Oral History InterviewElin Langholm, InterviewerFrank Saunders, IntervieweeNovember 13, 2001[BEGINNING OF SIDE 1]EL: 0:00 Then first I just, I have to say my name, and I'm Elin Langholm. I'm sitting here with Frank Saunders? FS: 0:07 Saunders, Saunders, like,EL: 0:08 Saunders. And it's Tuesday the 13th of November.FS: 0:13 Right.EL: 0:14 Yeah, and we are just gonna sit here and talk a little bit about the history of ECU. And so I just guess, I'll just start asking you with some background questions. If you could tell me a little bit about yourself, where you're from, when you were born, things like that.FS: 0:31 Okay, my name is FS:, and I was born in Reidsville, North Carolina, September the 27th 1922. I went to the University of North Carolina in 1940. And in 1942, I went to the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. And I was there for two years, and then I came back to Carolina. And in 1945, I got a degree in mathematics from the University of North Carolina. I thought I wanted to be an engineer, so I went to Durham and was accepted at Duke University in an engineering program. And so during that first semester at Duke, I went back to Chapel Hill. So some of my friends who were still over there working in graduate school in mathematics, had a big party, and they invited me to come. And so they started talking to me and said, well, look, you know, you might want to come over here and study mathematics and a graduate program, and I ran into the chairman of the mathematics department, Archibald Henderson. He studied with Einstein in Europe, and he came back to this country and lectured a lot on relativity. And he became famous doing this, but he was also good in English. He was George Bernard Shaw's official biographer, and he was a very outstanding person, and he came up to me at the party and he said, Saunders, what are you doing? And I said, I'm over at Duke, I think I'm gonna be an engineer. And he said, oh, you don't want to be an engineer. Said, come on back over here, and I'll give you a teaching fellowship and a scholarship and continue a study of mathematics. I'd had two courses in relativity with him in my undergraduate program, and this is how he knew something about me. But I told that Dr. Henderson that I'm going to finish this semester at Duke at any, at any rate, and so I don't know about it, but I want to come back over here and study mathematics. So at the end of the semester, they had another big party at the fraternity house in Chapel Hill. And I went over there, and I ran into some of my friends, and they said, man, you better come back over here. You don't want to spend another semester or two over there just to get another graduate degree in engineering, but it would be better to get graduate degrees in mathematics. So, I decided the next morning, after the big party, to go by and talk to Dr. Henderson, who was chairman of the department. And so I walked in his office, and I said, well, Dr. Henderson, did you mean what you said when you were going to give me a teaching fellowship, and and all of this? And he said, yes, yes. I meant exactly what I said. And I said, well, I'll accept that, and I'll come next semester. So, I went back and Carolina and I got a master's degree in mathematics, and then I took every course they offered in mathematics in the graduate program. And I needed only a dissertation. I took the language exams and passed those and, and all of the tests that I needed to take. And so that, last of that semester, though, before I started working much on my dissertation, Dr. Agnew, who was president of Coker College at Hartsfield, South Carolina, had a very close friend in the mathematics department at Carolina, Dr. Lasley. And he had called Dr. Lasley and asked him to recommend some person to come to Coker to teach, and he had recommended me. And so the president came up and gave me an offer I couldn't refuse. So, at the end of that semester, that was in the December of 1949, I went to Coker college as head of their mathematics department. And down there had to teach all of the courses, and I didn't have any time much for, to continue my research, and so I kind of procrastinated and went along. And a couple of years later, during the summer, I had worked up a problem that my advisor had given me, and so I went back to Chapel Hill to talk to him and turn in my my work. And when I walked into Phillips Hall, which was the math, mathematics building now, you walk into a little vestibule, and in front of you is a big lecture hall, and a friend of mine who was in graduate school, was in there defending the same topic. EL: 7:41 Oh, really? FS: 7:41 That I had spent my time working on. So, I just left, you know, without talking to my advisor or anything. I said, well,EL: 7:53 Oh.FS: 7:53 Listen, I'm not going to start over on a paper because the job I have is okay, you know, like it is, and it gave me about a year and a half of extra work because I completed all the requirements for the doctorate, other than the paper. And so I taught there for 12 years. EL: 7:53 Oh, okay.FS: 8:21 Then I came to East Carolina University in 1961.EL: 8:28 1961, okay. FS: 8:28 I, a friend of mine at Coker who was a professor of history, came to East Carolina the year before in 1960. And mathematics, and history, and political science, and several other courses, actually departments, were in the old Austin building.EL: 9:05 Oh, okay.FS: 9:06 And so he had ran into the chairman of the mathematics department at East Carolina and told him that he had a friend at Coker, that he should talk to me, that I was a good mathematician. You know how friends do. And so he invited me to come up and interview with him. And so I told him what it would take for me to come, that I'd have to be a full professor, and I'd have to have a certain salary, and I have to be able to teach in summer school and everything. And I really didn't think they could do that, so I had forgotten about it. And I was in a National Science Foundation institute at Bowdoin College in the summer of 1961. And so while I was up there, I got a letter from Dr. Jenkins, who was president of East Carolina College then and he had sent me a contract with everything I had asked for in talking with the chairman of the department, but he had 'associate professor'. So, I picked up the phone and called him, and I said, I'm sending your contract back. And he said, well, what's wrong? And I said, well, Dr. Davis, the chairman of the mathematics department, had said that, you know, I would be a full professor. And so he said, wait just a minute, let me check on my desk. And he came back and said, yeah, that's right. Said, if that's the only thing that makes any difference, you just change the 'associate professor' to 'full professor' and sign the contract and send it back. I said, okay, I'm a word, man of my word. That's what I said, I will do that. So, I changed it and said, send it back. So, our family came to East Carolina in 1961.EL: 11:42 Right.FS: 11:43 Fall of 1961. And we moved into this house.EL: 11:50 That was you and your family.FS: 11:53 Well, actually,EL: 11:55 Were you married at the time?FS: 11:56 Yeah we, oh, yes, Jo was she was the associate professor of dance,EL: 11:57 Oh, yeah.FS: 12:03 At Coker College at the time. EL: 12:05 Okay, so you met her there. FS: 12:07 Yeah, I met her there in 1951, and she had been studying with Martha Graham and Jose Limon, and all, in New York and Connecticut College for Women in the women's dance program. And so she had gone back to Coker. She had finished that two years earlier. She had gone back there to teach dance, and that's where we met. So we got married in 1951, and when we came back from Bowdoin College, we had just two children. Frank, our oldest son, was about eight years old, and our daughter, Mary Jo, was six. So, they start, Mary Jo started school again. Of course, Frank was in the third grade, I think. EL: 13:22 Yeah.FS: 13:25 And so soon after I came here, I was on a committee. We picked Dr. Pignani to come as chairman of the mathematics department, and he had studied at Carolina, and he had worked with some very fine people there. And so he appointed me as director of the graduate studies. And so I was director of graduate studies for, I guess, about ten years, and Dr. Pignani died. And so, you know, they have these committees that have to do everything now, you know. And so the committee asked me to serve as chairman until they went out, and I was acting chairman for a couple of years, and then I went back as director of graduate studies for a couple of years, and then I just taught and retired from the mathematics department. And when I was seventy in 19-, and I was seventy in September of 1992.EL: 15:04 Okay.FS: 15:05 And the board of governors passed a resolution that any person in the sixteen branches of greater university who became seventy before December the 31st, 1992, had to retire by June of '93 so they'd be uniform all the way through. So, I retired in June of '93, and then in the fall of '93, the chairman of the department asked me if I would teach a graduate course in the spring of '94. And I said, well, I don't know. See if you can get somebody else, and if you can't, then, then I wouldn't turn you down. And so I had forgotten about it. I went to a party in Bethel at Dave Spears' house, and the chairman of the board of trustees was over there at the party, and he came around to me and said, Frank, we appreciate you agreeing to teach that course, and I just, oh-oh, yeah, fine, fine. Heh! I didn't even know I was going to teach it! EL: 16:28 Exactly.FS: 16:29 So, I came back and called the chairman, and he said, well, I've been out of town, and you know, I knew you would do it and all this kind of business. I said, okay, it'll be all right. But you know, if you teach one course, they say you don't have to go to committee meetings, but to know what's going on, you want to go to committee meetings. And then, of course, you're working with students,EL: 16:29 Exactly right.FS: 16:50 And you want to be around so that you can help them. EL: 17:00 Yeah, so you were staying,FS: 17:02 It's the same thing as full-time.EL: 17:03 Exactly. FS: 17:05 So, I told them, after that semester, I said, please don't ask me anymore, you know. I want to travel. I want to do other things. EL: 17:15 Yeah.FS: 17:16 So, they said, okay. So, that's a little bit of background on me.EL: 17:22 Okay, can I ask you one more thing? Why mathematics? Did you start having an interest in math very early in school, or?FS: 17:31 Well, I was always, did well, always did well in mathematics. And I was interested in that. Of course, I was interested in physics,EL: 17:46 Yeah.FS: 17:38 And chemistry, and all of science courses and, and-EL: 17:47 What did your parents-FS: 17:51 And I guess mathematics, the reason, I guess, I, when I went to Carolina, I got in the Naval ROTC program. This is how I ended up at the Naval Academy. So, I was in the Naval ROTC program for a couple of years, and in 1942.EL: 18:24 So, this was during World War II, also.FS: 18:27 Yeah, 1942. I went to a party the ROTC group was having, and it was a guy there, kind of a smart aleck guy, was raving about he was going to the Naval Academy. And, you know, he started drinking and all, you finally get tired of all this junk. I said, well, haha, anybody could go to the Naval Academy if they wanted to, and then he really got on me, you know, oh, man, what are you talking about, it's great honor, all this kind of junk. So, things and clouds were kind of looking bad over in Europe at that time, and all the, I thought man maybe this business of serving the country is a good thing. And so when I went home for Christmas, I told my father, I said, you know, I believe I'd like to have an appointment to the Academy. And so he called a congressman who lived in Mount Airy at the time, Folger, John Folger, and told him that, that I was interested in going to the Naval Academy. And he also called a few influential people in town that they had worked with, you know, and in politics and all, and so they wrote letters for me. So, soon after I got back to Carolina, I got a letter from our representative [John] Folger, saying that I had a principal appointment for the Naval Academy or West Point, whichever one I wanted to go to. Well, of course, I am, in the Naval program and all, and I was interested in that. I said, I'll, I'll accept the appointment to the Naval Academy. And that's how I got started at the Naval Academy. EL: 20:36 What did your parents, I haven't asked much of your parents. FS: 20:39 And now to finish, finish up this,EL: 20:39 Okay.FS: 20:41 So, you asked me about mathematics. When I came back to Carolina, I had more credits in, in an area that I could get a degree in mathematics in two quarters. And that's the only reason, I think, that I went into mathematics because I thought I want to get through and go into engineering probably.EL: 20:39 Oh, okay.FS: 20:42 You know, and so that's how I got into mathematics, and I have loved mathematics ever since.EL: 21:25 Yeah, obviously since you've been writing really [unintelligible].FS: 21:28 Right, right.EL: 21:28 What did your parents do when you grew up? What kind of job did they have?FS: 21:35 Well, I had an offer to go with the government, but the GS rating that actually pay, would pay me right much more than teaching. But after teaching there, I taught one course for the first year of my graduate program, and then the next two years, I had taught two courses, and these were five-hour courses, so it was two-thirds of a load, really. And I had, I enjoyed teaching, I enjoyed working with students. And so I decided, when Dr. Agnew came up from Coker and offered me the job, that I would want to go to down there and teach, in particular because I had been teaching algebra and trig. at Carolina, till you get a doctor's degree and all, then you don't get to teach any of the good courses. EL: 22:51 Okay.FS: 22:52 And so when I got down to Coker, then I was teaching calculus and modern algebra, you know, in the advanced courses in mathematics, and I wanted to do that, and so that's how I ended up down there teaching.EL: 23:08 Okay, okay. What did your parents do when you grew up? What did they think about you going into college, and?FS: 23:20 Well, my father was a tobacconist, he bought tobacco during the season, and then during the summer, he was in the insurance business, because being in tobacco business, and got to know a lot of people who who grew tobacco and everything, and so he would, he would sell them insurance on the tobacco crops. So, he that's what he did. And my mother started out, she was a teacher, and she taught, I don't know, grade six, grade something.EL: 24:07 Okay, yeah.FS: 24:08 And so I guess the teaching part was kind of inbred in me, but at any rate, they wanted me to go ahead and get that training and as a teacher, or they didn't, you know, care, whatever I wanted to do was all right with them, as long as it was in, go ahead and at least get a degree or two in college.EL: 24:42 Okay, I see, so they supported your decisions over that. Okay, so have you? Had you been in Greenville before? FS: 24:52 No.EL: 24:53 So, it was the first time you've been here, when you came here in '61.FS: 24:57 Yeah, I did.EL: 24:59 How did you-?FS: 25:00 Maybe I should, maybe I shouldn't say this. But you know, my friend was, lined up the interview for me. We came up one weekend and oh it was, must have been mid July. It was real hot day when we came and we came down Dickinson Avenue on a Saturday, and there were a lot of minorities, you know, sitting around everywhere. And my wife didn't like the scenery, you know. And she kind of cried, and all, went to, had the interview said, I, you know, I don't think we want to come up here. We got a real nice home and real nice setup down in Hartsville. Coker College with your work there, and she didn't want me to come. And I guess that's why I asked for more than I thought I could get, not, not really seriously thinking about coming, but in the back of my mind for another reason, kind of connected with this: I wanted to get back in North Carolina, because the situation with the Blacks in South Carolina, where we lived, wasn't good. It wasn't good. And you're concerned that when there's in the schools, a feeling of distrust with the other kids, you know, and and sometimes kids were bringing knives to school, and, you know, it was a situation that wasn't too good at that time. And I felt like kids would be better in North Carolina, having been raised in North Carolina and everything. But soon after, well, about, I guess, about even 10 years after we came here, the situation in the high school was real bad here.EL: 25:09 Yeah.FS: 25:14 And my daughter had a couple of people to go around the class with her, and there were a lot of fights going on. EL: 27:43 Yeah.FS: 27:43 You know, it was a situation that you don't like in an education environment, because you can't be uptight, and all, and do the kind of work that you hope to do. Now, of course, everything is kind of moved out and moved in the direction that should have gone in now. And everybody gets along with each other and you know, but at that time, it was people,EL: 28:21 It was very tense, I think probably.FS: 28:23 Yeah, people, just, just didn't, didn't like the being forced segregation issue. You know, was a big issue there.EL: 28:34 Yeah, because when you came up here in '61 isn't that about when the desegregation started?FS: 28:41 Yeah, right.EL: 28:42 Yeah.FS: 28:42 I'd say that's about when.EL: 28:43 Yeah.FS: 28:44 That's why I saw things down there that was taking place at the time, that I could see the writing on the wall when, when things were, courts and all, and the people, police, and all, started backing the minorities.EL: 29:06 Yeah.FS: 29:06 You know. And because at the time I left, it was still a situation in which whites are up here, you know, minorities down here with a different situation, but it was changing,EL: 29:22 Yeah.FS: 29:22 At the time, and it was getting bad, and therefore that was one reason, I guess, that I felt like it would be nice to come back to North Carolina.EL: 29:33 Exactly. But can you remember when you first started working here? Were there any minorities at ECU at all? Or were there only white people?FS: 29:43 Well, we had a few, but the few that we had were good.EL: 29:51 In your department, also.FS: 29:53 Yes.EL: 29:53 In mathematics.FS: 29:54 Right, in mathematics, we had a few, and they were very, very good people who, very, very talented people. And in fact, I remember that there was a Black boy at Rose high in my daughter's class who took the SAT and made 1600.EL: 30:22 Oh, okay.FS: 30:23 And they thought, well, something's wrong here. This is a fool. So they ordered another exam, and it took the next one and made 1600 on it. So you see, we had, he didn't go to East Carolina but the point I was trying to make, the people that we had in the East Carolina University and other white, predominantly white, institutions were good people. EL: 30:57 Yes.FS: 30:57 I mean, they were academically well suited to go into the program and, and do a job. EL: 31:05 Exactly.FS: 31:05 So, it's not the ones that cause trouble and didn't, were not very smart, and, you know, they didn't want to go to college anyhow.EL: 31:16 Right.FS: 31:16 You see, and so you didn't have that kind of element to work with.EL: 31:22 What more am I going to ask? So we had desegregation during the 60s, and then I guess Vietnam War started to happen at the end of the 60s. FS: 31:22 Right, yeah. Right.EL: 31:36 How was it like here at the ECU during that, did you?FS: 31:41 Well, actually, I didn't notice that much change in the student body or the people who had to go, of course. I don't know the percentage from the Greenville area that actually ended up going to Vietnam, but I don't think it was a very large group of people who were called to go to that, that war. And so it wasn't as, it wasn't like World War II.EL: 32:20 No.FS: 32:22 I'm sure like World War I was, you know, it was a different kind of situation. EL: 32:27 Very.FS: 32:28 So, it was a very bad state of affairs, I think.EL: 32:37 Yeah.FS: 32:37 In that, a lot of people got killed, and that would not have if, you know, if it hadn't been for the situation over there. I think Johnson felt like that they could go in there and maybe get things squared away much quicker than they actually could. EL: 32:59 Yeah.FS: 32:59 So it was, was a bad thing for this country to do, but,EL: 33:05 Yeah, that's what happened.FS: 33:06 These powers to be brought it about, EL: 33:09 Yeah.FS: 33:09 And so we had to follow through on it.EL: 33:12 Can you remember if there were any, many veterans from that war coming back to ECU afterwards the world was over?FS: 33:20 Well, we certainly had veterans coming back, and they were on G.I. Bill, and in particular, the ones that I worked with in mathematics were older and seemed to be more serious about their work, and they didn't maybe want to party as much as, EL: 33:53 Yeah.FS: 33:53 As a younger freshman, you know, coming in often too. And they did a good job, I think the ones that we had.EL: 34:06 So, can you tell me a little bit about, I guess there's been big changes on campus from when you first came here till now.FS: 34:17 I think the big change goes back, maybe, to the type of change that occurred when I was in lower grades, when I was in elementary or grammar school. I remember the principal during research, I mean during recess, would go around the playground with two long switches. EL: 34:57 Oh, really. FS: 34:59 And if anybody did much cutting up, boom!EL: 35:07 Yeah.FS: 35:07 They got it. EL: 35:09 Exactly.FS: 35:09 In fact, one boy got it so bad across his back, and all, that his father raised a lot of rucus about it, you know. And, but the attitude was, if you got a whipping at school, when you got home, you got two whippings. I mean, they backed the people. They did never, they never questioned the authority. And these, most all the students, did the same thing. They play and do things they shouldn't do and all like this, but down deep, they did not question authority, and that kind of situation prevailed at Carolina, when I went there. Whatever grade you got, you didn't fuss about it. EL: 36:27 Yeah.FS: 36:27 If you didn't do well in the course, it was your fault. Teacher might not have been good, or anything like that, but inside of you, you said, well, the other people are doing good job in this course, it's because I am not working hard enough. When I came to East Carolina, it wasn't quite that. I think that some of the kids probably going home and talking about a professor being too hard or something. Then the parents would maybe call back, EL: 37:19 Yeah.FS: 37:20 And when they came up, they would check in and see, well, now this is pretty tough work for these people, so they,maybe, maybe they need stronger teaching or something, you know, maybe you're expecting too much. But then it continually got worse.EL: 37:48 Oh.FS: 37:49 In that, if a student doesn't succeed, it is your fault, entirely your fault. It's not his fault, and he goes out and drinks beer every night. You know that's all right. EL: 38:11 Yep.FS: 38:11 You are responsible for his well-being and for beating the material in his head.EL: 38:23 Must have been tough for you.FS: 38:24 And now this is not all, but I say, the prevailing feeling that one would get while teaching class, a large class, you'd have a half a dozen people, or more in the class that would certainly feel this way and not do anything. And then you'd have some in between that that would think, well, you know, he is pretty tough, he's asking us to do more than he should. Maybe he really should be a little bit better in his presentation, and give us a little bit more. We didn't expect all of this, no. And then, of course, the good students they tried, you know. They doing well,EL: 39:24 Yeah.FS: 39:25 Coming by in morning, asking you things and and going to the library and doing little extra projects. And, you know, everything is fine, but you got the feeling from the other end, people who felt like that, you had to give it to them and put it in their minds and not make them work at all, just had to be there.EL: 39:54 Yes.FS: 39:54 That kind of situation is bad, I think.EL: 40:02 Yeah.FS: 40:02 And you do all you can to, once you can get people excited and interested in mathematics, you don't have to worry, because they're going to work, they're going to do the job. But it, with the background that some students have when they come in on the low side is such that you can't stimulate them. You can't get them excited about the work, like you could, say to, when I was teaching at Carolina. Student, average student is quite a jump above the average student at East Carolina at that time, and so that made a big difference too.EL: 41:04 Do you, how many students were there in mathematics, for example, in a graduate program when you first started? Here? Was it a big department?FS: 41:14 When we, when I first started, we had about, I guess, fifteeen, sixteen people, faculty members, and we had four, three or four graduate assistants.EL: 41:36 Yeah.FS: 41:36 And maybe or, twenty-five or thirty graduate students.EL: 41:47 Okay. Were there any women working there when you came or were, was it only men? FS: 41:53 Was it what? Was it, what all-EL: 41:55 If there were any women in the department.FS: 41:57 Oh yes, oh yes. EL: 42:00 There were?FS: 42:00 The faculty was composed of about half-and-half.EL: 42:06 Oh, really, when you came here?FS: 42:08 When I came here. And the student body, what should I say, you know the females are usually, you know, very good mathematics. they're real good. And so we had some real good female students, good at, just as good as any of the guys, you know. So now, when I left the department. It didn't grow too much after about late 70s, because the legislature wouldn't give them any more money to expand the faculty, and they wanted to hold it within maybe sixteen, fifteen to sixteen-thousand students. And then the, of course, the medical school and all of this just revolutionized situation. EL: 43:22 Yes.FS: 43:22 For not only the university, but for the area.EL: 43:27 For the, yeah.FS: 43:28 For the hospital and all this.EL: 43:30 Yeah. Can you tell me how was Greenville like when you first came here? How was the city of Greenville?FS: 43:39 All right, when I first came here, we came into this section here. This was, it was the, called the Greenville Boulevard.EL: 43:54 Yeah.FS: 43:55 Where we turned off to come down Greenville Boulevard, we didn't, we were running through farms. There was only one store on the corner of Charles Street, Charles Street and the boulevard out there.EL: 44:19 Okay.FS: 44:19 There was a service station, [caller] by the name of Shella, ran the service station had a pinball machine in the back, and the guys would go up there often on the way home and stop and get a beer and play the slot machine, the pinball machine, that was the only,EL: 44:49 Entertainment.FS: 44:50 Place of business.EL: 44:51 Yeah.FS: 44:51 All the way up. And you know what it is now.EL: 44:55 Yeah, it has grown very much.FS: 44:58 It's all, if nothing, you know, it's not hardly any vacant space for anything.EL: 45:04 No.FS: 45:04 Because it's continual, continuous throughout, business everywhere. EL: 45:44 Yeah.FS: 45:11 And then the football field, when we came here, was over where the music building is now. Where the gym, the old gym, from there, over the music building, of course, wasn't there, through there was the football field, and they had some temporary stands there, and we played teams like Herman and Davidson.EL: 45:48 So, you were involved in the sports activities as well?FS: 45:54 Yeah, and so I was, I was interested in sports, and I became a member of the athletic committee. I was on the athletic committee for about 25 years. I was in charge, well first, the budget committee. I was chairman of the Budget Committee, and we, we would come up with salaries for the coaches, and then we'd go and we'd have our meetings, the athletic committee in Dr. Jenkins office, and I would sit right in front of his desk and make a presentation to the, to the committee, whole athletic committee, how the budget, budget committee had come up with, and it was always accepted exactly as we recommended. And then the people on the athletic committee would help screen like a new basketball coach or something. Then we would screen the people when they come in, and help people, parties and all, at the house and meet, so that different people, influential people who backed the program, would be able to meet the prospective person. And of course, now it's an entirely different world. The director of athletics and maybe a few of his people on the on the board of trustees,EL: 45:54 Oh.FS: 45:54 You know, not, not the faculty committee,EL: 46:16 Yeah.FS: 46:16 But the board of trustees, they would make the decisions for the coaches who would come and their salaries and everything else.EL: 48:01 But football then, that was a big sport, also back in the 1960s.FS: 48:06 Well, it was big in the sense that they had some some people who were enthusiastic about the game and wanted to get some better players, and they needed to get a [coach]FS: 48:30 [END OF SIDE ONE]