Van BruntDee_20190118_Transcript.pdf

Media

Part of Dee Van Brunt Oral History Interview

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