Ways IT Was

Across the Curriculum

Homecoming.

Sampling:

Asi Asi danced a Samoan fire
dance in the then-new gym,
igniting the floor & crowd..

The soccer field was named
Kartalab after a player who
electrocuted himself tossing
a phone line over a high wire,
hopping to establish two-way
communication with his girl
friend; we banned him from
GIRLS dorm, caught after hours.

We elected our first trans-
dressing homecoming
queen. My beagle Zeke
had actually been elected
by popular poll but Mary
Sue Rix, the student dean,
disallowed the results.

David Holt started-up the
Appalachian Music Program
—using native musicians as
instructors.

Dr. Bradshaw arrived from
Bowdoin & U. of Hartford.
We cooked possum for him
at Jack Boozer’s house.
At one point we had a
Boozer, Case, & Bierhaus
in our English dept.

As preparation, Bill Mosher
would drop his Trip-to-India
students all over Asheville
Friday nights with one dollar
& instruction to make it till
Sunday morning.

Then they’d swap survival
stories.

Carl Mumpower was counselor
and psych teacher.

As Service Project director (side
duty), Bill gave credit hours for
those trying to finish-out the
obligation before graduation by
letting them kill flies in Gladfelter.

Students Directed the Work Program.
You got a problem with that? Staff
eventually did , so we hired pros.

Chip Plank: Phd in Political Science
and a truck farmer from DC: our first
professional Work Director. Chip
suggested we get rid of the campus
trucks and make bicycle-rickshaws to
cart all the stuff around.

Gone in 2 years.

The next work director (Sokol) invented
the word TRIAD and prepared for each
incoming student a big notebook, tricked-
out with academics, work, service
requirements so they could get squared
away right from the start. Skip over all
trial and error. An early quality
enhancement program.

All faculty worked in the work program
one month over the summer, one week
during the year. Got to drive tractors,
trucks, buses, fire engines, paint dorms
and Glad, shingle the chapel, answer phones,
help the registrar, hose down the piggies,
call the cows…

Tony Early sat
in the back of the
room ogling Ginger
Johnson and rolling
his own fiction,

Ed Scott, philosopher and tractor
repairman offered seminars in
Wittgenstein for any among
staff and faculty who wanted to
play. He was asked to write a
Philosophy of Work for some
Strategic Planning but it was
too philosophical to use.

October Fest: beer drinking
among all in lower Glad: conga
dancing to our multi- generational
ompah band, slip slidding on the
spill, little children wet their pants,
coeds, holding their own hair
back, hurled into the bushes….

Some one put up a rope swing
on the big tree East of Glad.
& we were Day Care for Hippies
before we became Leeds Certified
and now these are the good old days.

xxxooo, Presbyter

(which you all should know:
a presbyter is an old guy.
Elder is what a presbyter is
Don't take my word
for it. Ask Steve R.)