UT Dallas Through the Years: 1969

[Katherine] Welcome to a special mini-series from the UT Dallas CometCast Network celebrating the 50th anniversary of UT Dallas’ founding. You’ll hear from the people who were there to witness the University’s growth throughout the decades and learn more about what makes UT Dallas such a special place. Hi, I’m Katherine, and I’ll be your guide as we look back through the years. Let’s start at the beginning — 1969 was a landmark year. Astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin took the first steps on the moon; Woodstock was held on a farm in New York; and a small research institution in the middle of a North Texas cotton field became The University of Texas at Dallas. Earlier in the decade, Texas Instruments co-founders Eugene McDermott, Erik Jonsson and Cecil Green recognized a problem not only for their company but for the Southwest region as a whole — there was a brain drain. Smart young minds would leave the area to do their graduate studies at universities in other parts of the country, and often not return. To counter that the trio founded a graduate research center to foster those minds and keep them at regional universities. Dr. Frank Johnson was pretty much there from the beginning, working in space sciences and designing instruments that studied the atmosphere of the moon. He was selected to serve as acting president when the research center transitioned to UT Dallas. Shortly before he passed away in 2009 he sat down for an interview on his history at UTD.

[Dr. Frank Johnson] The decision was made and the battle was fought and won to bring this into the UT System that is prior to that the future of the institution was precarious. There was a lot of political concerns about it. All the universities the North Texas area were against it, particularly against having undergraduates. At the beginning, by legislative action we could not have undergraduates. That was lifted later. It’s now a great and full-fledged university. So we had to adapt to the bureaucracy of The University of Texas System. Having no experience along that line, there were there were rough spots along the way but on the whole we had good support from the chancellor’s office. So there are no great problems but still there were some minor well some points of difficulty.

[Katherine] Dr. John Hoffman was part of Frank Johnson’s team, and his mass spectrometers flew to the moon, Venus, Halley’s Comet and Mars. He witnessed monumental changes from UTD’s origins as a one-building campus to the bustling modern university it has become.

[Dr. John Hoffman] It was a big open expanse of land and one building and right in the middle of it known as the Founders Building because it was built by the three founders — Jonsson, McDermott and Green. And what’s now the Founders Annex was the power plant for the Founders Building… and that was it. And of course we could drive right up to the front door and park. We didn’t have to walk for blocks away, but the rest of was cotton fields and basically our house was just south of Arapaho Road, just west of Coit is where we bought this house, and north of Arapaho was all cotton fields, so things have changed. It seemed like when a person came they stayed almost forever because there was very little little turnover. I think the work conditions were so good that people just liked it here and so it was a pretty close-knit group. And by the way we had the best cafeteria in the world. You can’t forget that. It was so good.

[Katherine] Sandy Goertzen joined the research center in February 1967 and retired in 2007. She served in an array of capacities during her time, from helping with grant proposals to delivering mail. Her proudest moment she said is founding the Staff Council, which advocates the interests of campus staff. Things have come a long way since she first stepped foot on campus.

[Sandy Goertzen] The first day that I came out here for an interview was on a Friday, and I lived in Oak Cliff at that time so that was a long trek. And I came out here they told me where to come and told me to get on Campbell, which was a two-lane road at that time, and I drove which seemed like forever until I saw this one building way off in the distance. So I went up the long driveway and finally found my way here to the what was H.R. was like a one person office, I think it was. Now I mean it’s a hop, skip and a jump, but back then there was no houses or anything. I worked for a gentleman by the name of Dave Canham. He got all of the faculty you know doing their proposals and their stuff for NASA, NSF, NIH. I did a lot of his reporting — stuff for when he would go to Washington. Every month he would make a trip to Washington and go to these various agencies talk to them about the faculty members that we have and what they’re proposing. I think I was still in that position when 1969 came about, and I remember working with him very diligently on all of those proposals that had to be transferred — the names and all of that — because it was all, it was going to be a state institution now, which made a difference in the proposal. So we did a lot of corresponding to get that all done. When I first started here it was just a place to work, and then I think it was because we did become a university and we were connected with Austin and all the other schools, I just really enjoyed …. it’s just like one big happy family.

[Katherine] Ron Lippincott is a program manager in the William B. Hansen Center for Space Sciences. He has helped create instruments that studied our atmosphere and the cosmos. He’s also been present for all of UTD’s milestone since the University is the only place he’s ever worked during his career.

[Ron Lippincott] They were actually building Founders and I went to work in August of ’64. Founders was not ready. We were located on the SMU campus. I believe we made the transition in September of ’69, and I was in Brazil on a rocket launch and so I wasn’t actually here when the transition took place. I got back about a month later and got to hear about it from other people. [laughs] It seemed like to me on the north side of Founders was just a huge field of Johnson grass almost chest high, and I remember that partially because Larry Brooks was a electronic technician. He was a big hunter and he had a hand operated clay pigeon thrower and so once every week or two after work three or four of us would go out in the Johnson grass so we would beat down a path and he would set up his clay pigeon thrower and we’d take turns doing the throwing and then we had two or three guys shooting with shotguns so we’d shoot shotguns out behind Founders. To me one of the most interesting things of course is the change of this area and you know back then we talked about progress and you knew there’s going to be progress and progress meant more buildings more roads building further in this area to the north but even knowing that it’s been amazing to see.

[Katherine] Dr. Richard Mitterer was one of the original members of the geosciences faculty. he started as an assistant professor and eventually became head of the Department of Geosciences as well as a member of the board of directors at the Geological Information Library of Dallas. He witnessed firsthand the rapid change the University has experienced since 1969.

[Dr. Richard Mitterer] You know that Governor Preston Smith came to the campus to sign the legislation creating the University in June of 1969. Well I was there at that event and I brought my wife and my five-year-old son. (There was) a news video that was taken at the time apparently that’s posted on the UTD website showing the signing ceremony and showing the crowd and we’re in the crowd. You can see us very prominently in the foreground just left of center in that video. My five-year-old son eventually 26 years later got a bachelor’s degree in computer science there at UTD so I thought that was kind of an interesting twist.

[Katherine] Dr. Mitterer also was the doctoral supervisor for James Reilly, who is the director of the U.S. Geological Survey and a former NASA astronaut.

[Dr. Richard Mitterer] Jim got all his degrees — three degrees — at UTD in geosciences… bachelor’s, masters and PhD. For his master’s degree he collected the rocks from Antarctica and he actually went to Antarctica to collect the samples. Deep down you know since the lunar NASA landings he had a great desire to become an astronaut and so some years later after he had completed his master’s degree he reached an age where he thought you know it’s now or never but he also knew that since he wasn’t a military person that in order to be accepted in the astronaut corps he would have to have more of a scientific specialty. He called me one day and said he’d like to meet up with me and talk to me over mutual ideas and so we got together and he explained his interest in becoming an astronaut and said he knew he would need a PhD and he had some ideas for research that he was involved in with his oil company that he worked with and that he’d like apply some of that work to a PhD degree. Well it was up my alley more. His Antarctic work was out of my field but the work that he was doing with the company was much closer to my interest and so I agreed to supervise him and you know as soon as he was finishing up his degree he had already applied to the astronaut corps and he had been accepted. Jim has risen to greater heights than any other student that we’ve ever had. But interestingly he has been to more extreme environments than any other human being, having gone to Antarctica, having gone down to the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico on a submersible and gone into outer space — I don’t know… I doubt that there’s another human being on earth that has done that.

[Katherine] We end with Dr. James Carter who himself was a bit of an institution. He arrived on campus in 1964 as a postdoctoral researcher and retired in 2008 as a professor emeritus of geosciences. I say retired with air quotes because you couldn’t keep him away from campus. In recent years he was determined to find a time capsule that had been sealed in the Founders Building in 1963. The location of the vessel had been lost over the years and Carter aimed to track it down. And track it down he did. Sadly, Carter passed away about a week before the time capsule was unearthed last September and a few days before he was scheduled to speak on this podcast. We end this episode with a portion of an interview with him from when UTD celebrated its 40th anniversary in 2009.

[Dr. James Carter] What brought me here was the opportunity to become part of a group of individuals that were working on cutting-edge that had to do with the whole earth, looking at the mantle in particular which I was quite interested in and it was part of my dissertation research. When I came I was going to be here either one or two years. What intrigued me was the nature of the people here and their vision and the idea of being able to work at cutting-edge science on on deep earth problems that’s what intrigued me it had nothing to do with the physical structure that was here as such because it wasn’t here. When I came and interviewed there was nothing but a hole in the ground. The campus was very compact; there were only three buildings — there was Founders, the Founders West Annex and then there was a very small building that had the high voltage equipment in it. If we start at the very beginning it was an extremely exciting place to be. There was no project too large or too small that people wouldn’t tackle no matter how difficult it was. It was the can-do attitude. It was amazing. It was the 60s. It was the… you know, we were going to the moon. I see the same kinds of enthusiasm that we had in the early [Southwest Center for Advanced Studies] days and so that’s another thing is exciting to me to know that we’re getting back to that kind of can-do attitude. It’s sort of intrigued me and I’ve always said this and I don’t know how true it really is but I always said that if you went out on Campbell Road and you stopped 100 cars probably 99 of them couldn’t tell you where UTD is. I don’t think that’s the same anymore. and I want to see it when you stop 100 cars 100 people will say there is UTD.

[Katherine] Thanks for listening to this special mini-series. The CometCast Network is brought to you by the UT Dallas Office of Communications. You can find our other podcasts at www.utdallas.edu/cometcast.