Q:  What are you doing next?
We have built a home in Prescott, Ariz. Many people have asked why we aren’t going to build and stay here. As I say to everyone who asks me, “why do you live here?” They say well my parents, kids, grandkids and everybody I know is here. I say, well, everybody I know is in Arizona. My son, Scott, and his wife, Kate, and our grandson, Roland are in Phoenix. We have nieces and nephews in Sedona. My wife’s parents retired from the air force to Flagstaff in the 70’s and we have been going there ever since. It’s home, so we’re going home.
It’s going to be nice to be close again. I want to see my grandson play t-ball. That’s the simple statement. I want to enjoy myself. I have worked 43 years and the last 17 have been as a president. I am ready to not be on the job, 24/7.
Q: Do you plan to continue working part-time?
I have no idea how I am going to adjust because I am used to the pace of a campus. My wife and I finished our undergraduate years, went on and got a master’s degree in higher education administration, and then I worked two years in a small private school as the director of student activities, housing and placement. Depending on the time of the day I had a different hat on and it was a great job. We went back and got a doctorate at SUNY (State University of New York) Albany for two years and from 1972 when I finished my doctorate to this point, I’ve worked full time in university administration. Within that period from 1977 on, I’ve been a vice president or above at a university. My life has been the calendar of a university. I refer to retirement and say I’m finally graduating.
When I get to Prescott I’m going to be taking conversational Spanish at Yavapai Community College, and I’m going to be taking some courses like environmental studies at Prescott College. I’m looking forward to it. I honestly have no idea what life will be like. Becky and I have measured the time of the year by what’s going on on campus. In the fall it’s soccer, volleyball and football; certain recitals and awards dinners at different times of the year and homecoming. My friends say to me, “What do you do? Why don’t you fish or hunt?” Everything I do is right here in these 300 acres. It is nice not to be obligated. People will invite us to things and we try to get to as much as possible and from year to year we have to rotate because sometimes they’re competing.
Q:  Overall, how would you say you feel about leaving?
 It’s extraordinarily difficult. If you’re from here, you really have no way to appreciate how warm gregarious and welcoming people are from this area. They say that they don’t like or welcome outsiders, but that’s ridiculous. Once you get acquainted with somebody, you’re trying to figure out if you’re related or have a mutual friend. This is such an extraordinarily welcoming and social part of the country. We came in here, and the history of the academy says that presidents and their spouses don’t have friends. You have a lot of people you are acquainted with and that you do business with, but you don’t have friends. Here we have countless friends and it’s just because of the nature of the people here.
It will be incredibly difficult to leave here and I genuinely say that we will cry a lot of times in leaving. We’ve had ten years invested here, and we’ve seen the campus change in so many ways. I’ve seen at least 300 faculty and staff who have gone through the campus to retire or move on and I’ve seen all these new people come. I sit in functions like the Arts and Sciences banquet and I wonder, “When did the faculty become so young? They’re a bunch of kids.” I know I hired them during my presidency, but the university has transitioned and changed so dramatically that it’s exciting and it will be very hard to pull away from.
I have great pride in this campus and what we have done together. The faculty, staff and students. When you do that, it’s just hard to break away from it, which is why going 1500 miles across the country is the best thing to do. There’s nothing more sorrowful than a retired president hanging around the campus. That’s not going to be me.
Q:  What would you say are some of the biggest cultural differences you noticed in Louisiana?
We have travelled all over the world, from Istanbul, Turkey to St. Petersburg to the tip of South America. We’ve been everywhere. The people of the bayou region are extraordinary. They are very self-sufficient.
Look at us after Katrina. State government was floundering in trying to get its act together. The federal government was nowhere to be found. How did we pull ourselves together and provide evacuation center services to upwards of 12,000 people over about 50 days? We did it because of the people in this area. As people’s freezers began to defrost without electricity and their shrimp, crab and sausage thawed, they made gumbo and jambalaya, and came here to feed people.
We are a heavily catholic population. One of the things that is absolutely extraordinary in a crisis in particular is the organizations of the church. The catholic churched stepped forward to provide the heart of the services from used clothing to washing and ironing clothes for evacuees, to staffing the centers and the services of feeding people. It was amazing. St. Thomas Aquanus took in the dogs, cats, rabbits, turtles and everything.
I ran into [Bishop] Sam Jacobs in St. Thomas and there was a rabbit sitting on the main alter and I was chuckling because it was such an example of how genuine and how helpful people are. When people came off those busses, they often had nothing but a pet in their hands, and they were forced out of their houses. The initial reaction of authorities was to say that the pets couldn’t go into the evacuation centers and the church stepped in with some pet organizations and provided cages and food. This is just one of hundreds of examples of how gracious people are in this region.
That’s what is special about being here, and that’s what attracts people about being here. That’s why people come to teach for two years and spend 30 years here. We came for five years and we’re finishing ten. We would stay on except the clock is ticking and we’re 69 and there’s something else in life to do.
Q:  What do you feel your biggest accomplishment has been here?
I feel my biggest accomplishment was empowering people on this campus to do what they thought was right for Nicholls. Faculty, staff and students. I didn’t tell them how to do their jobs. I empowered them to do their jobs on behalf of the campus. Nothing came easy out of everything we’ve accomplished in the last ten years, from all of the resident hall renovations, the cafeteria, the parking lots, the roadways, the landscaping, the signage, the rec center.
Nothing comes easy at Nicholls. We’re a small college and nothing comes easy in a rural area like this. We’ve worked hard to get it. All of those things were accomplished because people were empowered to do their jobs and we have extraordinary talent on this campus. People were able to design these projects, plan them and deliver them. We didn’t use outside expertise. We did it ourselves for the most part and I’m very proud of what people have accomplished.
Q:  Besides Phoenix, do you have any travel plans in mind?
We have one practice in travelling: we don’t tend to go back. We go one place, and then move on to the next. However, we took a tour in the mid 90’s when we flew to Istanbul, Turkey and spent three days in Istanbul and got on a cruise ship to go down the Turkish coast to Ephesus, which is Troy, and through the Greek Islands to the Peloponnesian Peninsula and into Athens. In the process we ended up in Istanbul, and the two of us have never been in a more extraordinary place on earth. The mixing of the millenniums of history. The sites, the sounds, the smells, the culture, the foods, the people. We can’t wait to go back to Turkey to see it a
gain.
We’ll continue to travel. We’ve done 18 or 19 cruises, plus many other trips. We will continue to do that as our hobby, but it will no longer be Thanksgiving, Easter, Christmas or the other Nicholls breaks. That’s when we’ve travelled. We look forward to that change.
Q:  What is your greatest fear about leaving the University?
I grew up in a family of finance people. Bankers, accountants, and all of that. They taught me financial stewardship. Our years in Colorado and Montana we learned about stewardship of the land through ranching and agriculture. I’ve always really felt strongly about having a responsibility in whatever I do to show stewardship and making something better than it was.
When we arrived at Nicholls it was a great academic institution, but it needed a lot of encouragement to become the university it is today. I’m proud of that.
If I have a fear, it is that we have a government that doesn’t care about education and a governor that doesn’t care about education. They all speak well at the Baton Rouge level, especially when they’re getting prepared for 5 o’clock news feeds, but when it comes down to what’s going on in schools, colleges and universities and the damage that five years of budget cuts have not been planned, and simply executed, the damage is long-term.
I’ve been very vocal. I would honestly tell you, if I have a frustration, it is that my presidential colleagues across the state have been so silent. Now, some have spoken up and they’re no longer here. Others have chosen not to speak up, but if you are a steward of your institution you have a responsibility to speak up.
Q:  What will you miss the least about the Louisiana?
Being rather frank, state government. If I was joking I would say the humidity in the summer, but that’s part of life in the deep south and I don’t mind it. What I will miss least is the government that doesn’t seem to care.
Q:  What has been your most gratifying experience as president?
I think it’s seeing close to 10,000 students pass through this campus and complete a degree. There’s nothing more gratifying than seeing that accomplishment because 62 percent of our students are first generation and many are working multiple jobs to afford schooling. It doesn’t come easy. To see so many of them get degrees and be wanted in the professional fields, it’s wonderful.
Q:  Do you have advice for the University as we continue to fight for Nicholls?
I want people to continue to be proud of what they do and what Nicholls accomplishes. We’re going to get through this and continue to mature as a University. I like to say that we survive and even thrive on occasion in spite of state government. Folks up there don’t like that statement, but it’s accurate for rural regions and we are going to get through this. I want to encourage people to continue to do what they do so well on behalf of the students and we’ll get through it together. I may not be on this campus, but my heart will still be here. Our hearts will still be here.