Interview of Richard Mshomba, Ph.D

2016

MALLIOS (M): Before we jump into a discussion of today’s archaeology, I’d like to start with some personal background. What were the inspirations for your career? Specifically, why didn’t you join your father and brothers in Ophthalmology? LIGHTFOOT (L) (Figure 1): I can’t stand the sight of blood! [Laughs] I bet it’s like a lot of archaeologists: I got hooked when I was a kid. The key thing for me was when my family packed up our ’63 blue Travel-All, and we toured the American Southwest. We visited a number of national parks, including Mesa Verde and the Gila [Cliff Dwelling] National Monument and saw a lot of great archaeology. I knew then that this is what I wanted to do when I grew up. So I had it in my head, beginning when I was about 10 or 12 on that trip, that I wanted to go into archaeology. And I just continued to think that way. When I was in college and continued on to graduate school, my idea was to do a career in National Park Service archaeology. M: If you hadn’t becom...

Slovak Ethnology, 2019

The oral history interview is a "multi-layered communicative event". It is a unique, active event, reflective of a specific culture and of a particular time and space. Interviews, more precisely biographical interviews, are the tool I have been using for decades. The relationship between the interviewer and interviewee is, therefore, an essential question for me. I interview people to find out what happened to them, how they felt about it, how they recall it and what wider public memory they draw upon. Focused on the biographical narratives, as well as in-depth and repeated interviews, I have constantly faced ethical and moral questions in accordance with my role as a listener, and as a partner in the interview, but also as a scholar with the goal of using the interview in my scientific work. In my text, I would like to develop Hourig Attarian's inspiring ideas on self-reflexivity, which brings to light the grey zones that we encounter in our work. This is often a difficult and fragile process. It is central to the connections that I create with the interviewees in my projects. These people always affect the course of my work, but also me personally. This balancing act is an exercise. I try to understand my own limits, I try to push my own boundaries, and assess how each of these circumstances impacts my research.

1996

Anna: Today's date is August the 9, 1996, my name is Anna Gibbs, and I'm meeting with Jean to conduct an interview for the Oral History of Appalachia Project and the Community Action Program Family Interview Project. Jean you're aware that the interview is being recorded and will be used for these projects and do you give your consent for the recording and for the interview? Jean: Yes. Anna: First of all, were you born here in West Virginia? Jean: I was born right here in the west end of this city. Anna: Do you have brothers and sisters? Jean: I have one brother and one sister. I'm the oldest of the three children. Anna: You've lived here in this city all your life? Jean: All my life. I'm fifty-nine years old. Anna: Are you married? Jean: I'm a widow. My husband died when he was thirty-eight, left me with three small children. My son was five. My middle daughter was eight, and my oldest was twelve. And I had to send them through school by myself. Anna: Bet you faced some real problems with them too. Jean: Quite a few. Anna: How old were you when your husband passed away? Jean: He was thirty-eight and I was forty-one. I was four years older than him. I have two daughters who were both married and divorced. One daughter has two children, two sons, and the other one has one son. My son is still single. Right at this moment he's staying with me at the high-rise which he's not going to be able to stay there. He had joined the service but because of a problem at childbirth-he had to wear braces on his legs from the time he was thirteen months old until he was about three. Despite this he never had any problem. He was in football and played and it never gave him any problem, but later on he hurt it again but the Army s_till took him, and after he was in there, well he would have finished his Basic in February and on Anna: This was like a survivors benefits? Jean: Yes. And-we had nothing. So there was nothing coming in, because I was not eligible for anything. And until he found a job and I was able to find another job, for two months there, we had nothing coming in. And that has happened a couple of times last year-I had a very serious operation, was in the hospital seventeen days, and was off work two months, altogether it was almost three months. In that time there was no income whatsoever coming in. I had gone to the Welfare, I was not eligible for anything, except my food stamps. I said 'I have no way to buy the essentials like toilet paper, toothpaste,-the essential things.' To get to the doctor we had no car, I said 'I have to have money to take the bus or a cab,' there was no way they could help me. I had a friend who works with the Health Department, who used to work here, when she was taking her social service work, and she came and gave me some money to help me, and the church gave me a little bit. I wouldn't have been able to make it if it hadn't been for them, and the help of the Good Lord.

2013

1973

2014

SCHAMBER: Okay, we are here today interviewing Bob Benedetti who was the Dean of the College of the Pacific and the Executive Director of the Jacoby Center. The interviewer is John Schamber. It's March 26 th , 2014. We will just start with biographical information on Bob, and then will go to a list of topic areas that we want him to talk about. When did you first start working at Pacific? What the heck interested you in working here? ROBERT BENEDETTI: I began my time at Pacific in August of 1989. I was coming from Florida from New College, which was affiliated with the University of South Florida. I had decided to search for a new job, even though I loved what I was doing in Florida, because my father had died and my family was from California, from the Bay Area, I felt that it would be good if I could be closer to them, given they were without our father. So, I started to look and after I did my search, there were five schools I applied to on the West Coast that had openings for someone with my experience in academic leadership. I received two offers and decided Pacific was by far the better of the two. It interested me because I'd been teaching at what is often euphemistically referred to as an "elite school," and I wanted to teach in a school with a wider range of students to see if the same kinds of approaches, that I had worked at an 'elite school', would work at another institution. The second reason that I think that Pacific would treat me well was a friend of mine was applying for the Academic Vice President position. We really looked forward to working together. I had known Joe Subbiondo from work at AAC&U in Washington; we were on the executive board of an organization called ACAD, a dean's organization there. We enjoyed each other and we thought this assignment would be fun. SCHAMBER: If my memory serves me correct, you were either the longest serving Dean of the College or one of the longest? BENEDETTI: I matched the record. SCHAMBER: The record was? BENEDETTI: The record was 13 years and I had 13. Now, you have to remember that the College was not a longstanding institution. It was created in 1961 when the clusters opened, so that, the liberal arts departments and others that didn't have a home and were not part of professional school or clusters could be in the College. So the College as it is today did not stretch back into the nineteenth century, but, yes, Dean Whiteker and I were served the same length of time there, 13 years. SCHAMBER: After you stepped down as dean, the next position that you took was then at the Jacoby Center, correct? BENEDETTI: Right, as part of my negotiating at the time of my leaving, the Deanship was to ask if the higher administration would be interested in a new center in the honor of Jake Jacoby who had been the first Dean of the College, and that center would be focused on public service and citizenship. The provost and president were interested and we settled on a 2/5 time assignment where I would work to create a center. Instead of going back to political science full time, and I would teach three courses spend the rest of my time developing programs that would to involve students and faculty in community research and service.

2005

Levis: This is going to be in history forever, isn"t it? Schreck: Yeah (laughs). Levis: Go ahead, go ahead. Schreck: Today we will be interviewing Dr. Barry Levis. With me is Wenxian Zhang, head of Rollins Archives Special Collections and Lily Velez, a student assistant working on the project with us. So Dr. Levis-Levis: Yes. Schreck: Would you share with us some of your family history and your background growing up? Levis: Well, the first Levis came to Pennsylvania in 1690. (Laughter) Should I go back that far, or uh-(Laughs) And he was the grandson of the Duke of France, but he was a French Huguenot. He became a Protestant and so left France under the persecution of Louis XIV, and then came to America. And then, I"ve been working on my family history so I"m sort of aware of these things. Did you know there"re two Levis" buried in the Vatican? One was an archbishop and one was a cardinal. Three Levis" were executed by the French Revolutionary government. Zhang: Are they all related to you? Levis: Yeah, oh yeah. It"s not a very, you know, big family. But anyway, so. Anyway, so, I grew up in Pennsylvania and went to school in Abington (??) and then went to Penn State. And went into science, because my father said I had to either be a science major or business major or an engineering major because I had to do something practical. And so I did biology and I hated it. I started two lab fires, scorched the ceiling of the lab, and knew this was not what I was to do. I started taking history courses in my senior year and loved it. Just yeah, this is it. Why didn"t I do this a long time ago? Applied to graduate school in biology genetics, got accepted. Also applied in history, got accepted. And went into history. Over my father"s dead body practically (laughter). He was never going to speak to me again. I was going to live in poverty the rest of my life. How could I make such a stupid mistake in my life and so forth? So anyway. So that"s how I got into history. Schreck: Any experiences while at college? Other than in your-Any teachers you remember and how they helped you?

1984

Well, we didn't live at Vet Village because Vet Village wasn't built yet. If I might go back a little, I had taken a course, a creative writing course out there under Dr. Burgess Johnson while I was a patient at Beaumont Hospital, and I wasn't real sure wha t I wanted to do. I had been a newspaper reporter on the San Angelo Standard Times before I went to war, and I had really planned to go the University of Missouri and get my degree. I had two years at John Tarleton College. I took the creative writing course with Dr. Johnson and this was in the summer I think of '45, something like that, maybe fall of '45. Anyway, he was a visiting professor. I was taking him home one afternoon after class, and he pointed at the mountain and he said, "You see that mountain?" I said, "Yes." And he said, "That's a beautiful mountain." And I said, "You know, I guess you're right. I never really thought about that." And maybe that was the beginning because it was a beautiful mountain and somehow that mountain attracted not only me and my family but so many other people here, Mt. Franklin. Anyway, I was getting rather restless at the hospital because they were operating on me about every six weeks, and I had nothing to do and so I thought well, I would like to go back and take another course, a few courses, anything to transfer to Missouri. My doctor, Willard Schuessler. encouraqed it.

2005

Zhang: Today is Thursday, May 5, 2005. My name is Wenxien Zhang, head of Archives Special Collections. Today we have Dr. Jack Lane here, going to be interviewed by me in the Rollins College Oral History Archive project. My first question, Doctor Lane: I understand most of the people who live here in Florida today come from somewhere else, so could you please share with me some of your family background? Lane: Yes, I did. Like others, many many others, I come from someplace else. I was reared in a rural part of Texas about twenty miles from Austin, the capital. I was born in 1932 at the depths of the Depression. After I started teaching American History I found out how bad things really were. I didn't particularly realize it that much when I was a kid, but my family were [very poor]. We lived on a brick manufacturing company where my family worked as common laborers. The company provided all the housing. They had a company store there. I do remember a couple of times my mother saying that they had received no sal[ary]-My father'd received no salary because all of the money that he had made that month had gone into buying groceries and clothing and things from the company store. So often we had-there was just no-there was just nothing but bills in the pay envelope. My family were not educated people at all. They were literate, all of them could read or write, but I think no one in my very large extended family had gone past the eighth grade. I think my mother did go as far as the eighth grade. That was my extended family from uncles and cousins. I was the second one to graduate from high school, and no one in my family had gone to college. I was the first to go on to college, and my family didn't even know what a Ph.D. was. I mean they'd never even heard of one when I got a degree. So I came from that sort of background. There was never any discussion as to whether I would go to college or not. No one ever mentioned it to me. A history teacher in high school asked me if I thought about college and I told him,-No, for one thing my family couldn't afford to send me.‖ I got a job. I'd left this little home, this little country town, and gone to Austin to work. And when I was drafted in the Korean War, and it was-that was really a kind of launching pad for me, in a way. I got away from that world; met other people. Ended up after the war going [to college and] getting the G.I. Bill. They offered it for Korean Veterans and so that gave me an opportunity to go to college. And while I was in college I got the bright idea that I might like to be a college professor. I loved what they were doing-without really even knowing whether I could. So, [I went to school] at Oglethorpe University [for] my undergraduate [degree], and then I got my masters at Emory University, a Ph.D. at the University of Georgia. That was a time when a lot of jobs were available. I had that year, that I was getting my degree, I had six interviews for jobs. I could have probably had any one of them and very late in the year there was a notice on the bulletin board that Rollins College had an opening. And so I investigated a bit and I had gone to a small liberal arts college, that's where I wanted to go. These others were all state schools. So I came to Rollins in 1963, thinking that I would probably stay here a while because I was very much interested in getting a research university. I was writing, I was wanting to write, and ended up staying here for thirty-five years. Zhang: That's fascinating. Let's go back just a little bit. You mentioned you were in the Korean War, so you were around twenty, how old you was there? Lane: I was-Let's see, I was drafted in 1951, so that would have made me nineteen. Zhang: Nineteen? Lane: When I was drafted. Zhang: How many years did you serve? Lane: Well, I was drafted for two years, but about six months before I was gettinggoing to get out, they came around asking everyone who's time was up if they wanted to reenlist for one more year. If they did, any one who did would be exempted from reserve duty, any reserve duty, when you got out after one-after one more year. You would complete entirely. And I'd already heard information about people who had gone into reserve and gotten called back, just as they're doing right now. And I was not interested (laughs) in staying in the army or having anything to do with it anymore. I was in the paratroopers, so I made jumps. I had about fifty jumps out of planes. And I was already getting scared to death of that, so. I stayed one more year, so I stayed, actually stayed three years. I'm glad I did because the war was winding down and there wasn't too much. The last year was not bad, was not a bad decision. Zhang: So you were actually in Korea? Lane: No, I wasn't. We were getting ready to ship off to Korea when I got discharged. And then, six months after I got discharged, the outfit was shipped to Korea. Trained for it, though.

Segunda Edición. Junio de 2009. CAPÍTULO I INTRODUCCIÓN ¿QUÉ ES UN PROYECTO?