Dee Van Brunt Oral History Interview

Item

Identifier: VanBruntDee
Title: Dee Van Brunt Oral History Interview
Date: 15 October 2017; 18 January 2019; 25 January 2019
Creator: Dee Van Brunt
Contributor: Nancy Allen
extracted text: Dee Van Brunt
Interviewed by Nancy Allen
The Evergreen State College oral history project
January 18, 2019
FINAL
Allen: Dee.
Van Brunt: Yes, Nancy.
Allen: The last time we were talking about Evergreen, you were telling me how it was when you first
arrived at the college, and what your general reactions were. I recall that they were positive, but if you
have anything else you want to say about them, please do that. But I wanted you to refresh my memory
about exactly when you came. I remember that you had at least two different jobs, but I don’t
remember what they all were. Will you tell me exactly when you came, and how long you stayed, and
what your jobs were?
Van Brunt: I came in November of 1975. I was hired as the student payroll person. I sort of liked the
job. I enjoyed it, and I was there for, I don’t know, four or five months. I had never worked in an
institutional setting before. All my prior employment had been as office manager. I also was a pediatric
allergist assistant. I was sort of my own boss all those years, and I wasn’t used to the different levels of
supervision.
So one day, I wrote a memo to the students and temporary employees at Evergreen about the
processing of their payroll cards. It came to the attention of my supervisor, Sheila’s supervisor, who was
Rose Elway. I was called into her office and reprimanded for putting out a memo without having it
passed through my immediate boss and my secondary supervisor.
Allen: Good lord!
Van Brunt: That’s how I started at Evergreen. I had to learn how to play the institutional game. I was
there about six months and I got a phone call from the Budget Dean, the Instruction Dean, up on the
second floor who was an academic employee. There were two different kinds of employees at
Evergreen, academic and business.
That person was Willie Parson, who was just a lovely, delightful, charming, interesting fellow. He
interviewed me to fill a position who had been held by Helen Hannigan. Something went there, and she
was demoted down to the Business Office. I never knew the whole story. I don’t think I wanted to know
the whole story. I felt sort of strange taking the position of somebody who had been in it for many, many
1

years, ever since the college started.
Willie hired me as the budget person, his budget assistant. I was in charge of the payroll for
faculty and academic student employees. Willie came by often. We were just two doors apart. He
would just stop by and see how things were going and so forth, sit down, and he usually pulled up a chair
next to me. We visited just a very few minutes, and we had meetings once a week, but these were just
informal.
One day he came into my office and he sat down across the desk from me. I thought that was
strange, but I didn’t say anything. We chatted for a bit, and he didn’t seem unhappy with me, there was
nothing, nothing that I recall that was upsetting or whatever, but I thought that was strange. So I asked
him why he sat over there instead of next to me. I thought maybe I smelled bad or something. He told
me he just wanted me to recognize that when he came in—it was a test—and sat on the desk opposite
me on the opposite side that he had something serious to discuss. If he sat next to me, it was just a
congenial visit. That was the first lesson I learned from Willie Parson. And to this day—which is 42 years
later—I still miss that man. I learned a lot from him over the years. He was a special fellow.
Allen: But what specifically did it mean to sit on the other side of the table? I understand it meant it
was serious, but why?
Van Brunt: If he had to ask me why something happened, or to criticize something, or talk about
anything—a personal issue with me—then he was opposite. He never ever came and sat on the
opposite side of the desk again. We got along well, and I was able to do whatever it was he asked of me.
Allen: But I think that’s scary. I think it’s scary to be told “Well, if I come in and sit down a certain way,
I’m going to really have to talk to you seriously.”
Van Brunt: It was a little scary, but it didn’t happen and I didn’t think much of it after a while. He was an
interesting fellow. I learned a lot about him in his personal life. They’d never had children, he and his
wife, Sylvia, who was a librarian in the Tacoma City Schools. I learned that a toothpaste tube that wasn’t
rolled perfectly was very disturbing to him. I learned that they had white carpeting all throughout their
home. I just realized Willie was a very, very—I can’t find the word, Nancy, but everything needed to be
just so.
Allen: Totally neat and orderly.
Van Brunt: Yes. A year or so later, they had their nephew—his name was Danny, it’s funny I remember
that—he came and lived with them for a year. I heard lots of interesting stories about what went on at
home. He’d never had a child, and to have a teenager in the house was quite an awakening for him.
2

Eventually, he went back to teaching. I don’t think he liked administration very much. He was a
beautiful teacher. He left. He didn’t leave Evergreen, he taught biology at Evergreen. Then later, when
the Tacoma Campus was formed—
Allen: When Maxine [Mimms] started the Tacoma Campus?
Van Brunt: Maxine and Betsy [Diffendal] started the Tacoma Campus, Willie eventually went up there.
Then he also mentored junior high and high school students, and did some tutoring for them in biology.
He was a great member of that community, not only the Evergreen College community, but also the
Tacoma community.
So that’s my Willie Parson story. I’d see him from time to time, and then he just sort of
disappeared into the ethos. He retired. Went back to the South, where he and Sylvia had come from.
He died, she died.
Allen: So Willie hired you on the academic side?
Van Brunt: Yes.
Allen: One of the things I always think about Evergreen—because I was there from the very first year, so
I was there four years before you were there—it always seemed to me like faculty, especially in the very
early times—because faculty had designed the place to the extent that it was designed—they left a lot
un-designed because we were supposed to design it as we went along, kind of. So we had so little
structure that we didn’t create ourselves. I mean, we just had to decide what was going to happen.
[laughing] And it was not like an ongoing structure that we had. We just had to make it.
Van Brunt: You had to make up the structure.
Allen: And so it always seemed to me that we were really privileged, because the staff had to be part of
the State structure. We were part of the State structure, too, in the sense that we got our paychecks,
but we didn’t have to follow any State rules.
Van Brunt: Yeah. And that was interesting to me in the fact that my first job downstairs was highly
structured, and I got into a bit of trouble, as I told you earlier. When I came upstairs to work on the
academic side, it was more like you described. I worked quite independently. If I had a problem, I often
didn’t bother Willie. I would go down to the Business Office and talk to the Controller. Most of it were
accounting kinds of questions. There were good people down there who were willing to teach me,
actually. Because probably Willie, coming as a faulty into the deanship, may not have known the
accounting answers, and I just didn’t want to bug him. So I found my ways to get the help I needed when
I needed it.
3

And the deans weren’t used to a whole lot of structure because they were all faculty people,
most all of them were. They all were at that time when I come upstairs. I had never worked—except my
first job out of high school when I worked for the telephone company—I never worked in a very
structured—I had to make my own structure.
Allen: Yeah, but you also sometimes worked alone, as I remember.
Van Brunt: Yes.
Allen: When you were in the doctor’s office, for example.
Van Brunt: Yeah, it was my job to make the office go, and same thing in the pediatric office. I started as
an office manager and then learned about allergy testing and giving allergy shots and so forth. Later,
when I worked for an orthodontist, same thing. Yeah, it was strange to work in a hierarchical situation,
but I never really accepted that that’s how it was. I just sort of did it—I don’t know.
Allen: Well, maybe it wasn’t really. [laughter]
Van Brunt: But it worked fine in the deans’ area, until somebody came along as the Budget Dean. I
think it was after Barbara Smith. John Perkins. He had no budget experience at all. We had one little
issue that wasn’t with John, it was the accountants downstairs.
After Willie left, Barbara Smith was hired, new to the college. She was hired as a dean, as a
Budget Dean. I worked with her for many years. We did really well together.
Allen: Were you always in charge of the faculty budgets?
Van Brunt: I wasn’t in charge of them. The deans—
Allen: It felt to us like you were in charge of it.
Van Brunt: But I saw to it they were paid. I made up the payroll list for the faculty at the beginning of
the fall. I paid all the part-time faculty, all the adjunct faculty, and the students that worked for the
academic side of the college. I was responsible for that.
Allen: But the way that a faculty member knew about you, or at least the way I knew about you—
actually, I didn’t realize that you were the person that, if I had a complaint about my budget, like I
wanted more money or less money, I had to ask you.
Van Brunt: The program budgets.
Allen: Yeah, program budgets. That’s what I’m talking about.
Van Brunt: Yes, I also sort of administered those.
4

Allen: Yeah, you sort of administered them, I would say! [laughter]
Van Brunt: Yes
Allen: Because I remember, I didn’t have any trouble with you. But one time one of my teaching
colleagues had a problem, where you said he was overspending his budget. He was a visitor, and he was
this guy—I think he probably hasn’t retired yet, he’s still an academic on the other side of the country—
but his name was Roger Nelson Lancaster. He was gay, and he had done this amazing book on Nicaragua,
Nicaragua under the Sandinista revolution. So he was really hot. When he came to Evergreen as a
visitor, he spent too much money somehow. I don’t know how he did it. But you had to call me, because
I was the coordinator of the program—
Van Brunt: You were in a coordinated study and he was part of the group.
Allen: Yes. I hardly ever didn’t teach coordinated studies. So I had to talk to him about, what is he doing
to overspend his budget, and can he please stop it. [laughing] That’s really the one kind of control that I
ever felt. But I’m sure there must have been more reactions to people when they discovered that their
budget is controlled by somebody besides them. And there must have been some people wanting bigger
budgets or something like that.
Van Brunt: Often that happened. Most of the faculty were extremely responsible for it. And if they
needed just a little more money, there was a pot I could draw from, and have that transferred into their
budget, if it was institutional money, or if it was soft money that came from the Foundation or
something, I had a special budget that what they needed to purchase could be done through that
budget.
Most of the faculty were quite responsible. Once in a while, I would have [chuckles] a faculty
come in very angry and very disturbed because he just needed more money, and sometimes—one of
them in particular, I remember—he was really abusive toward me, the way he spoke to me and the way
he came into the office.
Allen: Would you like to give some details?
Van Brunt: Yeah. I’ll tell you it was Steve Herman, because I’m sure Steve had lots of—there must have
been many stories about Steve Herman all over the college.
Allen: Yeah.
Van Brunt: And I was used to him coming in and being demanding. He had a summer program that he
took students down to southern Oregon every summer to study birds, to band them and so forth. It was
5

a wonderful program that went on for many years. So, I was used to Steve. I was used to him for lots of
reasons, because we collected the money that the students paid for that program. Other than paying for
that program, there were lots of costs—food and setting up camp and mileage and all of that stuff. So I
did that for Steve every year.
But this particular day, he came in and he literally was screaming at me. I just stood up. I put up
with a lot from him. I don’t know that he ever apologized to me.
Allen: Wow.
Van Brunt: But that day, I guess I’d just had enough, and I stood up to me. And he was quite tall and I’m
short.
Allen: Yes, he was quite tall.
Van Brunt: I got right up in his face as best as I could and I asked him to leave my office, and he was
welcome to come back when he would be civil. And he just kept on screaming.
Allen: Ooh!
Van Brunt: He did come back within a few days, and he did apologize, and we took care of whatever his
need was. I don’t recall what it was. That was interesting. But I did sort of manage those budgets. I was
one of three people with that responsibility at Evergreen. There was Donna Whitaker, who did much
the same, except she sort of managed the business of the science area over in the Lab Buildings. And
there was a man, Al, who did similar stuff in the Library.
Eventually, many years later, we were all demoted and they hired an accountant from the
Business Office who became a supervisor of the three of us. That was sort of unpleasant because we’d
all worked rather independently, and all of a sudden some structure arose. That was much later. It was
after Barbara, and it was towards the end of John’s [Perkins] term.
Allen: So you had three different bosses. You had Willie, you had Barbara, and you had John?
Van Brunt: John Perkins. Who came after John? Oh my goodness. Oh! Well, after John, then Karen
Wynkoop was hired from the Controller’s Office to come up and be in charge of the total academic
budget—library, labs, and deans. Everything, yes.
I’d gone to Karen over the years for assistance or help or to teach me something, and so I wasn’t
unhappy about that at all. I was glad to see her up there. She was intelligent and humane and a nice
person. I couldn’t ever say anything unkind about her. But it meant that Donna and Al and I were
working under different circumstances.
6

Eventually, I left the deans’ area and moved upstairs. She worked directly under the Provost.
We went upstairs and our offices were close to the Provost Office, so I worked directly under her, and
she reported to the Provost. Those years were good years. I enjoyed those.
At a certain point in time, when I was still down in the deans’ area, I was assigned as the—I don’t
remember the term, whether they used Ombudsperson or whatever—but we opened a campus down in
Vancouver on the old Fort property down there, and I was sort of the liaison. I think I’ll call it that. I was
the liaison person between that campus and this campus. I don’t know what their administrative person
down there—there was a faculty in charge, Jin Darney, and the other faculty down there the first two
years was Phil Harding. Phil could be difficult to work with budget-wise. Jim was a dream. But they had
Ann—and I don’t remember Ann’s last name right this minute—she was hard for them to work with, so I
went down there, I don’t know, every couple months for a day or two and smoothed things out. That
was interesting work, actually. I enjoyed it.
In ’83, I don’t know if I was upstairs under Karen or if I was still downstairs—I’ve lost the sense of
time when things happened—but one year—the 1983-84 school year—It was Richard Nesbitt, who was
the manager of the Communications Building, which was a sort of performing arts and associated
disciplines—most of the faculty were over there. Richard, when he was hired, he was told he could
rotate into the faculty every so many years, so ’83 was his year. He asked that I come over there for two
quarters—while he taught in a coordinated studies program—and manage the building, you know, the
people in the building and so forth. So, I did that, and I loved that. That was wonderful.
But on Valentine’s Day in ’84, he called me from home and asked me to come over to his house.
I thought it was really strange. I was busy working and I said, “Can’t you come here?” And he said, “No, I
need you to come here. Now.” It was just a very, very strange request, but I got myself together and I
went over there. He asked me to sit down. He offered me a cup of tea, which I said, “No, thank you.” I
was very fond of Richard. He was a single parent with a little boy in the first grade, Pan.
We were sitting there talking. He had just read The White Hotel, and got up and got me a copy
of it to read. Then he came back and sat down and, I don’t know, I expressed that I was cold. It was
really cold in there. He got up to fix the thermostat and was down on the floor the next second. I got
down on the floor to see if he was okay. No response. His heart was beating. I called 9-1-1, and he had
a heart attack and died right there.
Allen: What? I never knew that. Oh my god.
Van Brunt: There I was. I don’t know what time it was. I think it must have been late morning, I don’t
7

remember that exactly. The medics came and they took Richard away.
I called Walter Niemiec, who at that time I was fairly close to, and Richard was very close to.
They were hired about the same time. Walter managed the whole Lab Building Complexes. I told him
what had happened and I said, “Somebody needs to go pick up Pan at school when school gets out.
Would you do that for me?” So, he did that, and brought Pan to the house, and the two of us told Pan.
Then we called Richard’s ex-wife and Pan’s mother. She lived in Portland, so we called her and she came
up. She was up there by 9:30, 10:00 that night.
And so, lots of personal stuff for me and the Nesbitt family went on for years. I took care of
Richard’s estate here. I closed up his house. I got to know his sister in New York. And, of course, Pan’s
mom, I’ve said, in Portland.
But the main thing was I stayed over in that building until we hired a new permanent manager. I
probably stayed there a year and a half. I can’t remember that. And I still was doing some of my budget
stuff for the student payroll, but I think my colleagues—I think Donna took on a lot and my office
assistant took on a lot. I stayed over there for quite a while. I don’t know how long it was, maybe a year
and a half.
Allen: So that is how—I’m just putting in stuff that I know from my own experience—that is how Josie
Reed figured out that you would be a good executor of her estate.
Van Brunt: Well, I was not executor of Josie’s estate.
Allen: Oh, that’s right. But you had power of attorney.
Van Brunt: Yeah, I’d had her power of attorney for healthcare for a while, because both her daughters
lived in the southern part of the United States. She didn’t have any family here. Three or four people
helped. Josie—I don’t want to go into all the personal stuff about her illness—but she went downhill fast
at a very early age. She was in her late sixties.
Her friends gathered around her to help her. We drove her to appointments, we cooked, we
came to the house and did what we could to take care of her. We did everything we could. It was
Ernestine Kimbro, Zeta, Alice Nelson, some.
Allen: Me.
Van Brunt: Nancy Allen.
Allen: You called me at 2:00 in the morning to tell me when Josie had the stroke.
Van Brunt: Okay, and myself. There was a nucleus of us that cared about her very much, and wanted to
8

do whatever we could.
Allen: Right.
Van Brunt: She had established a trust. She owned some beautiful wetlands property, and she had
inherited quite a bit from her mother, so she put everything—she was advised by an attorney to put
everything in a trust. So, after she died, her girls took over the trust, and it still exists today. They’ve
protected a lot of the property around them. They bought up some new property and so forth to keep
the integrity of the land. They’re still going on today.
Allen: Yep.
Van Brunt: Back to Evergreen. You know, I’ve lost a lot, Nancy. I don’t know whether I came back to the
deans’ area after the stint at the Communications Building.
Allen: One of my questions was how you divided up your time at Evergreen into periods. What were the
different periods? It’s clear that the different periods are about different bosses and different buildings.
Van Brunt: Yes. I was really fortunate. Most people go to work in a place, especially if they are not
faculty, they’re just the people that hold up the institution.
[Telephone rings]
Allen: Should I turn this off?
Van Brunt: Health advice. Anyway, the phone rang. I had opportunities. I had the Vancouver
opportunity. I had the Com Building opportunity. I took on—I ran—we tried to do elder hostel. I think
we did it for two or three years, and I was the person who coordinated and did the elder hostel. I got to
do that. One summer, Gail Tremblay had a wonderful grant for Native American teachers, who came to
Evergreen for six or eight weeks. She brought people in the arts and pottery and dance, authors, Native
Americans [telephone rings 00:35:40]. Excuse me, I have to answer the phone.
[End Part 1 of 3 of Dee Van Brunt on January 18, 2019]
[Begin Part 2 of 3 of Dee Van Brunt on January 18, 2019]
Van Brunt: The workshop was a wonderful thing.
Allen: Oh, Gail.
Van Brunt: It was Gail Tremblay’s workshop. It was amazingly wonderful. I had two Native American
students that helped me. We were in charge of everything to do with those people, except teaching
them—their housing, their comfort, their questions, whatever they needed. I met fascinating people. I
remember Linda Hogan most of all because I loved her writing. She was here and it was just wonderful.
9

The participants were wonderful, and one of the outings—and Gail wasn’t able to go, so my
husband, who just seemed to be anti-Evergreen from the day I went to work there, was interested in
participating in this particular outing, because we were going to visit John Hoover’s home; John Hoover,
who was a Native American wood sculptor, woodworker. Norman was interested in that, so we gathered
all the people together. We had two or three drivers, and off we went to John’s home. It was just
wonderfully amazing. His wife wasn’t there. He was able to offer us tea, and showed his shop, and
talked to us about his history in the work he did. It was a wonderful, wonderful day. Then Norm went
on another fieldtrip with us up to the Makah Reservation.
That was a great experience. The students that worked with me on that were wonderful, and
I’m still in touch with one of them today. That was nice.
Allen: Another question I had was how you had contact with students, which I now am understanding
some of. Basically, they were working with you on different projects that you worked on, or they were
interns or something.
Van Brunt: Yes. Number one, I had my own student employee. I was always in charge of the student
employee payroll for the academics for the whole time I was at Evergreen, almost 22 years. So I saw
them. They delivered their timesheets to me every month. And others in the deans’ area and upstairs—
the Provost—everybody had students who worked with them.
And then students came to me for academic money to work on individual contracts, projects
that they had as students that they had through their individual contracts.
Allen: Oh, so individual contracts had budgets, too?
Van Brunt: There was an individual contract budget. There were budgets set up for certain students
who’d gotten money from the Development Office, or special grants given by the academics and so
forth. So I had a lot of student contact, which I loved. It just made it wonderful.
Allen: Yeah, that was something that wouldn’t have happened anywhere else probably.
Van Brunt: Probably not because the academic and the business sides of the college would have been
so much more delineated. And here, it all sort of meshed, one way or another.
Allen: It makes more sense for it to mesh, I think, because there’s a lot of students that need experience
and are building skills, and the college needs a lot of work. [laughing] It doesn’t seem to make sense to
not have that happen.
Van Brunt: One experience I had one of the times I was over in the Communications Building—I was
over there two or three times for one reason or another for a short or long duration over the years—a
student came to me—I think it was during the time that I was replacing Richard—and needed somebody
10

to be the faculty, so to speak, on an individual contract. There was another name for that, a title for
somebody when they did that but I can’t remember.
Allen: Sponsor, I think.
Van Brunt: Sponsor maybe. Anyway, I did that for a young man who went to the Seattle Center. He was
up at Seattle Center. He was on one of the annual festivals that they did every year. So I went up twice
to see what he was doing, and I talked to his supervisor there. I really enjoyed that contact. I’d never
done that before. I enjoyed it thoroughly.
[End Part 2 of 3 of Dee Van Brunt on January 18, 2019]
[Begin Part 3 of 3 of Dee Van Brunt on January 18, 2019]
[Begins 00:00:31]
Allen: You just said that you wanted to talk about your famous students.
Van Brunt: I just wanted to talk about the caliber, the wonderful students that I had as my student
employees that helped me with my work over the years. My first student was Adrienne McDonald, very
bright and smart. Eventually she graduated and went on her way, and I did lose track of her over the
years. She married Sam, had a baby, and moved somewhere in South Seattle.
Over the years, I had Rachel Burke, who went on to become a Microsoft millionaire. Came back
to Olympia. She married a young man who had some form of autism, and he spent money
indiscriminately—because the money was available—and built this magnificent place for them out at
Maytown. They had two beautiful little girls. I’ve been in and out of Rachel’s life ever since the day she
went to work for me.
She quit Microsoft eventually, and a lot of money disappeared, but she still has some that she
protected. She married a very early Evergreen graduate—the first second-year graduate, who’s a
musician. They’re very happy.
She and I would get together for lunch, oh, once or twice a year. In May of ’17, she calls me and
says, “It’s time.” And I said, “It’s time for what?” “Have you forgotten that you promised me you’d go
Italy with me someday, since you love it so much and I’ve always wanted to go?” I said, “Rachel, I’m 81
years old. Going to Italy is hard.” “You promised.” So, in early October of that year—2017—Rachel, her
mother-in-law Lou, who was 76 at the time, and I who was 81 still, off we went.
I had a dream about spending a week or two living in the walled city of Lucca, which is about an
hour northwest of Florence. I had visited Lucca twice, just for a day-long adventures, and I just wanted
to go back there and become part of the village. I’d never wanted to leave.
Off we went, and we each had certain responsibilities about getting ready to go—buying the
11

tickets, making the reservations and all of that, and we each did our job well. We arrive in
Florence and spend three nights at my most favorite hotel there, the Hotel Cellai. I go there and they
say, “Oh, Mrs. Van Brunt, we’re so happy to see you again!” I’d stayed there 11 times.
We had a room for three, a wonderful room. I had to share a double bed with Lou the first night,
and then they did something that made the bed a little bigger. But we just did wonderful. We gave
Rachel, because she was putting up with the old ladies, we gave her the little cul de sac in the room.
We ended up in Lucca three days later to this gorgeous apartment in an old building right near
the wall that was full of antiques and paintings and photographs. Three bedrooms, bath, washer/dryer,
beautiful new kitchen. We each paid 400 and something bucks apiece for 12 days. We came and went.
We did not rent a car. We decided we were going to learn how to use the public transportation, and we
did beautifully. We used bus and train. We went to Cinque Terra for a couple days. We just had an
amazing, wonderful time. That was Rachel, and I still see Lou, her mother-in-law, and Rachel.
My other amazing student was Nina Carter.
Allen: Oh, yeah.
Van Brunt: And Nina Carter was just bright and wonderful. She was a California girl, like I was, and an
only child. She’d had a rather sophisticated growing up. She went to school in Switzerland and had lots
of privileges that many people don’t have. I got her for a year as my student employee. She went on to
many interesting jobs. The only time that the Olympia City Council has been at all effective, Nina was on
the City Council. Now, she is finishing up her career. She’s the chair or director of a hearings board here
in Olympia. I forget which one it is.
She married a faculty member, Tom Rainey, and it’s been a lovely, successful, good marriage. All
is well. And I still see Nina and Tom.
Allen: Nancy Taylor interviewed me. Nancy was a faculty member who was the only woman who was
hired by the planning faculty. [laughing] I mean, not for the first year of the college, but before the first
year of the college started. She was the only woman who was hired. So when we had our conversation
about the college, one of the main things we talked about was how incredibly sexist it was at the
beginning, especially sexual harassment.
Van Brunt: Oh, really?
Allen: Oh my god. [laughing] Anyway, it was about faculty having affairs with students.
Van Brunt: Yes.
Allen: And Tom, Nina’s husband, had married two former students of his in sequence. He married one,
he married another, and he married Nina.
12

Van Brunt: I did not realize his first two wives had been students.
Allen: They were both former students.
Van Brunt: I know them pretty well, and I never knew that. I think my daughter knew that, because she
tried to tell me some stuff recently and I thought, you don’t know what you’re talking about. But I guess
it was me who didn’t know! [laughing]
Allen: I don’t know what it was about, but I taught with Tom like about the third year that I was at
Evergreen and he was carrying on with one our students. He had just divorced his wife, Barbara, who
was one of his students from Buffalo. That’s what I know about that.
Van Brunt: Interesting. See, I didn’t know he had two wives. I only thought he had one wife, but his
two daughters look so different from each other and him. All of that makes sense now. I still love Tom.
[laughing]
Allen: Everybody seems to love Tom. [laughing]
Van Brunt: Actually, his last stint at the college, I don’t know if it was five years after he retired that they
were giving faculty at that time to come back and work.
Allen: They never paid any attention to it with him. They just kept hiring him.
Van Brunt: I think he went on and on. Actually, his last teaching assignment was this past spring. He
taught with Marla Elliott, and they did one of the Russian plays that went on for two or three hours, and
it was beautifully done. Actually, the last presentation in the Comm Building’s Experimental Theater—
which now has been closed down for budget reasons.
Allen: The Experimental Theater is not open anymore?
Van Brunt: Not open anymore. They fired the scene shop director, they fired the costume designer, and
one other employee.
Allen: Too bad.
Van Brunt: Not the same place, Nancy.
Allen: I’m going to talk to you about that sometime, but we don’t have to do it now.
Van Brunt: Our lovely old institution is something else today.
Allen: What do you mean when you say that?
Van Brunt: Number one, there are very few coordinated study programs anymore. Secondly, the things
that drew students to Evergreen, especially in the performing arts, doesn’t now exist anymore. The
sense of community doesn’t seem to be there at all anymore, according to employees whom I’ve known
for many, many years who are still there. It’s just a very different college. Very different. It makes me
sad. It makes me sad, because I really, for the 22 years until that last few months, I thought I was the
13

most fortunate person in the whole world with the job that I had there. The jobs, the positions I had
there.
Allen: That’s great.
Van Brunt: I wanted my granddaughter to go there. She was interested in marine biology, and by the
time she decided she really wanted to do that rather than some of the things she tried first, it just wasn’t
the right place to be anymore. That made me especially sad.
Allen: Wow.
Van Brunt: Now what?
Allen: Maybe we should stop on that note. [laughing]
Van Brunt: All right, let’s stop.
[End Part 3 of 3 of Dee Van Brunt on January 18, 2019]

14

Dee Van Brunt
Interviewed by Nancy Allen
The Evergreen State College oral history project
October 15, 2017
FINAL

VanBrunt: Where are we?
Allen: You had moved to Olympia and you are not yet at Evergreen.
Van Brunt: No. We moved in a very stormy night in late November to Olympia. I mean, the van came
the next morning. Anyway, we rented a home across the street from where I live now. Got the kids in
school and so forth. Got settled in. Norman got settled in to his new office and I started looking for a
job, because I didn't like being on unemployment. I didn't think that was a good place to be.
I interviewed at Something Office Machines in downtown, just east of downtown. I
interviewed at two orthodontic practices. I interviewed at a physician's office. Every single interview I
had, either after the interview or prior to getting an interview, I was told, "Oh, we have a younger
group at our practice here. I just don't think it will work."
Allen: How old were you?
Van Brunt: I was 38 years old. I was just devastated, and I didn't have the good sense. At that time, we
weren't very aware of this kind of bias. I was just undone by it, so I just sort of stopped looking for a
job for a while. Because I just came home in tears. Norm says, "You don't have to work. I can support
the family." I said, "But I like to work." [chuckles]
I remember seeing an ad in the newspaper about a job Children's Orthopedic Tea. They were
forming new bridge guilds. I didn't want to go to the tea, I didn't know anybody or anything, so I
called the woman after the tea the next day, whose name was in the paper and phone number, and
told her I really liked to play, that I hadn't been able to go to the tea. She says, "I've got several calls
like that. I'm going to pull together a group of women who called, and as soon as I've done so, I'll call
you and tell you where you guys can meet."
We met at Carol Hunt's house a month or so later. There were 11 of us, and they were all
older. I was the youngest woman there. They were all older. We decided to form a new guild that
played in the daytime. I started playing. We had a wonderful time. I made the dearest friend of my life,
Dorothy Rogers. We were very close till the day she died. Later, the daytime group continued as a

1

daytime group, but an offshoot of it was a couples' dinner evening group. We'd take turns
hosting and so forth. That was great. I had a social life.
Then that year, I remember going—they were having women's—what did they call them? I
want to say awareness groups.
Allen: Consciousness raising.
Van Brunt: Consciousness-raising group. Actually, when Norman and I lived in Bellevue, we struggled
so. We struggled through our whole marriage, but in the early days of our marriage, we joined a couple
of those groups in Bellevue. Met some neat people from Seattle. That's a long time ago now.
So, we tried that stuff, and then I went to this one. It was a woman in Ken Lake that was
hosting us. There were only one or two, and so that just sort of fizzled, or else I fizzled. I don't recall.
But I realized that what I had been through in looking for a job wasn't the way it was supposed to be.
Allen: Yeah, that's good.
Van Brunt: I don't know how I applied for the Evergreen job. I don't know if I was doing ads in the
paper. I went back to job searching again. I had interviews in probably September Of '75, and Rose
Elway, who ran the Business Office—no, Alan Spence ran the Business Office. I was hired in student
and temporary payroll. Sheila Gray was the boss at that time.
It was okay. I learned the job really quickly. Met a lot of students, a lot of staff, especially parttime staff. But I met anybody who came to the counter. I met a lot of people. That's where I first met
Ellie Dornan, who was covered from head to toe with turquoise, and was crazy as a loon.
I worked down there, and I started putting out my own memos about payroll time and
different things, and I got my hands slapped a couple times for not passing the memo through—I'd
never worked in a hierarchical situation, and I didn't know how to work in that kind of—I've always
been independent, and my jobs, I was lucky. Once I was trained or learned the job, that was that. So I
had a little trouble with that, and those were the only—I found an old evaluation and that's what I got
my hands slapped for, being "impetuous."
Then the job opened in the Academic Deans area as the Budget Coordinator. There was a
woman in the job by the name of Helen Hannigan. Apparently something went wrong, and she was
demoted down to the Business Office. I really never knew what happened. I felt bad that
somebody was still there and had been taken from the job. I didn't find out about that until after I
had the job.

1

But Willie Parson hired me, and I fell in love with Willie Parson. He was a wonderful boss, he
was a good trainer, he was honest. He taught me something I've never forgotten. "If I sit next to you or
just at the corner with you, everything is fine. If I sit across the desk from you, everything's not so
fine." In other words, if you marched into my office and he sat down there from me, across the desk, it
meant he had a little problem with me.
Allen: What's confusing to me is where this is coming from.
Van Brunt: I don't know. He just told me.
Allen: No, he says he thinks that he sits far away from you if he has a problem.
Van Brunt: If he sits across the desk from me, on the other side .
Allen: that means he has a problem.
Van Brunt:

. he might have a little problem with me he wants to discuss.

Allen: I see.
Van Brunt: If he sits here or here—and he was good at touching. I mean, we just clicked. We just
clicked. I just loved that man. He was a hypochondriac later, I found out, but it didn't affect me or how
I worked with him. It was his white rugs at home and his toothpaste lid, all this stuff. I loved working
for Willie. Then, he was done, and I think they hired Barbara [Leigh Smith]. I think Barbara was the
next hire in that position, Barbara Smith.
Allen; Because Willie was a faculty member.
Van Brunt: But he became the Academic Dean for Budget.
Allen: Right. So he rotated into the deanship.
Van Brunt: He rotated into the deanship for four years, and he was in that deanship when I was hired.
He was my boss for quite a while. Then was his turn to go back to teaching, and Barbara Smith was
hired. I was actually on that hiring committee, and I do not remember who else we interviewed for
that position. I don't remember a thing about that hiring committee. Because I got on a lot of hiring
committees- That's what you did at Evergreen.
Allen: Okay, I don't want to go too much further along in time about your job yet.
Van Brunt: Well, my job had to be learned.
Allen: What I want to talk about was what the college was like in 1975, when you first came.
Van Brunt: I was brand-new. I didn't know the college. I didn't know about the college. I didn't know

1

its beginnings. That came over time. And again, I mentioned my first job was in a position where I had
to report to this person who reported to this person. I'd report to the other woman in the office, then
to Rose Elway, then to the head of the Business Office. That, for me, was a struggle, because I had
never worked dependently. Never.
Allen: So it wasn't like the rest of the college in that it extremely hierarchical.
Van Brunt: Very hierarchical. Extremely. It was difficult, but there were nice people that worked down
there. Got to know Lorri Moore, who eventually we picked for my job, and has probably done a hell of
a lot better than I ever did. She's been wonderful.
I went along. I did fine. Then I moved upstairs and I started to learn so much more about the
college, and the way the classes were taught. At the time, I felt like I was in this warm, loving, huggy
community. The faculty treated you like any other person, the rest of the staff treated you like any
other person. Yes, you had a boss, but you did what the person asked, and you collaborated with
them. It was great. No matter who they were—Charlie Teske would come down and talk to me. It was
a wonderful place.
It was a caring, caring community, except for a few faculty. There were a few faculty, like Sid
White and a few others. Richard Alexander at the time. I came to really like Richard Alexander, but it
took me a while.
Allen: Yes.
Van Brunt: I mean, there were a few of the arrogant ones. Mark Levinsky was difficult, but then you
learn about them. I just felt very at home. I loved where I was.
Allen: Okay. I don't know if you remember this, but I think this is the whole reason I wanted to
interview you, I guess, is that one year—I mean, you were so good to faculty about their budgets.
That's what I'm saying. And you knew how to work the State system, and how to break the rules
occasionally so that people would be helped.
In my specific case, what happened was I was running the Spanish program, and we were going
to go to Spain in spring quarter. But l, on my own dime, went to Spain to find out where we were going
to go. Were we going to go to a school? Were we going to go to a town and live with families? What
were we going to do? I went there over Thanksgiving vacation and the first week back. I went to Spain
and I paid for it all myself—all my lodgings, all my travel, everything. Then, the summer after this year
that I spent spring quarter in Spain with the students, again with no per diem or anything.
Van Brunt: Oh, really?

1

Allen: Yeah, we had no per diem in the beginning. I came back, and in the middle of that summer, I
was broke. Surprise! I'd paid for all this travel for myself. So I called you up [chuckles] because I
thought you would know. What I thought was maybe the college can hire me to do some summer
work. Maybe they need a report written or they need me to do something. Because I need money to
get through the rest of the summer. Because, you know, we got paid for 10 months.
Van Brunt: You were spread over 10 months, and also the only way you get it is to teach, and you
probably didn't have an assignment for the summer.
Allen: Right. No, I didn't want to. I didn't teach very much summer school at all. There were other
people who did, but I didn't. Anyway, so I call you up to find out, is there some way I can make some
emergency money? And I told you the story of how I had gone there in November on my own and all
that. You said, "Well, let me see what I can do about that." Then you just basically got me a check for
the travel expenses that I had paid. [laughter] Somehow, a check.
Van Brunt: We had faculty development money, and maybe you didn't know it at the time, or didn't
know you could apply for it. Who knows? But I knew where the money was. [laughing]
Allen: I know you did. So you got me some of that money. And I thought [laughing] it wasn't very much
money, it was a couple of thousand dollars or something, but it was exactly what I needed to get me
through the rest of the summer. It was great! I just wanted you to know that this was so great to have
somebody like this around.
I think a lot of other people felt the same way about you, and I've heard from so many people
"Oh, yes, she knew how to break the rules when it was necessary." [laughing]
Van Brunt: I probably didn't really break the rules, I just knew where the money was!
Allen: You knew what they were and you knew where it was.
Van Brunt: Well, I'm glad I helped you that summer, Nancy. [laughing]
Allen: Yes, you did. You certainly did. It sounds like you didn't experience the crazier parts of
Evergreen.
Van Brunt: No, I think the crazier parts happened in those very early years, and by the time I was there
and then my first, second, third hiring committees and all were pretty smooth. Much later, I could have
killed Walter Niemeic a couple times, but that was later on—about how he'd get tired of interviewing
and pick the best one, which is often the worst one. I love Walter as a friend, very much. Lorri worked
for Walter all these years because Karen Wynkoop had gone.

1

Allen: What do you know? I think it's one.
Van Brunt: Very good.
Allen: I'm so happy it's on.
Van Brunt: I am glad it's on, Nancy.
Allen: Me, too! Okay, Dee. When did you come back to the United States from Afghanistan?
Van Brunt: We came back to the United States late in the summer of '68. We had sold our home
while we were overseas. We'd sold our home in Auburn, and they told us all my treasures, my
childhood and young woman treasures that had been stored in the garage, they were gone, and they
hadn't been restored like the real estate person was supposed to do for us. All that was lost. All my
childhood books. Everything lost.
We came home, but before we came home, we had another offer to do a similar kind of thing,
another Columbia teachers thing, and it was in . . . near Bermuda, one of the islands.
Allen: Curacao?
Van Brunt: No. I can't say it. But Jim [who is Jim?] decided he wanted to go back and get his doctorate.
He applied at Manhattan, Kansas—there's a university there—and WSU. He decided to go to WSU. I
came home and stayed with my sister for a couple days in [Novato? 00:02:12], and I went to the
moving company to get my stuff moved up here. We'd rented—unseen—a downstairs duplex near the
college. I bought a new car in San Francisco, and loaded it up with the kids and all the stuff, except that
we had with us, and we moved to Pullman.
From San Francisco, we drove to Walla Walla and spent the night in Walla Walla, and then
went on to Pullman the next morning to this new basement-level duplex. It was a daylight basement,
but it was pretty small. It had a little tiny living room, a kitchen/eating area, two bedrooms and a
bathroom.
And there, we were supposed to live for a couple years.
Allen: Wow.
Van Brunt: I guess then he shortly arrived, and school started. It was close to September. He started in
his paid T.A., so that helped pay for tuition, part of it anyway.
I went to work as a teacher's assistant in the kids' elementary school. We got to know our
neighbors next door, [Dionne and John Dills? 00:04:07], who knew Rudy and Gail [Martin]. Gail doesn't
remember, but he was infatuated with Gail, but he was married to his wife, who was a very rich
woman through heredity and so forth.

1

Somehow, my philandering husband philandered with his wife. On Christmas Eve of 1968, Jim
tells me he's leaving me, he's divorcing me, and he's moving in with Dionne next door.
Allen: Oh, god!
Van Brunt: And he has gone to Moscow, Idaho, filed for residency. He didn't really file, he got a post
office box in Moscow. It's just over the line there. That was that. Allen: I don't understand what
being a resident of Idaho has to do with— Van Brunt: Because you can get a three-week or six-week
divorce.
Allen: Oh, faster divorce in Idaho.
Van Brunt: Yeah.
Allen: Oh my goodness.
Van Brunt: so I've rolled with the punches over the years. I think I had one tearful discussion with him,
and then I thought I remembered something. His mother met my mother in Carmel on Jim's and my
wedding day. His mother told my mother, as all the girls were getting ready—we got married in Carmel
—that I was really getting the rough end of the stick. She did not hold much regard for her son. My
mother didn't tell me that till many years later, when she says, "l could have told you so." [laughter] So
I thought about that. I remembered that. And also, she had been up that fall to visit us. She lived in
Long Beach. I loved his mother. She was a wonderful woman, I just loved her. I liked her more than my
mother. But she had come to visit and that was nice. So that Christmas Eve, it was not a very happy
Christmas.
Allen: Yeah, I can imagine.
Van Brunt: I had these two little kids, so I stayed. As soon as the bad weather—you know, there's
winter over there, and there's ice and snow—so I couldn't drive over. But my dad had started in Seattle
and so forth, and I thought, well, I wasn't going to go home crying for help—I was too proud—so I took
the kids one weekend. We stayed in that motel on the corner of 45th and 1-5. I went to the school
district, I guess, on the Monday morning, and asked about schools and so forth. I don't know how—oh,
Dad had cousins there and I visited them, and they said—their kids had already grown and gone
through the Seattle Public Schools, and things weren't too good in the schools right then—they said,
"You know,
Bellevue has a wonderful school district. Why don't you settle in Bellevue?" Well, I didn't know
Bellevue from anywhere, but we went over the next day to Bellevue. I just found an apartment, rented

1

it, put the deposit down- I took the kids. We went back to Pullman. We packed up. Did I wait till the
end of the school year? I think I decided to move in June, when they were out of school. I didn't think
it was good to move them real late in the school year. That's too hard on them.
So, I moved over in June. We had saved quite a bit of money. I'd bought and paid for the
new Ford wagon, and I kept everything except his very personal possessions. He wanted to marry
Dionne because she was a rich woman. By the way, he thought I was a rich woman when he married
me, because my uncles paid for my wedding. My family didn't pay for my wedding, my uncles did,
and he thought my family had money.
Allen: Oh my god!
Van Brunt: All this stuff in retrospect. So he had his money again—he never had it with me—he had his
rich woman that he was going to marry. I moved over to Bellevue. The first thing I did after we just got
settled, and then the kids found playmates and stuff, and we had neighbors in the apartments. They
were really nice. They were at Crossroads, 156

1

th

and NE 8th. It's east of downtown Bellevue. We rented an apartment. There was a swimming pool

right across the street. The kids found playmates. All was well. Then I started looking for a job. Other
mamas would watch them and stuff. And next door, just right behind the apartment complex on 156th,
was a little group of physicians' offices, and there was a pediatrician, and next door was another
pediatrician that specialized in allergies. I went into the first pediatrician's office. No, they'd had their
staff for many, many years. They didn't need it. I went into the next one and he says, "Well, as a matter
of fact, I'm just setting up my practice. I need an office manager." So he hired me on the spot. I don't
think I filled in forms. I don't remember what I did. They were from the Tri-Cities area, and he was just
setting up this pediatric allergy clinic. I went to work for him, and I knew how to office manage, you
know, I'd run the credit union for several years and I knew how to do all that. I learned how to order
stuff, you know, I learned the business. And I loved it because it was mostly all children. Some of them
were terrible asthmatics and had awful allergies and so forth. So after a while, the office work wasn't
all that much and it didn't keep me very busy, so he trained me to do allergy testing and allergy shots
for children who came in for shots, so I had a dual job. So then, I was there . . . '69 . . I think we were
only there for a year and a half and he says, "Dee, I'm going back to Tri-Cities." I'd been to his home a
couple times for dinner and stuff, and his wife hated Bellevue. She was lonely for her family. They didn't
have any kids yet, and her father had a huge medical clinic in the Tri-Cities, in Richland, and he invited
Kenly to come and join him and be a partner. His wife didn't want to be in Bellevue, so I lost my job. He
invited me to come, but I didn't know TriCities. Then I had to start looking for a job again. I found one
with an ophthalmologist practice. A German woman, from Germany was running the front office and
doing the interviewing and all that. She showed me once how to use this machine to read the patient's
present glasses or contacts. I could not get it with her hovering over me. I just couldn't get it. I got very
nervous, so I did not get that job. I looked a little further, and I think there was an ad in the paper and it
was for an orthodontist office manager. Well, orthodontists, too, are mostly kids, so I got that job.
Same thing exactly. Office management, payments, do the bills, do the ordering for all the supplies and
so forth. Then he taught me how to make the models, the plaster of Paris models, and retainers and so
forth. And then I learned how to chairside, be a chairside assistant—help put on the braces, take them
off, clean it all up after they'd cemented. In those days, it was pretty messy stuff.
In the meantime, Robert had made a friend of a young man that had a big brother from
Seattle Big Brothers, and it was Norman. After a few months, Mike was a little older, he was 11 or 12,
and he told his mother he didn't want a Big Brother anymore, and my mind was spinning. I thought,
this was really weird, but Michael was of an age where he probably got tired of having somebody take
him bowling and this and that. It's hard to—so Robert wanted Norm to be his Big Brother. Robert

1

would go with them and do things.
I called Seattle Big Brothers and I made an appointment. I went over
there and interviewed them, and found that they did really pretty deep screening, talked to the
parents. They were pretty careful. They were very careful. They said, "Would you like it if we did
another search on Norman?"

said, "Yeah, I really would. I'd feel better. It's been a couple

years." Maybe it had been many years. I don't know. So, Norman became Robert's Big Brother. Two or
three times a month—it was usually once a week. He would pick up Rob and they'd go fishing or
they'd go do this or that. He did things with him. Took him camping one time.
Somehow, somewhere in that time, after that happened, I decided the apartment complex
wasn't a good place for the kids. There too many people coming and going, and the kids didn't have
much supervision, including mine. So we moved into a little house in Lake Hills, which is just south of
where we were, a mile. There was a swimming club there, and a wonderful school. Rob had the most
amazing schoolteacher. Katy was in junior high at the time, I think, so she went to the same junior
high.
All was well, and Rob and Norm continued their relationship or whatever it was.
Allen: You're not having any sense that you're going to end up married to Norman?
Van Brunt: Oh, no. No, no. He was sort of odd. He'd never been married. He was 46 years old. He
dressed terrible. It was sort of like Mike Beug's old pants, you know? I mean, it was terrible stuff. He
had terrible taste. He'd taken Rob over to his place, but he never invited me. And this wasn't between
him and me, this was he and Robert.
That went on for a while. Not much time has passed. It got to be the summer of '71, and the
children went back to their dad's in Pennsylvania. When he got his doctorate, he and his wife—who was
then his wife—moved to Clarion, Pennsylvania, to a state college there. He became an English professor
and she became a librarian. That's where they spent their whole careers, or from '69 on.
That summer, the kids went back to their dad's for a month, I guess, they went for. And
Norman called me one day and said he missed the kids. Would I like to go out for a drink? I said, "Sure.'
We went to some bar in Bellevue, I don't know, I can't remember where it was. He excused himself—I
guess he had to go to the bathroom—from the table, and the man and woman from the next table
started talking to me, and I responded. I was waiting, you know. He came back and he looked at me
and he said, "Let's go." He was jealous. I found out later that it appalled him that I would talk to
somebody else when I was out with him for a drink. I mean, this man was off the wall.
I apologized and said, "I'm sorry. I'm awful outgoing. If somebody speaks to me, I talk back."

1

He took me home and that was that. About a week went by and he said to me, "Let's try
again. How would you like to take the ferry and go up to San Juan Island?" I thought, well, I'd never
been up in the
San Juans yet. I used to take the kids to Mukilteo to Useless Bay. We found that beach and we loved it.
So, off we go to San Juan Island. Had a very nice day. We found a beautiful, quiet beach and
had sunset there. Very pleasant. We missed our ferry home. Hãd to come home the next day. Then, I
don't know, I think he came over once or twice and we just visited and had a drink. Then the kids came
home and all sort of reverted back. Then, in October, he asked me if I'd like to marry him.
Allen: Wow!
Van Brunt: He worked for the State of Washington Department of Highways as a land appraiser, but he
though all that.
also purchased and sold land for highways development. At the time I knew him, in the beginning, he
was buying up all the homes on Mount Baker for Interstate-90. It broke his heart. He had to take
people's homes from them, and he suffered terribly Van Brunt: He worked for the State of Washington
Department of Highways as a land appraiser, but he though all that.

1

Dee Van Brunt
Interviewed by Nancy Allen
The Evergreen State College oral history project
January 18, 2019
FINAL
Allen: Dee.
Van Brunt: Yes, Nancy.
Allen: The last time we were talking about Evergreen, you were telling me how it was when you first
arrived at the college, and what your general reactions were. I recall that they were positive, but if you
have anything else you want to say about them, please do that. But I wanted you to refresh my memory
about exactly when you came. I remember that you had at least two different jobs, but I don’t
remember what they all were. Will you tell me exactly when you came, and how long you stayed, and
what your jobs were?
Van Brunt: I came in November of 1975. I was hired as the student payroll person. I sort of liked the
job. I enjoyed it, and I was there for, I don’t know, four or five months. I had never worked in an
institutional setting before. All my prior employment had been as office manager. I also was a pediatric
allergist assistant. I was sort of my own boss all those years, and I wasn’t used to the different levels of
supervision.
So one day, I wrote a memo to the students and temporary employees at Evergreen about the
processing of their payroll cards. It came to the attention of my supervisor, Sheila’s supervisor, who was
Rose Elway. I was called into her office and reprimanded for putting out a memo without having it
passed through my immediate boss and my secondary supervisor.
Allen: Good lord!
Van Brunt: That’s how I started at Evergreen. I had to learn how to play the institutional game. I was
there about six months and I got a phone call from the Budget Dean, the Instruction Dean, up on the
second floor who was an academic employee. There were two different kinds of employees at
Evergreen, academic and business.
That person was Willie Parson, who was just a lovely, delightful, charming, interesting fellow. He
interviewed me to fill a position who had been held by Helen Hannigan. Something went there, and she
was demoted down to the Business Office. I never knew the whole story. I don’t think I wanted to know
the whole story. I felt sort of strange taking the position of somebody who had been in it for many, many
14

years, ever since the college started.
Willie hired me as the budget person, his budget assistant. I was in charge of the payroll for
faculty and academic student employees. Willie came by often. We were just two doors apart. He
would just stop by and see how things were going and so forth, sit down, and he usually pulled up a chair
next to me. We visited just a very few minutes, and we had meetings once a week, but these were just
informal.
One day he came into my office and he sat down across the desk from me. I thought that was
strange, but I didn’t say anything. We chatted for a bit, and he didn’t seem unhappy with me, there was
nothing, nothing that I recall that was upsetting or whatever, but I thought that was strange. So I asked
him why he sat over there instead of next to me. I thought maybe I smelled bad or something. He told
me he just wanted me to recognize that when he came in—it was a test—and sat on the desk opposite
me on the opposite side that he had something serious to discuss. If he sat next to me, it was just a
congenial visit. That was the first lesson I learned from Willie Parson. And to this day—which is 42 years
later—I still miss that man. I learned a lot from him over the years. He was a special fellow.
Allen: But what specifically did it mean to sit on the other side of the table? I understand it meant it
was serious, but why?
Van Brunt: If he had to ask me why something happened, or to criticize something, or talk about
anything—a personal issue with me—then he was opposite. He never ever came and sat on the
opposite side of the desk again. We got along well, and I was able to do whatever it was he asked of me.
Allen: But I think that’s scary. I think it’s scary to be told “Well, if I come in and sit down a certain way,
I’m going to really have to talk to you seriously.”
Van Brunt: It was a little scary, but it didn’t happen and I didn’t think much of it after a while. He was an
interesting fellow. I learned a lot about him in his personal life. They’d never had children, he and his
wife, Sylvia, who was a librarian in the Tacoma City Schools. I learned that a toothpaste tube that wasn’t
rolled perfectly was very disturbing to him. I learned that they had white carpeting all throughout their
home. I just realized Willie was a very, very—I can’t find the word, Nancy, but everything needed to be
just so.
Allen: Totally neat and orderly.
Van Brunt: Yes. A year or so later, they had their nephew—his name was Danny, it’s funny I remember
that—he came and lived with them for a year. I heard lots of interesting stories about what went on at
home. He’d never had a child, and to have a teenager in the house was quite an awakening for him.
14

Eventually, he went back to teaching. I don’t think he liked administration very much. He was a
beautiful teacher. He left. He didn’t leave Evergreen, he taught biology at Evergreen. Then later, when
the Tacoma Campus was formed—
Allen: When Maxine [Mimms] started the Tacoma Campus?
Van Brunt: Maxine and Betsy [Diffendal] started the Tacoma Campus, Willie eventually went up there.
Then he also mentored junior high and high school students, and did some tutoring for them in biology.
He was a great member of that community, not only the Evergreen College community, but also the
Tacoma community.
So that’s my Willie Parson story. I’d see him from time to time, and then he just sort of
disappeared into the ethos. He retired. Went back to the South, where he and Sylvia had come from.
He died, she died.
Allen: So Willie hired you on the academic side?
Van Brunt: Yes.
Allen: One of the things I always think about Evergreen—because I was there from the very first year, so
I was there four years before you were there—it always seemed to me like faculty, especially in the very
early times—because faculty had designed the place to the extent that it was designed—they left a lot
un-designed because we were supposed to design it as we went along, kind of. So we had so little
structure that we didn’t create ourselves. I mean, we just had to decide what was going to happen.
[laughing] And it was not like an ongoing structure that we had. We just had to make it.
Van Brunt: You had to make up the structure.
Allen: And so it always seemed to me that we were really privileged, because the staff had to be part of
the State structure. We were part of the State structure, too, in the sense that we got our paychecks,
but we didn’t have to follow any State rules.
Van Brunt: Yeah. And that was interesting to me in the fact that my first job downstairs was highly
structured, and I got into a bit of trouble, as I told you earlier. When I came upstairs to work on the
academic side, it was more like you described. I worked quite independently. If I had a problem, I often
didn’t bother Willie. I would go down to the Business Office and talk to the Controller. Most of it were
accounting kinds of questions. There were good people down there who were willing to teach me,
actually. Because probably Willie, coming as a faulty into the deanship, may not have known the
accounting answers, and I just didn’t want to bug him. So I found my ways to get the help I needed when
I needed it.
14

And the deans weren’t used to a whole lot of structure because they were all faculty people,
most all of them were. They all were at that time when I come upstairs. I had never worked—except my
first job out of high school when I worked for the telephone company—I never worked in a very
structured—I had to make my own structure.
Allen: Yeah, but you also sometimes worked alone, as I remember.
Van Brunt: Yes.
Allen: When you were in the doctor’s office, for example.
Van Brunt: Yeah, it was my job to make the office go, and same thing in the pediatric office. I started as
an office manager and then learned about allergy testing and giving allergy shots and so forth. Later,
when I worked for an orthodontist, same thing. Yeah, it was strange to work in a hierarchical situation,
but I never really accepted that that’s how it was. I just sort of did it—I don’t know.
Allen: Well, maybe it wasn’t really. [laughter]
Van Brunt: But it worked fine in the deans’ area, until somebody came along as the Budget Dean. I
think it was after Barbara Smith. John Perkins. He had no budget experience at all. We had one little
issue that wasn’t with John, it was the accountants downstairs.
After Willie left, Barbara Smith was hired, new to the college. She was hired as a dean, as a
Budget Dean. I worked with her for many years. We did really well together.
Allen: Were you always in charge of the faculty budgets?
Van Brunt: I wasn’t in charge of them. The deans—
Allen: It felt to us like you were in charge of it.
Van Brunt: But I saw to it they were paid. I made up the payroll list for the faculty at the beginning of
the fall. I paid all the part-time faculty, all the adjunct faculty, and the students that worked for the
academic side of the college. I was responsible for that.
Allen: But the way that a faculty member knew about you, or at least the way I knew about you—
actually, I didn’t realize that you were the person that, if I had a complaint about my budget, like I
wanted more money or less money, I had to ask you.
Van Brunt: The program budgets.
Allen: Yeah, program budgets. That’s what I’m talking about.
Van Brunt: Yes, I also sort of administered those.
14

Allen: Yeah, you sort of administered them, I would say! [laughter]
Van Brunt: Yes
Allen: Because I remember, I didn’t have any trouble with you. But one time one of my teaching
colleagues had a problem, where you said he was overspending his budget. He was a visitor, and he was
this guy—I think he probably hasn’t retired yet, he’s still an academic on the other side of the country—
but his name was Roger Nelson Lancaster. He was gay, and he had done this amazing book on Nicaragua,
Nicaragua under the Sandinista revolution. So he was really hot. When he came to Evergreen as a
visitor, he spent too much money somehow. I don’t know how he did it. But you had to call me, because
I was the coordinator of the program—
Van Brunt: You were in a coordinated study and he was part of the group.
Allen: Yes. I hardly ever didn’t teach coordinated studies. So I had to talk to him about, what is he doing
to overspend his budget, and can he please stop it. [laughing] That’s really the one kind of control that I
ever felt. But I’m sure there must have been more reactions to people when they discovered that their
budget is controlled by somebody besides them. And there must have been some people wanting bigger
budgets or something like that.
Van Brunt: Often that happened. Most of the faculty were extremely responsible for it. And if they
needed just a little more money, there was a pot I could draw from, and have that transferred into their
budget, if it was institutional money, or if it was soft money that came from the Foundation or
something, I had a special budget that what they needed to purchase could be done through that
budget.
Most of the faculty were quite responsible. Once in a while, I would have [chuckles] a faculty
come in very angry and very disturbed because he just needed more money, and sometimes—one of
them in particular, I remember—he was really abusive toward me, the way he spoke to me and the way
he came into the office.
Allen: Would you like to give some details?
Van Brunt: Yeah. I’ll tell you it was Steve Herman, because I’m sure Steve had lots of—there must have
been many stories about Steve Herman all over the college.
Allen: Yeah.
Van Brunt: And I was used to him coming in and being demanding. He had a summer program that he
took students down to southern Oregon every summer to study birds, to band them and so forth. It was
14

a wonderful program that went on for many years. So, I was used to Steve. I was used to him for lots of
reasons, because we collected the money that the students paid for that program. Other than paying for
that program, there were lots of costs—food and setting up camp and mileage and all of that stuff. So I
did that for Steve every year.
But this particular day, he came in and he literally was screaming at me. I just stood up. I put up
with a lot from him. I don’t know that he ever apologized to me.
Allen: Wow.
Van Brunt: But that day, I guess I’d just had enough, and I stood up to me. And he was quite tall and I’m
short.
Allen: Yes, he was quite tall.
Van Brunt: I got right up in his face as best as I could and I asked him to leave my office, and he was
welcome to come back when he would be civil. And he just kept on screaming.
Allen: Ooh!
Van Brunt: He did come back within a few days, and he did apologize, and we took care of whatever his
need was. I don’t recall what it was. That was interesting. But I did sort of manage those budgets. I was
one of three people with that responsibility at Evergreen. There was Donna Whitaker, who did much
the same, except she sort of managed the business of the science area over in the Lab Buildings. And
there was a man, Al, who did similar stuff in the Library.
Eventually, many years later, we were all demoted and they hired an accountant from the
Business Office who became a supervisor of the three of us. That was sort of unpleasant because we’d
all worked rather independently, and all of a sudden some structure arose. That was much later. It was
after Barbara, and it was towards the end of John’s [Perkins] term.
Allen: So you had three different bosses. You had Willie, you had Barbara, and you had John?
Van Brunt: John Perkins. Who came after John? Oh my goodness. Oh! Well, after John, then Karen
Wynkoop was hired from the Controller’s Office to come up and be in charge of the total academic
budget—library, labs, and deans. Everything, yes.
I’d gone to Karen over the years for assistance or help or to teach me something, and so I wasn’t
unhappy about that at all. I was glad to see her up there. She was intelligent and humane and a nice
person. I couldn’t ever say anything unkind about her. But it meant that Donna and Al and I were
working under different circumstances.
14

Eventually, I left the deans’ area and moved upstairs. She worked directly under the Provost.
We went upstairs and our offices were close to the Provost Office, so I worked directly under her, and
she reported to the Provost. Those years were good years. I enjoyed those.
At a certain point in time, when I was still down in the deans’ area, I was assigned as the—I don’t
remember the term, whether they used Ombudsperson or whatever—but we opened a campus down in
Vancouver on the old Fort property down there, and I was sort of the liaison. I think I’ll call it that. I was
the liaison person between that campus and this campus. I don’t know what their administrative person
down there—there was a faculty in charge, Jin Darney, and the other faculty down there the first two
years was Phil Harding. Phil could be difficult to work with budget-wise. Jim was a dream. But they had
Ann—and I don’t remember Ann’s last name right this minute—she was hard for them to work with, so I
went down there, I don’t know, every couple months for a day or two and smoothed things out. That
was interesting work, actually. I enjoyed it.
In ’83, I don’t know if I was upstairs under Karen or if I was still downstairs—I’ve lost the sense of
time when things happened—but one year—the 1983-84 school year—It was Richard Nesbitt, who was
the manager of the Communications Building, which was a sort of performing arts and associated
disciplines—most of the faculty were over there. Richard, when he was hired, he was told he could
rotate into the faculty every so many years, so ’83 was his year. He asked that I come over there for two
quarters—while he taught in a coordinated studies program—and manage the building, you know, the
people in the building and so forth. So, I did that, and I loved that. That was wonderful.
But on Valentine’s Day in ’84, he called me from home and asked me to come over to his house.
I thought it was really strange. I was busy working and I said, “Can’t you come here?” And he said, “No, I
need you to come here. Now.” It was just a very, very strange request, but I got myself together and I
went over there. He asked me to sit down. He offered me a cup of tea, which I said, “No, thank you.” I
was very fond of Richard. He was a single parent with a little boy in the first grade, Pan.
We were sitting there talking. He had just read The White Hotel, and got up and got me a copy
of it to read. Then he came back and sat down and, I don’t know, I expressed that I was cold. It was
really cold in there. He got up to fix the thermostat and was down on the floor the next second. I got
down on the floor to see if he was okay. No response. His heart was beating. I called 9-1-1, and he had
a heart attack and died right there.
Allen: What? I never knew that. Oh my god.
Van Brunt: There I was. I don’t know what time it was. I think it must have been late morning, I don’t
14

remember that exactly. The medics came and they took Richard away.
I called Walter Niemiec, who at that time I was fairly close to, and Richard was very close to.
They were hired about the same time. Walter managed the whole Lab Building Complexes. I told him
what had happened and I said, “Somebody needs to go pick up Pan at school when school gets out.
Would you do that for me?” So, he did that, and brought Pan to the house, and the two of us told Pan.
Then we called Richard’s ex-wife and Pan’s mother. She lived in Portland, so we called her and she came
up. She was up there by 9:30, 10:00 that night.
And so, lots of personal stuff for me and the Nesbitt family went on for years. I took care of
Richard’s estate here. I closed up his house. I got to know his sister in New York. And, of course, Pan’s
mom, I’ve said, in Portland.
But the main thing was I stayed over in that building until we hired a new permanent manager. I
probably stayed there a year and a half. I can’t remember that. And I still was doing some of my budget
stuff for the student payroll, but I think my colleagues—I think Donna took on a lot and my office
assistant took on a lot. I stayed over there for quite a while. I don’t know how long it was, maybe a year
and a half.
Allen: So that is how—I’m just putting in stuff that I know from my own experience—that is how Josie
Reed figured out that you would be a good executor of her estate.
Van Brunt: Well, I was not executor of Josie’s estate.
Allen: Oh, that’s right. But you had power of attorney.
Van Brunt: Yeah, I’d had her power of attorney for healthcare for a while, because both her daughters
lived in the southern part of the United States. She didn’t have any family here. Three or four people
helped. Josie—I don’t want to go into all the personal stuff about her illness—but she went downhill fast
at a very early age. She was in her late sixties.
Her friends gathered around her to help her. We drove her to appointments, we cooked, we
came to the house and did what we could to take care of her. We did everything we could. It was
Ernestine Kimbro, Zeta, Alice Nelson, some.
Allen: Me.
Van Brunt: Nancy Allen.
Allen: You called me at 2:00 in the morning to tell me when Josie had the stroke.
Van Brunt: Okay, and myself. There was a nucleus of us that cared about her very much, and wanted to
14

do whatever we could.
Allen: Right.
Van Brunt: She had established a trust. She owned some beautiful wetlands property, and she had
inherited quite a bit from her mother, so she put everything—she was advised by an attorney to put
everything in a trust. So, after she died, her girls took over the trust, and it still exists today. They’ve
protected a lot of the property around them. They bought up some new property and so forth to keep
the integrity of the land. They’re still going on today.
Allen: Yep.
Van Brunt: Back to Evergreen. You know, I’ve lost a lot, Nancy. I don’t know whether I came back to the
deans’ area after the stint at the Communications Building.
Allen: One of my questions was how you divided up your time at Evergreen into periods. What were the
different periods? It’s clear that the different periods are about different bosses and different buildings.
Van Brunt: Yes. I was really fortunate. Most people go to work in a place, especially if they are not
faculty, they’re just the people that hold up the institution.
[Telephone rings]
Allen: Should I turn this off?
Van Brunt: Health advice. Anyway, the phone rang. I had opportunities. I had the Vancouver
opportunity. I had the Com Building opportunity. I took on—I ran—we tried to do elder hostel. I think
we did it for two or three years, and I was the person who coordinated and did the elder hostel. I got to
do that. One summer, Gail Tremblay had a wonderful grant for Native American teachers, who came to
Evergreen for six or eight weeks. She brought people in the arts and pottery and dance, authors, Native
Americans [telephone rings 00:35:40]. Excuse me, I have to answer the phone.
[End Part 1 of 3 of Dee Van Brunt on January 18, 2019]
[Begin Part 2 of 3 of Dee Van Brunt on January 18, 2019]
Van Brunt: The workshop was a wonderful thing.
Allen: Oh, Gail.
Van Brunt: It was Gail Tremblay’s workshop. It was amazingly wonderful. I had two Native American
students that helped me. We were in charge of everything to do with those people, except teaching
them—their housing, their comfort, their questions, whatever they needed. I met fascinating people. I
remember Linda Hogan most of all because I loved her writing. She was here and it was just wonderful.
14

The participants were wonderful, and one of the outings—and Gail wasn’t able to go, so my
husband, who just seemed to be anti-Evergreen from the day I went to work there, was interested in
participating in this particular outing, because we were going to visit John Hoover’s home; John Hoover,
who was a Native American wood sculptor, woodworker. Norman was interested in that, so we gathered
all the people together. We had two or three drivers, and off we went to John’s home. It was just
wonderfully amazing. His wife wasn’t there. He was able to offer us tea, and showed his shop, and
talked to us about his history in the work he did. It was a wonderful, wonderful day. Then Norm went
on another fieldtrip with us up to the Makah Reservation.
That was a great experience. The students that worked with me on that were wonderful, and
I’m still in touch with one of them today. That was nice.
Allen: Another question I had was how you had contact with students, which I now am understanding
some of. Basically, they were working with you on different projects that you worked on, or they were
interns or something.
Van Brunt: Yes. Number one, I had my own student employee. I was always in charge of the student
employee payroll for the academics for the whole time I was at Evergreen, almost 22 years. So I saw
them. They delivered their timesheets to me every month. And others in the deans’ area and upstairs—
the Provost—everybody had students who worked with them.
And then students came to me for academic money to work on individual contracts, projects
that they had as students that they had through their individual contracts.
Allen: Oh, so individual contracts had budgets, too?
Van Brunt: There was an individual contract budget. There were budgets set up for certain students
who’d gotten money from the Development Office, or special grants given by the academics and so
forth. So I had a lot of student contact, which I loved. It just made it wonderful.

14

Dee Van Brunt
Interviewed by Nancy Allen
The Evergreen State College oral history project
January 25, 2019
FINAL

Allen: Now we are recording. We decided that we were going to talk about Jose Gomez, because we
both really knew him well and think that he was an important person at the college. Unfortunately, he
died before this project was ever conceived, so we are just going to talk about him and tell what we
know about him.
Van Brunt: I think that’s a wonderful idea. I worked in the deans’ area, I forget for how many years. But
I was there when Jose was hired. I was not on the hiring committee, though. I’m not sure why I wasn’t.
Anyway, he arrived at the college and was given an inside office in the deans’ area. No window
to the outdoors. It was in this little office. There was no description for the job that Jose had. Nobody
knew what he was supposed to be doing. Now, maybe Patrick Hill did, but even the deans didn’t truly
know what Jose would be doing. But it slowly evolved, and we realized.
Allen: Well, he had a title.
Van Brunt: I don’t even remember his title.
Allen: Dean of International Studies, or Students? I’m not sure.
Van Brunt: Maybe it was Students.
Allen: And we didn’t have any international students. [laughing]
Van Brunt: We didn’t have very many international students, but when we did, when a student was
admitted to Evergreen, there was a lot of paperwork. A lot of stuff with the Feds and the State and so
forth to be taken care of, and Jose was to be responsible for that. Somebody probably knew what he
was supposed to be doing, but most of us were a little bewildered.
The other deans—the four deans in the area—weren’t particularly outgoing or very receptive of
Jose. In the beginning, his close friends became the rest of the staff in the deans’ area, mostly a bunch
of girls, women. We just learned to love this man. He was extremely bright, he was caring, and he was
not afraid to ask about things that he didn’t understand or didn’t know how it would work there at the
college. We all just grew to love him very much.
1

Not long after he came, maybe within six months, I was moved upstairs near the Provost’s Office,
so my contact with him right there on campus wasn’t a whole lot. But I got to know Jose better at
various social gatherings, and we invited him over here several times for dinner. He would just stop on
his way home. And in later years, he would just stop uninvited. We loved seeing him, and somehow
dinner for two always became dinner for three. It worked out just fine.
Then we, Norman and I, started taking Jose down to Michael Beug’s vineyard at harvest time
each year. There were a group of regulars that just started going down and helped harvest grapes. We
drank a lot of wine, got very filthy dirty, tired. Ate lots of good food. Everybody would bring good food
with them. Jose always rode with Norman and I. We did a lot of visiting up and back. We’d take
different routes so Jose could see more of Western Washington, Southwestern Washington. I came
across a picture the other day of Norman just standing on the shore of a lake buried in the forests south
of Morton. It reminded me of those times.
I’m trying to think. I taught him how to gut a salmon. I’m wondering, I can’t remember where
we got the salmon. But I have pictures of us out in our utility room, and he was learning how to clean
out a salmon so we could cook it for dinner. I don’t know where that salmon came from.
Allen: Do you think he actually ever did that again?
Van Brunt: I doubt it. [laughing] I doubt it. I didn’t go to Jose’s home much, but one time he was going
to host some sort of faculty gathering. I don’t remember if it was a new faculty or somebody we were
trying to woo, but I remember there was a gathering at his home and he asked me if I would come and
help him. He was impeccably neat and tidy and exacting in his home. It was always just perfect.
Allen: Yes, it was. But he also didn’t do much there, as far as I could tell. [laughing]
Van Brunt: No, he didn’t, but it was sparkling and lovely. He let me make guacamole in the kitchen. I’d
start to do it my way, and then he would show me his way, so I would adapt. [laughter] Anyway, he just
became a very treasured person in my life, and he grew to be much loved at Evergreen by a lot of
people. It took a while.
Then, when he rotated into teaching, he was an amazing—I did not take any classes from him,
but my husband took American Indian Native Law class from him and just was blown away by Jose’s
ability as a faculty member, and his knowledge of the subject, and how he worked with students.
Norman went to school way back in traditional times at the University of Washington, and Evergreen was
different to begin with. He loved that class a lot.
But Jose at work, he just became one of the girls at work. [laughter] He was funny. I remember
1

Paula Butchko, she had pretty raunchy humor.
Allen: I remember that! [laughing]
Van Brunt: And terrible today. It was probably unacceptable then, it was, but Jose would join in the fun.
I don’t know, he was just a unique, special, very caring, caring man. Then he had that battle with cancer.
He handled it amazingly well. He was so positive. And that he died was just a crazy, sad thing, because
the cancer was gone. I think he went in for some sort of repair work.
Allen: Hmm, I don’t know. What he told me was that the doctor said, “Well, it’s all gone, except there’s
this one little tiny thing that we still have to get,” or something. At the time, I thought, I bet whatever’s
left there is not life-threatening, and I bet you could just wait and watch it. I connected it with how
impeccable he was, and how he thought of it as a foreign body or something dirty.
Van Brunt: Yes.
Allen: And he just needed to get rid of it. That’s what I thought, because he did go through a decisionmaking process about it.
Van Brunt: Yeah. It was strange, just because I thought the cancer was cured. But then he aspirated.
Allen: It was like 98 percent. That’s what he told me.
Van Brunt: Whatever it was, it was supposed to be short and not dangerous.
Allen: Right.
Van Brunt: And he was going to come home happier, and cleaner, if that’s what it was to him. I would
talk to him almost every day and he wouldn’t let me come up to see him. I just couldn’t understand that,
but that was the last week or two that he wouldn’t let me come up. He had aspirated something.
Somebody had given him some food improperly or something.
Allen: That’s how he got an infection in his lungs. Then I guess he had not very good immune response
because of all the chemotherapy or something.
Van Brunt: Mm-hm. It did, it weakened his immune system tremendously. Anyway, I miss him.
Allen: Oh, I miss him very much.
Van Brunt: He was one of the special folks at Evergreen.
Allen: I think he’s the only great person I ever knew, and it’s because of all his work with Cesar Chavez
and stuff.
Van Brunt: His history was amazing. He wrote the first gay-lesbian laws when he was at Harvard Law
1

School, or after he graduated, or maybe while he was still there. I don’t quite know. He did amazing
things in his life. He worked for Chavez there in California. He was his right-hand man for several years.
Everything he did was for the betterment of human beings and our world. Anyway, we lost a very special
person.
He also loved community. We were talking the other day about community at Evergreen and
how much of a caring community it once was. Over the years, as old-timers retired, new administrators
came in, often not understanding the nature of the college and of the community that was there. Over
time, it just sort of was diminished. You didn’t see or hear of people looking after each other like they
once did. You saw more in the hallways conversation. There was a person there who had no use for
Jewish people, and she would voice it in the hallway talking up on the third floor.
Allen: Really?
Van Brunt: Not faculty. She was a staff member. But nobody corrected her or told her that was
inappropriate and stopped it, but one time we would have done that.
Allen: Yeah.
Van Brunt: This person was associated with the President’s Office and so it was really awful. And then,
just plain, old caring. We had Bonnie Ward. Bonnie was a custodian at Evergreen.
Allen: Oh, Bonnie, of course.
Van Brunt: She was developmentally disabled.
Allen: I still see Bonnie a lot.
Van Brunt: I’ve seen her once or twice when I’m on the west side, but not much lately. Of course, I’m
not out and about as much as I used to be. But Bonnie, she would do anything in the world for you.
Somehow her parents brought her up to be self-sufficient, out in the dominant community. She wasn’t
over protected. She worked at Evergreen for over 30 years.
Allen: Describe Bonnie a little bit.
Van Brunt: It’s hard to describe Bonnie. You knew obviously there was some developmental disability,
but she was friendly, she wanted to do anything to please you, to help you. To earn extra money, she
walked along the roads from the college to home every day, picked up debris, picked up cans and bottles
and so forth.
Allen: And I think she walks a little funny, or she did. She seemed a little crippled.
Van Brunt: Yes, she had sort of a shuffle, and a little jerky walk. Yeah, she did. But she managed to hold
1

down that job, and she worked hard.
Allen: Yeah, I know.
Van Brunt: I was just amazed. But the community cared about her.
Allen: Yes, everybody really loved her.
Van Brunt: They had respect for her. They treated her just like everybody else. But later years, she
suffered.
Allen: How do you know that she suffered?
Van Brunt: Jane Jervis told me after I left. I left before it totally disintegrated, because I didn’t like what
happened. I retired probably three or four years too soon, but I just didn’t want to be there anymore.
Allen: What year was that that you retired?
Van Brunt: I retired in August of ’96. Then I came back and worked a day a week the ’96-’97 school year.
Lorri Moore, the person who was going to do my job, who was hired to replace me, had a youngster who
was in his last year of preschool before kindergarten, and she wanted to be home with him a day a week,
and so I did that. It worked well for both of us. It was sort of a nice transition for me.
After that I was gone from Evergreen for a while. Then I got a phone call from Bill Bruner.
Jacinta McCoy had died of a horrible asthma attack in the process of moving from one home to another
one night. Jacinta was in the Communications Building. She was the assistant over there who worked
with the manager, and the manager of the building was fired. I don’t really know exactly why he was
fired. I wasn’t there then. But I understand he was somewhat un-adept. I don’t know what that was all
about, but Bill Bruner said, “There’s nobody there to run the building. We’re not ready to hire anybody.
A lot of healing needs to happen between faculty, and faculty and staff. I need you to come back.”
So, I came back for 18 months. I think I always had the respect of most of the faculty. There
were some newer faculty there. Walter [Grauman? 00:18:40] and Ariel Goldberger.
Allen: Goldberger or something.
Van Brunt: Anyway, there was a lot of jealousy among them because one of the faculty sort of . . . I don’t
know how to put it . . . crossed over into the other faculty’s area of teaching. There was just all sorts of
stuff going on. Staff members were not being treated properly by the new faculty.
Allen: I didn’t know that that was part of the change.
Van Brunt: Oh, a lot. People didn’t trust each other over there. It was horrible. And it was during that
time—
1

Allen: This was all theater and arts people?
Van Brunt: Theater and arts people. Mm-hm.
Allen: Because I was still teaching then.
Van Brunt: Theater and arts people and animators. We had two animation faculty, one of them was
rather new. The other animation person was a staff member who could teach. That person had been
there almost since Evergreen started was treated badly. It was just an unhealthy thing. So, I did the best
I can.
I was just an accounting person, but I went over there and I hired a student assistant, who was
very smart, willing to learn from me. She took on difficult situations. She learned to find solutions. She
took a lot of burden off of me at certain points while she was there, and in the later months that I was
there. Things did get somewhat better. People started talking to each other. They were able to sit in
meetings and treat each other respectfully. I felt like I did an all right job.
Allen: Of course you did an all right job!
Van Brunt: Well, a lot of it was out of my expertise, but I like people.
Allen: What part of it was out of your expertise?
Van Brunt: Remember, I was just a lowly staff person. These were faculty I was dealing with, and some
of them were rather arrogant.
Allen: Of course they were, but it was about running the building.
Van Brunt: And then I had Peter Randlette all the time wanting more, more, more of everything. I had
him the first month I was at Evergreen. He was a student. He was wanting something [chuckles] and he
never stopped. But he also was very supportive of me. Doranne Crable died during that time.
Allen: I kind of remember that, yeah.
Van Brunt: I loved what I was doing. It was a challenge. I cared about most of the people there. I’d
known them for many, many, many years. It was just some new people that just . . . and I don’t know
what went on with the old manager. I don’t know why he was really let go. All these things happened
during his tenure there, all this stress and behavior.
So, I went home and then I was called back one more—oh, and Bill Bruner had said to me, “I
don’t want to hear anything about that building unless it’s something you absolutely just no way possible
could deal with. I need to be free of that worry.”
Allen: Wow.
1

Van Brunt: He was a special guy. Bill Bruner was a special person. He’d been the Dean of the Library at
one time. How did he come over? Was he an acting Dean of Academics? I don’t remember why he was
the Dean of Academics.
Allen: No, I don’t either.
Van Brunt: Maybe when he rotated back into faculty, maybe then he rotated out again. I do not know.
Maybe he was subbing for some dean, or maybe it was in between deans. I do not remember because I
had been gone a long time.
Allen: I don’t remember what dean had left, but I was surprised, too, because I think he wasn’t in the
right field, or what I thought was the right field for that position, or something. I don’t know what it was.
Van Brunt: Because it was the Budget Dean, and that was the one dean that did not normally rotate out
of faculty.
Allen: That’s right.
Van Brunt: That was the one dean that was usually hired specifcally as the Budget Dean.
Allen: That makes sense.
Van Brunt: Yeah. A lot of things have faded, Nancy. It’s been a long time. It’s been . . . ’96 . . . it’s been
22 years.
Allen: You retired exactly 10 years before I retired. I wasn’t as influenced by this period that you were
talking about, I don’t think.
Van Brunt: Well, you weren’t based in the building.
Allen: I was in the humanities. I was based in a completely different area.
Van Brunt: Right. It was pretty traumatic over there.
Allen: But I think that the college lost its sense of what its innovation was. I mean, I applied to
Evergreen because it was going to be innovative, and because it was a new place that was just starting
up.
Van Brunt: Right, and it was to be interdisciplinary. That was the other wonderful new thing for colleges
in Washington.
Allen: Yes. And I remember when I came, the Planning Faculty had just recently fully decided to go with
coordinated studies. Because they had been having a big debate about I guess they knew they wanted
to be interdisciplinary, but they didn’t exactly know how to go about it. I think Merv Cadwallader was
1

the one who knew somebody who had helped develop the idea of coordinated studies, so he sold it.
Actually, I think I remember hearing him say, “Maybe I over-sold it. Maybe we shouldn’t base the entire
college around this. Maybe I’m trying to go too far with this idea, especially in a place that’s supposed to
be experimental. Maybe we should relax and be more experimental about the curriculum.”
But everybody also thought, well, if you don’t set up an alternative plan, then everybody will just
creep back into their old ways. And all the faculty came from departmentalized institutions. Nobody
except me and a very few others had done a little bit of interdisciplinary work, but nobody was really
experienced at it. So that was . . . that was just a great success.
Van Brunt: It was beautiful.
Allen: That’s the reason I loved the college, because I learned so much. I would have been just—
Van Brunt: Of other disciplines, as you were teaching in your language arts.
Allen: Yeah.
Van Brunt: This is it. Teachers became learners as well as teachers, all the way through with
interdisciplinary studies.
Allen: I know.
Van Brunt: It’s a beautiful concept. I still think it is today, but I understand that there’s less and less of it
at Evergreen today, and I’m sad about that because I think it’s a wonderful way to learn.
Allen: I think that’s one reason the college isn’t as good as it used to be, and one reason people say
there’s no spirit of community, because, in fact, we used to all work together. We used to all work very
closely together and rotate around, so there was kind of a sense of community that we built up.
Van Brunt: Just within your individual programs.
Allen: Also, when we first started, there was an enormous amount of zeal. Like we just were all fed up
with our old jobs and we wanted to establish something new, and we wanted to be creative, and we
wanted to work our asses off in this new system. And we did.
Van Brunt: And we worked hard.
Allen: And it was very, very hard.
Van Brunt: Yes. I took two years of two-quarter interdisciplinary programs, and I know how hard the
faculty worked. I know how hard we worked [laughing] the students.
One thing I wanted to say about Jose, too. Totally going back to Jose. He was one of the first
1

faculty, if not the first faculty, to use the Internet.
Allen: He was really a technoid, he was.
Van Brunt: Yeah, but I mean, for teaching. He taught sometimes in the summer, there were classes over
the computer. I’m not saying this properly. There’s a word for it. Anyway, that was very new, and it may
be that he started that at Evergreen.
Allen: I mean, I know he did it. I don’t know if he started it because he wanted the college to do more
of it or something. Maybe he just started it because that was an easy way to do summer school. I mean,
I know he started it in summer school.
Van Brunt: Yes, he did, and it was something new and innovative.
Allen: Yes, it definitely was, and Evergreen should be really set up well to do that because we had a
great Computer Sciences Department, I thought anyway.
Van Brunt: We did.
Allen: And we involved computers as much as possible.
Van Brunt: Anyway, there was the thing about the community or lack of community changing. The
college was going through a series of slow but very definite changes. I remember when I was back on
campus for that 18 months, Jane—I can’t say her last name—she’s a woman that worked in the Library
as long as I’ve known her. She was deaf.
Allen: Oh, I know who you’re talking about. I can’t remember her last name.
Van Brunt: Anyway, one day I ran into her during that 18-month time in the Communications Building
and she said how good it was to see me and everything. She says, “You know, it’s not like it was when
you were here. People don’t talk to each other anymore. They’re not kind of each other. It’s so
changed.”
Allen: That was around the middle of the ‘90s, late ‘90s.
Van Brunt: It was late ‘90s because I left in ’96 and I didn’t come back for that job, I don’t know how
many years later it was. Maybe it was right around 2000, 2001, somewhere in there. It’s just a different
place. We used to have, for no reason at all except we needed a party. Four or five or six of us would get
together and decide it was time to have an all-campus party. We’d take over the fourth floor kitchens.
Allen: Yeah, I remember that.
Van Brunt: I remember Steve Hunter and Walter and Jeannie Chandler and I, we pulled off a huge big
party one year. Well, they’re still doing that. As people died—this was a community that was
1

established in ’70-’71 and it was still going on, well, in the mid-to-late ‘90s is when we had these parties.
And then we also lost several younger staff people to cancer, who lived in the Library Building.
We once in a while had a memorial service for faculty, but now we started to have memorial services for
staff. I remember Paula, and Mary Hansen, the secretary in the Library. I remember those. I hated
speaking in front of the public. I never, ever got comfortable with it. I remember Paula had asked me
before she died if I would speak at her memorial service. And I did do that, and I was so glad that I did it,
but it was about the hardest thing I ever did at Evergreen. I never understood that about myself. I can
yack yack yack all day, but getting up in front of a large group was hard for me.
Allen: It’s hard for me, too.
Van Brunt: I don’t know what else, Nancy.
Allen: I feel like I want to say one tiny thing about Jose, which has to do with his memorial service, too. I
think Jose was really different between women and men. [sighs] I want to say something like he was
more himself with women.
Van Brunt: I think he was.
Allen: He didn’t mind—
Van Brunt: He was at ease with us. He was a gay man, and I don’t know whether that had anything to
do with it or not. But he was, he was always comfortable.
Allen: When you said he was one of the girls, that’s very much—
Van Brunt: He chimed in with us, and he never—he just seemed at home with us. And some of that
may come from he had Bonita, Jenny . . . I can’t say that . . . Aurelia . . . the sister, I can’t say her name.
He had five sisters, so he lived in a household of women growing up. That could be a piece of it. He was
just comfortable. He was very close to his mom. He liked and respected women.
Allen: Yeah. And so I thought that I knew a lot about him because he and I had been friends for a really
long time. I can’t remember exactly how long it was after he was hired, but he got a grant from, I think,
the National Endowment for the Humanities, to take a group of people, a group of faculty people—to
Chile.
Van Brunt: I remember that.
Allen: And I didn’t know about it. I didn’t know about this possible trip to Chile. I don’t think it was very
broadly broadcast among the faculty. But he knew [laughing] very clearly that he did not want Jorge
Gilbert to go on the trip to Chile.
1

Van Brunt: Yes! [laughing]
Allen: And he knew that Jorge would try to go on the trip to Chile. And Jorge, being from Chile, had no
reason to learn about Chile, and would just be doing it so he’d get a free trip down there, and then he’d
take off and do whatever he wanted.
Van Brunt: I believe that, Nancy.
Allen: So for that reason, Jose contacted me and said, “I don’t know this person, but she has to speak
Spanish because she teaches Spanish, so I’m going to see if she wants to go.” So he called me into his
office and said, “I think you should take a trip to Chile this summer.” [laughing] He even intimated a
little bit about how he didn’t want Jorge to go, even the first time we met. My mother had just died. I
couldn’t have done it if my mother hadn’t died, I think, because I couldn’t have taken that much time off.
Van Brunt: Because you were looking after her.
Allen: But I was just kind of ready for a trip, so I just went. He went, too, and he and I got to know each
other on that trip. He was such an important figure of comic relief on the trip. It was really great. But
that’s how I got to know him.
Van Brunt: I see. I didn’t realize that.
Allen: And then, when he started to teach—he rotated onto the faculty—I’m the first person he taught
with. I actually taught him a lot of stuff about teaching. [laughing] Because he was so scared to lecture.
He would just over-prepare and tear his hair and work for hours and hours and hours. Then he’d be so
full of nerves that he couldn’t do it right. It was hard.
Van Brunt: Well, he finally learned, because Norman is a highly critical person, and when he took the
class from Jose, he was blown away.
Allen: Yeah. That was Jose’s field, too, the law.
Van Brunt: Yes, I realize that, so I don’t know if it was just unfamiliar territory as far as the discipline you
were teaching in or what.
Allen: He didn’t know—
Van Brunt: And, you know, I don’t know. I always thought Evergreen was sort of wonderful because
they didn’t care what gender or whether you were gay or lesbian or bi or whatever. We all learned just
to accept each other and care about each other. We didn’t think about that much, but I wonder for Jose,
there were always many more women who were gay than me in our—
Allen: Yes, absolutely. I think he was the only gay man there for quite a long time.
1

Van Brunt: Yeah, and so that might have been hard for him. I don’t know how the male faculty
approached him, or what his relationship was. Some of the faculty, many of them could be very arrogant
and self-serving. I could even name two or three, but I’m not going to do that.
Allen: [Laughing]
Van Brunt: Because some day, somebody’s going to read this stuff.
Allen: Yes, and you get to take out whatever you want, too. [laughter]
Van Brunt: Well, Mark Levinsky. He was a wonderful teacher. Alan Nasser. Those people, they thought
they were, if there is a god, god’s gift to the world. I just wonder how he was welcomed or not by the
male faculty.
Allen: Hmm.
Van Brunt: I don’t know whether I should have said any of that, but I was concerned for him off and on
looking for friendships and so forth. But he found them. He found the people, good people, who loved
him and cared about him.
Allen: Was he good friends with John Perkins?
Van Brunt: John was in the deans’ area. He was the Budget Dean, I think maybe, when Jose was hired. I
was still downstairs and John was the last dean that I worked directly for downstairs. I think that’s when
Jose came, when John was there. I don’t know. I’d have to ask somebody. I don’t know how we’d find
that out. We’d have to get into the personnel records or something, unless there’s somebody who
would remember. Maybe someone who was dean around that time would remember that, but I’m
pretty sure it was John.
Allen: I think that Jose also had a problem getting started because of the way he was hired.
Van Brunt: Yes.
Allen: Because Patrick did something kind of irrational and completely off the wall, without consulting
anybody. He was the Provost and so all the deans—well, the faculty—were very confused.
Van Brunt: Maybe he didn’t consult with the deans or faculty enough.
Allen: No, he didn’t. He didn’t. So we didn’t know . . .
Van Brunt: . . . what his role was to be, really.
Allen: No, we didn’t know, and I think a lot of deans—I’m not sure about this actually, now that I think
about it. But sometimes brand-new deans were asked to teach on the faculty first, and then they
1

became deans after they actually saw what the place was like.

1

Item sets: The Evergreen State College Faculty and Staff Oral History Project

Media: Van BruntDee_20190118_Transcript.pdf; VanBruntDee_20171015_Transcript.pdf; VanBruntDee_20190118_Transcript.pdf; VanBruntDee_20190125_Transcript.pdf