Kelsey: Where were you born
and raised?
Boas:
I was born in
Paterson, and I was
raised in
Lake Hopatcong, New Jersey.
Kelsey: And where did you go to high school?
Boas:
It was a long ride to
Sparta High School.
Kelsey: What year did you graduate?
Boas:
I graduated
Sparta High School in
1968, and that’s what got me here next.
Kelsey: How did you find out about
County College of Morris?
Boas:
That’s a good question. I remember in high school
hearing that there was a college close by, but I didn’t
know anything about it. No one in my
family had ever gone to college before, so it was a
new thing, being the oldest in the family. My parents
wanted me to go to school, I didn’t want to go to
school, so somehow I ended up here. I don’t really know
how I got here, but I ended up here. It was a good
turn.
Kelsey: And why did you decide to go to school
here?
Boas:
My parents had asked—they wanted to see me go to
school. They said that was the thing to do. And I
said, “Okay, I’ll do it.” I did make ’em a deal,
though. They wanted to send me to school and pay my
way, and I said, “No, I’m gonna pay my own way, because
if I flunk out, I don’t want you yellin’ at me for the
rest of my life that I wasted your money.” So I
actually got a student loan, and I believe for the
two-year period, it was $4,000 for two years. That paid
for the two years here.
Kelsey: Do you think your parents wanted you to go
to school partially because of the
draft?
Boas:
They may have, but I think my father and mother wanted
me to do better than they had done, and just thought
that that was the right thing to do at that time, was to
go to school.
Kelsey: What did you major in?
Boas:
Ah, to bring back good memories, I would say general
studies. I’m not sure what I majored in. I took all
the things I was told to take: the Englishes, the
philosophies, the sociology, the phys. ed., and took a
little bit of everything. Remember, everything was
new. We were the first group here, so it was kind of
anything we wanted to do, or wanted to try, we did. We
didn’t know any of the instructors, there was no history
on who was a good instructor, who was a bad instructor.
I’m not so sure I even knew what philosophy was at that
point. It was just a class on Tuesdays at two o’clock.
We were given schedules in an arena scheduling kind of
format, and we winged it. So I would say general
studies—I think.
Kelsey: What was the physical
campus like at that time?
Boas:
Well, I can tell you, compared to today, the trees have
grown. Henderson Hall,
which was our administrative building, classroom,
meeting pad, cafeteria—was
everything. [Otherwise], there was nothing. It was
just a field with mortar and brick going up, and a
parking lot next to it. And some freshly planted, small
shrubs, which today are thirty-foot trees. So it’s
really nice today.
Kelsey: What was the cafeteria like?
Boas:
Well, the cafeteria was also our student activity
center. It was also where the student council met. It
was also where the automotive rally club
met for rallies. It was the gathering room. As I
showed you in the yearbook, it’s where the
bongo board events took
place. It was the gathering place—besides the parking
lot. Those were the two gathering places that I recall.
Kelsey: What were
bongo boards?
Boas:
Tom Blaney started the ski
club, and [bongo
board was] one of the things that we did back
then for skiing, to get balance and agility. It was a
round, six-inch diameter, maple “ball” if you will, and
a board sits on top of it. And you jump on top of it
and balance. And I still have mine from here. We all
bought them, and we had contests, who could stay up the
longest, who could eat lunch on the
bongo board. I mean,
it was just one of those crazy things that you did to
pass the time between classes. And everybody did it.
You could not go in the cafeteria and not be coaxed into
hopping onto a
bongo board.
Kelsey: So they were having these competitions in
the cafeteria?
Boas:
Yeah, we had the competitions, and we started it, and we
kept it up quite a while, I remember quite well. And
that’s why it’s in the yearbook: it was one of the
major events that we all got together [and did] just to
pass the time with.
Kelsey: Tell me something about the
clubs.
Boas:
Well, there was nothing, and we were coaxed by
Jerry Luboff, an early
English teacher, a young fellow at the time. He was an
English teacher that really related to us very well. He
wanted to start a literary magazine. And quite frankly,
at eighteen or nineteen years old, I’m not sure I knew
what a literary magazine was, but we said, “Sure! That
sounds like a good idea!” That led to the photography
club, that led to us meeting after school and learning
how to write short poems and stories, to produce the
literary magazine. I have two of them, and I will find
them for you and give them to you.
Kelsey: Did it have a name?
Boas:
I think it was The Promethean,
is my recollection.
Kelsey: And it still is.
Boas:
I don’t know where we got that name from, either, but I
do remember the group of people sitting down to give it
a name. It’s funny, the first issue has a bunch of
pictures of my snow-covered dock at
Lake Hopatcong, and
cars with snow in my yard. I just took a lot of
pictures where I lived, and a lot of those were put in,
because we didn’t have any planned pictures. So any
picture that had some esthetic look to it, or kind of
fit with a poem, we plopped in the original issue, which
was published on kind of like a simple
ditto machine, with a
couple of staples in the middle of it.
Kelsey: Were you involved with other
clubs?
Boas:
Oh yeah, one of the things we started, one of the fun
things that probably you couldn’t do today, we had an
automotive rally club, which one or two weeks a month we
would go out and it would be similar to a poker run,
where we’d get literally twenty or thirty cars together,
and it wasn’t a race, it was just to go from point to
point and pick up checkpoints and clues and return
back. We even had overnight rally clubs, where we went
up to
Newburgh, New York and
stayed overnight. Some people took motorcycles, some
people took cars, parents’ cars, convertibles, junkers.
It was just a lot of fun. We just got together and
started on campus and ended on
campus. And it was a blast, so we had a lot of fun.
I was in the drama club. I
didn’t think that I was an actor at the time, but they
needed people to push around lights and do sound
equipment, and we put on live plays. And I remember
vividly “A
Streetcar Named Desire.” And we spent weeks
upon weeks practicing and practicing and did three or
four shows, and they went over extremely well, and we
were all rather shocked at how well we could do
that—again, with the assistance of the
faculty kind of pushing us to say, “Try it and see
what happens.” And we did.
Kelsey: What was the
political and
social atmosphere like
on campus that first year?
Boas:
I can’t remember the beginning of the first year. I can
tell you that politically, administratively, we all had
a direct line to the president, the dean, the
superintendent of buildings and grounds. I can remember
when I believe it was Art Hibbard
was hired as the first safety guy, and his son worked in
maintenance with me. And you had a direct line to
anybody. Wilma Holder, which
was my best friend’s mom, was the receptionist down in
the lobby, so everybody knew everybody, and you had a
direct line to anybody. If you needed to add or delete
a class, or needed help, you just went to any
faculty member and they kind of
figured out how that was done.
The
Vietnam War was in full
swing, and there were mixed feelings, but I think in the
first fall semester, we were so busy with the activities
on campus that I don’t think that
was as much of an issue as it was the second and third
semester, when there was turmoil, everybody was
protesting, and we had
some—I would call them
sit-ins or events here, that people would get up and
speak for or against the
war. But it was
minor. It was not anything that caused any problems.
It was just more of a gathering, and everybody stating
how they felt about the current situation in the world.
So one day you’d be celebrating
landing on the moon in
July, and then in September you’d be protesting the
war. So it was kind of
a funny, funny time.
But it was a fun time.
Everybody got along. It was that “make love, not war”
generation, and we all got along, regardless of our
political aspirations. And I don’t remember anybody
being that political, although we all had our opinions
and shared them, but then after that was over, we went
on to the next fun thing that we were going to do.
Kelsey: Do you remember any
veterans on campus?
Boas:
I do remember a couple. I actually remember
recruiters on campus.
I remember when the
recruiter came on
campus at least once or twice. There was an
army recruiter and a
navy recruiter. But I
don’t really remember any veterans other than
occasionally I remember one or two older people in
uniform that were around, but no, can’t say that I do.
And again, I wasn’t either interested or paying
attention at the time, which is totally possible.
Kelsey: What was the world like for you in 1968?
Boas:
Well, it was a challenge. I was working a couple of
jobs, working here, going to
school, growing up, was interested in the same thing
everybody else was in 1968: cars, girls, movies, things
that we look at now today as a little minor, but just
the average thing a teenager would probably look at
today, minus all the technology. I mean, the big deal
was, if you had an
8-track player in your
car, rather than just your
AM radio. That was
pretty cool.
Kelsey: How did you dress to
go to school?
Boas:
I could tell you if I had to work, I wore my
County College of Morris
gray work uniform—gray pants with a gray shirt. But I
would say jeans and a shirt. We didn’t have the
dressdown that they have today. We all put on some nice
clothes. I can remember we had desert boots, that were
“in” at the time.
Hush Puppies were in at
the time. I don’t recall wearing that many jeans. I
recall wearing regular khaki pants and a button-down
shirt, and sweat shirts. Of course everybody had a
County College of Morris
red jacket that we all got in and started that early on,
so we could have something to wear that had the college
name on it.
Kelsey: What was the
social life like on campus?
Boas:
It was on campus and off campus. It was a social life
that occurred before class, during class, after class,
and after campus. I mean, the social life went around
on—Friday and Saturday nights I can remember—I’ll tell
you one story vividly I can remember. There was a party
at someone’s house outside of
Flemington, and I had
taken my ’57
Corvette down, in which
we were double-dating. You can imagine four people in a
’57
Corvette. We were on
somebody’s back road, and I remember it was so foggy and
dark I had to hold the door open to back out of their
driveway. My door hit a little tree and fell off the
car. But everybody rallied together and they taped the
door back on so I could get home (laughs) and ended up
getting it fixed at one of the body shops in
Ledgewood a couple of
weeks later, and we were back in gear. But I mean, we
all worked together and did crazy things outside of
campus as well. But usually we
were focusing on the next thing we could do when we got
back here. I mean, we really focused on the college at
the time—as a social as
well as educational experience, but there was a lot of
socialization going on, that’s for sure. And a lot of
us, it was the first time we had met new people, and it
was kind of fun, from all different places. I never
knew anybody from
Parsippany or those
areas,
Denville. So we met a
lot of neat people living up in
Lake Hopatcong I would
have never met.
Kelsey: What were some of the local hangouts or
hot spots?
Boas:
As I was coming in today, there was a little restaurant
on the corner of Route 10 and Center Grove Road. It was
just a little dump. I mean, it was the only place
nearby you could go and get something to eat between
classes and come back. Now, of course, it’s a real
diner. The other hot spots, we had to go up into
downtown
Succasunna or
Ledgewood. We’d eat at
the bowling alley off of
Ledgewood Circle. You
know, exciting places like that. There weren’t a lot of
fast food places, that I recall, around here at all.
We’d pack a lunch until the
cafeteria got in full swing. And then you could
only live so long on the
automated food. It was
kind of tough, it wasn’t the freshest stuff. But if you
were hungry, you’d eat anything.
We’d come here all day. I mean,
even if you had a class, unlike a lot of
students do where I teach today,
we got here at nine o’clock in the morning and left at
five in the afternoon, whether we had one class or three
classes. I mean, this was the place to go. If you
didn’t have to work, you were here, and this is where we
hung out.
Kelsey: How did you get
to school?
Boas:
Car. I drove. I gave you the picture, I started out
driving my parents’
Saab, which my dad and
I raced up on
Lake Naomi. We drove
that here. And then finally I had bought a
Corvette from my
neighbor, a ’57
Corvette, for $600,
which I managed to get running, and I drove that here
for three semesters, every day down and back. It was
about 10 or 12 miles. I’ve still got it, it still runs,
it’s never been painted, never been touched. It’s
exactly like it was the day I bought it. And it was
bought new at Dover Chevrolet. And I’ve still got it,
and it’s one of my prized possessions. I would have
brought it with me today, but give me more notice next
time, and I’ll tool up in it. When you have a big
anniversary, I’ll bring it with me.
Kelsey: We’ll do that. Do you remember the
price of gas?
Boas:
Oh, absolutely. I worked in gas stations. I can
remember, it was either in the fall of ’68 or the spring
of ’69, going out to the gas station, lifting off the
plastic cover of the numbers, which you flipped over,
like a
Rolodex, and changing
it from 29.0 [cents per gallon] to 30.9, and I thought
the world was gonna end. For ten bucks I wouldn’t be
able to fill up the tank, go to a movie, get pizza and a
soda, and still have money left over anymore. I think
the kids today now need fifty bucks to do some of that.
But it was literally ten dollars, you could have a great
date. You could even go bowling if you wanted, and
still have change. But I thought that was the end of
the world, 30.9. I thought that was it. And cigarettes
went up to 40¢ and I quit. Same year!
Kelsey: You mentioned that you
worked on
campus. What did you do?
Boas:
Absolutely. I was the first employee hired by the
superintendent of buildings and grounds. I was the
go-fer schmuck. If it had to be done, I got to do it.
Remember, when we first got here, there was a lot of
things—not a lot of people planned on all the things
that were gonna happen. I don’t think they planned on
so many students showing up,
that showed up. The parking lot was overfull. We used
to park on the lawn until they did the lower lot out in
front of Henderson Hall.
There was just the one lot next to Henderson Hall, and
then the maintenance building. And I remember
Gil Hole, and he had a ’67
Grand Prix. It was
green with a black vinyl top. His wife worked at
Picatinny Arsenal. I
used to have to go pick her up in his car. And I got
started because I would talk to the maintenance people
in the buildings and all, but they didn’t have any
outside people, and they needed the grass to be cut.
And I said, “Well, I’ll cut grass.” It was $1.10 an
hour, which was extremely good, because the
A&P was only paying 90¢
an hour. I believe the next year it went to $1.35 an
hour in 1969. I cut grass—among
other things. I mean, swept parking lots, cleared the
drains for the water off the parking lots, and helped
move stuff from here to there. Again, it was only two
buildings, and there was a lot of construction going on
at the same time. But whatever needed to be done,
that’s what we did. I’m going to stop down at the
maintenance building, because in the back there were
workbenches built all the way around. I built those
workbenches by hand. I remember getting the parts down
and putting them all together, carriage bolts, and
spending a week just putting together the workbenches.
I want to see if they’re still there.
Kelsey: How many hours a week did you work?
Boas:
Well unfortunately it depended upon how quick the grass
grew. I can remember in the early spring semesters, I
would be cutting all week, and then by Monday again I’d
go back and start where I was last Monday. So it was
kind of a circular thing. Then Gil let me go out and
buy a big tractor, and that simplified it to about three
days a week. But there really was no requirement,
because there were a lot of things to be done. And we
would recruit students who
weren’t even on the payroll, who would help us move
things around, or get something done, so that we could
get done and have some fun. I would say it was 10-20
hours a week, every week, that we worked.
Kelsey: Did you work anyplace else besides on
campus?
Boas:
Yeah, I worked at the
Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea
Company [A&P] off the
Ledgewood Circle, ’til
it burned down. I worked up there as well.
Kelsey: What year did it burn down?
Boas:
I want to say ’69 or ’70—the first time, not the second
time—the first time. I worked in the meat department
there. I was a fish head. Great
job.
Kelsey: How many hours a week? And you were doing
that at the same time?
Boas:
That was ten hours a week or so. Oh yeah.
Kelsey: So you were working almost full time.
Boas:
Working all the time, yeah. That was mostly Saturdays
and Sundays, weekends.
Kelsey: Describe a typical
day for you at
CCM.
Boas:
If I can remember a typical day. As I said, I can
remember getting up and being here at nine o’clock, and
going to the cafeteria, seeing
who was there, hanging out outside, or hanging out down
at the maintenance building, seeing what needed to be
done in the afternoon—interspersed by studying that may
occur, with other students, or
doing your homework, which we didn’t have to go anywhere
to do, we did it right here. We’d get together and do
our homework together. Remember, the
faculty used the same cafeteria, so they’d be there
with us, and we’d go sit with the faculty members.
I can’t
remember, there was a great German
fellow who taught philosophy, who used to come
down. He had that kind of voice and presence that when
he walked in a room and spoke, the room got quiet and
everybody was impressed with the way he would speak.
And we would always have philosophical debates about
Xenophanes and things
that you wouldn’t think that eighteen-year-olds would be
interested in. But he had such a profound speaking
voice and a presence, and his German accent, he was
always dressed with a suit and tie, very impressive, and
I can’t remember his name. I did pass his class, though
(chuckles) which was amazing.
Kelsey: Do you remember a
library,having any kind of a library?
Boas:
No. I remember when the building was opened, but I
think I told you in the e-mail, no, I don’t. I don’t
remember…. And again, as I shared with you, and you
will share with the website, giving you my original
report cards, I was not the library-type student. If
you could be on a road rally, or if you could be goin’
somewhere with a bunch of guys and gals, I was doin’
that, or taking pictures, or doing something else. I
would do the minimum that needed to be done. It was
more for me, unfortunately at the time, a
social activity than an
educational activity. So I had my priorities backwards
at the time. But I did okay, but they told me what my
goal was, and I met the goal that they wanted, so I
focused on other activities. Having fun! I was
interested in having fun.
Kelsey: How many classes a
day did you take?
Boas:
Usually it was, I want to say, as I recall, four or five
days a week, and it would be at least two classes a
day. And usually there was—a little bit different than
I know
community colleges are
today—you would have a break in between classes. In
other words, they wouldn’t let you take a 12:00-2:00,
2:00-4:00. You would take a 10:00-12:00, and then a
2:00-4:00. So they’d give you a break, where you kind
of had to hang out on campus anyway,
and that provided us with the opportunities of us
getting together and thinking about things we wanted to
do, or would like to do. But all day. I mean, we were
here all day. We didn’t want to leave. When classes
were done, we’d be here—if we didn’t have to work, or if
somebody didn’t say, “There’s a party at someone else’s
house.” Then, of course, we’d take off.
Kelsey: What do you remember most about that first
year?
Boas:
I guess the transition of nobody telling me that I had
to go to class, but I was expected at every class.
Nobody telling me that I had to do homework, but by God
you’d better have the homework done. You know, the
part, transitioning from a high school environment to a
college environment was a learning experience—as well as
what was the content of the classes. But I remember
just the change in atmosphere, where you were treated
like an adult, as opposed to someone who needed a hall
pass to do anything. We had free rein of anything we
wanted to do.
And I
can remember many times three or four of us had an
idea. We would go to the president, and he would say,
“Let me check with the board, and let’s see if we can do
it!” Everybody was receptive to anything new and
different that we could come up with. We came up with
some crazy stuff. I think if you look back, there were
quite a few clubs on
campus, quite a few activities on
campus, that probably would rival today. Everybody
didn’t just do one thing: they did two or three or four
clubs. And I was involved with the
student government, but
I wasn’t an officer, because we had so many great people
who were running the student government, and had so
much—their skills in planning events and activities, and
talking to the board and the
administration, they did a great job. So we were
all working together for we didn’t know what. It came
out pretty well with all the clubs and everything we
did. I’m not so sure how many people were here for the
education, but they were also here for the socialization
and the changing of their life, compared to a high
school environment. And I don’t remember that many
older people that were here. I mean, we were all in
that eighteen, nineteen, twenty-year-old group. I’ll
pick on Cliff Campo. I think
he was two or three years older than most of us, and had
been out working. He had a great ’67
Mustang, red, perfect,
mag wheels, just great. But he was probably one of the
older people here, and he was maybe two years older than
we were, and that was about it.
And even
the faculty, I don’t think they
were that much older than we were. They were in their
twenties, and maybe some of them were in their thirties,
but everybody was young, it was new, and it was
different. Everybody was learning new stuff. It was a
great time.
Kelsey: What is your best memory?
Boas:
That’s one of those things, your greatest and your
worst. The best memory was probably…. You know, one of
the things I don’t remember was how we graduated. I
can’t remember how we did that—although I do have the
diploma to prove it. My best memory was probably one I
shouldn’t tell you, but I’ll tell you anyway—you can
always edit the tape. My best memory was dating the
French teacher’s daughter so I could get a passing grade
in French. That was my best memory. But I can’t
remember her name. That was a lot of fun. And I did
learn a lot of French, by the way. My French improved
dramatically at that point. And I can’t remember her
name either, but that was a good time, that was a great
memory.
Other memories were probably
things that you remember from each of your classes. The
philosophy teacher—Warganz, I
think his name was—“being is and cannot not be,
therefore will never be” stuck with me. In the history
class, the History of Western Civilization. You know,
you’d get up every morning and look forward to that
class! But it was entertaining, and I can remember the
Romans and
Alexander the Great,
and he’d go over the detail. And he had these little
model soldiers that he put on the table, and we’d
actually act out the wars, and it was great stuff. And
Jerry Luboff with English.
I mean, I certainly was not a writer, I was not a good
speller, I was not a good orator. I was a typical high
school student. I wasn’t a very outgoing person, but he
got me to write, he got me to take pictures, he got me
to be involved in poetry. Those are good memories.
Kelsey: And what about your worst memory?
Boas:
A worst memory. I’m not sure I have any worst
memories. I’d really have to think about that, because
it was a good time, I enjoyed every day. Probably the
worst memory was when it was over, and you had to figure
out “what are we gonna do now?” We didn’t want to
leave. It was over. What do you do next? Can you hang
out any more? I got lucky, someone told me that you
could go to school and work on cars and do welding,
which was my area of interest, since my dad was in that
area also, and I ended up going to
Trenton State, which is
now the
College of New Jersey,
and majored in industrial arts, industrial engineering,
and built race cars, became a professional welder, and
still had fast cars, and lookin’ for fast girls.
Welcome to college! Not much has changed, has it?
(laughs)
Kelsey: So then you graduated from
Trenton State?
Boas:
I got my bachelor’s from
Trenton State. I had a
year off in there. After I graduated from here, I ended
up having some surgery and some problems medically,
which took a year to heal up, so I ended up working at
Vernon Valley Great Gorge,
got into snow skiing, was on the National
NASTAR [National Standard Race] team in giant
slalom snow skiing, and then started a year later in ’71
at
Trenton State,
graduated with a bachelor’s in ’73, and a
master’s in ’74. And
then I went to
Temple after that, and
got my
doctorate in ’79.
Kelsey: In what subject area?
Boas:
That was vocational-technical education, administration,
curriculum, and research. And in between there, in
1975, I met my wife and got
married—which I didn’t plan on that either, but that
just happened. It was a slow Friday night—true story.
We had only seen each other three times, so the third
time, we got married. And I’m still married, to the
same person! Yeah, that’s the key. So it’ll be
thirty-three years this August. I got married on my
birthday, by the way. It makes gifts easy—a tip for
people.
Kelsey: And then what did you do after you got
your
Ph.D.?
Boas:
The domino effect. It was someone here at this
campus that told me about
Trenton State. And I
can’t remember whether it was a guidance counselor or a
faculty member or another
student. And I really didn’t look around. Nowadays,
kids apply to colleges all over the place. I really
didn’t look around. I figured anybody that would take
an average student from here, I’m gonna go with it!
I’ll roll with it. I could still commute from the lake
to
Trenton and back on
weekends, to work or whatever. They asked me to stay on
at
Trenton to do my
master’s. They
actually paid for that, I got a scholarship for that. I
graduated from
Trenton with a 4.0,
graduated my
master’s with a 4.0,
and graduated with my
doctorate 4.0. So I
wouldn’t have done that well there, if I hadn’t got the
guidance on what you’re supposed to do, here. I think
that’s the important part. Even though I was the 2.0
student here, I finally woke up. And maybe that year
off was what I needed, along with not being a teenager
anymore.
At that point, I guess my real
focus was to go on to do something else. I heard from
Trenton that they were
looking for leadership individuals in vocational
technical education. I never thought that I would
become a teacher. I mean, that was the furthest thing
from my mind. Nobody in my family
was a teacher. On any side of the family, nobody had
ever taught. And I just kind of fell into it. When I
was a graduate assistant, the professors at
Trenton would ask me to
fill in on classes—drafting classes, wood shop, metal,
welding, auto mechanics—which was a natural, and I could
relate to the students real
well.
When I
went to
Temple, I met a fellow
from the
University of Delaware,
and he said “We’re having a conference this weekend,
c’mon down.” I went down, and of course their
projector didn’t work,
their
16 millimeter projector
was broken, so I proceeded to fix it for ’em. And the
dean of the department down there said, “Can you do this
technology stuff?” And I said “Yeah.” Well, they
invited me down there as a graduate assistant, and I
spent twelve years at the
University of Delaware.
I was the youngest full professor ever in the history of
the
University of Delaware.
One of
my students there was starting a
computer science program at a
community college in
Maryland, which is only
four miles away, and the second year he was overwhelmed,
and he said, “Would you come and help me?” Well, that
was twenty-five years ago. So full circle: starting in
a
community college, and
I’ve been in a
community college most
of my career. So I really understand the
community college life
now, from both sides of the fence.
Kelsey: How have the years you attended
CCM affected your life?
Boas:
Well, I’m sure if I didn’t go here, I probably wouldn’t
have gone to any other [college]. I mean, I would have
never heard about
Trenton State. I
probably wouldn’t have gone to another college. Coming
here, I didn’t know whether I wanted to go to college,
wanted to be in college. I think if it wasn’t for the
balance between the out-of-college and the in-college
experience being so enjoyable, I probably wouldn’t have
continued at college. And if someone—and I can’t tell
you who it was—didn’t tell me you could leave here and
go on and get two more years and get a degree, I
probably wouldn’t have done that either. So a lot of it
was being in the right place at the right time—luck—and
saying yes to an opportunity that came along, and just
“try it and see what happens.” And that’s really how it
happened. I hadn’t planned on it. I hadn’t planned on
getting a
doctorate. That was
out of the realm of possibility. I have a number of
credits beyond my
doctorate, but that
would be the farthest thing from anybody’s…. I wish my
high school
guidance counselor was still alive, because she was
the one who told me, “You’d better go into the service,
because no college will take you.” So I proved her
wrong when I graduated from here, and I did go back and
give her a copy of my diploma from here, and she was
impressed. So…. I impressed everybody along the way.
Somehow I woke up and found out that it wasn’t so hard
going to school, and you could learn something and have
a good time. But that all started here.
Kelsey: Is there anything else you’d like to add?
Boas:
No. Hopefully I’ll find some of the more interesting
materials I have in my collection, and you can display
them or archive them somewhere and show everybody what
it was like. I’m sure all the people out of these early
classes you interview, they’re going to say they had a
good time. That’s what it was all about.
Kelsey: All right, thank you very much.
Boas:
You bet. My pleasure.
[END OF
INTERVIEW]
INDEX