Pat Matheny-White Oral History Interview

Item

Identifier

Matheny-WhitePat

Title

Pat Matheny-White Oral History Interview

Date

28 August 2018

10 September 2018

Creator

Pat Matheny-White

Contributor

Stephen Beck

extracted text

Pat Matheny-White
Interviewed by Stephen Beck
The Evergreen State College oral history project
August 28, 2018
Beck: This is Stephen Beck. I’m here with Pat Matheny-White at her kitchen table. It’s August 28, 2018,
and this is part of the oral history project. I’m glad to have a chance to interview you, Pat.
Matheny-White: Yes, I am appreciating this has stimulated me to do a lot of thinking about the past
that I’d kind of set aside. Also it will be nice to have some contact with you, because we’ve semi-known
each other over the years. Knew your parents well.
Beck: Right. Let me start out by asking some questions about your early life. You were born and grew
up in Minnesota, correct?
Matheny-White: Right. I’m from Blackduck, Minnesota, which is a little town 80 miles south of the
Canadian border. I grew up with a large extended family in a small community of 600 people, but the
school was a consolidated school, so it was about twice that, if not more. It’s interesting to look back at
the roots or the seeds of who I became that go back that far. I went to my 50 th high school reunion and I
was amazed at the connection, and realized that I was, in essence, raised by the people that I went to
school with as well as this extended family, because we all went—a number of us—through all 12 years
together. So it was really quite interesting how we had a hard time the first time we got together for a
dinner. We didn’t have nametags [laughter] and [we were] trying to recognize each other! But the
connections were there. So I have pretty strong roots there, and family roots, people who settled there
in the late 19th century or whatever.
Beck: When you were last year or were visiting any of the memories of the time, did you find any
connections between your upbringing there and your later career? You mentioned something along
those lines.
Matheny-White: Yes. I had a wonderful piano teacher and a music teacher, and that was such a
trajectory for me in my academic career. I got my B.A. in music performance history at Macalester
College, which is a liberal arts college in St. Paul, Minnesota, so that has its roots there.
Also, we had a Spanish teacher, which you might not expect in a small town, and he was very
influential. He was studying for his master’s degree at Bemidji State University. Have you heard of it?
Beck: I have, I have. [laughter]
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Matheny-White: So he would come not only teaching Spanish. He was a Native Mexican and part of
what he did was to invite us to his home. We also went to a conference in Minneapolis of students
studying Spanish. I got a taste of another culture through that, but also of academics, because he would
come in bleary-eyed from writing a paper on Camus or somebody, and he would share all of that. Then,
in addition to speaking his native language, he loved Italian, so he was always comparing. [laughing]
There are some different roots there, since later I did this Chicano and Latino Artists in the Pacific
Northwest.
Also very close to the Native culture. The Red Lake Indian Reservation was not that far away
and there were six students in my class who were off the rez. It seemed there were always these
mixes—we were Scots-Irish/English/Dutch, so then there were the Scandinavians, the Finns—so it was
really quite a diverse community. But then, of course, there were the standard biases and so forth. I
think it was a special time. I look back at it as giving me a very good foundation for what happened to
me later.
Beck: You mentioned that you went to Macalester, and you did a major in music, was it?
Matheny-White: Right. There are these kind of competing private colleges in Minnesota—Carleton and
St. Olaf and so forth. Also one of the influences in Blackduck were the Presbyterian ministers, and they
also were not just ministers, but I was very impressed how my mother was cared for and ministered by
them, but also they were intellectual stimulation. We used to have this youth group and we would get
into very intense discussions.
Macalester was a Presbyterian school, but very liberal. There was an experimental curriculum
when I came there, which was a four-one-four curriculum, which was four classes for two semesters,
and then the one was where you could concentrate on a special project or do independent work, or
there were one-month classes.
Beck: Kind of a January term sort of thing?
Matheny-White: Yes. So, there’s that influence [laughing] being in the first classes that were studying
in that curriculum.
Beck: So you were in the first year of the experimental curriculum?
Matheny-White: Yes. Also you had a choice of having a full major, if you really knew what you wanted
to do, or you could have a minor, and mine was in music, but I really took classes from all of the faculty
that were special. In my freshman year, my English teacher was James Wright, who was a well-known

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poet. So they were very influential. My piano music mentor was there. I remember a sculptor was
Italian. And I took a political science class from G. Theodore Mitau, who had run Hubert Humphrey’s
Senate or whatever before he ran for Vice President.
Beck: Sorry, Mitau?
Matheny-White: Yes, he was the political science faculty person, and he had run Humphrey’s campaign.
Beck: His presidential campaign?
Matheny-White: No, I think he was in the Senate. This was prior to running for Vice President. But a
pretty influential person in the Democratic Party. So there was quite a—I took a class from an
anthropologist whose text had become the standard. So it was an excellent college. And it also had
international students, and there were opportunities for people to work and study abroad. The World
Press Institutes was on campus, which were journalists from all over the world who would come there
to experience American culture or whatever.
My first year at Macalester was 1963, and that’s where my experience of John F. Kennedy’s
assassination happened. So I had that whole experience of watching television in the dorms and being
totally absorbed with that for days. And I will never forget the look on James Wright’s face. I was in his
class when it was announced that he had died. There was a kind of community spirit there that was
shared by all of us.
Beck: That actually leads me to wonder. These days at Evergreen certainly, and I think at a lot of
colleges, if a major event happens, it’s brought right into the classroom and it’s discussed a great deal.
Matheny-White: Right.
Beck: Did that happen at the time?
Matheny-White: Yes, and one of the themes running through the entire curriculum, I think, was
existentialism. Now, I had planned to go to seminary, etc., and there was a whole kind of Christian
existentialism that was happening in literature, music. It was affecting every discussion, I think, on
campus. And we had a literature faculty member commit suicide. So, it was an intense time,
philosophically and social issues, etc.
I drew on my Macalester experience a lot when I was teaching at Evergreen, and in the mode
that I taught. I also worked in the library. That’s why I ended up deciding to go that route with my
graduate work.
Beck: What is that exactly that you decided to go into librarianship?
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Matheny-White: I worked in the library all the time. I was there under scholarship, but also worked
and work-studied the whole time. Jim Holley was the dean of the library and he had a great deal of
influence. And I succeeded pretty well. I was running the science library in the summer on the campus.
Beck: That’s impressive as an undergraduate.
Matheny-White: Yeah, but it was summer and not a lot of demand. But still, it gave me the sense that
this is something I could do and be in an academic environment. I keep saying I went away to college
and never left. [laughter]
Beck: That’s true for a lot of us!
Matheny-White: Right. I had decided that’s the route I wanted to go. I realized that I didn’t have the
major in music. I wasn’t going to continue to do performance, though I did two major full recitals where
I was playing eight hours a day during January as part of the preparation. So I sort of had in my head
that, well, my undergraduate was my avocation and then I’d go the other route.
This is an interesting parallel to Evergreen possibly. Because of the curriculum, when I applied
to graduate school, they said I didn’t have all the credits I needed, particularly in—I continued to study
Spanish, so I was rejected. Then I talked to Jim and he wrote this long letter explaining the curriculum,
so then I got in on a provisional basis—which was kind of ridiculous—because I hadn’t taken one part of
the SAT. So two weeks after I graduated Macalester, I was in line registering for classes at the University
of Denver. Then I took that SAT, which I passed with flying colors. [laughter]
From there, after Denver, then I got a position at Southwest Minnesota State College, which was
a brand-new state college in Minnesota. It was doing some innovative things in the curriculum. I was an
instructor, so I was faculty, and taught a freshman seminar, but I was focused on preparing the non-print
collection, particularly the music. So, when Jim became dean of the Evergreen Library, as he was
moving west he stopped and interviewed me. That’s how I came to Evergreen.
Beck: What was your first position? What did Jim hire you as or to do?
Matheny-White: He had this concept of a multimedia library, which I’ll want to talk about.
Beck: Okay.
Matheny-White: And what he needed, he had contracted with Richard Abel Company in Portland to
buy all the books that were the standard books for college libraries, but he wanted to extend all of that
to integrate the non-print collection. He knew my experience from Macalester and from the University

4

of Denver and from my teaching, so I came on a temporary, one-year appointment, using capital funds
that he had for the initial collection.
I was to develop the non-print collection, and then I was to see that all of the books and all the
collection got on the shelf—so, developing all of the cataloging and the processing. And there were no
standards for Library of Congress cataloging of non-print material at that time.
Beck: There weren’t? So you had to make it up as you went along?
Matheny-White: I developed the standards for cataloging non-print materials. There were some
beginnings, but . . . And as part of that, I came and collaborated with the development of the
Washington Library Network. The Washington State Library librarians were very much involved, so I had
resources within the library community to do that.
Beck: Was the Washington Library Network already established, or was that part of establishing it?
Matheny-White: No. Once again, Evergreen was ahead of the game. [laughter] Jim reached out to the
Washington State Library—Maryan Reynolds was the librarian—and they started talking about
cooperation and networking and so forth. So when I arrived, there were discussions going on about a
resource sharing amongst the State Library, King County Library and Evergreen.
Those early discussions resulted then in the Western Washington Library Network, and then
became the Western Library Network, which was the resource for most of the online cataloging,
accessing the Library of Congress system.
Beck: That was really right there at the beginning.
Matheny-White: Yeah. I was right in the middle of all this technical development at Evergreen, and
cooperatively with the other libraries. I was going to meetings. A lot of them were at Washington State
University. I used some of their acquisitions system. That was an intense part of my job.
Then I was meeting with faculty about developing the non-print collection. That’s how Sid
White and I began working collaboratively together. We went to the University of Washington to see
what their resources were for slides and for visual imagery. I worked with Don Chan and Charlie Teske
on the music collection. But I also reached out and talked with David Ray, who was the drummer for the
Mud Bay Blues Band, where we would go and dance. [laughing] But he had connections all up and
down the Coast with musicians, so I ended up buying the Arhoolie [Records] catalog of blues music and
jazz music. Then I bought everything that was in the [Smithsonian] Folkways catalog. So that was

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another intense interaction, and getting to know also work with the faculty, and thinking about the
curriculum.
Beck: I’m curious about the extent of the non-print collection as it started out. At least at the
beginning, you mentioned that sheet music was part of that, as well as slides as well as audio recordings
of various kinds.
Matheny-White: Right.
Beck: What other kinds of things were part of the collection at the beginning, and how did it grow from
there?
Matheny-White: One peculiar thing that was in the collection was a bearskin rug. [laughter] That was
kind of a joke, I guess, or a story to tell. Jim had acquired it in Yosemite, I think, coming out on his trip.
But it was really very broad. Everything was supposed to be new. We were to have repair kits for
bicycles. On media loan, it had the equipment for everyone.
I would like to talk about what captured me at Evergreen when I came. It was Jim’s vision of the
Library that really spoke to me. It was interesting, when he came and interviewed me, he then sent the
letter to hire. And all he had to show me was this little brochure of the Evergreen State College and
what it was to be, but it did have what the charge was at that time. I think this was publishing Opening
Fall 1971, but it had been prepared for them. Then there was this ’69 report of the Evergreen State
College. Then his letter [laughing] May 5, 1970. I quote:
I’m sending under separate cover a packet of materials on the college. Here’s what we’re up to. I continue to be
rather depressed and pessimistic about our being able to do anything substantially different than the conventional public
institution of higher learning. We’re suffering all too early from what Stanley Idzerda, the President of St. Benedict, refers to as
“hardening of the categories.”

So it kind of revealed this intense discussion that was going on among the early faculty, the
planning faculty. That was a very intense time. He had organized a conference on learning strategies.
He says, “I hope my pessimism doesn’t turn you off, and here is what the possibilities are.”
Beck: What was the date on that letter?
Matheny-White: That letter was May 5, 1970.
Beck: So that’s really right before the planning year.
Matheny-White: No, it was during the planning year. No, no, no, no.
Beck: Yeah, the planning year . . .
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Matheny-White: . . . started in September of ’70. So this is amongst discussions that they had these
people come in and consult. So, yes, it was even before the . . .
Beck: This brochure that you referenced first. It looks like it’s about an eight-page or 12-page little flyer
that’s black and white with a few photographs, and a few sketches of what they imagine the campus
might look like at the time.
Matheny-White: Well, it had architectural drawings.
Beck: Right, architectural drawings. Accurate, as far as it goes.
Matheny-White: Yes. So I was taking quite a risk [laughing] to come.
Beck: Yes.
Matheny-White: But I also had in mind that I decided that I was going to travel the world being a
librarian; that I’d go somewhere and be a librarian for two years and travel on. I was ready after two
years at Southwest Minnesota State to go somewhere.
Beck: A one-year position might have looked about right to you at that point.
Matheny-White: Right.
Beck: I wanted to ask you just maybe to open up a little bit more. Jim referenced in the letter the
“hardening of the categories.” Whose phrase was that?
Matheny-White: It was Stanley Idzerda, who was President of St. Benedict College, and it was one of
the people that he brought to this conference on learning strategies at Evergreen. Also then what we
have is this full set of documents of all of Jim’s thinking, and what was happening at that time.
He would write these position papers. The first one was stating his position as a librarian, as a
generalist. I know Sid wrote position papers or whatever, so there is that kind of documentation in the
archives. But this what I was committed to, and what he laid out here; that it was a generic library with
all kinds of forms of materials—conventional print, art forms, three-dimension realia, microforms. All of
our periodicals are in microform, and we had special collections of historical material. Audio-visual
forms, magnetic tape, laser storage, etc. He was thinking, very far thinking that everything would be
prepared for the catalog in machine-readable form, and aiming toward whenever the computers would
catch up. For instance, at circulation, we had the mode in which we could implement machine-readable
cataloging that then they could use for checkout. It was punched cards that went through this machine.
[laughing] They’d have to batch these every day and take them down to the computer service center.
But still, there was this vision of doing that.
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He also envisioned a generic library would eliminate physical boundaries. In other words, the
library would be reaching out and meeting people. He also saw students as whole beings, and being
served. And cooperating with other departments, administration and with academics. So he saw what
he says is “students and teachers engaged as colleagues.” This is one of the kind of conflicts that I
observed, and others, that there were those [whose] mode was to think of co-learning with students,
and then others who, you know, well, we have this expertise and we need to maintain this teacherstudent role. That was a part of a conflict at that time, philosophically some differences and people on
quite a spectrum.
Beck: That the faculty and the institution as a whole is the bearer of knowledge and tradition, and it’s
that institution’s responsibility to pass it along to the essentially empty and passive students.
Matheny-White: Right. [laughing]
Beck: That’s a bit of a caricature, but nevertheless, that’s the basic idea. And on the other side there’s
the idea of the faculty, the students and everyone in the institution being involved in a cooperative
educational [unintelligible 00:30:40].
Matheny-White: Right. And I think with that spectrum of thought and experience, there were a lot of
intense discussions. Everything was challenged and everyone had—there was 20 people around the
table and it was sort of smoke coming out of the trailer. [laughter]
Beck: You’re talking about the planning year?
Matheny-White: The planning faculty, yes.
Beck: The planning faculty, the planning staff, and everybody involved in those early discussions. And I
imagine there was probably as many different visions as there were people in the room.
Matheny-White: Mm-hm. That’s right. Which reminds me, I want to talk about a project that Sid and I
worked on after retirement called Founding Visions.
Beck: Okay.
Matheny-White: It’s a video of people talking in this mode. [laughing] You know, what were their
visions?
Beck: Right.
Matheny-White: We did a video of the planning faculty. I can’t remember which—I have it here
somewhere—of, was it 10 years, five years? Ten years, I think. Where we asked them what was their
vision when they came, and what were the results at that time? What [was] their assessment?
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Beck: Just to go back to Jim Holley’s vision, what stands out to me so far from it is, first of all, the idea of
having—the print collection is just one aspect of a much broader, as it were, repository of media and
information and even tools that are available within the library. And the other part of it that stands out
is the lack of clear boundaries, that is to say that it’s really inter-penetrated with the rest of the
institution and with the community at large; and that it reaches out well beyond what you think of as
the library proper. Is that essentially it?
Matheny-White: Right.
Beck: Is there more that you would want to say about his vision that stands out that I’ve left out about
it?
Matheny-White: I think that’s the core of it. With the collection, also Dave Carnahan was the Associate
Librarian and he came from community college experience. And there, he came from a media services,
so there would have been the separation, the library and then the media services. So what was
happening is that they were trying to mesh us into the multimedia library, so that people would think
more broadly and critically of the use of information in any format.
Beck: And having a media services person be part of the library right at the very beginning was crucial
on that.
Matheny-White: Right. Let me just see. There’s a breadth of thinking here. He was saying we needed
to maximize utilization of information, theory and technology, so it’s thinking about the collection, it’s
thinking about space and so forth, but it was also about the theoretical basis for analyzing information
and so forth.
And then budgeting. There, you really hit the categories, and it doesn’t fit. So he was talking
about there would have to be a non-comparable activities category.
Beck: Okay, yeah. It really does go deep, as I see it.
Matheny-White: There was a lot of thinking.
Beck: The idea of what constitutes knowledge, what constitutes information, what a library is for
seemed to be really touched by the way in which he was thinking about the Evergreen Library.
Matheny-White: Right. He was a leader in the American Library Association. He had been working with
people on a new library science program at the University of Iowa. So he was in the forefront of a
college library movement. Along with it was the integration of the librarians as faculty.
Beck: Yes. Which was an early feature at Evergreen, wasn’t it?
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Matheny-White: I think Susan Smith Perry [Susan Perry Smith] was first, and I think in probably ’75 to
’77, I became faculty in ’78. It took a lot of discussion from 1970 to then. But also, a lot of discussion for
what the requirements were for faculty they were hiring. They were to be interdisciplinary, so we had
to fill that mode of being interdisciplinary. That’s why we were to have skills to go out and teach, or
have degrees or whatever, to go out and teach in the academic curriculum, which would be unique to
Evergreen. In another university, it would be that they would be on the tenure track and do all that was
required of faculty as well as doing the library functions.
Beck: So, doing double service essentially.
Matheny-White: Yeah. And that’s what I did my whole time at Evergreen. [laughter] Because here I
was in this milieu of media processing, and yet I was working with faculty, and then I got a sabbatical to
be able to focus on art history for me to do my first rotation into the faculty.
Beck: But really, right at the beginning, I think you mentioned that you were involved in faculty hiring
for the first teaching year when you were working on the planning year.
Matheny-White: Right. And then I served on other faculty hiring committees. That was my main
governance.
Beck: Yes!
Matheny-White: Yeah, it’s really quite overwhelming. [laughter] And I was 24 years old.
Beck: What was it like being 24 years old, and being a woman, and coming to be working with this
group of planning faculty in 1970? What was the experience?
Matheny-White: Well, I do have memories of the first time eating crab and clams and seafood at
faculty parties. Monica Caulfield was my supervisor. She was the Readers Services part of the
development of the Library, so she was more involved with faculty functions. She went to all the
meetings. She then became head of Reference when we opened. She was supporting what I was doing,
both in acquisitions—but she didn’t have expertise in cataloging and processing and all of that.
We went to this party at Sid White’s house. [chuckles] One of the many parties where Greek
music was being played. Sid showed one of his multimedia slide tape performances. And then, with a
little wine and so forth, Beryl Crowe and Dave Hitchens would start preaching. [laughter] So it was
really . . .
Beck: What sort of preaching was that?

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Matheny-White: What did they call it? Here, I’ve got . . . yeah, Beryl was an Okie and Dave was . . . I
can’t remember where he was from.
Beck: I think he was from Oklahoma.
Matheny-White: I think so. But we had this tribal guide at Evergreen. Jim Holley was Father
Graybeard, Dave Hitchens was Brother Dave, derivation from his famous party act, The Salvation Radio
Show. [laughter] Preacher was Beryl Crowe, and again, derivation The Salvation Radio Show. So that
was my introduction to the wild faculty parties. Then later, we would go up top Fort Worden and roast .
. . let me get this right . . . roast a kid on the beach on Mother’s Day. [laughter] That was one of our
parties, and I have some nice photos of that.
But it was just wonderful camaraderie. That was a whole new experience for me. But also what
was interesting is that a lot of people’s marriages were falling apart—the intensity, the change—and
there was Sid and I getting to know each other. I didn’t think that we would get married, but we did
decide to do that, [but] each having our independent roles. Some people on campus didn’t know we
were married. And out of each of our independence, we collaborated.
Beck: When did you two get married?
Matheny-White: In January of ’72.
Beck: Okay, so pretty early.
Matheny-White: Early.
Beck: There was something I wanted to ask about that you were talking about. Oh, I guess I wanted to
ask a little bit more about Jim, because he left the college pretty early on, and you mentioned conflicts
that he had.
Matheny-White: Right. He had this hope and dream, as many people who came to Evergreen had. I
certainly became very engaged with his hope and dream, and now I’ve been observing how, through
time, we really did fulfill it, but it took time. And so the conflict, I think, was that he was writing position
papers, he was bringing in resources, and he was ready to challenge and engage with his ideas.
Also, having the multimedia library brought a scope of thinking—generally that kind of broad
scope, I think, was in conflict particularly with Charles McCann. He wanted his books and so forth, and
he didn’t grasp the whole concept. And when looking at these position papers, Jim was very clear, he
was very thorough, very personal about what he believed. And in some ways—Joe Shoben was the Vice
President. Jim came on very early on, and he was the Dean and he made sure—but then Joe Shoben
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came in as a Vice President of what Jim called “spare parts,” which meant Student Services and the kind
of peripheral to the core of academia.
There’s a position paper [Joe] wrote in response to Jim’s, but I discovered it was Shoben who
outlined almost a separate supplementary curriculum. I found [that] in reexamining that. So he had
that the Library could offer, kind of as Jim described it, reaching out to the student in ways other than
just what was happening in the classroom or the programs, and also that the Library should be
proposing curricular ideas.
Beck: This was Joe Shoben who was saying this?
Matheny-White: Yes, and Jim, in response to Jim’s concept of the full multimedia, full generic Library.
Beck: So really developing what Jim . . . and extending it in certain ways.
Matheny-White: Mm-hm.
Beck: And Joe was doing this as the Vice President for Student Affairs of Student Services or something?
Matheny-White: What was his title? Let me search a minute.
Beck: That’s fine. But it just strikes me that the Library, at least today, is under academics
organizationally. Was it then as well?
Matheny-White: It’s under the Vice President Provost. Well, with cutbacks, Joe Shoben’s position was
cut. He left, but he fired Jim as he was going out.
Beck: Joe fired Jim?
Matheny-White: Well, he was for Charles McCann. [laughing]
Beck: Oh, I see. It’s interesting.
Matheny-White: Yeah. But what I want to focus on [sighs] is the intensity of the time, and the visions
that people had, and the conflicts that arose. Sid got very discouraged early on, and I could tell his story,
but that’s not what I’m going to do. So everyone was kind of struggling with roles, and where they fit,
and who they were going to teach with, but doing it in really a core vision of thought in what needed to
be taught in response to what was happening in the world.
Beck: Right.
Matheny-White: Okay, let me find Shoben. He was Executive Vice President.
Beck: But not a particular division of the institution?

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Matheny-White: Well, there were people then that were reporting to him. So Jim became a dean
under rather than being . . . so categories started developing. [laughing]
Beck: Right. These days, the Dean of the Library reports to the Provost, the Vice President of Academic
Affairs and Provost.
Matheny-White: Dave Barry was the Vice President.
Beck: He was the first Provost.
Matheny-White: Right.
Beck: But this must have been all in the first year or two of the college opening, wasn’t it?
Matheny-White: Right. Then Dave Carnahan became acting dean, and he wrote a position paper
reinforcing, because he was very committed to Jim’s ideas. And then Jovana Brown was the next
permanent dean, which my conflict there was [laughing] I wanted a woman to be hired, but because of
her academic background and what I thought she could contribute to what our mission was, our raison
d’être was. I remember being called into Dean Clabaugh’s office and him drilling me on whether this
was something—you know, whether I was just doing it because she was a woman and da da da.
Beck: This is when my memory really kind of starts about Evergreen politics, and I think it’s a little bit
later, but I do remember at least some vague controversy—not controversy perhaps but just conflict
around Jovana Brown. That might have been in the mid-to-late ‘70s or somewhere around that.
Matheny-White: Yes, there definitely was. I really prefer not to talk about that.
Beck: That’s fine. Well, so many of these conflicts, as you said, they’re very intense and very heated. So
once the college opened, what were you then doing after you did your first year? You were hired on a
one-year contract.
Matheny-White: Right.
Beck: After that expired, were you simply renewed for another contract, another [for] one year?
Matheny-White: Monica and I looked at each other in like July of that first year and said, “I wonder if
we should talk with somebody about whether we should come in the next day?” [laughter] Then we
talked to Jim, and, of course, he then took care of all of the paperwork, etc., and we got our letter of
appointment from Joe Shoben. So she was head of Reference, I think, and I was Technical Services
Librarian.
Beck: Were those one-year positions or were they more permanent than that?

13

Matheny-White: I think it was yearly, or it might have been . . . it would have been a standard
whatever.
Beck: I guess there was one other thing that we had talked about on the phone earlier about the
difference in the way faculty were treated early on as opposed to staff or librarians?
Matheny-White: We weren’t faculty at that point. There were these discussions going on and it was
one of the agendas that Jovana had, and it was through her efforts that we got faculty status. It was
from her discussion with the deans and so forth that requirements for that, that we would be having to
teach other than just library research. We were already teaching a workshop—it was called Between
the Covers—and we were regularly integrating with the planning of programs. But this kind of
reinforced that process. A main part of our contract was that we were working with curriculum
development, and then that we would teach and try to integrate what we were teaching in Between the
Covers into the program. That was a major effort that has been a very positive thing, and has had major
influence in the academic library world.
Beck: So early on librarians were not faculty; considered staff or . . .?
Matheny-White: Yes, administrative exempt, some of the kind of upper-level administrative.
Beck: Right, some of the associate VPs and other people at Evergreen have that sort of status. But
there was that vision from very early on that librarians should be faculty.
Matheny-White: Right.
Beck: Jim had that and it sounds like Dave Carnahan did as well.
Matheny-White: Yeah, he was Associate Dean, so, yes. And also for Media Services as part of that was
that they were teaching workshops and so forth, but there was also integration there happening. Like
Peter Randlette and some of the Media Services people were teaching.
Beck: There was a movement towards integrating the Library and Library staff as fully as possible into
the curriculum, into the college, into the academics. But it sounds like from what you’re saying that
Jovana Brown did really a lot of the heavy lifting in making sure that that actually happened
administratively; that librarians became faculty and to set up procedures around that.
Matheny-White: Yes.
Beck: Do you recall any of the discussions or any of the ways in which that happened, resistance that
needed to be overcome or anything of that sort that you’d like to talk about?

14

Matheny-White: I wasn’t involved directly with discussions that I recall. Susan Smith was onboard then
and she was the coordinator of User Services. I was still kind of in the backroom in Technical Services,
and then I started, as we hired staff and got ourselves reorganized—that’s another whole thing because
I need to talk about the successes and failures of this integrated generic library. So I was having to deal
much longer with Technical Services kinds of things, and then once things were running there, then I
started doing Reference and became a Reference Library faculty person. Did my rotation and became
coordinator of User Services. Through this, I always had this balancing act between internal leadership
in the Library and being a faculty person. And that was constantly happening at the same time. So, I
was doing two jobs [laughing] and kind of rotating in and out of what I did.
And then I had a real commitment to a kind of community-based leadership role, which started
of this idea of tribal processes and being a community right from the beginning with Jim. We were the
library group. But it gained more depth with me. An important book for me in that regard is from the
Center for Conflict Resolution, A Manual for Group Facilitators: A Handbook for Consensus DecisionMaking and Building United Judgment. I was a consensus decision-maker, so I spent a lot of time with
all of the staff, talking about issues, getting their ideas, in preparation for a meeting when we could
make a decision.
Beck: Is that really at the heart of what you’re calling community leadership?
Matheny-White: Yes. I would be meeting with deans on budget and I would say, “I have to go back to
the Library. I’ll get back to you.”
Beck: Get opinions from people.
Matheny-White: And I don’t think that’s happening anymore.
Beck: Yeah. I don’t know what’s happening in the Library myself, but I can say that those things occur
fitfully elsewhere in the college.
Matheny-White: I know. And that’s the core of the planning faculty, its intensity. And then it would
happen in curriculum planning. Remember all the faculty retreats?
Beck: Yeah.
Matheny-White: Position papers written. Does that still go on, or is it within, you know . . . ? Anyway,
something to think about. [laughter] When I despair about what I hear about what’s happening on
campus, I despair about people being able to do their best thinking, and cooperative thinking.

15

Beck: Right. Well, one of the central structures—there are certain prerequisites you have in order to
have those discussions, and some of them are very simple, aren’t they? You need to have time and you
need to have space. In some sense these are literal, but in another sense they’re somewhat
metaphorical. What’s the forum? What’s the space within which people could come together and have
those kinds of discussions? What time is there available to do that?
Matheny-White: We used to stop every activity on campus and come together, all those sessions in the
Library. What’s that open space?
Beck: The entrance to the Library, that great big hall?
Matheny-White: Yeah. The teach-ins and dialog and seminars were spent if there was an issue on
campus. You stopped business and you come together.
Beck: Was your sense, when those discussions happened, when those seminars happened, people
showed up across the—
Matheny-White: There was no student governance, there was no faculty governance. So what we did
was we got together.
Beck: Everybody, right? Faculty, staff, students, administrators all in the same room.
Matheny-White: No, that’s kind of impossible as you grew. [laughter]
Beck: Well, there’s a matter of scale. You’d need a room big enough to hold all, don’t you?
Matheny-White: Yeah. So I think more what happened is there would be teach-ins within a program.
But then there would be an opportunity for a forum.
Beck: One thing is you do need to have a room big enough to hold everyone. You need to have the
space, you need to have time where things stop and people can dedicate their time to that. But I think
you also need to have the sense from people across the campus it’s worthwhile to show up. Right?
Matheny-White: Someone has to organize.
Beck: And that they’ll be listened to.
Matheny-White: Mm-hm.
Beck: That it isn’t a dog-and-pony show, as it were. That was the sense that you had was that people,
when they went to the meetings, that there would be actual consequences.
Matheny-White: We had covenants, and we were to resolve our conflicts.
Beck: And sometimes at those meetings . . .?
16

Matheny-White: Well, whatever format could work. Paul Gallegos used to stop things and hold a
forum in the lecture hall. Anyway.
Beck: I remember Paul telling me about being part of the 1984 program as a student. I don’t recall the
details of that, but I gathered at least that he was a real student leader in that program and may have
done some of that as a student.
Matheny-White: Mm-hm.
Beck: But then, of course, later he went on to work for the President. So when you’re thinking about
when he would stop things and hold these forums, was that as a staff member later on or early on?
Matheny-White: Yes.
Beck: So really both, you’d say?
Matheny-White: Mm-hm. Actually, I was kind of thinking about—you were asking about the
implementation in the beginning of the college and so forth.
Beck: Yes.
Matheny-White: So I kind of went off on a tangent there, but when the college opened—wait a minute.
Let me go back to the issues of implementing the generic library.
Beck: Yes, you mentioned that you wanted to talk about its successes and failures.
Matheny-White: Right. I was in demand within the Media Services group, and then probably more so
within the Library, to share what we were doing. It got down to a nitty-gritty of we wanted everything
to be shelved together, or a representation of things to be shelved. We were working with 3M to
develop books for cassettes. In other words, we purchased LPs and then we had this massive project
with media loan people in the early days to tape all of those onto cassettes, and then we would circulate
the cassette, thinking we were okay legally that we could do that. But then we had to put the cassettes
in something, so then we developed these audio books. All this was crafted by 3M in plastic and so
forth.
Beck: I remember those. There may still be a few out there, but they were book-sized. They looked like
a standard book.
Matheny-White: Mm-hm. So then we bought art prints, because there was this whole idea that
students should be able to have artwork on their walls. So we created a plastic sleeve of cardboards.
We would store them, but then we wanted to have a representation with the books, so we had these
little, thin plastic things with the photo of the . . . [laughter]. Crazy!
17

Beck: What was the thought behind that?
Matheny-White: Well, we wanted to integrate everything on the shelves.
Beck: Physically.
Matheny-White: We pushed it physically. [laughter] Crazy! So then all of these little, thin plastic
containers appeared in the end section. We started shelving them and they all fell off! [laughter] Then
we had to put a little wooden strip so that they would, instead of going like this, like a binder would, it
would be flat so they wouldn’t fall off the shelves.
Beck: Because they were in these sleeves . . .
Matheny-White: . . . they were like binders.
Beck: Yeah, they were like binders that gave a little sort of triangle.
Matheny-White: . . . with a sleeve with a photo in it.
Beck: Right. So you can’t really shelve those because the thin end, you know . . .
Matheny-White: Duh. There was a reason why you shelved them in a flat file place, and people knew
to go there to get them, because they can be integrated in the catalog, but then, you know. So I’ll go
back a little further.
Richard Abel Company was contracted to buy the books and process them to be shelf-ready.
Then I was developing the means to make the non-print shelf ready, and to develop the cataloging.
Then we contracted with Xerox Bibliographics—which I think they created that company—we were their
main contractee—so that they could develop a database and then be able to sell an online catalog for all
of those materials.
So when I purchased all the non-print, it was a drop-shipped to Xerox Bibliographics, with my
models for how they were to catalog it. They would get the 3M, so they could process it and it would be
ready for the shelf. Xerox Bibliographics was the lowest bid, and we got a notice of canceling the
contract because they didn’t realize when all of this material started arriving what they had to do to set
up this whole operation.
Beck: So they weren’t able to handle it.
Matheny-White: Uh-uh. So then there was a period of negotiation, and we had so I was involved in
supplying the information for all of that.
Beck: Did they eventually fulfill the contract?
18

Matheny-White: No. [laughter] We got financial compensation. So, opening day, there was no Library
because the Library building wasn’t ready. So we had people in various places around town holding
seminars; Phil Harding giving lectures in the Episcopal Church and da da da.
But then when we opened like in November, a big, huge truck full of books arrived from Richard
Abel Company, and so I put a notice out [that there were] 40 tons of books arriving, and asking people
to come and shelve books. State Library people came da da da. So, they arrived at the loading dock and
crews started getting ready to put them on the shelves. And then we discovered that—what was it?—a
third of them didn’t have any call numbers.
Beck: They hadn’t been labeled with call numbers? They’d been cataloged but not . . .?
Matheny-White: But there’s something like cataloging in publication, so the Library of Congress
cataloged it prior to publication and then the call numbers were not assigned.
Beck: So they weren’t really shelf-ready at all.
Matheny-White: No. So we had developed a caged area [laughter] in the third floor of the Library to
house these, because we didn’t know where to put them on the shelves. So, as we started unpacking,
those that were ready for the shelves were shelved, but then there were these boxes of books that
didn’t have call numbers, labeled call numbers.
Beck: So that became an in-house job to catalog all of those, or at least to prepare them for shelving.
Matheny-White: But see, Jim’s vision for Technical Services was that there wouldn’t be one; that it
would be all contracted out.
Beck: Okay. That didn’t work out so well, though, in this case.
Matheny-White: No. And that we hired paraprofessionals and, you know, clerical people to do any kind
of processing, particularly for things we would start to order and have to do in-house because of the
Xerox Bibliographics. So, we had an opening day collection of some books. [laughter]
Beck: How long did it take to then process that other third of the books that weren’t . . .?
Matheny-White: Probably about 10 years, both the non-print and the . . . so it was an ideal that didn’t
get realized in a lot of ways. But we created personnel and space assignments to try to integrate still
with media loan being upstairs, considering media equipment to be circulated, like all the other
materials. And then the circulation of all the materials was centralized. We had rare books, because
they needed to be protected. Then we had to keep the government documents, even though that was a
small collection because we had access to the full government documents at the State Library.
19

Beck: So there were some failures of this model, but it sounds like there were some real successes. We
still do have today Media Services integrated with the Library, librarians are faculty, and rotate into the
curriculum through the Library. I would say also that the Library maintains—at least in many respects—
the idea of being an open library, to be integrated fully into the curriculum and reaching into the
community.
Matheny-White: Right, we adapted. And the catalog is fully integrated, more so than most people
would do. We catalog government documents, we catalog everything. That was fulfilled, the concept of
having this generic library, but putting it all on the shelves physically together was a bomb.
Beck: Right. That didn’t work out so well.
Matheny-White: Then there’s a position paper written by me and Dorothy Briscoe—who was hired as
the coordinator of User Services—a thorough account of the whole collection and its status. I mean, it’s
incredible. I don’t know how many hours I used to spend on that. And then, a proposal for funding to
take care of it. Let me just find this so we know what the timeframe is. Here we go.
“Getting It Up, or a Library Group Status Report on Acquisitions and Processing.” 1973. What
was decided was to use the remaining capital budget—which would have been for more acquisitions—
to hire people to do the work.
Beck: To actually process this backlog.
Matheny-White: We had 2,000 books that still needed to be cataloged and processed, and 2,200 audio
and 30 film strips. Oh, here, you can get the whole sense of what was in the Library—art prints, audio—
which would be music—books, charts, film strips and loops, games, maps, microfilm, films—because we
did end up purchasing some, of course—music scores, pictures, slides, 3D objects.
Beck: Including the bearskin.
Matheny-White: Yeah, I think it had died its second death! [laughter] So there were 75,000 books—
our goal was 100,000—and 85,000 microfilm, 12,000 slides, 2,500 pictures, 1,000 maps, 8,000 audio, art
prints.
Beck: So, a varied collection.
Matheny-White: Mm-hm. In terms of the collection, the dream is online computers. That’s where you
can access information in any form.
Beck: That piece has been advanced quite a bit, I would say. Up until just a few years ago, I still had old
bound copies of journals from my graduate school days. At one point I looked at those and said, “Why
20

the heck am I holding onto these things?” [laughing] Because it’s all available through JSTOR or any
number of other sources.
Matheny-White: And the Library has kept up with the technology. George Rickerson, and then with
Steve Metcalf and people working on cooperative—the interlibrary loan. What is the name now of the
current catalog?
Beck: Summit.
Matheny-White: Yeah.
Beck: It’s certainly my best friend because books come very quickly. Usually if I order them Monday or
Tuesday, they’re in by the end of the week. I know I’ll have them to look at. There are also some books
that are available just online that are of some use.
Matheny-White: I don’t know how I survived at all. [laughter]
Beck: I know. It seems, though, one of the things that I’m taking away from the general tone of the
conversation is that there were visions that people had, and those visions didn’t get implemented
immediately and fully, but with a lot of hard effort, many of those things did become realized, at least in
some form, in some limited form. Success wasn’t immediate, but there was success over the longer
term.
Matheny-White: Right. When I retired in ’95, when I was 50, because of the chemical exposure I had at
Evergreen, I left on a very positive note. Jim Holley died that year also, and I had given a memorial for
him. I left saying that his dream was alive, because Sarah Pedersen—the Library was holding discussions
on what it meant currently for them to be a multimedia library, and that this was their primary reading.
So that was 25 years later. [laughing]
Beck: Right. So it was still alive.
Matheny-White: Mm-hm.
Beck: I’m wondering, maybe we could go back a little bit though, because I would like to talk about
ways in which the college developed and your career developed and the Library developed during
maybe the first five or 10 years of the college. What were some of the major changes or trends or
developments that you saw during that period? How did the Library settle out? How did the college
settle out during that period?
Matheny-White: For me, it was moving from the technical sort of aspect of the Library into the teaching
and into the faculty role. We hired catalogers and we had a whole department. Jim gave me a terrible
21

time about building my empire [laughter] but there is evidence that it needed to be done. So for me,
that was a major personal change. So in 1978, I was teaching in Form and Content with Hiro Kawasaki.
The two of us designed it. It was late 19th, early 20th century art history.
Beck: That was ’78-’79?
Matheny-White: Mm-hm. I went into a part-time the quarter before and taught a class in music. I was
the music part and Hiro was visual part. They needed to accommodate more enrollment, so Dave
Powell and Chuck Pailthorp joined with Hiro in the fall. They thought there would be some attrition, but
Dave and Chuck wanted to stay.
It was my first teaching. There was a lot of trauma. I can remember this meeting with Jovana
where they were questioning whether I could pull my weight. Barbara Smith got involved and so I
remained in the program, and Hiro was a very good support for me. I gave my first lecture on women
composers in the 19th century and got applause. [laughter]
Beck: So there was some question about your continuing in the program.
Matheny-White: Yes.
Beck: You were on the faculty at that point, and this was your first rotation into teaching.
Matheny-White: Mm-hm. And I have read things from other women faculty, of their experience with
an all-male team other than them—Marilyn Frasca, LLyn De Danaan—and that was something that a
woman on the faculty had to deal with. Because there is something called academic arrogance.
[laughter] But also, I didn’t perform well in a public faculty seminar that was held that first year because
I was doing all my Library stuff and teaching music. They had a bit of basis for questioning, but I think it
was more than need be.
It was working through that first full-time teaching experience that was . . . a change. Also, I had
an interesting approach to teaching writing, because I had been involved with some of Sid’s teaching of
the critique process for students when they’re producing their work, and I used that same process for
writing. I asked people to write whatever was the topic, but then that they would share that within a
critique. There was a process where you read or you talked about what your idea is, and the response
was, in terms of questions and clarification and giving feedback, not criticizing. So it was all about ideas.
Beck: Right, and asking questions of clarification. But the feedback would be their observations?

22

Matheny-White: Are they expressing themselves about their ideas? Just like a person’s idea of what
their painting is about, and they’re getting responses. They’re conveying their idea and then people
responding, and there’s a whole loop then of creativity that develops over that.
Beck: People giving feedback would explore the ideas.
Matheny-White: Right, rather than the sentence structure. Or, if they said, “I don’t know what you
mean here,” then you speak to that.
Beck: That was something Sid had developed as kind of a critique for visual art perhaps, or for writing as
well?
Matheny-White: He was working a lot with multimedia, so it was word and image.
Beck: So you used that as a basis for doing writing critique in Form and Content.
Matheny-White: Mm-hm.
Beck: Did that work well then?
Matheny-White: Yes, I had positive evaluations from—this was within the seminar. Anyway, I met the
challenge. [laughing]
Beck: Good! Do you think that other faculty borrowed that method at all? Do you feel that it
disseminated to some extent, or was it just something you did with your seminar group?
Matheny-White: I don’t know that it was accepted. I used it a lot, and there would be some in my later
planning or whatever, but I don’t know. I think it was more my adaptation not something that was used
regularly in the critique process in the arts.
Then also I was able to do more teaching and to integrate into the curriculum more. So I was
growing from all of that technical work to being the full librarian, as envisioned. And I think that’s a very
positive thing that’s developed within the Library; that it has been a success.
Beck: I wanted to ask about the way in which teaching responsibilities meshed with Library
responsibilities. I don’t know if this is a change or if it’s just my own misconception, but my sense is that
faculty librarians who are teaching actually rotate out of the Library and, at least currently, are not
responsible to continue to maintain the same level of work in the Library while they’re teaching.
Matheny-White: Right. But, while we’re in the Library, we are also integrating ourselves into teaching.
I would do like a three-, four-week bibliographic instruction or whatever you might put a label on it, but

23

helping them with their research projects, and how to develop them through using the Library and doing
analyzing resources and so forth.
Beck: But it sounds like, at least in your experience in Form and Content . . .
Matheny-White: That was full-time.
Beck: . . . that you were teaching full-time but you still had to maintain—
Matheny-White: No, I rotated out. And it was one quarter, because schedule-wise, that’s what worked.
I think people are doing out for a year now and teaching.
Beck: Yes.
Matheny-White: But while you’re trying to do Library leadership and [laughing] also working with the
teaching is a lot to balance. Also to maintain the Reference Desk, which I was dedicated to—other of my
colleagues weren’t so much, and I understand that’s changed so that there are more staff people at the
Reference Desk.
Beck: Yes.
Matheny-White: But that’s also part of the contraction of staffing and budgets.
Beck: It is.
Matheny-White: I also became a leader in working with the faculty who rotated in, which was a
wonderful thing.
Beck: When did that start? Do you know when?
Matheny-White: It was from the beginning.
Beck: From the very beginning, faculty were rotating into the Library.
Matheny-White: Right.
Beck: That struck you as a really valuable thing?
Matheny-White: Mm-hm. Very helpful in our dialog of them learning about resources, our talking
about acquisitions—because did collection development—I just asked them to experience all of that.
Beck: Well, I know that faculty who I know of who rotated through the Library did develop a different
sense of the Library and its role within the college as a result of that experience. It seemed to be a very
valuable thing for the college as a whole.
Matheny-White: Right.

24

Beck: This was about how you were personally developing during that first decade and what changes
were happening in your career. But what would you say about changes in the Library generally, changes
in the college generally? Did you get a sense, was the revolution betrayed or was the dream fulfilled or
anything of that sort?
Matheny-White: I think what I was speaking about when I left is that seeing that it had succeeded. I’ve
been gone for quite a while now, so I don’t know. I mean, I talk with people and so forth. So I left on a
fairly high note, but I had to leave. But then, the Friends of the Library was flourishing, having readings
of the faculty and others. That continued. So I think it was just a matter of responding to the progress
of technology and being able to take advantage of that; continuing the philosophy of the generic library,
and particularly of the teaching.
Mainly the issues were budgeting and the cutbacks that we would have; the space development
that we kept—I don’t know how many times I’ve written capital budgets to try to expand the Library and
all being crushed. Then you go through this constant rotation of budgeting, where you develop ideas
and then it’s all about cutting. I was acting dean for one quarter.
Beck: When was that?
Matheny-White: Hmm . . . let me look at my resume. I need some help here. [laughter] 1990. And
within that time, I prepared both a capital budget, and operating budget and a Title III Grant application.
Beck: That’s a pretty full plate.
Matheny-White: I did it with consensus. [laughter] I would meet with all of the various groups—Media
Services and Acquisitions—and work out the priorities and the narrative. Then we would decide. I’d
work with all these different units and then come up with the final budget and then approve. We’d all
have these Library meetings. That was pretty intense.
Beck: Was that a period where there was a lot of cuts on the horizon?
Matheny-White: There would have been guidelines, but I wasn’t there then for the final cutting and
slashing. [laughing] This was just the middle. I can remember going into a meeting where we, I think,
got the Senate budget. That was usually the last. We’d submit the grand and then you’d have the
Governor’s budget and then you’d have the Senate budget. So there needed to be cuts and so forth,
talking about them. I went to a meeting of all the budget heads in academic area—you know, the
deans—and nobody wanted to say anything. [laughter]

25

So I said, “Well, the Library could cut this and we could do that,” and started the discussion. I
remember Wyatt Cates saying [whispering], “Pat, why are you doing that?” Well, there was all this
support, so we came out pretty well. [laughter]
Beck: Those sort of meetings—
Matheny-White: I mean, I had confidence in that we had done a careful job, and that this is what was
needed because I knew what the goals were, etc. And I knew that we had developed enough support.
Beck: Maybe this is jumping ahead a bit, but you mentioned when you retired in 1995 at the age of 50.
Matheny-White: Mm-hm.
Beck: And one central reason for that was a chemical spill that happened in the Library. Do you want
to talk about that? I’ve heard rumors about this. I don’t really know the story.
Matheny-White: Okay. I’ve had to live with this all my life. My life now is about health and keeping me
going, and being able to live in the world, thanks to Evergreen. [laughing] I have a little file here that I
kept. We’re talking about so much, I can’t keep track of it all.
Beck: I know.
Matheny-White: That’s it. Air quality. It happened in December ’92. They had been remodeling the
photo labs on the first floor and did not do much about ventilation. We were having a workshop up in
the Reference area, and also the television studio floor was being refinished. This would have been
during Christmas break. They thought they were venting—they had a fan off-gassing—what they were
doing down in the television studio, when in fact, it was sucking it in and sending it in and sending it
through the Library Building through all the ductwork.
We were right above the TV studio teaching, and we all started getting symptoms—burning
eyes, headache, breathing, thought we were going to pass out—and we had to exit the building. People
had to leave and they couldn’t enter again. Here’s one compound had toluene xylene ether acetate
ethylene aliphatic hydrocarbons. All of these horrible chemicals. So I’m damaged for life. I react to all
kinds of chemicals, chemical sensitivity. And I don’t detox well. There are people who survived all that
and have done well, but my liver doesn’t detox for me. And I’m doing it all naturally. I have paradoxical
responses to drugs and anything chemical. And formaldehyde is prevalent everywhere. Every
fragrance, every perfume has formaldehyde in it. Cigarettes have formaldehyde in them, and that’s one
of my key responses.

26

So, I was accommodated. Bill Bruner was the Dean then and he accommodated so that we
could work outside of the Library Building. They brought in biological engineers, and they did a lot of
cleanup. They hired someone to monitor this, and whenever any kind of chemical was going to be used,
they’d analyze it and try to diminish the effects of it, or warn people to be gone. They were also taking
up asbestos [they found] down in the Student Services area, so they’d been taking up carpets also.
Beck: They had been taking out carpets at the same time?
Matheny-White: I think it was pretty much. So there’s this whole stew. And then there was discovery.
They had to clean all the ducts. Discovery of things not having been vented. We used to have the print
center in the Library—the print shop that went down into the basement—in the Library, and all of those
machines were not vented.
Beck: Really?
Matheny-White: Computers weren’t vented. Xerox machines weren’t vented. We had curtains that
were absorbing all of this.
Beck: And it all went through a centralized air circulation system?
Matheny-White: HVAC system. And the air input to it was off the loading dock. So that’s why we now
have all the deliveries and so forth away from the building.
Beck: So it used to be all the auto exhaust would come in.
Matheny-White: Trucks that would back up to [laughter] the loading dock and all of that would go into
the system.
Beck: That really made it impossible for you to continue to work at Evergreen.
Matheny-White: Right. So we held all meetings outside the Library. Barbara Bergquist, who was my
assistant in the Reference area—because I was convener of Reference at that time—she had an office in
the Seminar Building. I started having all the Reference meetings at my home, which was only a mile
away.
So then we decided we could be in the Library for two hours at a time, so I did two hours at the
Reference Desk; the rest of the time I had meetings in other buildings or I was at home. But I was still in
very bad shape, so I decided to retire and then work in the Library, being accommodated but working at
the Reference Desk for two two-hour shifts—you know, the five-year contract for retired faculty. I did it
one quarter.
Beck: And that was it.
27

Matheny-White: Mm-hm. So, I had another career. [chuckles] Sid and I continued to collaborate.
We’d been collaborating on grant projects—the Chicano/Latino Project and the Peoples of Washington
exhibit and the book. Sid continued to consult on other art projects, exhibit projects, so we collaborated
on that. Then that got frustrating because Sid didn’t have the support for him to be able to really carry
out a project. It was difficult to be dependent on other people with funding and so forth.
Then we started on kind of personal productions, traveling and producing video productions.
Sid started doing genealogical work on his family. We’d been doing all these histories of people in
Washington, so we focused on us. He was able to find his father’s birth certificate in Romania, and we
traveled to Romania. He gave a presentation on his genealogy work at the Temple, and then we showed
the Romanian Odyssey.
Beck: We’re going on two hours in this conversation, and I’m wondering maybe if we could pick up at
another session. It strikes me that the brief comments that you’ve just made about the project work
that you did with Sid, and then your own work, it’s worth expanding on it. I think we could have another
conversation.
Matheny-White: Yes. And I’d also talk more about my teaching.
Beck: Yes, I would like to know more about your teaching.
Matheny-White: Because that was meshed with some of this project work.
Beck: Good. And I think the only other topic that I can think of right now beyond those two that I think
would be worth talking about is just some more general reflections about Evergreen as an institution,
the Library as an institution. We could maybe have those three topics for the next time.
Matheny-White: Yes, that would be good.
Beck: All right. Thanks for this, and I’m going to go ahead and turn off the recording.

28


Pat Matheny-White
Interviewed by Stephen Beck
The Evergreen State College oral history project
September 10, 2018
Beck: Hello. This is Stephen Beck. I’m interviewing Pat Matheny-White on September 10, 2018. We’re
back at her kitchen table. You just mentioned that you wanted to talk about some other things that we
really didn’t get a chance to flesh out fully. One of them was hiring women faculty in the early days. Do
you want to talk a little bit about that?
Matheny-White: Yes, I think that’s an important issue about not having women on the planning faculty.
There was a letter that was written by, I think, a faculty member from the University of Washington—a
female faculty member—raising that issue. As Nancy Taylor has presented, she was the first woman
hired at Evergreen, and she was doing all this recruiting of students, etc., and she and I and Monica
Caulfield, who was actually my supervisor, but she was focused on reference and planning for the
teaching and the reference and outreach to the faculty, etc., and then also would be responsible for
acquisitions, but I came on as the non-print collection developed. So we worked together, though she
was officially my supervisor. And she and some of the women faculty—Gail Martin, and there may have
been some new hires in other areas—women—and so we were involved with the interviews. I
remember interviewing Carolyn Dobbs and Betty Estes, and going up to Seattle to interview LLyn
Patterson at that time, then De Danaan. And that was a major effort and, I think, a real important effort
in the founding of Evergreen to fill that gap. And these women have been very strong leaders and
teachers at the institution for years, so it was kind of a pride for me to have been involved with that.
Beck: Do you remember, who was the faculty at the UW who wrote the letter?
Matheny-White: I don’t at this time remember her name, and I don’t know whether there’s a record
some where, maybe in the archives?
Beck: But the substance of the letter was “You folks down in Olympia need to get some women on the
faculty”?
Matheny-White: Yes, a very strong feminist voice. And so I think that was an impetus for there being a
major effort, though it would have been probably an effort that would have been made but maybe not
so much as it was.

1

Beck: I’ve seen that book of early faculty, the class of ’72, and I remember that Carolyn Dobbs is in that
book.
Matheny-White: Right.
Beck: Also, I think LLyn Patterson was in there. Maxine Mimms was another. I think there weren’t that
many women faculty on the first teaching year, maybe a handful of others.
Matheny-White: Well, here’s the women. Nancy Allen—this is the first year of teaching. Esther
Barclay, she was Special Services. Peggy Dickinson.
Beck: Oh, I remember Peggy, yes.
Matheny-White: Yes, I have been seeing her once a year for the past six years because I drive down the
Pacific Coast and then over to Tucson for where I stay during the winter. Peggy is back in Arcada, and
she has had a whole huge career of being a ceramicist, doing lots of teaching and very involved in
politics. She’s her usual vibrant self in the inner-eighties. [laughter] So we stop and have an intense
visit, catch up on Evergreen and the world.
Beck: She might be somebody worth talking to about the early years.
Matheny-White: Yes. I remember that she wrote something for the 25 th Anniversary Project exhibit.
Beck: Right.
Matheny-White: And then Carolyn Dobbs and Betty Estes and Linda Kahan.
Beck: Jeanne Hahn was in the first year, too, wasn’t she? She was in the class of ’72 I recall.
Matheny-White: Right, but she may have been the next year.
Beck: Oh, okay. Could be.
Matheny-White: Carol Olexa. LLyn Patterson. Nancy Taylor then became faculty.
Beck: And she was on the faculty on the first teaching year is my guess?
Matheny-White: Yes. Yeah, that’s it.
Beck: Is there anything else that you were thinking about with respect to the hiring of women faculty?
One of the questions, I guess, that occurs to me is whether there was any resistance to the letter that
came from the professor at the UW, and resistance to those of you who thought it was important to hire
more women faculty? Or, was it more like, well, of course we should? What was your sense of it?
Matheny-White: I would not have been directly involved with a lot of those discussions, but I just
remember the concern of the women on the staff, Gail and Nancy and Monica and I, and I think some of
2

the other male faculty were very concerned. So I think we went to a meeting or something, and I’m not
sure . . . so I don’t remember all the politics of it, but I just remember that it was an effort that was
stimulated by this letter, and the effort was made.
Beck: You also mentioned that you wanted to say a little bit more about Dave Carnahan, who was
pretty important in the early days.
Matheny-White: Yes. He was the Associate Librarian.
Beck: Was he a Library Dean?
Matheny-White: Yes. He and Jim Holley, the Dean, worked very closely together on the development
of the multimedia library. And their writing that appeared as the issue of Library Trends, April 1971, was
co-authored. Because it was the Library not only having non-print and a broad scope of a generic
library, but it was to be meshed with media production. And often services that would be in media
services or with media production—the collection being there—they’re all being integrated.
For instance, Connie Hubbard was a graphic designer for the college, and she was in the Library
trailers and she was part of the Library group, as well as Woody Herzel who was the campus
photographer. And so when I arrived in the trailers, there was Dave Carnahan’s office and Joanne
Jerovic, his secretary; Al Sarri, the man who did all of the development of the media production
facilities. And then then there was Malcolm Stilson in the back, and Kay Yutesonomia, who later became
Sullivan. We were previewing films regularly and she ordered films.
Beck: Who was that again?
Matheny-White: Kay Yutesonomia, who became Kay Sullivan. She continued to be the film contact for
either renting or purchasing. We used to have these community gatherings of previewing films, and
other staff people. And Nancy’s office was there, so when I arrived my desk was outside of Malcolm’s
little cubicle. Then I went into Nancy’s office when she got on the road and started recruiting, and
Monica Caulfield also had her office. And then Jim [Holley?] was in the Probst Building, which was a
separate blue building that had once been a slaughterhouse.
Beck: It’s an old building that was on college property?
Matheny-White: No, it was a metal building, and then we had all these other trailers. The faculty was
in one and the Library was in one and I think other staff. And the Probst Building was the administrative.
Anyway, those are some of the images of them. But I did want to talk about Dave Carnahan as a very

3

key person and a great support for me in developing the collection, and how it would be distributed, and
contacts with all of the college media services organizations.
Beck: He was a big support in that he was a very strong advocate for building the non-print and the
media collection?
Matheny-White: Correct. Also, as a person to advise about what would work and what we could do
differently. He was interested in that. So he was fully committed, and has spoken—and has continued
to speak—very highly of our having the best college library in the country. Anyway, that’s an important
thing for me to—also, we had a resident real student that was employed in the Library who did meet
and give and provided a student perspective during the planning year.
Beck: This student was involved in planning the development of the non-print collection and the Library
generally?
Matheny-White: Yeah, he was in the Library. He wasn’t directly with the non-print, but he was in the
trailer. He had one of the other desks in the room. [chuckle] He was a poet, so one of the first
publications that came out of Evergreen about the curriculum, designed by Connie, is like the first
statement of what Evergreen was all about, and he was the author of it.
Beck: Do you want to read any of that?
Matheny-White: Yeah, that’d be kind of fun. [chuckles] And it’s a beautifully graphic design.
Beck: Very simple.
Matheny-White: Yeah.
Beck: Got the original Evergreen lettering.
Matheny-White: Yeah, Connie developed that, as she did develop, with consultation with Sid, the logo
for Evergreen. It’s still survived, though it’s done in a more—
Beck: It’s been stylized a little bit differently.
Matheny-White: Yeah.
Beck: Connie and Sid collaborated on that original design?
Matheny-White: Right, we were all working together all the time. It says:
Where the best ideas of students and teachers are combined to form a program unlike others, emphasizing
cooperative studies centered around the practical problems all of face, seeking to understand them through the
coordinated efforts of many disciplines working together. You won’t be sitting back and listening while someone else

4

does the talking and the thinking. You will expected to participate, because that’s how you learn. And that’s how
answers emerge to the complex questions you and your group will face.
While there will be no standard vocational tracks, such as schools or nursing or engineering, you will have
the opportunity to pursue your special interests through contracted study, working with an instruction to design a
program suiting your needs exactly.
Through independent projects, you will contribute to your groups through internship programs where you
work in the field you plan to enter. Through . . . who knows? At Evergreen, you will be expected to take part in the
planning of your future. The only limit is your imagination.
-

Tim Moffitt, Student

Beck: Oh, Tim Moffitt wrote that. Okay. I’ve heard that name. I’m not directly familiar with him.
Matheny-White: Yeah, he became a librarian and various other pursuits. I think he’s working for a nonprofit somewhere. I haven’t seen him for a while. He made a statement in the 25th Anniversary
publications.
Beck: So Tim was working at Evergreen before the first teaching year?
Matheny-White: It was during the planning year. He was a library assistant or something. I don’t know
what his title was exactly. I guess I could find out somewhere.
Beck: But he was a student elsewhere and then became a student at Evergreen?
Matheny-White: Actually, I think I have—yes, I do have his resume here. Timothy L. Moffitt, Library
Reference Assistant. At that time, in 1970, he worked for the Census Bureau. Attended Foothill College,
California, ’66 to ’69 and San Francisco State in ’70. He’d just come driving up the coast, or came to the
Northwest, drove into the parking lot and probably had a conversation with Monica. [laughter]
Beck: All of a sudden, he was working in the Library.
Matheny-White: Right. And also we had another—Zimmerman was his last name. But then there was
another important group of people that were working in the Library, and that was because of an
assistant to the Deans, Ken Paull. He had worked a long time in State government. He was to be sort of
Operations Manager. He brought people in under a program called New Careers. Lucy Enriquez was
hired through that program, and a woman named Alice Douglas. I don’t remember some of the others.
Both Lucy and Alice stayed on after, Alice only for a few years, but Lucy retired from Evergreen. She
became the documents person working with the U.S. Government documents in the Library.
But some of them had various careers, or they needed a career, so it was an opportunity for
them to learn technical skills or whatever. They were working as assistants with us. So I remember, we
5

ordered all of this microfilm for Special Collections and for Periodicals. They all arrived and we had this
big party. I saw this image of Jack Webb, from the faculty, Monica, Tim, Alice and I smoking cigars for
our first arrival. [laughter]
Beck: May I see that by any chance? Thank you. Oh, that’s wonderful. Celebratory cigars.
Matheny-White: Yeah. I mean, it was really a group effort and a lot of camaraderie. Also, this is a
photo of all of us at Millersylvania State Park at the first retreat. We used to meet a lot, having
workshops etc. And an important learning process for me was going to workshops on racism. It really
opened my eyes. All of us—staff, faculty—everybody was involved with this effort and this new college.
Beck: You mentioned workshops on racism. Were there workshops during the planning year and the
first year of the college, or was that something that was organized within the college?
Matheny-White: I think it was in the first years of teaching. Because another major effort was to hire
minorities on the faculty that first year of teaching. To focus that effort, Rudy developed the program
on minorities. I forget the name of it.
Beck: I think there was a program called something like Contemporary American Minorities or
something like that.
Matheny-White: Yes, that’s it. Along with that—and just efforts to kind of combat that—there was
also, along with not hiring women in the first planning faculty—Rudy was the one minority, as they
called it then. But also just the times, as staff expanded and as needs were met.
First of all, these retreats and so forth was a lot of community building. Willi Unsoeld was there,
and there also was a retreat at a camp near Mount Rainier. I can’t recall the name of it now.
Beck: We’ve had retreats at Pack Forest.
Matheny-White: Yes, Pack Forest. I remember the first one happened. Unfortunately I had to go to a
family reunion, but there were all these stories and photos and lore from that first retrea]. [laughing]
Anyway, it was a learning experience on so many levels because of being involved with the planning of
the curriculum, the planning of the Library, and doing it as a team effort. It was quite overwhelming at
times. [laughing]
Of course, Malcolm Stilson was a wonderful first person that I met. They became like my family
here.
Beck: And he wrote all those musicals about Wintergreen College, wasn’t it?

6

Matheny-White: Yes, yes. [laughter] That’s quite a record for Evergreen, his wonderful humor and
satire. It relieved a lot of the tenseness of the place. [laughter]
Beck: And the tenseness around just differing opinions about how the college should be developed and
all of those kinds of issues.
Matheny-White: Yes. We could almost like see the smoke billowing out of the planning faculty
[laughter] trailer.
Beck: From what you were just saying, it sounded as though there was a general attitude of “Let’s all
just pitch in and do what needs to be done.” Right?
Matheny-White: Mm-hm.
Beck: Without a lot of distinctions among staff and admin and faculty and students and so forth. But
some of those differences started to really creep in and become more important, or were treated as
more important.
Matheny-White: I think it was an agenda of the time, and it did get generated out of the intense
discussions, and then the intensity of each of the areas—the Library and Student Services and so forth—
of how to support that sense of the interdisciplinary coordinated studies effort. So it had to all be
coordinated and everybody be involved in some way or other. And it was small. You had lunch together
and you played touch football. It was an amazing time.
Beck: Did you want to say any more about some of the differences between staff and faculty, and [how]
librarians are treated sometimes as one and sometimes the other?
Matheny-White: The organizational chart for Evergreen Library was a bit different than in most places
because primarily, I think, Jim’s vision of the librarians being faculty and totally integrated into the
academic part of the college. He envisioned, for instance, having these vendors take care of the
cataloging processing and so forth, which, from our experience, didn’t work as well as one would want,
especially with the non-print. Xerox Bibliographics, the vendor for that, did produce the first card
catalog and a microfilm copy of it that was available to people in the public. But it was mostly the
books, if not all, because they were not able to accomplish all the processing and cataloging of the nonprint.
There was an intention for that operation [to not] be that large in the Library. So I had to take
what was a reality and develop Technical Services staff, as would normally happen. But all of the people

7

were what we called paraprofessionals and they were under the Civil Service, which didn’t really match
the level of their responsibility in many ways. So then we worked within the administrative positions.
Beck: When you say they don’t match, are you saying that they were doing work that was above the
grade that they were classified?
Matheny-White: Yes, they didn’t fit into the classifications. So then there would be administrative
exempt. That’s what I was before becoming faculty. And then catalogers, there would be a
professional, but that changed also as people came in with experience, like your mother. So we were
breaking the mold. The rigidity of a classified system didn’t fit with the way we wanted. So the
librarians would be faculty, and so all of the other would not be librarians, but would be functioning at a
high technical level or at an administrative level. So, we were blurring the lines, and there would be
conflicts through that process, because we had faculty privileges—and they were seen as privileges—
and the other staff did not, and whether there was an equal voice in all of that.
So that’s why I, through all of this kind of group development and ways to function, I developed
this . . . way of governing where . . . what’s the word I want? . . . where everyone has a voice.
Beck: Is it kind of a community consensus?
Matheny-White: There’s a word for it. [laughing] Consensus. Consensus building. So that everyone
was heard, everyone was in the room. But it also takes a lot of prep work of being in contact with a lot
of people for them all to understand the issues, and then come and listen to other people’s point of
view and come to a decision. So I think that we were trying to flatten the organization, but people
would end up still with their positions. But it was a way to work with conflict to come to a united
decision. And that hasn’t always been happening. I was kind of unique in doing that.
Beck: My experience is limited in this, but it’s enough to tell me that making decisions by that kind of
consensus process takes a lot of time. It takes the preparation time, but it also takes kind of some going
back and forth from, where is the difference of opinion? What really underlies it?
Matheny-White: Right.
Beck: And that takes a lot of time.
Matheny-White: Yeah, it is a conflict resolution process. But you make the best decisions, and you
have the best working conditions for people. It’s a very humane way to function.

8

Beck: Right. Even if people don’t get their way, they at least get the sense that they were heard. They
understand why the decision might have gone a way that was different from what they wanted in
particular.
Matheny-White: And they knew what my decisions were based on, that kind of consultative process.
Beck: Right. So the rationale of the decision was really transparent in that kind of process. That’s a real
value I think a lot of people hold.
Matheny-White: Yes, and that doesn’t happen, or as much as it should.
Beck: Right.
Matheny-White: Because there continues to be that kind of tension of where you’re a State institution
and you have to fit into a kind of authoritarian organization, when that isn’t how we want to function.
Beck: The official structures are quite hierarchical. Some people are vested by the State with decisionmaking authority. Other people need to work there but don’t have that authority.
Matheny-White: Right. I mean, it is a reality that’s how it has to be, but within that framework, you can
still practice humane ways of functioning together.
Beck: Yes, yes! But you have to be wily about it. You have to find ways to, well, as you said, blur the
lines. That is, make the substantive decisions—
Matheny-White: I feel that a leader of such an organization has to be consultative and have a lot of the
information, so you’re pervasively consulting at whatever level, but clearly the decisions are made in a
consultative process.
Beck: Right, and you need to be listening carefully to what people are saying, keeping in mind all of the
various constraints that you have to work within and the values that you’re trying to promote.
Matheny-White: Yes. And that was an important thing for me that had a core with the planning year
and how we functioned. And it was extremely important to me.
Beck: Yes. But it also seems that you have to keep in the forefront the value of making decisions in this
consensus-building model. Because there’s always going to be a demand to make a decision quickly,
and efficiency is kind of a standing value within institutions, so there’s always going to be, as it were, a
prevailing wind towards quicker decision-making.

9

Matheny-White: But if you also have processes of communication and open communication at all levels
and promote that, then you can make a decision. You can justify or think about the decision in that
context, so you know what the issue is.
Beck: Right. So, if there’s an open flow of communication in all directions, then it will smooth the way
for that kind of consensus building, it sounds like.
Matheny-White: Right.
Beck: That makes a lot of sense to me. Then it becomes more difficult if the communication lines are
shut down, or people no longer feel as though they are as free to speak their minds, because then the
information isn’t available.
Matheny-White: And there will be conflict, and as a result of conflict, there will be people not feeling
they can express themselves, as you say.
Beck: You can’t get a group of people together and not have conflict. [laughter] Right? It’s just in the
nature of human beings.
Matheny-White: That’s right. And that, for me, was an important issue throughout, because I had to be
an arbiter between staff, and then be between staff and the public. And I got into some very tough
situations. I learned who I was in the midst of that.
Beck: Yes. [laughter]
Matheny-White: And how to resolve and work through some of those issues, because they were there.
Media loan, when people wouldn’t return things. [sighs]
Beck: You think they know how to work something and then it turns out they don’t. Damage the
equipment perhaps.
Matheny-White: Or, you have to pull the plug when something is or isn’t happening. Right.
Beck: Yeah.
Matheny-White: Okay, so we ought to proceed with the rest of my life at Evergreen.
Beck: There’s a fair bit to talk about. One of the things that we talked about last time is your project
work and your teaching. We could talk about one or the other, but you indicated that they really were
pretty well meshed together.
Matheny-White: Yes. Yeah, I’d like to talk about my transition into teaching. I had to apply to be
faculty. I remember I was interviewed by Rudy Martin and Dave Marr. The change for me was from
10

being Technical Services—I was always oriented in collection development toward what was in the
curriculum. I had the time then to be at the Reference Desk, and I drew a lot on what I knew as a
cataloger and knowing the collection.
Over time, it was to develop a program or decide to go into a program to do full-time teaching. I
had an idea for a program and I got a sabbatical for six months, did some research, and then that
resulted in my planning a program called Form and Content with Hiro [Kawasaki]. It was an
interdisciplinary program within the arts.
My sabbatical was on late 19th, early 20th century art. This was the key for that. It was an exhibit
called Color and Form. It included Kandinsky and Paul Klee and all these people, [the] beginnings of
abstract art. My main thesis that I was thinking about was that one aspect of this was that painters,
artists, were trying to attain to music, which is the more abstract, non-material form of art. I discovered
that I really needed to know French and German to pursue that, but from it, developed the program.
But it changed, as happens at Evergreen [laughing] because of student demand. I don’t
remember whether it was a . . . what did they call the entry level?
Beck: Core?
Matheny-White: Core. Yes, it was a core program. There was a demand, so then Chuck Pailthorp—
now Charles Pailthorp—and David Powell were added to the program. I was part-time in fall teaching a
music module.
Beck: This was fall of what year?
Matheny-White: It was fall of 1980. I taught the music module in the fall, and then in the winter, I went
in full-time. David and Chuck were to move out and I was to move in. I did do seminars with them, but I
was under a huge amount of stress that fall because I was trying to be half-time and half-time, which
never works. Anyway, they wanted to stay in the program, and questioned whether I should come on.
Beck: Ah. So Chuck and David wanted to stay in. I see.
Matheny-White: So there was a bit of a conflict there, but we worked it out. [laughter] And it was a
real success for me. I got to work pretty closely with Hiro, and I learned a lot. It was very difficult, firsttime teaching, going into a conflict situation. But it worked. It worked. I continued the music, but also
contributed a lot of the lectures or visual material as well.
Beck: Was it a full-year program?
Matheny-White: Yes, it was.
11

Beck: You were in it through winter and spring?
Matheny-White: No, just winter. Then Chuck wished I was staying through spring because he picked up
on the music module. He almost begged me to come teach. [laughter] Anyway, we gained our trust as
a team and we did a really good program. Very successful.
The next time I taught, which was in spring if 1983, was Experiments with Sound and Image:
Roots of Modern Art and History again, and this time will Bill Winden and Will Humphreys. Bill did the
music and I did the visual art in terms of content presentations and Will, with his philosophy cultural
background. That was an amazing program. One of the highlights for me was a student that I had who
had come into the program—this was in spring—from taking science classes and she . . . I’m going to
blank out . . . anyway, she saw all the connections of what she was studying in science and what I was
presenting artistically because it was all this abstract art. She had an exhibit and also was able to—so
those kinds of wonderful interdisciplinary changes in ways of thinking based on what was happening at
that time period in the arts.
Beck: Was this student an artist as well a science student?
Matheny-White: Yeah, yeah. It also fed into her creativity in her artwork, which she hadn’t been doing
for a while. So she made all of these interesting connections. Those kinds of things are rather exciting in
my teaching, because I’m presenting often content that the students in the arts haven’t seen before and
so it stimulates them in their artistic production.
The next time I taught, which was in winter of ’86, it was Perspectives in American Culture, a
multicultural arts-humanities program. I taught with Gail Tremblay, Craig Carlson, a woman who was a
filmmaker who is no longer here—can’t remember her name.
Beck: Not Sally Cloninger?
Matheny-White: No, no, no, no.
Beck: But just somebody who was here for . . .
Matheny-White: . . . a few years. I think that was it. I learned a lot from Gail and Craig. Gail was
intending to teach this with Stone Thomas, and then he had to be pulled out of teaching, so she was in a
position of disappointment. [laughing] But we really developed a wonderful program. I did an
ethnomusicology of American music within the program, and it was a learning experience for me. Also
at this time I had done the Chicano/Latino Project, and I was interested in culture and music and so
forth. I remember the times I spent with Gail listening to Native American music, because she was very
12

open to—and she brought over her LPs and we sat and talked, and I listened to all this wonderful music.
It gave me a whole other level of understanding. Then I taught jazz and blues and the whole gamut of
American music, and had students doing a research project. And I gave a presentation on
Chicano/Latino culture. I learned a lot about teaching from Craig, and about honoring elders, just kind
of in ways of knowing.
Beck: You mentioned that you’d finished your Chicano Project at this point. Do you want to say
something about that project now?
Matheny-White: Sure. Can we backtrack once more if we’re returning to projects? And also this is the
first collaboration with Sid, which happened in the planning year and the first year of the college. Sid
worked with Jim Holley in developing a collection of prints from local printmakers. What they
developed was that they would purchase a print from some of the master printmaker teachers and a
print of one of their students. It was this wonderful, wonderful project.
So Sid and I spent time going and visiting artists, and I assisted with the—I think there was a jury
that then selected the work. Then one of my assistants, Paul Asman, was involved with the preparation
of the collection for exhibit. And there was a nice catalog in which Jim paid tribute to this being a
collaboration with Sid and me, and ended up in our marriage, which would have been in ’71. [laughing]
So, that was the first collaborative project.
Beck: May I see this? So this is a kind of a guide to the prints?
Matheny-White: Yes, and these prints are in the Library collection. I think they’re in the Evergreen art
collection, they’re not in the Library proper now. But we acquired those prints, and then Jim selected a
few additional. They were the core of the art collection at Evergreen.
Beck: How wonderful. And this was ’71?
Matheny-White: Mm-hm. The Chicano/Latino Project began in the ‘80s. Sid had been getting
disillusioned with the current artwork being produced—abstract, etc.—and was interested in art and
culture. He had contacts from his having taught at Oregon State University and the University of
Oregon, and in particular, Jack Irely, who was like a person who knew everybody up and down the West
Coast.
Through him, when Sid became the Gallery Director, he decided he wanted to do art of the
people, and Jack suggested Isaac Shamsudin, who was an African-American artist in Portland who did
murals, so his artwork reflected positive images of his culture, of his community. Sid met with him in his

13

basement with many, many paintings rolled up and prepared for presentation. As a result, he did an
exhibit of Isaac’s work.
From there, he was interested in doing more multicultural artists as cultural interpreters. That
was kind of the core of a whole decade plus of developing that kind of exhibit. As part of that, he wrote
a grant to the Humanities Commission. The consultant was a Chicano art scholar, and Sid then spent
time—we did—going and visiting not only artists to be included in this inclusive, multicultural Northwest
exhibit, but also to interpreters—art historians and people in the cultures. We visited with . . . I can’t
remember them all, but anyway, it was a pervasive mass visitation and writing of a grant.
Then, as it was reviewed by the Humanities Commission, they said it was too broad and it
should be narrowed. For some reason, Sid was sitting in Mike Hall’s office, who was then working with
Student Services, and there was an image—a poster—by Daniel DeSiga. Sid inquired of who he was, and
as a result of that, the Chicano/Latino Project happened.
Beck: Let me ask about the original project. You were surveying and talking to artists really from all
walks in the Pacific Northwest, not just limited to Washington State but really outside of Washington as
well, would you say?
Matheny-White: Yes, I think it included at least Washington and Oregon.
Beck: Then you narrowed it down to Chicano/Latino artists within roughly the same area?
Matheny-White: Mm-hm. Actually, we expanded that, so we were visiting artists in Idaho.
Beck: But it was focused on living artists presumably?
Matheny-White: Mm-hm. Daniel DeSiga knew a lot of these people, so he was the first rich resource.
How Mike Hall knew him is that he was teaching at . . . oh gosh . . . Cesar Chavez College, which was just
south of Portland. He was working with students in the art department, but he also was making murals.
Then we connected with Alfredo Arreguin in Seattle and many of the other artists. And we did a whole
survey of all of the murals. We got funding from the Humanities Commission to do this then. We got
slides of their work, and documented it.
This was published in an article in the Metamorfosis Northwest Chicano Magazine of Art and
Literature at the University of Washington. This was like a first. People sort of knew each other, but
there really wasn’t any concerted effort to acknowledge that this community of artists existed in the
Northwest. It was original research. But we also found fork art and went into community centers and
looked at the walls and talked with people.
14

Beck: A lot of it was art in the community.
Matheny-White: Yes.
Beck: It wasn’t just art that was sitting in studios somewhere.
Matheny-White: Right. Alfredo was one of the most successful. He came from Mexico to the
University of Washington as a student. He had had a one-person exhibit at the Bellevue Art Museum. I
think he was with a gallery in Seattle, too.
So we had many of these interesting meetings [with these artists? 00:59:09]. Did what we
called field research, and then we documented and collected, so there are directories of murals, there
are a whole slide collection. Then we acquired posters, and so there now is a repository of
Chicano/Latino posters in the Evergreen archives, and many of them now are on the walls in the Library
and elsewhere.
The most recent activity with this project was I worked with Paul Gallegos in doing a one-day
exhibit from the collection, and he also provided money to frame more of them. We had this one-day
exhibit in a gymnasium for a Latino youth conference.
Beck: When was that?
Matheny-White: 2013-14, something like that.
Beck: Just a few years ago.
Matheny-White: Yes. So, it’s alive and well. The collection has been videotaped as a promotion for
another Latino conference. We also received a collection of prints for the national traveling exhibit of
Chicano art that was planned in LA. We received some prints from there, so those are also on display.
Through all that community effort of all these artists and scholars, we were able to enter into
those communities. Sid and I would go places and some people would talk to me, sometimes to him, so
we developed a lot of skill in talking with people.
That had started when I taught the Experiments with Sound and Image, and I remember that
spring of ’83 that Russ Fox and Jacinta McCoy appeared at my door and asked if I would have time to
talk to some of their community studies students about how we did that. Sort of this spontaneous
thing.
I talked about remembering the first interview—I think before the Chicano/Latino—where we
met with the leader of the El Centro de la Raza. We went to lunch and he wanted to know who we
were. So we told our stories and he told his, and that was the basis for his deciding to cooperate. That’s
15

what I talked about is you have to know who you are in terms of your culture to then have cross-cultural
discussions.
Beck: When you said you told your story, you told your own story, not the story of the college.
Matheny-White: Yes. I said I was from Blackduck, Minnesota, and I lived just south of Red Lake
Reservation, and I had an extended family. You know, kind of what my values were, what the core of
them were.
Beck: When was this published, the Metamorfosis [article]?
Matheny-White: 1983.
Beck: That’s presumably also in the collection at Evergreen in the Library.
Matheny-White: Yes. This is co-authored with Sid and I, and we continued then with this collaboration
of doing whatever print research there was available. Because I was collecting things as we were going
around as well as collecting artworks. Sid then got funding to do a traveling exhibit of Chicano and
Latino artists in the Pacific Northwest. There’s a catalog for that, and I did a little bit of bibliographic
work, and I was the research person for this.
We met with all of these artists. Again, a wonderful collaboration with Lauro Flores who’s been
the head of the Spanish language and culture or whatever it is department at the University of
Washington. We met Erasmo Gamboa, who is in Chicano studies. Tomás Ybarra-Frausto, who used to
teach at the University of Washington. He was at Stanford, and then he worked for the Rockefeller
Foundation. He was a dear mentor for us in all of these projects. Then all of the artists. Cecelia Alvarez,
Alfredo Arreguin, Arturo Artorez. All of them became close friends. They’re all here in the exhibit
catalog. So that’s what I contributed, my experience with all of that in that program, Perspectives in
American Culture.
Beck: I’m interested in this because right now there’s a movement in the faculty to have Latinx studies,
so this is some history in the college that that group might be able to draw upon.
Matheny-White: Alice Nelson knows the collection, and she’s used it. The other new faculty member—
not the newest but the one that [came before]?
Beck: There’s Catalina Ocampo.
Matheny-White: Yes, Catalina I’ve met. They did that wonderful tribute to Sid and I when they had
their students do artwork after looking at the Chicano/Latino collection.
Beck: Wonderful! So the history is being remembered and put to use.
16

Matheny-White: Yes, there is a legacy going on there.
Beck: Good.
Matheny-White: After the Chicano/Latino Project, the Washington Centennial is happening. So we
decided we ought to have that history expanded. It wasn’t all white folks coming on stagecoaches.
[laughing] That opened a big new project, where Sid worked with a proposal to the Centennial
Commission. It was to gather materials and have an exhibit, one that toured and went on the walls.
And then we had a discussion with . . . the Asian American Governor of the State.
Beck: Was that Gary Locke?
Matheny-White: Gary Locke. He wanted an exhibit that could go into the malls. It was semi-successful
because of the development of how it would be displayed. But it was still out there.
Beck: When you say semi-successful . . .?
Matheny-White: Well, to design the exhibit and the structure to be able to be freestanding. You
couldn’t original photographs or any artwork or whatever, so a lot was involved with reproducing and
enlarging images. So, within the timeframe, we did very well, but then we worked with other people
after that, particularly the Northwest Folklife Festival people, who had exhibits at the festival. There
were more companies that were developing exhibit structures and ways to do that.
Beck: This was the Peoples of Washington Project?
Matheny-White: Yes.
Beck: So the exhibits went to the Northwest Folklife Festival, or series of festivals. Right?
Matheny-White: It went one year, but Sid became a consultant with them for a lot of other exhibits.
Also he was a consultant to an organization that put on the Fiestas Patrias in Seattle, which is a
Chicano/Latino festival. We also did a book. Made a proposal to the Centennial Commission for a book.
That was published by the Washington State University Press. It’s essays and images.
Beck: I’m going to kind of leaf through it. So there are essays, photographs.
Matheny-White: This meant that Sid was going into homes and into the closets and pulling out photo
albums, going to museums, all looking for multicultural images. The image that’s on the cover is one of
the most multicultural images. It has men, it has women . . .
Beck: It looks like it’s a camp of logging or a mill?

17

Matheny-White: Yes. It is millworkers, Bay City Lumber Company. There’s a whole story about how
that was acquired.
Beck: Do you want to tell that story?
Matheny-White: I don’t know whether I can remember it all. I won’t remember names. This is
something with my fibromyalgia chemical sensitivity brain. We went to the museum in Hoquiam. We’d
have to keep probing and trying to find these images, and she suggested we go over to this Liberty
Tavern because there was a man there who did a lot of historical work. So went into this tavern
[laughing] and started looking at the walls, and here were all these wonderful historical photographs. So
Sid is looking, and all these guys at the bar are wondering what’s going on. Then we get to talk with the
owner, whose name I can’t recall. But it is true that he was very interested in the history and so forth,
and we ended up walking out with this photograph.
Beck: Wonderful! So he shared the photograph with you and gave permission for you to reproduce it?
Matheny-White: Yes. It’s been on posters. There’s women, children, a whole diversity of Filipino and
Slovakian . . .
Beck: Did you mention the date that that photograph was taken?
Matheny-White: Well, shame on us. We might have talked about it. No, I don’t think he did. I may
have the credits elsewhere here. Here we go. Here’s our full credits. Millworkers, Bay City Lumber
Company, South Aberdeen, circa 1919. Bronco’s Liberty Tavern Historical Museum. [laughter] Elevated
the name. But it is Bronco is who we talked to.
Beck: Good. Tavern and Historical Museum. That’s a good combination.
Matheny-White: I understand he also had a museum of the red light district in a whorehouse or
something like that.
Beck: It’s a history that’s often forgotten.
Matheny-White: Anyway, so this was a publication, and a very first in educating people about the
peoples of Washington. It’s been in demand in schools, etc. There were all of these people that we met
with regularly. [sighs]
Beck: I can tell that it was a project that you had a lot invested in; that you learned a lot from.
Matheny-White: Yeah, because the exhibit toured, as all of Sid’s exhibits, to libraries and schools and
museums. It toured beyond the Centennial. Then we had a big celebratory Peoples of Washington

18

weekend at Evergreen in 1988 to celebrate the Centennial. It brought in local people to perform and
talk. Larry Stenberg was a big organizer of that.
Beck: In this project, did you also look at some of the darker sides of our multicultural past?
Matheny-White: Yes.
Beck: It’s easy sometimes to treat multiculturalism as though it’s all one big, happy family, but we
know, of course, that it wasn’t.
Matheny-White: Right. I hope that we—I think that we met a balance there. A lot of it was the
specifics of the struggles and the issues, injustices, etc. of the various groups. But also, there are
immigrant stories that are pervasive. They are unique, and yet there is some things that are. We
wanted the people to tell their story. This is a peoples’ history. So that’s why we had scholars who
wrote essays, but we also had the voices of the people. That’s what this was about. This was to be
quotes from people, giving maps. It’s a really powerful educational tool.
Beck: So they told their stories.
Matheny-White: Mm-hm. And also, the scholars were community historians. Esther Hall [Mumford],
who is a black historian in Seattle. And Dorothy Cordova who worked on the Demonstration Project for
Asian Americans, Filipino. Doug Chin, historian, Seattle Chinese community. Vivian Adams, Curator at
the Yakama Nation Museum. Bettie Sing Luke, Program Director, Project Reach. [Unintelligible
01:18:38], folklorist, Washington State Folklife Council. They were sources for finding peoples’ voices,
but also we would go to museums, and then somebody would suggest that Sid go see Mrs. Barbara
Love, and that’s where he ended up in her attic and interviewed. So we tried to keep it the peoples’
voice, and through these people who had access to organizations, but who also were involved in their
communities.
Beck: So it was really close to the original sources, as close as you could get.
Matheny-White: Mm-hm. This was the first history of the state from that perspective. And I know that
it influenced one of the major authors of histories of Washington and his bibliography changed and his
narrative changed when he made new editions after this. Anyway, it was widely distributed and widely
critiqued. Volumes of all that documentation is in Sid’s archive at Evergreen. Then this is a guide that I
did, with Sid’s assistance, for the archive that’s at Evergreen.
Beck: It’s a Guide to the Peoples of Washington.

19

Matheny-White: Mm-hm. I don’t know whether it’s still on the wall, but there’s a wall up in the third
floor of the Library to the right of the stained glass, a little exhibit space. In a year or two or so, there
was an exhibit of the Peoples of Washington on the wall—selected—thanks to [Steve Davies? 01:21:04].
Beck: I’ll have to go up and see if it’s still there. You were working on that around the Centennial, so
presumably late ‘80s, early ‘90s.
Matheny-White: Mm-hm.
Beck: You said you retired in ’95?
Matheny-White: Correct.
Beck: Were there other projects that you were doing after the Peoples of Washington but before you
retired?
Matheny-White: There’s something that happened in ’92. But I’d like to switch back to my teaching,
because this all meshes with that. My next teaching was Washington Centennial Future/Past
Connections, an academic program that I taught with . . . oh, darn . . . he was a political scientist. No
longer here, but alive.
Beck: Not Beryl Crowe?
Matheny-White: No.
Beck: Somebody from a later period in the college’s history.
Matheny-White: Yes.
Beck: Larry Mosqueda?
Matheny-White: No. Political scientist, historian. Knows his Washington history. He used to give the
analysis of the results of the elections to the community. If I keep talking, I’ll remember his name
maybe.
Anyway, we taught this program. His perspective, of course, was history, politics. We brought
in people to do geography. We brought in an archeologist. Trying to look at the state from all these
various [perspectives]—political economy and culture, including multicultural history. So I drew on the
Peoples of Washington material. The next year I started drawing on my art history of the Northwest.
Because we taught again, but this was a Pacific Northwest program. It was Pacific Northwest History.
So, the Washington Centennial was in spring of ’89 and Pacific Northwest History in 1991. And that was

20

an academic program on Pacific Northwest history and culture, political economy, art history, including
multicultural history. Ken?
Beck: Ken Dolbeare?
Matheny-White: Ken Dolbeare. Oh, thank you! Oy! Well, this has been a while. [laughter] Yeah, a
political economist. He was learning a lot and I was learning a lot. Erasmo Gamboa couldn’t come down
for a lecture. I used to bring people in to give lectures, some of the people involved in the Peoples of
Washington Project. So Ken said, “Why don’t we give a presentation on what multiculturalism really
means?” So, there I was.
But fortunately, there’s these wonderful people that work with this REACH Center [for
Multicultural and Global Education]—Bettie Sing Luke I was mentioning—that have done this wonderful
prospective on—and this was something that was important to Sid and I is learning about the diversity
within a culture. So I was able to show this spectrum of identity within a culture of someone who
immigrates, and then how they acculturate, or whether they become totally American, and a person can
be anywhere in that prospective. And then, of course, there are unique qualities within those cultures.
So it was a kind of inspired, semi-successful presentation, which was inherent in what we were reading
and teaching, but I was able to pull it together.
Then in the Pacific Northwest program I had a seminar that was quite wonderful. There were
three Filipino people in the program. One was barely speaking English, one was totally Americanized in
the sense of not identifying to his specific culture that much, and then a women who was white whose
father was Filipino. Her mother was the person who worked outside of the home and her father took on
the domestic and the child raising. So she would turn us all on our heads with gender issues [laughing]
because it a change of roles in her home. So we had this whole spectrum. Then an African-American
student injecting, “What is culture?” From more of an injustice point of view, which was very good for
us all to hear his story. So I was trying to get stories from people and to think about what their culture
was. I said, “Well, you are a student in an academic college. That’s one way you’ve chosen to be in how
you’re defined.” So, to try again to think about who one is within the context of interacting with others.
Beck: Right, whether it’s multiple overlapping cultural groups.
Matheny-White: Mm-hm. Then my last teaching—because this little resume I have here ends before I
left—was Pacific Northwest History Art History, and I taught it with Joe Feddersen and . . . it’ll come to
me.
Beck: What did they teach?
21

Matheny-White: She’s an artist, but came back to her art through coming into the program to teach.
She was an MPA, but she studied art at WSU.
Beck: I do this all the time myself and I have to talk my way back to it.
Matheny-White: It’ll come to me.
Beck: For some reason Sandie Nisbet keeps coming to mind.
Matheny-White: No. It was a wonderful collaboration. I designed most of it from having done a lot of
research then focused on artists, and worked a lot with the curator at the Tacoma Art Museum who had
done an exhibit for the Washington Centennial. Then I connected with historians and people at the
Portland Art Museum, the Oregon Historical Society. So, pervasively gathered this huge slide collection
of artists. We also had a lecture series of artists to talk about if there were specific aspects of being in
the Northwest in their art or, again, who they were as artists within a cultural context. I think it was
quite successful. It was just one quarter in the spring of . . . I left in ’95, so ’93 probably. And I had a
wonderful time with Joe and with—see, I thought I could get it there. [laughing] Oh, it’s terrible! And I
had a pneumonic but I’ve lost it, too. I’ll let you know. I’ll let the world know in the transcript.
Beck: Was it Lucia Harrison?
Matheny-White: Yes! Lucia Harrison. Thank you! She was great, and I felt good about Ken having
recommended to her to come into the program. She had her last years at Evergreen was as an art
teacher. She was able to be an artist within a social, cultural context, because she had been doing this
abstract work at WSU that didn’t have that much meaning to her as much as being in public
administration did. After Evergreen, these projects continued. I left and retired in ’95 because of the
chemical sensitivity. Plus, there was another whole career continuing to collaborate with Sid.
So, projects. These are Sid White/Pat Matheny-White productions. The first, in 1992—Sid had it
as ‘95—was Founding Visions. Sid had done a television program and they’d done some closed-circuit
programs interviewing various people on campus. Most of the sources for producing Founding
Visions—which is a video production—were this Dreams and Goals series that he did in 1974. He was
asking people, how was Evergreen progressing? In that series, there’s one, “Dean Clabaugh is the
beginnings of Evergreen.” He was here before Charles McCann. And then there’s a 15-minute one of
Charles McCann; a discussion amongst Merv Cadwallader, Don Humphrey and Charles Teske.
Then the Dreams and Realities, 18-member planning faculty, and this one he filmed—it was
incredible—where he had them speak on audio of what were their dreams and goals for Evergreen, and

22

then what was the status of them? He filmed them sitting around drinking wine, and then meshed the
audio and the video. Uh! It was quite a production, but an important one. It was checking in on how
people were doing and getting it recorded.
Then there were other planning agendas—William Aldridge, Richard Alexander, Richard Jones
and Rudy Martin discussion. Another one, Winnie Ingram, Tina Petersen and Pearl Vincent. Pearl is an
important staff person.
Beck: What did Pearl do?
Matheny-White: She the secretary for the Provost or the Dean. Academic deans, I think. Dick Nichols,
who was the first spokesperson for Evergreen.
Beck: Later County Commissioner.
Matheny-White: David Carnahan on planning the Library. Tom Rainey and Willi Unsoeld, two very
different perspectives on the world. [laughing]
Beck: I’ve seen that one. That’s a discussion about—I think it’s surrounding the first faculty meeting.
That’s in the background of the discussion.
Matheny-White: Then they had a panel discussion, Evergreen Then and Now, in 1975. We excerpted
from all of those sources and others, and gave a little thumbnail portrait at the time of the Evergreen
planning community—the academic planners, the planning staff. And who was still at Evergreen, and
who were emeritus retired and who were deceased? I just went through it and William Aldridge and
Larry Eickstaedt are the only ones alive from the planning faculty.
Beck: But in ’92 or so, there was some excerpting from those videos from the ‘70s.
Matheny-White: Right. It was called Founding Visions. It’s somewhere, in archives or . . . I have copies.
Beck: But it’s a video production, so it might be on the online visual archives, which is a wonderful
resource that we have.
Matheny-White: Yes.
Beck: Were there interviews of people reflecting back? Did they go and speak to, say, Bill Aldridge?
Matheny-White: No, this was strictly trying to get the message out about the real beginnings of
Evergreen.
Beck: Right.

23

Matheny-White: Sid continued to consult with people in the Northwest on various exhibit projects, so
we used to collaborate on that. We decided to do our family histories. We’d been doing other people’s
histories. Sid was very interested when he went to my parents’ 50th wedding anniversary. He was
amazed at all of the people and the gathering of them, because his family rarely got together as a family.
The only time all of his siblings had been together was when his father died. So he started doing family
history because he also had all the photos. There were some wonderful photos from the time that his
parents and he and the family were in Russia during the Stalin period.
He did slide tape on his father, and he and his brother organized a family reunion on the 100th
anniversary of their father’s birth—that was kind of the focus—and to present this to the family. We
worked on that slide tape video production together. I did a lot of research on music to accompany it,
and a lot of it Romanian because his father and mother were both Romanian Jews who immigrated to
the U.S. in the late 19th century. That was an intense presentation that he did in 1984.
We continued to do those kinds of projects. Also, he was doing writing. He wrote something
called Russian Memories, and then documented the White family reunion, which was in ’94. He
continued that. He did a whole archive of the White family in 2001. Did other desktop publications.
Then we went on a trip to Romania and to Paris, where his mother immigrated before coming to
the U.S., and to London where his father immigrated before coming to Chicago, and their meeting in
Chicago because that’s where the Romanian Jewish blechers [Yiddish] came, which were tinsmiths.
They all lived on the same street in Chicago, and that’s how me met Jenny. They were lansmen .
We went to those places and videotaped, and then gave a presentation. And Sid did this
amazing history that accompanied it, a publication where he placed their history within the Romanian
and Romanian Jewish history, talking about the contemporary time that we observed and so forth. I
mean, it was an incredibly beautiful production. So, it was this book and the video. Then we showed
the video at the temple and he shared his genealogical work. A couple of times we showed it at the
temple. Somebody just approached me about doing it again.
Then I did family histories. I got all of the family photos when my mother died. This was
instigated by my oldest brother. We were visiting him in Detroit Lakes, Minnesota—wherever he was
living—and he had spent that winter writing stories from before I was born when my parents were living
in a little town called [Averill? 01:43:34], out on the prairie in northwest Minnesota during the
Depression, in poverty. Yet, he was writing this from a child’s point of view because he lived there. He
was the oldest but he had the most memories. And he was taking a creative writing class as well.
24

Sid started reading that and he was just gone. He said, “Pat, we’ve got to publish this.” So that
got us started—we always worked collaboratively—on doing a series of family history publications. I’ve
got them right over there. This was Remembering the Averill Years. That was done in 1998. Then I did
my mother’s life stories. She wrote them down for a niece of mine. She was a great storyteller, so I
have the history from pioneering days and so forth. I continued then. I wanted to honor my siblings, so
I did a book on each sibling of their life stories. I would have the photos and would interview them and
then transcribe their stories with the photos in a book.
Beck: How many siblings do you have?
Matheny-White: I’m the youngest of six.
Beck: Okay, so five books, one each.
Matheny-White: Right. One of them was a tribute to my brother, who had died when he was 17. I
pulled out all of the photos and the materials from his funeral and did that. Then I presented a video on
my aunt Ethel for her 80th birthday, and I did a slide tape video on my father.
So, we were always doing these publications or video productions. We videotaped friends’ 50 th
birthday celebration in San Francisco and various things. We would also travel. The first video was on
our trip to Costa Rica in 1995, which I retired. Indonesia in 1998. We showed that at Traditions. We
took a trip to Florida, and then the Romanian odyssey, and did a little nice publication of photos from
Oregon Coast.
Beck: You’ve also been very active in assembling Sid’s archives. You mentioned that before.
Matheny-White: Yes. He became an archivist and I became a media producer. We reversed roles, in a
way. But, of course, working together collaboratively. I was the technical producer, but we really
collaborated on ideas. I found that I was using a lot of my musical talent as editor—rhythm and working
word and image and music together. Did research for the one on his father, all the Romanian music and
so forth. Then I made a separate tape of all this Romanian music and a whole essay about Romanian
music for the family.
Indonesia—the purpose, we were front row center at every performance. We did this through a
company in Berkeley. We were part of a tour, but it was only three of us. Then we went on a separate
tour to Sulawesi. We went to Bali, Lombok, Sulawesi and Java. We videotaped performances, front row
center, and some, I don’t know whether they’ve been videotaped. We were there with the people in
the rice fields and in their homes. Just a phenomenal trip.

25

Beck: What kind of performances were these?
Matheny-White: Puppetry, dance, music, Balinese dance, people in trance.
Beck: These were performances that were mainly, would you call them entertainment? Would you call
them spiritual?
Matheny-White: Some of them were, but mostly they were community.
Beck: Storytelling?
Matheny-White: We went to a temple and we were right there with all the people dressed for a death
ceremony. They were just wonderful. We had a local guide as well as the guide who went on the whole
trip with us. We just were totally immersed.
The reason we went to Indonesia, Sid had been—in World War II was in India, and he wanted to
go back to a Hindu culture. He was interested in also some readings from people about the
interconnection of art and culture, of art being part of people’s lives and their culture. That’s why we
went to Indonesia, because we were searching for Hindu culture.
Beck: This was certainly seeing art in daily life, part of the community life.
Matheny-White: Yes, and able to be in the community, in a sense. We were in and out certainly, but
we were having conversations. The guide was quite impressed with our . . . whatever the Indonesian
language is. There’s multiple languages, but there’s a trade language and we learned that from our
ethnomusicologist at Evergreen; sat in on her classes, and having had Spanish, it was easy to bring back
because the language is based on Portuguese. Now, again, I’m trying to remember her name.
Beck: Was it Sean Williams?
Matheny-White: Yeah. She was our consultant on our video, too. So I was using my music and my
visual, artistic, all of that coming together in these productions. Doing research.
Then, coming back to the Chicano/Latino, there was an exhibit in Yakima where they honored us
and had a new exhibit of Chicano art.
Beck: When was this?
Matheny-White: In 2004. They had now old-timers, like Daniel and Cecelia and Alfredo. Lauro Flores
came and lectured. Then, they had new.
Beck: The next generation.

26

Matheny-White: Next generation. Jorhensio Lasso, I’ve got one of his prints in the kitchen. That was a
nice tribute.
Beck: Wonderful.
Matheny-White: Then I guess my next production was doing Sid’s life at his memorial. I had this
wonderful collaboration with Alley Hinkle. We’d known each other all this time, working in the Library
and media, and we got to collaborate. She was my technical support. It was images, it was his life and
art. It goes from childhood to when he died, set to music.
Beck: When did he pass?
Matheny-White: He passed in 2008. That was streamed. I don’t know whether that’s still accessible
on—but it was shown at the beginning of the memorial. But it’s also a separate, it’s an Evergreen
production. I did music and images. Didn’t do a narrative.
Beck: Were there other projects that we didn’t mention, or anything else that you can think of?
Matheny-White: Well, Sid had documented here. I think I’ve covered most of it. Since then, it took me
like three years to downsize from this huge—getting Sid’s archive to Evergreen, and then boxes of stuff.
Then I moved here to this condo.
I had this image—and we were working on it when Sid was alive—of having a condo in Olympia
and a condo in Tucson. Decided on Tucson. Sid had lived in New Mexico for his graduate work. So I had
to figure out a place. He loved our Phelps Lane, but I was having health issues where I really needed to
get away in the dark of winter and all the rain, and affected me for many years. So we took our first trip
to Tucson and I rented a house through HomeAway. It was a little casa a sul, right near the University of
Arizona campus. Because I was thinking Tucson is warmer than New Mexico is in winter in Albuquerque
or Santa Fe, and it was a little like bungalow that he would have lived in of the era of when he was in
Albuquerque. And it worked. [laughing] “Gee, this reminds me of when I lived in New Mexico.”
Because I knew I had to work on this possibility of being away from his haven. We had a wonderful trip.
We did kind of the borderlands, looking at Bisbee, Arizona as a possibility. But really, I wanted to be
near the University. So we took, over a couple of years before he died, to go there.
Here he is after his stroke, wanting to go to Mexico. He wanted to go to another foreign country
before, you know. So here we are driving into the border town, and parking and then walking across the
border. We wanted to go to this particular restaurant and we discovered it was upstairs. And he’s
walking through these streets with his walker, and then we get there and it’s upstairs. No, he’s going to

27

walk up the stairs. It was phenomenal that he could do all that after having had a stroke. He had his
stroke five years before he died and it was just producing and living fully through all that time.
Since he has passed, in 2011 I moved here, and that winter, I went to Tucson. And there’s more
there than I expected. I have rented in various places within the city. The University is all that I’d hoped
it be, but what’s incredible is the music—the Friends of Chamber Music, and the Tucson Symphony, and
Early Music and the classical guitar program at the University. So, there have been some very special
moments there. And I met a woman who is the mother of a former student at Evergreen, [Blaine Snow
01:59:06]. She’s been a good friend who introduced me to all of this.
I went to the University of Arizona Art Museum to an exhibit that was just phenomenal. There’s
a young curator, and the exhibit was curated with the science department and then with the art
department and the curator in looking at the collection—primarily late 19th century, early 20th century—
art from a scientist’s perspective, so that shapes and forms and so forth. They have one of the best
Jackson Pollack’s, and I have a whole new perspective on his art because it was from the perspective of
looking at fractals. So he was really working with the space in between all of those gestures. He was
laying it. He was doing it with a gesture, but there was also these fractals in between.
Beck: So the scientist was looking at the works of art—
Matheny-White: The visual phenomenon from a scientific visual perspective.
Beck: And it was about looking at the designs in terms of mimicking certain things.
Matheny-White: I couldn’t find the catalog. I wanted to read to you an example. But one of them is
the golden mean.
Beck: Yes, the golden ratio, is it?
Matheny-White: Yeah. Then there was some work of an artist, one of Sid’s faculty members at the
University of New Mexico, Raymond Jonson, which were all these amorphic shapes. Anyway, one of the
most important people in my life are curators. [laughing] And for them to collaboratively do this kind of
work and think in that way, it’s just so wonderful to see that.
Beck: The creative process.
Matheny-White: Mm-hm. And then listening to classical music with the students. It’s one of the best
programs in the country. Plus, there’s a Classical Guitar Society that brings people in. But they’re
playing in like the 17th century Spanish room—it’s just wonderful—in the museum.
Beck: An old mission kind of place?
28

Matheny-White: No, it’s a particular room. Then there’s the Ansel Adams Center for Photography. The
State Historical Society. I’ve gone to art history lectures and chatted with the people, art historians
sitting with me. It’s just been a wealth—I’ve taken a class. There’s a humanities scholars for people like
me who come and visit educators. It was on the history of tango, which she was doing a whole critique
of in the media or whatever. In our culture it’s sexualized. It started in a brothel, but it became this
gathering place of the milongas, where people can gather.
There’s a whole phenomenon worldwide of people gathering to go to milongas. They travel
with their shoes, and they find on the Internet where there is going to be a place to dance tango and
they get together. It’s also used as a political statement. If there’s some issue or whatever, they’ll show
up and do the tango.
She also had a prospective of . . . anyway, it was a whole new way of looking at it. Also, genderwise, the change of gender, where there’s a woman in Japan who will take either role, she’ll dress as a
man or as a woman, and the best performer of this one instrument is Japanese. They sort of associate
some of the movement with the dance with their culture.
Beck: Japanese culture?
Beck: So, you’re in touch through the whole dance?
Matheny-White: Yes. I saw a video of these dances where someone will give them clues as to what the
space is like, and then they’re free to move. And they’re helping people with Alzheimer’s who also have
touch. It’s two people in contact, but it can be just as simple as walking and gaining from that contact.
Beck: It’s very much symmetric, right?
Matheny-White: Yeah, it’s very formalized, but you can only do it if you’re really connecting with the
person.
Beck: That sounds amazing.
Matheny-White: That’s just an example of what one can do.
Beck: I’m wondering if we could move on and talk a little bit about just final thoughts about your time
at Evergreen. I’m interested particularly in what words of wisdom or what advice you would give to the
next generation of people at Evergreen, across the board—faculty, staff, students, admin. What do you
want to pass along?
Matheny-White: My hope is that the core of Evergreen and its philosophy remains. I know there’s
struggle with liberal arts all over. I was just looking on a shelf and found the Alumni Bulletin from
29

Macalester, and its message from the President is as dire as any. But also, I know from the core of me,
from just starting out in academic life that I succeeded because of the liberal arts college, now
Macalester, and having small classes, and having the attention and having faculty who were fomenting a
rich intellectual life; and that my sister who went there and myself succeeded in our academic careers as
my brothers and sisters who went to the large universities.
Somehow being able to foster that message of Tim Moffitt’s of people can do independent
study but within a collaborative environment, and having faculty seminars and so forth. Also the core of
my being interested in conflict resolution and in consensus, that you learn how to work with groups and
with people, and gain leadership skills in that way. That’s my hope. I know what the struggles are. It
was an incredible, amazing life. But just the need for fostering that kind of collaboration intimately in
that environment to then carry them through life is, I think, one of the most important things.
Beck: Well, there are a lot of us who are really working to keep that spirit alive. What I’m taking away
from our discussions—well, I’m taking a lot away from these discussions—but apart from the ideal of
the generic library, which I think is one that is still worth furthering and doing what we can to preserve
and extend. Also the values of consensus decision-making, and working broadly across all of the
different people of Evergreen, regardless of employment status or student status or what have you.
Those seem to be really central values that informed your career.
Matheny-White: Yes, exactly. With the Library, I’m discouraged. I know a lot of it is because of the
state of the economy and the contraction. This recent layoff has been very devastating, and there may
be more. But I don’t want people to contract into . . . what’s the phrase? The quote that I gave of the
planner at Evergreen—“hardening the categories.”
Beck: Right.
Matheny-White: I know the struggles of the Library, but I’m concerned.
Beck: Right. Well, yes.
Matheny-White: The Sound and Image position was cut.
Beck: Yes.
Matheny-White: The collection is there, but . . .
Beck: . . . who’s going to oversee it?
Matheny-White: Right. And the years of the archives being tended by the Stilsons—Malcolm collecting
and organizing and Randy organizing [Transcriber question: Are there two Stilsons, Randy and Malcolm,
30

and being there as our resident access to our history. I’m pleased that there is an archivist that was
hired.
I think there needs to be more creativity amongst the Library faculty, more, I don’t know, more
creative ways to extend the Library or enmesh the Library experience into the curriculum. I know
they’re doing very excellent teaching, but there’s issues within the Library that they need to pay
attention to.
Beck: Right. It’s easy to become very conservative and to move towards hardening of categories in
times of crisis.
Matheny-White: And I think it’s very hard. We’ve been successful with rotations of faculty into the
deanery who have, in most cases, been familiar with the way that the Library faculty have worked. But
if they go outside the Library, it’s hard to find people to hire that understand these concepts. They’re
out there because there are many places where librarians are on a tenure track faculty position. But
money-wise, I think probably the biggest issue is we can’t offer them enough, so they get younger
people or whatever. Anyway, it’s a dilemma. [laughing]
Beck: Yes. Is there anything else that you wanted to reflect on with respect to your time at Evergreen,
your hopes, your fears, your concerns for the future?
Matheny-White: Well, I hope that there’s some way that Evergreen continues to resolve these issues in
creative ways. But also, with conflict resolution, my concern about what has happened since last spring;
that people pay attention to covenants or they work on ways that will help with the community within.
Conflict resolution.
But also I think there needs to be a message, a renewed message out in the world. I think . . .
the right voices weren’t out there. I know that the media wants to find the issues and are quick to judge
and so forth. But there was one lone voice of a journalist from Tacoma who was an Evergreen graduate
in the Tribune, so we got it. See, I get this through The Olympian online or other regional newspapers.
But there needs to be—get ahead, to somehow get the message. Because I received the Alumni Bulletin
after that happened and I sat and cried in my chair. Because of all of these students who are doing this
tremendous work out there, and that message is not getting out in the public.
Beck: Yeah.

31

Matheny-White: Or, we’ve got enough of them around, but we’re obviously needing to recruit beyond
that. There really does need to be a stronger message out there of what we’re doing and what our
effect is.
Beck: Yes.
Matheny-White: It’s almost like a disservice to all we’ve done so well. It’s hard for me to engage. I
want to, and I’m ready to go there and try to figure out or help, or I want to go help with archives. But I
don’t have the energy to do that. My life is contracting because of my health. I’m having to do a very
rigid health routine at this point, so that’s always a conflict for me because I care.
I’m living an incredible life. I’ve been going through my music collection and discovering, and
going to concerts as I can. There’s the richness of education just surrounding me here. Anyway, I care a
lot. An important part of my life.
Beck: In the end, we all do what we can. Right?
Matheny-White: Mm-hm.
Beck: And you’ve done a lot.
Matheny-White: Yes. I appreciate this opportunity. I can’t turn my mind off in remembering, but I’m a
typical librarian here with all these publications. [laughing]
Beck: Yeah, you’ve got stacks and stacks of various publications.
Matheny-White: But it triggers things that are important. It was an incredible time and continues to be
a great connection.
Beck: Yes. I want to thank you once again for being willing to be interviewed and to share the stories
that you’ve told about your time at Evergreen and your time elsewhere. It’s been just incredibly
enriching for me personally to hear so much about Evergreen’s history and about the work that you’ve
done. It’s going to affect my teaching and the way I continue to work at Evergreen, so I’m personally
very thankful.
Matheny-White: Good.
Beck: And I also trust that this interview will be a useful record for other people in the future. Thank
you.
Matheny-White: Good. Well, I appreciate being appreciated [laughing] because there hasn’t been a lot
of connection. It’s a story to be told.

32

Beck: Yes. Thanks once again.
Matheny-White: Yes, thank you very much, Stephen.

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Item sets

The Evergreen State College Faculty and Staff Oral History Project

Media

Matheny-WhitePat_20180828_Transcript pt1.pdf

Matheny-WhitePat_20180910_Transcript pt2.pdf