a—well, I wanted to get into the beginning poetry workshop but it was filled. Then there was
another one for advanced poets, and it was being taught by a woman by the name of Emily Warren. And
I knew Emily because, several years before that, she and I taught together as part of a joint Washington
Humanities Commission and the Arts Commission. They had a program where they would match up a
scholar with a poet to teach in rural schools. I was the scholar. We taught one year in Twisp and
Winthrop for a week, and then we went over to way up northeast Washington and taught for a week at
Metaline Falls and Ione with grade school kids. I did some natural history with them, and then Emily got
them to write poems. And then another time we went to the little town of Dixie over by Walla Walla.
The school was, I think, kindergarten through sixth grade, and it was in an old schoolhouse that had
been the high school. So these little kids, the classes were small but they had that big old building, and
we spent a week there with those kids.
Well, turned out Emily was teaching the advanced poetry class there at Fort Worden. So I
contacted her, and I told her that I was more than a rookie—an ultra-rookie. And she said, “Don’t worry
about it. Sign up for my workshop.” So I did. There were 16 women and myself in this workshop. And it
was a week. And at the end of that week I was hooked. I had a great time, and did some fairly decent
19

writing there, learned a lot. And then I went back two more times to the writer’s workshop. That got me
started doing poetry, and I’m still doing poetry. When I look back at it, I can see definite roots from
Evergreen. I think I mentioned before that I never had a chance to teach a full program with Marilyn
Frasca or Susan Aurand, but some of their influence definitely rubbed off on me, and I think that helped
me move towards stone sculpture. And then, in terms of the poetry, once again that kind of grew out of
the interest in natural history and nature writing, because my early attempts at writing poetry were
more along that line of reflections on nature and so forth. There were a few times while I was teaching
at Evergreen that we included some poetry as part of the reading. I remember one of the books that had
a big impression on me when I was teaching the program Reflections of Nature with Rob Knapp, Thad
Kurtz, and Hiro Kawasaki. And Hiro had us read a book by Basho, High Roads to the Interior, combination
of haiku and kind of a journal of his trip in Japan. The idea of haiku: it’s a very economical way to say a
lot with a few words. There were definite influences from Evergreen that helped me with writing poetry.
But looking back on it, when I retired I never would have envisioned that I’d be doing those two things.
Then I’ve had other things. I’ve served on the board of the Kitchen Garden Project, which was
the early version of Grub. Then later I was on the board of Grub, and during that time we raised over
$750,000 to buy the garden and to erect a new farmhouse that Grub now has. I was on the board of
Homes First for a while. I was on the board of Friends of the Farmer’s Market. Done those sorts of
things.
Another important thing that I’ve been doing regularly is spending time at coffee shops. It
started with Batdorf & Bronson, and then the Bread Peddler, then Olympia Coffee when Olympia Coffee
was just a small little coffee shop. And then, for the last about five years, Bar Francis has been my coffee
shop. And Bar Francis was started by a guy who had worked for Batdorf & Bronson, he had worked for
Olympia Coffee, had a lot of experience, but he always thought he’d like to have his own little business.
So he built himself a coffee cart. It’s just a beautiful piece of work. So now he’s in a small, kind of a funky
space between Dumpster Values and Old School Pizza on Franklin Street. So, in addition to having my
coffee, it’s really kept me in touch with young people. There aren’t very many old timers that show up
there. So when I’m there, I don’t spend my time talking about various people’s laments, comparing
notes on your last colonoscopy or blood pressure readings. It’s mostly young people, and I’ve made lots
of good friends with these young folks. I’m always learning new stuff from them. I don’t know, they
probably think of me as kind of a grandpa figure, but we get along just fine. Then from time to time, if
there’s a slow period maybe I’ll draft a poem while I’m there. Or I read, do a lot of reading.

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Then to cap it off: I got acquainted with a fellow here in Olympia. He had run restaurants in the
past, he’s designed restaurants for other folks, he’s an artist, he’s a builder. I first met him at the new
Blue Heron Bakery. He was responsible for making the tables and the counters there, just beautiful
work. We got to be friends, and he did some small projects at our house. And then probably last spring, I
mentioned to him one time that I had had a platform in a tree when I was a kid on the farm in Iowa. And
then I had built a treehouse for my kids when we had the little farm up by Shelton. But I told him that I
have a garden shed in the back of our property, an old garden shed, and I said, “You know I’ve thought a
little bit about trying to build a treehouse above the garden shed.” And his eyes lit up. And so right away
we’re making sketches. And then he drew up a formal drawing. We went ahead with the project. About
a month ago we completed a treehouse. And it’s 9x12, it’s got a deck on two sides, a stairway leading up
to it. That’s going to be my place for reading and writing. If the grandkids want to, there’s a place for
them to sleep up there. But primarily it’s going to be my place to hide out and think, and read and write.
As I have been doing that project, constantly thinking about Phil Harding, because Phil would have just
loved to see this treehouse. Of course, if he had gotten involved during the design process it probably
would have had three stories, and a balcony, and a crow’s nest, and a greenhouse, and who knows
what. But we kept it under control, it’s just the treehouse.
Schrager: What’s your friend’s name?
Eickstaedt: His name is Dennis Lyon. Oh, and he also teaches tennis. We worked very well together,
back and forth on the design. We made changes as we were working on building it. But he was largely
responsible for the final design, and it turned out to be quite a nice structure. So anyway, that’s about
where we are, and that’s where I am. 77 years old this summer, and now I have my own treehouse.
(laughs)
Schrager: I was wondering if you could describe one of the sculptures, one of your favorites and how
you went about doing it?
Eickstaedt: Let me think. I think one of my favorites, and one of the more interesting ones, was one I
did a few years ago. I have a friend, another sculptor that lives down outside of Eugene, Oregon, and
he’s been a longtime member of the Northwest Stone Sculptors Association. Maybe four or five years
ago he bought several limestone fence posts that came from Kansas. I decided to buy one of those. I
actually bought half of a fence post, so it was about four foot long and roughly eight inches square. And
these fence posts came as I said from Kansas. When the farmers first arrived in Kansas in that area,
there were hardly any trees, but fortunately there were limestone deposits right close to the surface. So
they ended up quarrying the limestone and creating posts out of limestone, and that’s what they did to
21

fence in their farms. Well, then as the farms got bigger why there was no need for all of those fences,
and so they tore out the fence posts, and there were just piles of these around, down there in Kansas.
Pretty soon some of the sculptors looked at those and thought, hmm, another stone, maybe we can…
Anyway, I ended up with this half chunk of limestone, and I had no idea what I was going to use it for.
And then a few years ago I was at Harbor Days. And one of the booths was a wildlife photographer, and
one of his photographs was a photograph of a pelican. It was a tall, fairly narrow photograph. And I
looked at that, hmm, I thought, hmm, maybe. Well, fortunately, he had cards as well, so I didn’t have to
buy the whole photograph. I bought a card, I came home, and I did the measurements. Then I measured
the limestone fence post, and the dimensions were okay, there’d be room. So I carved a pelican into
that fence post. And when I first started in, when I just started to break the surface of the stone with the
chisel, there was an aroma that came out of the stone that smelled very organic. The only explanation
that I could come up with was that the limestone was created, I forget how many million years ago,
when the interior of the United States was covered in sea water. And the planktonic organisms had
calcareous skeletons, and as they died and drifted toward the bottom they piled up on the bottom, and
then, under pressure, created limestone. And then several million years later, why these farmers dug
them up and made fence posts. That aroma came out, and I ascribe it to the possibility that there’s
organic matter as part of the stone. And another thing that was interesting was when you strike it, it just
rings like a bell, the stone. It’s almost like a bell. Then as it turned out, as I worked on it, fossils started to
show up. So that was really interesting. I was able to leave one of the fossils—it was a fossil clam shell—
as part of the sculpture. It’s at the lower part of the sculpture where I carved some feathers. But
anyway, I carved it. I had been working with the stone flat on my carving table. And then one day I stood
it up, and it turned out that it was plumb one way—right and left, it was plumb—but fore and aft it was
leaning little bit. Huh. So I got out my old handsaw that I think came from my grandfather, and I cut a
small wedge off the bottom of the stone, so that the stone would sit perfectly plumb. Well, when I
carved off that wedge, it’s roughly 6x8, and looked at it, you can see the various strata in the stone—
different colors. Whoa, I thought, that’s interesting. So I polished one side. And it’s like an abstract
painting. It reminds me a little bit of some of the paintings that Marilyn Frasca did way back of the
Nisqually, where they were just kinds of bands of colors. Very definite different shades of color. I mean
there’s a real history just in that little piece of stone. I haven’t done it yet, but I’m going to frame it, and
hang it on the wall. It’s a beautiful piece of art just that way. It’s art that hasn’t been created by an artist.
It’s created by nature.

22

Well, then I got curious about pelicans. So I did some research. It turns out that the direct
ancestors of the pelicans that we have here today go back far enough that it’s possible that one of the
ancestors of today’s pelican was feeding on those organisms in that inland sea that created the
limestone in the first place. It’s something like 160 million years ago or something. (laughing) So, there’s
all these stories connected with the stone, let alone with the sculpture itself.
Schrager: Wow. Let me turn from 150 million years to 50 years, here, and ask you to reflect a bit on
what’s happened here, the Evergreen story. When you look at what Evergreen is now compared to the
aspirations of what the faculty, the presidents, the community were for the college, can you talk about
this? The values that the college had in its formation and how you think they’ve fared between then and
now? What’s continued in a strong way, what seem attenuated, what’s in question?
Eickstaedt: Well, let’s see. I maybe touched on some of this previously. I think I mentioned that it still
amazes me today that some of the key principles that we started with still hold true today. The fact that
interdisciplinary studies is still really the centerpiece. We still have not gone to departments. We still do
narrative evaluations. We still do not have majors. Those are some of the key things that I think are still
with us today. And it does amaze me, because there was so much pressure to give up the ghost and go
back to just being a traditional college. That has been the case for many, many of the new programs and
colleges that were started about the time Evergreen started. I know at some of the colleges and
universities where they did start interdisciplinary programs, one of the administrative issues that led to
part of their downfall was faculty argued about who gets the credit for these students? Does the biology
department get this percentage, does the English department get this percentage? How about the pay
for the faculty, how is that going to work? There were all sorts of issues that went back to the
departments, and they still in one way or another had their fingers in the pie. So there were many
exciting interdisciplinary programs that were started that withered on the vine, I think not because they
didn’t have good ideas, but the administrative structure was wrong. So here at Evergreen we had a big
advantage that we didn’t start with all of that, and we didn’t have to worry about arguments about who
got a hundred dollar raise and who didn’t, and that sort of thing, and who’s going to advance to
associate, and who gets to be a full professor, a lot of those issues. And the evaluation system: there
were lots of early programs and even colleges that started with some form of a narrative evaluation, and
gradually that gave way and they went back to letter grades again.
I was pretty familiar with the University of California at Santa Cruz, because I was at Hopkins
Marine Station when Santa Cruz was just starting. And I knew some of the early faculty. Of course they
set things up differently; they had different colleges as part of the university, and each college would
23

have a different emphasis, but there would be a strong interdisciplinary focus with each of these
colleges, and they would use narrative evaluations. But then, one of the things they did, they had boards
of study, so that, like the biologists that I knew that went there, whichever college they were a part of,
they were also be part of the biology board of study. Well, over time, those boards got more and more
powerful. And then also the narrative evaluations kind of withered away, and people gave up on that. I
don’t know about Santa Cruz now, but my impression is that they’ve gone back, pretty much, to a
disciplinary form of organization. So those early pioneers, I mean the guys that I knew that went there,
they were very optimistic and gung-ho. “We’re going to do something new.” Well, it didn’t happen the
way they had hoped.
So anyway, by and large I’m surprised at how well Evergreen has stayed close to the original
principles. In terms of the commitment to those principles, my impression is that the level of faculty
commitment is not as high as it used to be. Some folks are pretty much just doing their own thing in
their own field. Whereas in the early days, the programs that we designed were truly interdisciplinary.
They not only cut across separate disciplines like biology and chemistry, I mean they were across
divisions. I mean they were the humanities, the arts, social sciences, natural sciences. They were really
interdisciplinary in the best sense of the word. Now, when I hear about the programs, seems like quite
often there are programs taught by maybe only two people, and these are first year programs for
beginning students that are very narrow in their scope. Not really interdisciplinary at all. So that’s not
very heartening to see that. I know there’s various reasons for why that may have happened—student
interest, maintaining enrollment in these big programs, and so forth—but it has moved in the opposite
direction.
Let’s see. For an individual thing, I mean, I’m really pleased that I was asked to do this interview.
I really am, because for the most part I’ve… Well, I remember several years ago I crossed paths with
Patrick Hill when he was provost here. I had retired already. I think I crossed paths with him at a Grub
fundraiser, and we were chatting, and he says to me, “Larry, how does it feel now that you’re retired?
Do you kind of feel like a pair of old shoes that’s just been cast aside?” And I had to admit, yeah, that’s
the way I feel. So, I’m very appreciative to have a chance to talk about the early days of Evergreen and
all that, because I’ve had very, very little in the way of interest on the part of anybody here of finding
anything out. And now that we’re down to just a few original planning faculty, it’s amazing to me that
that’s happened. And same way with the early faculty, I’m sure they might feel the same way—that
you’re just kind of put out to pasture. What I’ve done since I’ve retired, I mean I’m having a great time,
I’m happy and so forth, but it’s not really what I envisioned. I thought that part of being a colleague and
24

collegiality would have meant that when a person retires they’re still part of the group, you know, and
you’d be invited back to join discussions, and people could pick your brains, and you could ask
questions, and still be somewhat a part of the community. But that certainly hasn’t been the case.
Schrager: Maybe that’s part of the challenge that the college has faced, and not so well: How do you
understand what these practices have meant, and what can you learn from them for your own work and
how you think about coordinated studies. Not turning to experienced faculty for that kind of knowledge,
experience. There’s a gap that we thought wouldn’t occur because we trusted that that the older faculty
would socialize the newer faculty that worked together. That’s how I learned.
Eickstaedt: Right.
Schrager: Put too much faith in that as the way that the values would be transmitted.
Eickstaedt: Yeah, it’s one thing to read. If you read the catalog, why certainly you can get a feeling that,
well, this is what Evergreen stands for, but like so many things, it’s a whole different matter if you talk
directly to somebody who was there. I mean it makes all the sense in the world. If you’re going to write a
book about the history of John F. Kennedy’s administration, well, you go back and talk to the people that
were there and can tell the stories. You don’t depend upon folks that have come much later, that can
read all the accolades about John F. Kennedy, to tell you the real story. No. No. It goes back to farming,
you know. If you’re going to be a farmer you better pay attention to what the old farmers can tell you.
You may have new fancy equipment and air conditioned cabs on your tractor and everything, but if you
don’t pay attention to what the old farmers say, you’re not going to make it. Or an old craftsman. Even
though the tools have gotten more and more fancy, if you’re going to be fine woodworker you better
find a craftsman to work with. Better yet you better apprentice yourself to an old seasoned craftsman.
Schrager: I’m really grateful to you that you took the time to do this.
Eickstaedt: It’s been a great experience. Remember all this stuff, and I thank you very much.
Schrager: Thank you, Larry.
Eickstaedt: Alright, puush, almost three hours again! Wow!

End of Interview

—Transcribed by Lori Larson

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Item sets

The Evergreen State College Faculty and Staff Oral History Project

Media

EickstaedtLarry_20160811_Transcript_Part1.pdf

EickstaedtLarry_20160825_Transcript_Part2.pdf

EickstaedtLarry_20160913_Transcript_Part3.pdf