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Identifier
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KormondyEd
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Title
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Ed Kormondy Oral History Interview
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Date
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4 October 2017
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6 October 2017
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Creator
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Ed Kormondy
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Contributor
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Oscar Soule
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extracted text
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Ed Kormondy
Interviewed by Oscar Soule
The Evergreen State College oral history project
October 4, 2017
FINAL
Soule: Today is Wednesday, October 4 [2017]. I’m interviewing Ed Kormondy in his home in Los
Angeles for the 50th Anniversary Oral History Project at the Evergreen State College, in terms of early
participants in the history of the school. I’ve known Ed for 46 years.
Kormondy: That’s amazing.
Soule: And we taught together in Political Ecology in 1971 and ’72. The following year, I became an
academic dean—although they called me an associate dean, which always hurt my feelings—but I was
an academic dean. And then, I guess, a little later in that year, you became an academic dean, and then
you became the Provost. I have actually—and I’m going to leave with you, because, well, no reason—
your last self-evaluation.
Kormondy: Oh, really? [laughing]
Soule: Oh, you’re going to love that.
Kormondy: Oh my gosh!
Soule: And then, your letter of resignation to Byron Youtz.
Kormondy: Oh! Oh my heavens!
Soule: So, those are going to be my departing gifts. But in there, you talk about a lot of things. And I’ll
let you read those, and then we can talk about that later. I’d like to get started by having you tell me
something about your youth, and your family. The only thing that I’m really interested in is, what was
kind of the basis for you becoming the Ed Kormondy that you are today? It would start with your family,
and your early schooling—possibly, maybe not.
Kormondy: I had a very close family. My father and mother ran a grocery store. And, as we used to
say, we grew up behind the store. My brother, three years older than I, we were, well, as brothers
typically are, we were sort of close in one way and in another way, not. He was very athletic. I was not.
I was more brainy, I guess, is the right word. But he set a good example. He went to college at the
University of Arkansas.
Then the war broke out—the Second World War broke out—so when I graduated from high
school in 1946, I went into the U.S. Navy and served till—no, 1944, sorry—and served till 1946. And
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then, went to Tusculum College in Greeneville, Tennessee. So, I went from New York to Tennessee.
Graduated in 1950. Graduated in the morning, and married Peggy Virginia Hedrick in the afternoon.
[laughing]
Soule: Getting things done, right?
Kormondy: And we immediately left for the University of Michigan.
Soule: Now, by that time, you were in the sciences, because you had a B.S. from Tusculum. How did
you drift into the sciences? Was it something that had always grabbed you, or was your Navy
experience important in that?
Kormondy: No, mostly it was a faculty member at Tusculum, Professor Mike Wright, was the biology
professor—the biology professor—small college—at that time. It’s still a small college, but not as small
as it was then. He was the major influence on my career. It was he who persuaded me to go on to the
University of Michigan, which I did, as I said. I graduated from Michigan in 19 . . . let me get my years
straight here . . . 1950.
Soule: ’51.
Kormondy: ’50. Is that right? Yeah.
Soule: Okay.
Kormondy: Yeah, 1950. There’s a lot of blank spaces in here.
Soule: Oh, yeah. Well, as I look at your resume, I can fill in those blank spaces. As I look at them,
they’re kind of standard for somebody like you, or like me, who gets a degree, and then there’s always
post-graduate work. You were a teaching fellow at Michigan, and instructor at Michigan, a curator of
insects at Michigan. And then you went to—so that was kind of the after-your-degree, but before you
found a real job, which seemed to have been at Oberlin.
Kormondy: Oh.
Soule: That you went from Michigan—you graduated from Michigan, and then you were there for a
couple of years. And you did the kind of things like I did, and then I came to Evergreen, but you went to
Oberlin from 1957 to 1963.
Kormondy: Oh.
Soule: Do you remember anything about Oberlin?
Kormondy: Not very much, except that it was a very nice place to work. Small college. It’s still a small
college—well, smallish college, not really small-small, but a small institution—and very intimate.
Everybody knew everybody, whether you were in biology or art or physics or whatever, it was a small
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institution, so everybody knew everybody. We had a nice little house in Oberlin. Gosh, that was a long
time. [laughter]
Soule: Yeah! I think that’s where you met Linda Kahan even. I don’t know if she was a faculty—I think
she mentions that. But it sounds like, in Oberlin, did it have a tradition, as you remember, a traditional
curriculum? You mentioned that you knew the people in the arts and literature, because the school was
small . . .
Kormondy: Yeah.
Soule: . . . and everybody was in close proximity. But, as I remember, Oberlin had kind of an innovative
or liberal or progressive way, maybe it was a way teaching as compared to curriculum—
Kormondy: Not particularly. It had a Conservatory of Music, which was very well known, better known
than the college itself. The Conservatory was better known at that time than the college itself. But,
over the years, Oberlin College built a very strong reputation, not just in the sciences, but in many fields.
It was a good experience.
Soule: After Oberlin, you went to, I guess, was it D.C., with CUEBS.
Kormondy: Oh, yeah. Commission on Undergraduate Education in the Biological Sciences.
Soule: Don’t tell me your memory is fading. That’s exactly right.
Kormondy: Wow. [laughing] That was a national project. I headed that for a couple years, as I
remember.
Soule: That was a shift away from research and classroom teaching to go to, not administration, but
education reform, education development.
Kormondy: Yeah.
Soule: Was that planned, or did it just kind of fall into your hands? Do you remember?
Kormondy: I don’t remember.
Soule: But it was from CUEBS that you came to Evergreen, because you were at CUEBS from ’68 to ’71,
and you and I taught together in 1971.
Kormondy: That sounds . . . I don’t honestly remember what those dates were, but that seems to fit.
Soule: Do you have any recollection of how you heard about Evergreen?
Kormondy: Probably because of that work, which was a national project, I learned about institutions
that were doing innovative teaching, innovative instruction, whatever. And I guess that’s what attracted
me.
Soule: I’m a little reluctant to ask this question, since it involves me, but do you have any memories of
our first year teaching together? It was called Political Ecology, and it was designed by Bob Sluss. But
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then Bob didn’t teach it. He went off to teach something else, and they made you in charge, they made
you the coordinator.
Kormondy: Those were the titles that were used, yeah.
Soule: And, as you may remember, Fred Tabbutt, Richard Anderson, Dave Milne, Ed Kormondy and
Oscar Soule. Do you have any recollection of what it was like to—in a way, you put it together, because
you were the only one of us—well, no, that’s not true. But in terms of the sciences, you were the only
person who had any real background. Do you have any recall of that?
Kormondy: No, not really.
Soule: Okay. Because then, in terms of what happened next, was in the second year of the school,
there were some problems—administrative problems—and they needed more deans, and they
selected—I guess there was a vote or something like that—no, there was a vote, and I got picked as the
fourth dean. And then you came in soon after that, and then took over for Dave Barry as the Provost.
Does that ring a bell?
Kormondy: No, no. Complete blank.
Soule: Total?
Kormondy: Complete blank.
Soule: Wow. Okay. Do you have any other recollections of your early days, or your days? Because you
only taught one year at Evergreen, but you were an administrator for about four.
Kormondy: Not really. That’s terrible, I know.
Soule: Well, it is what it is. It’s not terrible at all.
Kormondy: No. Nothing. Nothing.
Soule: Well, let me see if I read you some stuff. Because in your self-evaluation, you talk about—and
this is very specific—you mentioned Dave Carnahan and John Moss. Do you remember that situation at
all?
Kormondy: Carnahan was in the Library, I think.
Soule: I can’t remember.
Kormondy: Does that sound right?
Soule: Now, wait. See, this is why I have to look things up. It’s not Dave Carnahan, it was Dean
Clabaugh.
Kormondy: Dean Clabaugh?
Soule: Yeah.
Kormondy: He was the business, yeah.
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Soule: And John Moss. You said, “All this is background to what I will regard as one of the most serious
breaches of institutional policy Evergreen has experienced to date. After the agony of the MossClabaugh situation, and the many agonizing hours spent by me in the selection of exempt officers . . .”
Does that trigger anything?
Kormondy: No, it must have been so bad that I—no, it doesn’t, Oscar.
Soule: Okay, that’s not a problem. I’m going to leave this with you, and I’d like you to look through it.
Kormondy: Okay.
Soule: And see if it triggers any memories, and I can come back tomorrow or the next day and we can
pick up on some of those. But that doesn’t mean we’re done. It just means that now I’m off script.
[laughter]
What are your feelings about Evergreen, as you think back? Just in general, not specific this,
that or the other. I’ll give you a context. You worked at CUEBS, you spent decades after you went to the
campus on the Big Island, was it?
Kormondy: Yeah.
Soule: You found Jan Kido for us, who now, her niece is married to our son. So we’re ohana.
Kormondy: Oh!
Soule: We’re family. You then have traveled since you retired from that. You’ve been involved with
evaluating maybe tens, if not hundreds, of schools over the years. As you reflect on that, what are your
thoughts about Evergreen, as you put it in your life experience?
Kormondy: As I say, it’s largely a complete blank.
Soule: Really.
Kormondy: Which is hard to realize, I mean, hard to say. The prods that you have given me really
helped me to think about some things, but basically, my life is a blank, so I can’t come up with things.
Soule: Well, as you look back . . .
Kormondy: My kids were very happy at Evergreen. [long pause] It’s terrible.
Soule: No, no, no. As I read your self-evaluation, you were painfully honest in it in terms of some, oh, I
guess one could say critical comments involving both yourself and Charlie McCann, and even, to a little
extent, Dan Evans. But they were appropriate in the sense that they were in context, and they were not
personal. It was about certain decisions that people made, or stylistic things and the like. I’ll bring up an
example. In your evaluation, you were very upset with the appointment of Dan Evans as the President,
to the point that you tendered your letter of resignation.
Kormondy: Yeah.
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Soule: But you later, in the same document, indicate that Dan Evans was probably the right choice for
the job, but he wasn’t appointed in the proper way; that they had short-circuited the process, in your
mind.
Kormondy: Yeah.
Soule: And, as you said, if they had done it the right way, he probably would have been the choice
anyway, and he was the right choice.
Kormondy: Choice anyway, yeah.
Soule: Does that help you bring that story back to mind, where you could tell it instead of me telling it?
Kormondy: I think you summarized that very well. All I can recall is that initially, I thought the way in
which he was appointed was not consistent with Evergreen policies and procedures. Don’t ask me what
those policies and procedures were, but that the Board just didn’t follow its own guidelines in
appointing Dan. But, as it turned out, I think he turned out to be a quite good President. It was just that
he was appointed in the wrong way. They could easily have—whatever the right way was, I don’t
remember now, the Board just bypassed its own procedures in appointing him President.
Soule: And I agree that he probably saved the college . . .
Kormondy: Yes, yes.
Soule: . . . given what Dixie Lee Ray was trying to do, subsequent to him. Another point you raised in
your self-evaluation, again, taken out of context, could be read as critical of Charlie McCann, but I think
one could say, having been there, that Charlie agreed with you in what you found as a criticism. If you
remember, in one of Charlie’s talks to the faculty, he said, “I have a mouth in which it is very easy to
insert my foot.” [laughter] And as the Provost, what you were talking about in your self-evaluation, was
his inability to let misfits go, or to terminate misfits. And by misfit, I just mean somebody who might be
very good at what they do, might be a fine person, but they were not well fit for Evergreen and what it
was trying to do. But Charlie had trouble letting those people go, or asking those people to leave.
And historically—this is now my comment, not yours—I think that’s something that has plagued
the college over its lifetime, is not being hard-minded enough to do that. But do you remember any of
that, why you said that about Charlie?
Kormondy: No. As I said, it’s just all blank.
Soule: Okay. I’m trying to think. I guess, are there any—you know, we’re both on the downhill slide.
There’s less left than there has passed. Do you have any words—this is an oral history project. You’re
one of the founding members of the—and I’m shining you up now, because this is going to be
transcribed. But not only were you an early faculty member—I was an early faculty member—not only
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were you an early administrator—I was an early administrator—you played important roles in being the
first effective Provost that the college had. Dave Barry helped get the college started. I’m not
denigrating anything he did. But clearly, you set the college academically, and gave it a sound footing,
as the Provost.
Now, at this point in time, your memory isn’t perfect, so I’m not asking you to go back and
recount that. But just from where you sit now, do you have any advice for the college? It’s now going
to be turning 50 years old. Any advice for it, from your perspective of today, for the future?
Kormondy: No, because I have not been keeping up with it. Frankly, I don’t know whether it’s doing
well, or not doing well, or whatever.
Soule: I’m not asking you to give an evaluation, like you would when you would go to a campus and say,
“You’re doing this very well, and you should be improving that.” But just any words about what any
good school should be doing as it looks ahead taking care of its mission. It may have changed a bit from
when you were there, and you don’t know exactly what it is now. That’s fine. But do you have any kind
of pearls, just good advice that you would give somebody?
Kormondy: No, because I’ve been away from it for X number of years, and I don’t know whether it’s—I
assume it’s been quote “successful” unquote. I’m not sure how to define that successful, but . . . no, I
really don’t . . . I won’t want to say anything that might detract from what it’s doing well by
commenting, when I don’t know what it’s doing well, or not doing well, in my judgment.
Soule: Okay.
Kormondy: Because I really haven’t been that close to it for many, many, many years. So, no, I just
draw a blank.
Soule: It’s not a blank, I think it’s an honest Ed Kormondy statement, which is, you’d want more
information before you would give advice. And I think that says a lot about you as a person.
Kormondy: Yeah, you’re right.
Soule: So I’ll accept that. Should we say that we’re closing it for today, but we might pick it up a day or
two?
Kormondy: Yeah. [chuckles]
Soule: Okay, thank you very much.
Kormondy: All right.
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Ed Kormondy
Interviewed by Oscar Soule
The Evergreen State College oral history project
October 6, 2017
FINAL
Soule: I should say that for recording purposes, it’s Friday, October 6, 2017 at 10:15, and we’re picking
up into the second of our two sessions. But that’s fine. We can go back to the acupuncture. This just
lets the typist know where to begin.
Soule: Did you look through—
Kormondy: Yes, I did.
Soule: Did it trigger anything?
Kormondy: It was fascinating. I didn’t remember a hell of a lot of that. [laughter] No, seriously, I did
not.
Soule: Well, to tell you the truth, when I read it, I was at the college when those things happened, and
many of the things that you described either I didn’t remember, or I didn’t even know happened
because they were happening in the office of the Provost and the deans and the like. But was there
anything in there, like your point about being more rigorous in either moving out faculty who were not
doing a good job—not the people necessarily, but just that the process of trying to upgrade the faculty,
and upgrade the quality of instruction—that’s always been an important thing to you?
Kormondy: Yes, always, from way back. The most important thing that a college does is to provide
opportunities for students to become better individuals, as well as being better student scholars;
learning more about their subject matter; becoming a perfectionist, to some degree, without becoming
a prude. I think one of the roles of a faculty member is to encourage students to always do better, to
strive to do better. I think that’s one of the functions of a good faculty member is to not just accept the
status quo, and mediocrity, and getting by, but encouraging them to go beyond the bare passing to
higher levels of achievement as a student.
I think that gives a reward to the faculty member, too, that he or she then sees that their efforts
in teaching are being rewarded by those students going on and doing better. Of course, one of the real
joys of a faculty member is seeing that student go on in graduate work. That’s sort of pumps, pumps
hearts. “So-and-So is going on to the University of Michigan for graduate work, or whatever. And he’s
my student,” or, “She’s my student. And she’s going to really do very well at Ann Arbor.”
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And then, when she does, or he does, you can’t help [but] feel that you’ve had a little part of
that, preparing them to not be satisfied with the status quo in their lives, but to always aim a little bit
higher. Always aim a little bit higher.
Soule: I’ve been encouraged not to ask questions that are leading, where I’m giving you the answer, but
to your point, I think Evergreen has always done a good job in encouraging students to do the best they
can. There was one feature of the system, where essentially, the student was graded against himself or
herself. We never graded on the curve.
Kormondy: Yeah.
Soule: So, it was possible for an average student, if they did as well as they could, or even better than
we thought they could, it still might have been a C somewhere else, you could give them the equivalent
of an A by saying that they had pretty much done as well, if not better, than they could. Even though
they had a basic understanding, you could put it in the context that they didn’t get an A from Harvard,
but they got an A for being Anne Jones or John Jones and the like. Did you think that was a strength of
the college?
Kormondy: Yeah, I think that’s putting it quite well. I think that’s putting it quite well. It seems to me
that we attempted to have students measure themselves against themselves, not against some arbitrary
standard out here, you know, this is whatever it is. But are you maximizing your potential? Are you
using all your talents to the maximum? And if not, how can we help you to go beyond the ordinary to
more than you expected you could do? One of the things that we tried to do at Evergreen was just that,
to get students to realize their potential was greater than they had thought it to be. Even though it may
not have been whatever—mind-blowing—at least, in probably almost every case, the potential was
greater than they had realized they could expect to achieve. And when they did achieve something a
little beyond whatever, they said, “Ooh, wow! I did that?”
Soule: That often, as you said led to them seeking maybe graduate work or professional work that they
couldn’t imagine they would have done when they entered the system.
Kormondy: Exactly. It’s hard to generalize, but, as I reflect back on those many, many years ago, I think
most Evergreeners came without great personal expectations. Expectations, yes, but not great
expectations. When they were able to achieve something above and beyond this sort of plateau.
“Wow! I did that?”
Soule: I think you’re making a very important point, because at the beginning, we had not only no
reputation, we had no track record. Eventually, we became good at getting students into medical
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school, and into other professional schools, but at the beginning, nobody came to Evergreen because
they wanted to become an architect or an artist or something.
Kormondy: That’s right.
Soule: They just came because they wanted an education, and, as such, following your words, we
became adept of helping them move on to whatever they might do professionally.
Kormondy: Or, Evergreen was the convenient place to go, it was right next door, or easy to get into, or
whatever. Then, only later, did students begin to realize that they were being challenged, and given
opportunities, of which they had no idea when they came in as a freshman. They had no idea when they
were at the level of a sophomore that they’d be able to “Wow! I can do one of these internships?” Just
eye-opening and mindboggling.
I’m generalizing, but I think the faculty at Evergreen really were interested in their students.
The students were not just chattel, they were not just a means of earning an income. They were
meaningful human beings. My recollection is that the ties between a number of faculty and a number
of students became very strong over the years.
Soule: That’s true.
Kormondy: And it lasted for the full four years of the student’s existence. Even though the student may
be taking courses from somebody else, there was always that tie back with Dave Milne, or Fred Tabbutt,
or Oscar Soule, or whoever, as if you were guardian angels. [chuckles]
Soule: That’s true.
Kormondy: Or devils, as the case might be. [laughing]
Soule: Well, occasionally. [chuckles] Again, speaking to that point about engagement with the
students, and preparing them for better work and life’s work that they thought they might achieve,
another aspect of that education was, to me, the emphasis on project work; work that took place in the
real world, not just in the weekly ecology lab, where we’d just go out and get stream water from
campus, and look for hellgrammites or whatever; that we would take those kinds of exercises and put
them in the context of doing a report for somebody. Specifically, I’m thinking of a project that you got
funded and oversaw in Political Ecology, which was the Hood Canal bio-inventory that we did for the
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
Kormondy: Oh, gosh, I’d forgotten that, Oscar.
Soule: I think that was one of the most important projects ever done at the college, because it was
done in the first year, so there was no history on which you could draw to put it together. It was the
first year, and it was in a freshman or first-year program. So, we didn’t have third-year biology students,
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or third-year saltwater ecology students. Instead, we had to teach the students on the fly, and have
them do work that would be acceptable for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. And, at the end, when we
published that report, which was used by the Fish and Wildlife Services, those students had a document.
Should they choose to go to graduate school, they would be able to show them effectively a piece of
peer-reviewed work—maybe it wasn’t peer-reviewed, but it was accepted by the U.S. government as a
valid piece of work—which had their names on the chapter where they had done the work.
So, how did you think about the use of applied work put in a real-time context for students
there, in terms of it raising their self-esteem and their skill levels?
Kormondy: I guess it was the notion that what you’re about to experience is a real-life experience. It’s
not something we made up. It’s not something artificial, not something that doesn’t have value,
function. But, as a result of your work, there may be a change in policy, change in procedure, and you
could see your name on there, saying, this was part of the study we did that showed that we had to do
X, Y, Z.
And, I think, realizing that collecting data was not the easiest thing in the world. It’s hard
work—really hard work—whether you were measuring oxygen levels, or carbon dioxide levels, or
whatever. It was not excruciatingly demanding, in that sense, but demanding of the best that you could
bring to the table. It required consistency, persistency, cooperation with your fellow students, who
were working on another aspect of the problem. I think we were lucky that year that the Hood Canal
study opened up as a possibility. We were really lucky.
Soule: Again, the record should show that if it wasn’t for you, it wouldn’t have happened. You had the
contacts and the background on how to follow up on those contacts, that resulted in it happening, and
then providing some training for us. As you said, it’s one thing to go to lab on Wednesday afternoon
from 1:00 to 4:00 and count something. It’s another to get in the van at, say, 11:30 at night, and drive
for an hour out to Hood Canal, and then start sampling at low tide at midnight or 12:30, [laughter] using
flashlights, and knowing that you’re not just doing this for yourself; that this is going to be used to make
public policy. So, even the most casual student somehow gets caught up in their work. They quit
thinking about themselves, and have a little bigger perspective on the activity.
Kormondy: I think you’re getting at a crucial point in Evergreen’s philosophy, at least in the sciences. I
can’t speak for all the other areas, but at least in the sciences, it was that we tried to make sure that
what the students were engaged in were meaningful, were professional, and were contributing to the
improvement of whatever it was that we were working on at the time. I can’t give any specific
examples, but I think that, over that year of working on Hood Canal, we improved some sampling
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techniques. That’s not quite the right word. The rationale, we came to understand better how certain
things fitted together. This piece, and this piece, seemingly initially were like this, but after a period of
time, you realize that they reinforced each other, and produced something stronger than either study
alone. Which is part of the joy, and frustration, of research; that you finally realize that what you’re
doing can be—it doesn’t mean it always is—but can be part of a larger picture, not necessarily a
significant part, but not an insignificant part of that larger picture. But, another little piece in the puzzle.
So, here’s another drop in the bucket, when you do those samples at midnight, or 6:00 in the morning,
or whenever convenient during the day. [laughing]
Soule: It’s true, because even, like you were saying, sometimes it has a meaningful outcome and
actually changes public policy, and sometimes it doesn’t. But it becomes that added report, that added
piece of information that might be used sometime later. Because I remember, in the spring of that year,
we did more project work. I worked with a small team that was designing a park in Tumwater, down
near the golf course. We actually laid out cedar plank trails, and the city appreciated it very much, but
then abandoned it, and it grew over again and the like. But the students got the experience of designing
a park, and collecting material and the like. So, they got something out of it, but it didn’t have the longterm impact that something like the Hood Canal study did.
And this is just a moment to thank you personally. Because of you and that Hood Canal project,
in every program in which I taught, there was an applied component of the program. That was my first
year of teaching, so I was learning how to be a teacher from you, because I’m an ecologist—or was, I
guess we always are—and you were a role model in that sense. And that project left that impact on me
of, if you can combine social science and natural science, or ecology and policy, you end up with
something much, much stronger than the individual parts. So, thank you, and the college thanks you.
Kormondy: You’re welcome. I didn’t realize I had that impact. [laughing]
Soule: Well, you did. You did, there’s no question about that. I was just looking over some names here
of people from the old days. Do you think that might pique any—or, you read your evaluation? Is there
anything in there that brought back any good or bad memories?
Kormondy: Nothing specific, I’ll put it that way.
Soule: Generalities are important.
Kormondy: I think what it reminded me is the commitment that all of us had in that first year to making
sure it was a success, for the college, for us as faculty, for the students. And that, given the timeframe,
was not easy to define, because Evergreen was cutting a different slice out of higher education. It
intended to be different, but at the same time, to assure that its students, after graduation, were
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equipped to do whatever, either further graduate work, or into one of the agencies. My recollection is
that we were successful in having students proceed on to graduate work, and also, for some students, to
go on and work for the Department of Wildlife or whatever.
Soule: Ecology?
Kormondy: I don’t remember specifically. I really can’t speak for the rest of the academic units at the
college, but I think we in the life sciences really worked hard at giving our students a tough, but
meaningfully tough, experience, with some very specific—at the time—anticipations as outcomes. And
yet, allowing leeway for those students who couldn’t quite measure up. We nursed those students
along, as I recall.
Soule: True.
Kormondy: If you think of that in a usual classroom, or class—freshman class, let’s say—there is a range
of abilities, a range of enthusiasms, a range of dedication. But I think whether it was the luck of the
draw or not, I think we ended up with a very devoted—is that too strong a word?
Soule: No.
Kormondy: Devoted, committed, and able students in that first year.
Soule: To bring you up to date, I mentioned Bob Butts as a name. Denny Heck, one of our students, is
now a U.S. Representative from our area, and doing a fabulous job.
Kormondy: Oh, really?
Soule: Yes, I’ll go on record as saying a fabulous job representing our District.
Kormondy: Wow.
Soule: Dee Frankforth went on to do work. John McCombs and Eugene Maltzeff went on to be
commercial fishermen in Alaska, and John is still fishing today, 40-some years later. Other people have
become involved with the environment and the like. George Barner even was a County Commissioner
in Thurston County for years and a public servant.
So, I look back on that first year, and agree with you that we were quite fortunate in having
people—one student contacted me years later, a student named Paul Page, who was one of the larger
developers of low-income housing for migrant people on both the east and west sides of the state.
Some people went into the environmental area directly. Some people went into the business side of
life, but with a social consciousness. I think you can feel assured that your comments are quite correct
that that was a special group of students.
Kormondy: I think you and I can both say it was a challenging experience.
Soule: Yes.
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Kormondy: Not the routine college teaching experience, namely, that you went in and taught your
class, and then you went over somewhere else and did your thing in your lab, or in the field, or
whatever.
Soule: Yes. That raises a point I wanted to bring up, in terms of you being both a teacher at Evergreen
and administrator, because when they would do those time analyses of how much time we were
teaching. But to us, teaching also meant advising students, and meeting with students after class
informally, because that was, in our view, like you said, that was all a part of the learning package. It
wasn’t just the 45 minutes we were in lecture, or the hour or whatever.
Kormondy: Exactly.
Soule: And the numbers came back to high, that if you took in all of the time—because you had to read
the seminar books on your own time, you couldn’t just refer back to books from years past—people
could be working 60, 70, 80, sometimes 90 hours a week. We had to kind of explain that to the outside
world that our faculty were really working hard and, as you say, it took kind of special people who would
be willing to commit that much of their lives. Did you ever have to explain that to somebody and have
them kind of go “No, people don’t do that”?
Kormondy: I probably did, but I don’t remember. [chuckles] I probably did.
Soule: You mentioned the other day how much time it took to teach. It didn’t affect me very much,
because I had never taught before and so I just thought if I had been at the University of Michigan, I
would have worked 90 hours a week. [laughter] Everybody does that. But how did you adjust to that?
Kormondy: I didn’t really think of it as an adjustment. This is what it took to do the job. I honestly—
now, looking back—I don’t think I checked the clock, so to speak. I just realized this needed to be done,
and this needed to be done, and this needed to be done, and this needed to be done. It ended up being
X number of hours a week, or day, or half a week or whatever. It just became part of the Evergreen way
of accomplishing our mission—making yourself available to students, literally, almost any time,
especially those students who were working on the Hood Canal project, because they were doing their
sampling at various crazy times. [chuckles] And they’d come back with certain results, and then ask,
“What do you think this means?” And whatever, whatever, whatever. Those were pretty exciting times.
Pretty demanding times.
Soule: I remember, because you had a family, and your children were maybe 10 years older than ours
because we were[just] newlyweds. I remember you and Peggy gave us a party—which I always thought
was very kind—in anticipation of Sarah’s birth. But we had little kids and that was just part of it. You’d
put them to bed, read from 9:00 to 1:00 in the morning, and that was just part of the job. And then, get
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up at 7:00, and do whatever you had to do with little kids because we were both working. And Sarah,
when I mentioned that I was going to see you, said, “Oh, Mrs. Kormondy’s husband.” [laughter] Not
“Ed Kormondy.” As you say, it was just part of the job. I don’t remember people feeling sorry for
themselves, or saying they wished they hadn’t come here, they didn’t know they were going to have to
work this hard.
Kormondy: It was the ethos of the institution. I can’t say that everybody bought into that, but those
that didn’t, I think, left after a year or so. But we were very fortunate in the life sciences. I think we had
a very committed group of faculty, who were very devoted, very capable, very stimulating, very creative.
It was an interesting period of my life.
Soule: I guess we owe a debt of thanks to Don Humphrey, Bob Sluss, Larry Eickstaedt, Al Wiedemann,
who would have been the people that interviewed us to become the scientific part. I guess Fred
Tabbutt was in that group, too, who picked that first group of scientists, who were natural physical
scientists, who came in. I think, looking back, and then having both been an administrator as a dean and
then Director of the MES program, I agree that the physical and natural science faculty seemed to be
more cohesive and more in sync with the part of the college we’ve been describing than some of the
others. And then, they ended up picking like Byron Youtz to be the Provost and others from the physical
and natural sciences to be administrators. I think it speaks to your point of our being fortunate.
Kormondy: Yeah. Byron was a good choice.
Soule: Mm-mm.
Kormondy: He was a very good choice. I still keep in contact with Bernice [Youtz]. Birthday cards and
like that.
Soule: She was interviewed for this project.
Kormondy: Oh, good.
Soule: I haven’t seen her comments yet.
Kormondy: She was a very strong supporter of the college.
Soule: Yes. Do you remember any ways? Was it like through the community groups, like ECHO and
some of those other . . .?
Kormondy: No, I don’t.
Soule: I mentioned that I found this list of names from the early days. Bill Aldridge, Mike Beug.
Kormondy: Oh, my gosh.
Soule: Ring a bell?
Kormondy: Yeah, the name is there, but I can’t put . . .
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Soule: Mushrooms. Chemistry. He now makes wine in the Columbia Gorge. Richard Brian,
mathematician. Don Chan, music. Thad Curtz. Dave Marr. Dave Milne, certainly. Chuck Nisbet.
Kormondy: As you read them, the name is there, but I can’t bring up a . . .
Soule: . . . a story?
Kormondy: Yeah.
Soule: How about Tom Rainey? Tom Rainey?
Kormondy: Oh, yeah.
Soule: Historian.
Kormondy: Yeah.
Soule: Tom is still teaching occasional classes at Evergreen.
Kormondy: Really? Oh, my gosh.
Soule: And as vital as ever. Charlie Teske.
Kormondy: Oh, yeah. Charlie and I—oh, gosh, what was that relationship?
Soule: Oberlin.
Kormondy: Oberlin, yeah. We were colleagues at Oberlin. Oh, my gosh. [laughing]
Soule: Was Charlie part of recruiting you to come to Evergreen, as you remember? Or, was it just a
fortunate happenstance that you found out about the school, and ran into him out here?
Kormondy: I honestly don’t remember.
Soule: Any memories of that original dean group—Merv Cadwallader, Don Humphrey and Charlie
Teske?
Soule: They couldn’t be more different as individuals in so many ways. They all made significant
contributions to the college, in their way. I don’t have anything specific. Nothing comes up.
Soule: But in terms of just general style, or as you remember their personalities? Because I agree with
you that they were cut out of different molds.
Kormondy: Oh, yes.
Soule: Any just generalities about those kinds of differences? I assume I’m going to get interviewed one
of these times, and they’re going to ask me to talk about them, and I will. So, I don’t want to put any
words in your mouth.
Kormondy: No, as I think about those three individuals, very different. Very different. All three were
very committed. I don’t come up with anything specific on any of the three.
Soule: I think of Merv maybe being the intellectual compass of the school, with his [Alexander]
Meiklejohn, and all those innovative educational philosophies that were bubbling up in the mid-‘60s,
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late ‘60s. Don is kind of the pragmatic scientist, who had the budget and was kind of building on that.
Charlie, from more of the arts perspective, and holistic and communicative side of him.
Kormondy: Those are good.
Soule: But then, I’m putting words in your mouth. You can say yes.
Kormondy: The more I think about it, those are quite apt descriptions.
Soule: When you became Provost, did you ever have to effectively spank any of them for not playing
well with each other?
Kormondy: Not that I recall. Maybe I did, but I don’t recall. [laughter]
Soule: Very well put.
Kormondy: I don’t remember much about my time as Provost, really. Well, it’s like a lot of my
experience in life, it’s just gone.
Soule: Yeah. Again, I got thrown into administration, and in your self-evaluation, you point out that the
idea of using the deanship as a place to train people to be deans wasn’t a great idea. I was the first
person to be tried out in that way, so I took that as both a direct reflection on me, which I could be
annoyed at you saying that. But I couldn’t become annoyed because you were absolutely correct. So,
after one year of being dean, I found I didn’t like it, and I went back to teaching, which I did for another
30-some years.
I guess, like you, I’m forgetting where I was going with that. Oh, I know. You didn’t remember
pretty much the day-to-day or the specifics. What I learned out of my year is that, considering the
Provost and the President, there was a Mr. Inside and a Mr. Outside. That goes back to—you know me
and sports analogies—Doc Blanchard and [Glenn] Davis, I think, for Army were Mr. Inside, Mr. Outside
football players.
It was true that, over the years, our Provost and our President, one has been kind of the outside
spokesperson of the college, and the other dealt with the inside stuff. It’s my perspective that when you
were the Provost, you were the outside person, and Charlie was more the inside person. You had to
deal with legislative, committees, and maybe going up to Seattle to do things and the like. In other
times—Dan Evans—it was different. Evans was the outside person, and Byron [Youtz] was the inside
person, so it varied from President to President.
Kormondy: I think that’s right.
Soule: Does that kind of fit what you remember?
Kormondy: That sounds about right. This is not meant as a negative, but Dan Evans was the politician.
That’s how he’d spent most of his career, and he knew how to work the Legislature and legislators,
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where Byron was an educator. His focus was internal. Dan’s focus was external. I think we were
fortunate that we had those two people in those key roles at that time. Even though, as you know from
history, many of us were upset the way Dan was chosen to become our President.
Soule: Certainly.
Kormondy: He was . . . that would be putting it too strongly . . . I was going to say, Evans never became
an Evergreener, but that’s putting it too strongly. I think, as a politician, he absorbed what he needed to
absorb, so that when he went to his former colleagues up on the Hill—so-called on the Hill—he could
speak their language, and at the same time, convey our language, with was pretty difficult, but easy for
a politician. I don’t mean that in a negative sense at all. I think Dan did a good deal of good work for the
college in getting funding, which was important for the institution at that time.
Soule: Did you feel, when you were the Provost, that you handled a fair amount of the, say, political
side of presenting the college to various governmental agencies and other groups, or did Charlie actually
do most of that? I saw it being more you doing it, because Charlie wasn’t as comfortable in that role.
Kormondy: I guess I did it because it had to be done, and he wasn’t interested in, or willing to, or
whatever, and it sort of fell upon me to do it. So, I did it.
Soule: Any other things that come to mind?
Kormondy: No, but this has been an interesting couple of hours, Wednesday and then today, stirring up
some memories that have been long since idle. It’s been good. I appreciate it.
Soule: I don’t leave till tomorrow evening. Is it worth coming back tomorrow again for more?
Kormondy: I don’t think so. I think we’ve pretty well milked the cow. [laughter]
Soule: Well, I can tell you that what you’ve said has been very important, and we’ll never know how
useful it will be as an oral history. It’s like any piece of scientific work. Mendel’s work sat on the shelf
for quite a while [laughter] before it got picked up and used. So, we’ll see what happens with our
conversation.
Kormondy: That’s quite a comparison. [laughing]
Soule: It might be a little too over-flattering to the two of us, but let’s hope that it is.
Kormondy: Yeah.
Soule: Terrific, Ed. I can’t thank you enough.
Kormondy: It’s been fun just visiting with you again. Long-time colleague.
Soule: Absolutely.
Kormondy: Many, many years in between the time period we’ve been talking about, which was the
early ‘60s?
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Soule: No, early ‘70s.
Kormondy: Yeah, so that’s 40 . . .
Soule: Forty-six, forty-seven years ago.
Kormondy: Yeah, almost 50 years ago. Oh!
Soule: A long friggin’ time.
Kormondy: That’s a long time, buddy. [laughter]
Soule: I think we’ve held up pretty well. Cheated a little bit to get through, but what the heck. Terrific.
So, with that, I’m going to turn off the machine, and the transcriber will never hear what we say next.
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