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2012

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Oral History InterviewPia Leahy, IntervieweeElin Langholm, InterviewerHome of Pia Leahy[BEGINNING OF SIDE 1]EL: 0:00 My name is Elin Langholm, and I'm sitting here with [Palmyra] 'Pia' Leahy in her home in Greenville, and we're going to talk about her story about coming here to America and her years teaching at the Geography Department. So I don't know where to start really. I guess we can start, if you can tell me a little bit about Brazil, like where you grew up, and?PL: 0:21 Okay, I grew up in the city of Belo Horizonte, and that is in the east part of Brazil, between Brasilia and Rio de Janeiro. I went to university there. Then I went to university in the United States, in Syracuse. We came here with the first Fulbright group. Then I studied for a year in France, and then I came back to the United States in 1963 to write a book for the University of Texas. I wrote a book on catalog of Latin American maps, and I stayed there for from '63 to '65 working on that, and in '65 to '67, I taught at the University of Texas, and then I was supposed to return to my university in Brazil, but we had it good at the time, and things were very bad, so I decided to stay here another year. So the people here, East Carolina offered me a job on site, unseen. I had some friends that I had met in conferences. So I came here in '67 and I have been here since.EL: 1:30 What did your parents work with when you grew up? PL: 1:33 My parents do what?EL: 1:34 What did your parents work with? What kind of jobs did they have?PL: 1:36 Oh, my mother was a school teacher, and my father was in charge of the Social Security of my state. I have, I have, we are eight in my family four boys and four girls. I'm the oldest, so I'm very bossy.EL: 1:52 [Elin laughs] So what did your parents think about you going into teaching and taking a high university degree?PL: 2:02 Everybody my family had had university degrees. So I have eight brothers, and all of them, eight sisters and brothers, and so it was expected of you that you go to college. And I went. I loved geography, and I went and took a geography and history degree.EL: 2:20 In Brazil, yeah.PL: 2:22 And then I took a master's there, and then I got myself ready for my PhD. My dissertation was done, but I never could defend because we had a very bad political problem during about seven years. And so I have what you call an ABD, but it didn't seem to have bothered me very much around.EL: 2:43 Okay, so what about geography did you like, or did it come clear to you what you wanted to work with?PL: 2:51 Oh, yeah, I always loved geography when I was in elementary school, and I had an aunt that was fascinated with geography. I think she transferred to all of us there. And so in '56, '55 I was offered a Fulbright scholarship, and I came to, my, we all came to William and Mary first, because for Americanization, since there were a lot of Japanese and a lot of Germans was, you know, this is after the war, so it's still been on that phase. And we all went with work for the summer, had a wonderful time. And then I went into Syracuse, where I had a scholarship for political geography.EL: 3:36 Was that the first time you were outside Brazil?EL: 3:39 Oh, no, no. I used to go a lot to Argentina and we used to go to Europe for the for the winter, because it's Brazilian summer, so it's always cheaper to go during. EL: 3:48 Oh, yeah. PL: 3:49 We always have traveled quite a lot and, and in Syracuse I, I went to the Department of Geography there. I was, we all were special students, were not degree, seeking degree at that time, and but because my scholarship was for political geography, they put me in this class. I was, I had just begun my sophomore year in Brazil, and everybody in the class was about three times as old as I was, and there were only 10 students. I saw that it was funny, and then the other classes were all right. About two months into my courses, I get a call from the Dean asking for me to report to there. And I arrived there, the whole Geography Department was in this room, and I said, what have I done wrong? And they say, no, we did. You are you're taking courses in the PhD program. No wonder I was so horrified. And and I, the first day I went to that political geography class, the English professor that taught that course had the beret in which he had this little paper, and everybody had to take one, and my paper was the political duality of Nigeria. I barely knew what Nigeria was, much less that it had a political duality. But I worked very hard, and I threatened my colleagues if anybody asked me any question, were dead, and I learned my paper by heart, and I did it. But so, when they asked me what they want, they want, I want them to do, I said, well ask this, how am I doing in your class? He said, all right, so I continued in the classes, see we're not seeking degree program anyway. So after that, everybody was extremely nice to me.EL: 5:36 I see, so when did you leave Brazil to come to the United States?EL: 5:41 I came the first time in '55 but then I got, went back, I came back to the United States almost permanently in '63.EL: 5:47 In '63.PL: 5:48 That's when I went to the University of Texas to work on their book. EL: 5:51 So why did you come here?PL: 5:53 In '63? University of Texas invited me, because while I was in Brazil, the years before, I used to work for the Fulbright Commission, their summer seminars. So I got to know a lot of geographers from here, and they were heading the, University of Texas received a grant, and in this grant, it was, I'll show you the, the grant, the grant was to write and update the catalog of the Geographical Society of America, head of all the Latin American maps. And they had done from the beginning of times to 1926, and I update the whole scene from 1926 to 1964. This is done for research on that, something that was very well accepted when it came out, because it was during the time of the Alliance for Progress. So everybody is, and also, I was in charge to build the map, map library of University of Texas. University of Texas has the largest Latin American institute. And so they wanted to have a collection of maps that would suit because what happened is that the United States helped people make maps, but then the maps come here under what's called the third nation agreement, means you don't, cannot see the maps, only the federal government can see the maps. So the University of Texas had applied for the for the Ford Foundation to, enough money to buy maps so that we could make the University of Texas a Latin American collection that could be used by anyone. So that was also my function, after I wrote the book for them, and that took me two years. I went all over Latin America buying maps, and we built up a Latin American collection that was private and could be used by anyone.EL: 7:43 So you traveled all over Latin America. [unintelligible]PL: 7:45 Oh yes, it was great fun. And except I couldn't go to Haiti at that time. EL: 7:52 Did you go alone?PL: 7:53 Oh, yeah. In that, in, I was in Panama on my way to Haiti, and I went, I saw that that wasn't, during, it was during the time of Papa Doc, you know. Things were very rough there. So I went to the Haitian embassy in Panama City to ask for my visa, since I was a Brazilian citizen. And so, I was there for a few minutes, and all of a sudden this lady came said, the ambassador wants to talk to you. Never heard of an ambassador needing to talk to me to get at a visa. So I went to there. He said, Miss Monpeiro, what do you want to do in Haiti? So I told him what it was. He said, do you really have to go there? I said, Well, I don't really have to go, but I'd like to go. He said, if you don't have to go, don't go. This is the ambassador! So I am adventurous and I'm stupid! So I didn't go to Haiti. I went to Haiti a few years later, but, but not that time. EL: 8:44 Yeah, which country did you like the best?PL: 8:46 Of all, of all the Latin American countries? Well, with the exception of my country that I like pretty much. I like most of the countries. I like Mexico a lot, I totally enjoy Mexico, and I like some little countries. I like Salvador, and Central American Honduras. They're so different from each other that, that I think that you can have a little special taste for each one of them. Have you ever been to any of them?EL: 9:13 I've been in Belize, once, that's the only one. PL: 9:16 Belize, oh yes, yes. Belize is a little problem now, but, EL: 9:20 YeahPL: 9:20 But I think that, you know, some of the countries, used to be very nice to go, like Colombia. You cannot go anymore. I have a daughter in law whose parents come from Columbia. They can't go back there.EL: 9:32 Oh really. Okay, so when you first came to America, you went to Texas, right? PL: 9:39 To teach.EL: 9:40 Yeah.PL: 9:40 I came to teach.EL: 9:40 Yeah, and then what happened afterwards when you were back on that project?PL: 9:46 The chairman of the department had got a Fulbright for India, so they asked me to stay and teach his courses. So I called my university in Brazil. They said, yes, okay. So I stayed for one year, then I was supposed to go back to Brazil. And then, all hell broke loose. My father called me up and said, since you cannot keep your trap shut, your mouth shut, you better stay there. So I was looking for a job. I applied to a few universities, and then some friends of mine in here that I had known heard that I was looking for a job. So they called me up, and they offered me a job. So I came here on site at ECU. So I came here in '67.EL: 10:27 Oh, and you have never been here, in this in this stage before?PL: 10:31 No, no, I came here, when I arrived here. Greenville was so small, if you think Greenville is small now, imagine that 30 some odd years ago, it was very small. There was one restaurant downtown. There was nothing. It was very simple. And there was, was very agriculture, there was no industry here whatsoever; the industry didn't come here until 1970, so it was '70, Burroughs Wellcome moved from New York to here, and that was the beginning of the industrial park. It was totally, completely agriculture. EL: 11:05 And what about the landscape and everything, did you think?PL: 11:10 No, it was pretty flat. But, but, but, you know, you get to love, because I think that what is most, that, if you can offer is the people in this town. They are the friendliest people you can ever get. And they, they treat me so nice, so nice. You know, I made the very best friends. I have lived in this town longer than I had lived any other place in the world, so this is home for me. And I'll go, I'll go to Brazil very often, but, but this is home for me.EL: 11:39 So someone told me, I think that was Dr. Hampton, really, that when you arrived here, we came driving down the highway, the first thing you saw was this,PL: 11:47 Sign! Ah, yes okay!EL: 11:48 Can you tell me about it? PL: 11:50 Oh, yes. Oh, that was hard, I came from Rocky Mount and and when I drove into town, that, I there, was looking for that slide, it's in the attic somewhere, but I cannot find it. I drove into Greenville, just short of Greenville. There was this big sign that said, "The KKK of Greenville Welcomes You." You know what the KKK is, right? EL: 12:11 Yeah, I know.PL: 12:11 I said, oh my gosh what am I going to do? And then I took, I got out of the car and I took a photo. There was all these Blacks working in the, in the agriculture, because that was the labor here, was whites and Blacks, but predominantly Black. Right now, agriculture is all handled by the Mexicans. And so it was quite shocking, you know, quite shocking. But that thing went down quite fast. And I did something interesting, I went to a KKK meeting once.EL: 12:40 Oh, did you?PL: 12:41 Yeah with a professor from the geography department. I arrived there, that was quite that was an experience, because you always hear about racials and things. There was nothing, one single word of racial in there. There was this young man. He was strapped like an eagle, like this, and he was getting a good beat. It happens that this young man had mistreated his mother and his father that was deceased was a high rank, things on, the wizard, you know. And so, and the KKK thinks that they are private police, and so they were going to teach that kid that he had to behave, and mind his mother. So, so that's all, as you asked. There was, everybody had hoods so I did not know who was there, but except for the boy, and they told him, oh if you mistreat your mother one more time, the treatment is going to be 10 times worse. I don't know how it could be, but anyway. So this was Friday. EL: 13:35 Oh really.PL: 13:36 This was Friday. Monday morning, I get to my class and this voice from the back and said, "Miss Monpeiro, what were you doing at the KKK meeting in Winterville?" I said, "Oh, probably not what you were doing." [Pia laughs] And I changed the subject very quick. EL: 13:51 Yeah.PL: 13:51 It was interesting, it was different.EL: 13:54 Yep, you never talked about, a little bit about your impression of the Greenville area, and how did it look like. Is it very different, I mean, the campus and the university, how?PL: 14:07 From the time I came here? Oh yeah, the campus grew enormously. Except the center part of the campus hasn't changed very much. Except there was where the School of Art is now. There was a building there called Old Austin. Was called Austin building, then they built another Austin, and it became Old Austin. It was a very beautiful building. It was a pity that they couldn't save it. I think it got to dilapidated too fast. It, so that building went, and in place of it came the School of Art that is totally different than the architecture of the campus. You know what I'm talking about? EL: 14:42 Yeah.PL: 14:42 And then, and then, then they build the building we are now, when I first came here, our building was Graham.EL: 14:50 The Brewster building?PL: 14:52 Before? The Brewster building was not here. EL: 14:55 Oh.PL: 14:55 The Geography Department was housed in Graham building where the Geology Department is now, it's on the circle [Wright Circle]. And we move to this building in 1970, in December of 1970. And that place was all beautiful woods before they start the building and, and then the next building they made was, or they made the Rawl and, no Rawl already here, the Bates where the business school is, that's what it was. And, of course, the Student Union is, was also not there, Mendenhall. And there was a cafeteria where now is the archeology lab. And Joyner Library was very, very small, I mean a third of what it is now. And Minges Coliseum was just started being built. And of course, there was nothing of the medical school, that's all new.EL: 15:57 Did you have a place to live when you first got here, how did you?PL: 16:00 Yeah, the first when I came here, the first I arrived, I lived with Dr. Stewart and his wife. They're the people that talked me in to coming here. I lived there for the early part of the summer, until I find an apartment. It was not very easy to find apartments in here. There were only about two apartment compounds. One was Stratford Arms, that was on Johns Boulevard and this one that was on Fifth Street, called Green Spring Apartments. But that one was furnished, I didn't have any furniture, so I moved in there. It was pretty nice. I lived there. I got married in '69 and so we lived there until my daughter was ready to get, be born.EL: 16:42 Okay, so you found, you met your husband down here in Greenville?PL: 16:46 Now, I met my husband, yes, he had to come here for a meeting. He's a geographer, too. EL: 16:50 Oh!PL: 16:51 And, and I met him here. Then I, no, no, no, that's not true. I met him, I was in an AAG meeting in Gainesville, and they were having a party for him, he had just finished his PhD, that's when I met him. And then the following year, the Southeastern Conference of Geographers was here, and he came back, it was November '68 and then we got married in April '69.EL: 17:19 So and he is American. PL: 17:21 Oh, yeah, yeah, from [unintelligible]. EL: 17:22 Okay, can you tell me a little bit about how it is like to come here in America, and did you have any problems with the language and everything when you came here? PL: 17:33 Not, not this, not when I came in '63, no. EL: 17:36 No. But the first time?PL: 17:37 Of course, I have an accent, you know, and I'm not going to lose it.EL: 17:40 Me too! [Elin laughs]PL: 17:42 You probably don't know, there is a television program a doctor, psychiatrist called Dr. Ruth. Then my students laugh, they say that I sound just like her. EL: 17:52 Oh, really? [Elin laughs]PL: 17:54 But, you know, I always had a very easy attitude about my, I started first time class, in any class, I started said, look, after about 10 minutes and, "You notice, I have an accent, don't you? Okay, you have one too. So if you don't understand something, don't wait until after the test to tell me that you didn't understand me, because it's not going to bump you at all."EL: 18:18 So you started to work at the geography department in 1967. How old were you then?PL: 18:27 How old was I, god. I am 66, how many years? 34 years ago? I was in my 30s.EL: 18:36 You were like, in your early 30s, yeah. And how were you welcomed in the Geography Department?PL: 18:43 Oh, yeah. Oh, they really were very nice. I had met most of them in geography conventions.EL: 18:48 Exactly.PL: 18:49 Yeah. And so I am very easy to get along with, so we didn't have any trouble, was quite fun.EL: 18:57 And how big was the dapartment back then?PL: 19:01 [Unintelligible] It was, we have '67, in '67 we had 12 faculty. EL: 19:14 Twelve? Yeah.PL: 19:16 When I start, in '59 to '67 they said there was eight, and '67 to '70, there was 12. Maybe there was 10 people here. Most of the people, you see, we all came up at the same time, and all retired at at same time. Between between 19- I retired in, end of '96, between '93 and '96 practically everybody retired. So everybody that's in the department of geography now have been here, very young, and they have been here very little, very few years. EL: 19:48 So, when you first came here, there were also many of the other faculty who first started in that period, in the late 1960s.PL: 19:57 Yeah, there was a lot, and all these people stayed. Were, there were very few that went, but Dr. Stewart, would stay here until the '75 or so, and then he went to work at the, at the Appalachian University, and other people moved to other places, but there was a lot of people that stayed here.EL: 20:17 Were there, both men and women working there?PL: 20:21 There was, there was two women, myself and Dr. Patterson. Dr. Patterson was an Africa specialist, and her husband was also one. He came here to work, but then he got brain tumor, and then she took his place, and she retired way before I did. So for a while, I was the only one there. We only, there was very few women.EL: 20:45 How was that like to be a woman?PL: 20:46 Hmm?EL: 20:47 How was it like to be a woman? PL: 20:48 Yeah, we didn't get a good break until we start shouting.EL: 20:52 Oh yeah?PL: 20:52 Oh yes. And all of a sudden, one day, there was here, what they call the scandal sheet, all of us in everybody's box, it appeared the salary of here. Salaries were considered something like top secret, national, national top secret, nobody knew what anybody else was doing or making what, maybe is not, at least, there was no opening of salary. Now all of a sudden, everybody knew. So people that were in the same positions, some of the men were making thousands of dollars. All of a sudden, they had to straighten up that thing very quick. And from that moment forward, I don't think they had much trouble, no. But they were, they were, I think that there was a chairman here, our chairman, when I came here, Cramer. He was a little bit chauvinistic. But you see, I stayed here maybe because, most universities in those days there was nepotism law, you know, husband and wife could not be in the same department, but here there was none. So for us, was very good, because my husband and I both stopped in the same department.EL: 21:57 Yeah, but he came here after.PL: 21:59 After I did, yeah, but they came, they invited him to come here, because they want me to stay so. EL: 22:06 Yeah.PL: 22:06 And he was looking for a job. He was teaching at the University of Miami, and he was not happy there, so they invite him here.EL: 22:13 How was it like to work as a husband and wife?PL: 22:16 We never, never had anything to do with each other there, because his subjects were so different than mine. He used to teach trade and transportation and political geography, and he taught Latin America, because that was his speciality, and I taught cartography. [Unintelligible]EL: 22:33 Okay, can you tell me a little bit about the classes you started teaching? What kind?PL: 22:38 Okay, when I first came here was the strangest thing I found. The chairman of the department had this idea that everybody should be encyclopedia. So when I first came here, we were in the quarter system. So the classes were every day. And the first two years, I taught something like 11 different courses. EL: 22:57 Oh wow.PL: 22:58 It was ridiculous. But that thing, finally, thank god, stopped. You know, I thought economic geography [unintelligible], some ridiculous thing, and it was, it was, and it was not every semester, so you taught this semester, then they skipped a semester. We didn't have much say what you're going to teach. He was pretty,EL: 23:24 They just assign you for,PL: 23:26 Assigned for a course. But you see a question that, it was then, then by the time, I would bet you about '71, '70, things change a lot. Everybody in the department had to teach Geography 1000, what was not bad, no. Because Geography 1000 is a lot of people, know 100 and some odd students. But everybody had the same thing. So everybody taught at least one course. If you love to teach that course, then you could teach more. Because at one time, we were taught something like 17 sessions of those courses, then, to say, enormous amounts, because we had to teach everybody from the School of Education, you know. And but then, then became much simpler. The last 20 years, I only taught cartography, history of cartography, things like that, I thought, but after my husband retired, I taught Latin America for a few times, my ex-husband, then he was.EL: 24:22 Oh, okay. So you took cartography. I'm just curious, how was that like? I mean, because that's a subject that's been developed a lot, new technology and everything.PL: 24:34 Yes, you see, we did, we did, we did first, of course, this is before computers.EL: 24:38 Yeah. PL: 24:39 So we did the manual cartography, and they do beautiful stuff. You have to see the things that they did. They were gorgeous. Of course, it was very minute, we spent hours doing it. But we found out that the kids that took manual cartography became a much better computer cartographer, because somehow they developed a sense of static that you don't develop with the computer. But they could use it by creating that. And so for a long time, we thought both right now, they don't. Right now, what's the name,EL: 25:14 [Unintelligible]PL: 25:15 [Unintelligible], she only teach computer cartography, but it's okay, because now, now there is not. But, you know, for the longest time in the state, especially, there were many departments of planning that didn't have a computer cartography program, so they had to learn how to draft.EL: 25:30 So then, actually, you were sitting there drawing, maps.PL: 25:33 Oh, we drew beautiful stuff. I mean, gorgeous stuff. I wish I had some here. There was some in the department. They did in mylar, you know the plastic they use. They use Zip a Tone to make color cuts or something. We always display them on the hall. Everybody stop to see because they were gorgeous. Their final project, every semester, they had to pick out a country in the world and do an economic study of it, graphically, think about gorgeous stuff.EL: 26:03 How did you draw? What did you draw them with? Pens?PL: 26:06 Pens, oh yeah. How do you call this thing, ink pens that you have to put ink inside? Yeah.EL: 26:16 So if you spilled ink on it, then the whole map were destroyed?PL: 26:19 No, no, no, because mylar, you can erase. On the old times, when I first start, we didn't have mylar so if it spilled, you really had, we had, we have all sorts of techniques to erase things. You know, you had, the erasers, electrical erasers, you had. But it was much more messy because on the old times, the pins were tiny, little things like that that you fill up with, with the eye dropper and the jars of inks were not very, very safe, just so sometimes you had some wonderful accidents. But in time, [Pia gets up and walks away possibly to find example to show; unintelligible]EL: 27:21 Okay. [long pause] That's okay.PL: 27:27 [Unintelligible and far away]EL: 27:31 No, oh yeah, yeah, but that's more like in patterns or?PL: 27:39 Cartridge, yeah, but we had to fill it up. And you could use different colors. For example, use red ink for roads, or they did beautiful stuff, I mean they were gorgeous. Yeah, it's a lost art. But you see, we still find, for example, if you go to the National Geographic in Washington, while you are here in the States, make an effort to go there and visit them. They do magnificent work there, they'll take you through. EL: 28:07 What's the name of it?PL: 28:08 The National Geographical Society. They do, we used to take the students there, and every year we had one of the map makers from there come in here and tell the kids, we've got a lot of kids who applied to there. But for a while, we had the aero photograph, and the kids had to make maps out of the photograph, and not by computer, but by putting a myelin on top and measure things and so on.EL: 28:36 When did you start getting those photographs?PL: 28:40 Oh, when I came here, they were already here. EL: 28:42 Oh, okay they were already here.PL: 28:44 There was Dr. Cheston. That was a chairman afterwards. He used to teach that course. He had worked a lot with the partnering coach. We thought that in map reading, what they did in map reading was teach the kids every little thing that they were going to go if they went into the applied geography section, there was a little bit of map reading, there was a little bit of cartography, there was a little bit of photogrammetry, a little bit of remote sensing, and a little bit of GIS. So it was because they required a course for a freshman or sophomore. So they had an idea when they want to sign up for the course, what was expected, but I don't know they will do it map reading, because Melissa left. That was because teaching that course, but I don't know.EL: 29:32 I don't know either. So, but, did you, can I ask you, did you interact a lot with the students, or did you teach mostly undergraduate or graduate students? PL: 29:42 Oh, I taught some graduates, but mostly undergraduate. EL: 29:45 Okay.PL: 29:45 The graduate students worked with me because we had a lot of assistance on cartography, map reading, the map reading students worked with me a lot, the graduate students.EL: 29:56 Were there any other people from other countries, working or going?EL: 30:02 Oh, we had 75 Malaysians.EL: 30:05 75 Malaysians in one year?PL: 30:08 They came all at one time, almost.EL: 30:10 Oh, really.PL: 30:11 I think they came in groups of 20. But at one time we had in freshman, sophomore, and we had about 75 it was, I used to call the Malaysian invasion. EL: 30:19 Oh yeah?PL: 30:19 They were sweet. What happened is that nobody knew they were coming. And in the middle of the summer, one summer, all of a sudden, 20 Malaysians show up here. They're all going to start planning. See the planning and the geographic department were together and, and all of a sudden, oh, it was panic. You know, they didn't have enough teacher to teach those kids. And they were, they were very, very, very polite and extremely bright. They were the cream of the crop of Malaysia. And so I had them all in my cartography class, map reading class and so on, because cartography is also required, of course, for geology, for anthropology and for for planning, you know. And they were delightful. They were excellent students. And their English was reasonably good. And they were very studious. Very, very studious. But the funny things on those days we had you, it's before your time. Do you ever, did you ever heard of computer cards? So on the other times before the pieces came in, and you have the big, big machines. You type in a program would have a box, two, three boxes of cards in which there was whatever information in one individual. So registration was done like that, everybody had a card. And so I did not know then. But you know, if you are a Muslim and you have your father have gone to Mecca, so the letters B-I-N, Bin, like son of Bin Laden, the Bin means that your father has been to Mecca. Oh, really, yeah. So we had these kids. All the guys are called Mohammed. So it's Mohammed Hashami Bin, Mohammed dot, dot, dot, Bin. So Bin was, was just an addon so all of a sudden, I get this card, and everyone in my class was Mohammed Bin because the card didn't have space to put their name. Mohammed says, you just, just don't put Mo. put the name of the kid, and then I take the Bin out, because it makes, all I said was Mohammed one, Mohammed two. [Pia laughs] We had all these Bins in my class. It was so funny. And the girls too.EL: 32:35 There were both boys and girls?PL: 32:36 Yeah, and the girls were very, very all of them were very fundamentalist, but not extremist like these people, but the girls wear robes, and we gave them a room, so they had, they pray x number of hours a day. It was an interesting experience for our students and for them too, and they were really very nice. I saw, I was sorry when they stopped coming.EL: 33:00 Yeah, were there any interaction between them and the American kids? PL: 33:03 Oh yes, oh yes. They did very well. They many of them lived with each other. Not many, because they are very strict diet. They would go every two weeks to Charlotte to a kosher place, because we don't have a kosher store here, and to buy their food. They would drive all the way to Charlotte. EL: 33:22 Oh, really.PL: 33:23 Yeah, and they were, they all were drive bicycles. And it was funny, we would see them on Charles Street, one after another. They all, they all always moved in groups like that.EL: 33:37 Okay, so were these people here just for a semester? PL: 33:40 No, no, they graduated from here. Oh, they all came and graduated, and most of them went to graduate degrees. For example, we had a few that went to Stamford, to MIT, to Harvard. They were very, very good students. And they all did very well. Some were,EL: 33:53 So they were from Malaysia.PL: 33:54 Malaysia, yeah. EL: 33:55 Do you remember any other nationalities?PL: 33:58 Oh, yeah, we had, let's see. We had many kids that came from other countries. We didn't have as many foreign students here like they had in Texas, and many of them took courses with us. But I'm trying to remember if we had any graduate students from any other nationalities. I cannot recall.EL: 34:17 Because right now we are three. It's me from Norway, and then there's two from China? PL: 34:22 China? No, I don't remember. Oh, yes, we had, we had a Japanese girl, very, very bright Miko, and she went, she graduated from here, then she went to, she was a matter of fact, last I heard, she was in Taiwan, doing something for Taiwanese government. She was, the father was American, the mother was Japanese, but she lived in Japan.EL: 34:54 So were there any, like what more can I ask about the department? Were there any social things going on?PL: 35:01 Oh yes, oh yes. We used to have parties, and we used to have games. Like I said. We used to play softball faculty against the graduate students. In Brazil, we don't play baseball, so I had no idea what baseball was. And do you know, do you know baseball?EL: 35:21 I know what it is. I've never tried it. I don't understand it.PL: 35:24 But anywaym, there is a position called short stop that is on the middle and they left a note in my mailbox, "you're going to play shortstop." I did not know a short stop from a long stop, and so I asked my neighbor behind me to teach me how to play baseball. The question is that I, I did well, I hit the ball, but I you have to run around like that, but you have to drop the bat. So everybody was screaming at me. I saw that they were cheering me up. No, they were screaming, "Drop the bat!" [Pia laughs] We are not keeping the bat. I took a long time for them to let me survive that. We did, we had lots of things. We had picnics, we had, we used to, we used to take the grad, the students. We had GTU, that's Gamma Theta Upsilon. EL: 36:09 Yeah.PL: 36:10 We used to take them on canoe trips from here all the way to Grimesland. EL: 36:15 Oh.PL: 36:15 You know, it was fun. And I don't go canoe, so I stopped them in between. They would start here at the first street and all the way together. When they got it to Pactolas, they would stop, and I would bring them their picnics, and we ate there, and then I came home and they went back.EL: 36:35 Yeah. So there were some things going on.EL: 36:37 Oh yeah. So there was a lot of things going on in those days.EL: 36:41 So, but how was it, like you said, when you first came to Greenville, that there was nothing here. They had one restaurant.PL: 36:47 Yeah, there was very few things. Most people, here would go to Raleigh to shop. There was a little mall that was, you know, the Colonial Mall. Then there was a little strip mall there [Pitt Plaza Shopping Center]. There was Penney's [J.C. Penney]. There were some few shops. There was the downtown, however, there was a lot of shops downtown where there is none anymore. When this, when they start open the malls, everybody left downtown. Where it is that, what is the name of the restaurant? I cannot remember the name. It's on Fifth Street. Well, anyway, that restaurant, where that restaurant is, it was Belk's [Belk] that's now in both malls. Yeah, that was a wonderful store, and there was a lot of ladies dresses, shoe place, that whole avenue street was full of little shops, but they all closed, unfortunately. EL: 37:34 When, do you remember when they started closing? PL: 37:36 When, when they opened the malls. EL: 37:38 Yeah.PL: 37:39 See the problem was there was probably parking and, and I don't know. So first of all, the strip mall Penney's [J.C. Penny] came in, and then it started getting bigger and bigger and bigger then Brody's moved in there and closed downtown. Then Belk's [Belk] moved in there, closed downtown. Then they opened the other mall, and they moved there too. And little by little, everything went away from downtown and downtown died. You didn't arrive, before they made a mall with bricks all the way from Fifth Street to Third Street. But that didn't work either. Nobody came. No stores came, and so there was a bunch of derelicts there. Didn't want to go by there, because strange people sit around, and then they decided to open the street again to traffic and try to refurbish all these shops. They should have make little restaurants with outside cafes in there, would work perfectly, but somehow never worked. There was a beautiful store that is still there, empty called Blount-Harvey. It was a beautiful store. It's, they never did anything with the buildings just sitting there to rot.EL: 38:47 Yeah, because I walked up that street the other day and there's nothing there.EL: 38:50 Nothing, nothing, nothing. And it's, it, and for a while, for a while, there was a lot of this, little churches, you know, front window churches. Oh, one time, we made a map. I made the kids do a map of all the churches in Greenville.EL: 39:07 Oh, really. There are many. PL: 39:08 183EL: 39:09 In Greenville?EL: 39:11 They have church, there's church with all sorts of, there's, one that's called "No Name Church." We know 183 churches, we found. And, and we did lots of things, with map reading class, I tried to teach the kids how to go look for things. So we did, for example, projects like identify the houses by condition, [unintelligible] for everybody. And then we did one of places of accidents, you know, where it was concentration. So they had to go do research, you know, that was the reason because, what they had to go to the library, we did a lot of things with North Carolina. North, one thing that, if you hadn't had the chance to go see yet, go to the library at the North Carolina room. It's very, very good. It's excellent, can give you a lot of information. We did a lot of maps in North Carolina [unintelligible].EL: 40:04 Yeah, but I want to go, like, when you came here then, and since Greenville was such a small town, what did you do, I mean? PL: 40:13 That's one different thing that happened now. Now everybody go eat out on those days, everybody ate, weekends, you are always invited out, or you invite people in. So that was the country club that we joined afterwards. But for example, there was a Hardee's restaurant on 14th street. That was the first Hardee's ever built. That was it. There was no other hamburger place. Then there was on 10th Street extension, there was a place called Cliff's Oyster Bar that everything was sold fried. We used to call it the oyster kingdom. There was downtown, there was a place called The Old Country Inn that was, Old Town Inn, it was a little restaurant, very simple. There was two student restaurants called that was the first block after you finished the campus on 5th Street, that was more a student hangout. And there was a cafeteria that opened after I arrived there, here on Evans Street, where the, there's a restaurant, Marathon is now, that was there. That's it. Oh, there was a Kentucky Fried Chicken. EL: 41:16 Oh, were there?PL: 41:16 On the corner of, Greenville is the only town that 10th Street and 5th Street meet. EL: 41:21 Oh, yeah.PL: 41:21 You know where it is? Where there is the dive shop. Used to be Kentucky Fried Chicken. EL: 41:28 Oh, really.PL: 41:29 That's it. There was not even a pizza place. There was not an Italian restaurant. We have now 15 Chinese restaurants in this town. Nothing, nothing. When the first Chinese came in, Chinese restaurant came here, it was on 10th Street. That must have been, what, 15-18, years ago. Then all of a sudden, when we hit 50,000 people, all the restaurant, all the franchise come when a city hits 50,000 because now all of a sudden, we have restaurants, not that they were very good, but at least they are there. EL: 42:02 They're many.PL: 42:03 There are many, many, many for the size of, but you see, it's the problem of the franchise. No companies like Red Lobster, Ruby Tuesday, O'Brien, Outback, they only come in if the city has reached 50,000 people. Otherwise they don't come in. But when we did reach, we got everybody, I mean, from every side.EL: 42:25 You remember, like, because earlier, East Carolina University were mostly a teacher's college, right? And there were many, most girls going here, but when you came here, [speaker interrupts]EL: 42:37 What happened is the teachers college finished a long time they became, became East Carolina University, no, it's East Carolina College. The year that I came in here, in '67 became East Carolina University. EL: 42:48 Oh, that was the year?PL: 42:49 Yeah, but there's already lots of men, but still there was a lot of girls. But what the increase in, was the number of Black students.EL: 42:57 Yeah. How was that when you first arrived? PL: 43:00 There was some, but not very many, very few.EL: 43:03 And the desegregation haven't started yet? PL: 43:07 Oh yes, oh yes, it has already passed, because the integration was in the early '60s. But see when I came in here '67 the schools were not integrated. We had Epps high school that was on Fifth Street. On West Fifth Street was the Black high school, Rose High that is here on Elm Street, that's now coed, as a white high school, and it was like that. There were Black high schools and white high school, Black schools and white schools all over town. The integration came '67-'68 where it was a mess, there were fights instead of, you that always baffled me why they did not start integrating first grade this year, second grade next year, third grade, so these kids got used to it. All of a sudden, they dumped all the kids together. It was a disaster. It was a disaster. It took a long time to get that thing together. Seem to be okay now, but it took a long time.EL: 44:07 Oh it still is, yes, for me. I mean, I was almost shocked when I came here and I realized that there still are a big difference between white and Black people. PL: 44:17 Yeah, there is, there is and, but I think what happened most is that the difference that you have now is economic more than racial. I suppose there is still a lot of people here that are, you know, they treat the Blacks all right, but they don't have anything to do with them, you know they are the maids and so on, that's fine, but they don't have, I remember the first time we had a Black professor in my department. I had a big party here and invited him,oh it was great concern where these people came from. EL: 44:47 Oh, really?PL: 44:48 Oh yes.EL: 44:48 And he was a faculty?PL: 44:49 Oh yes, yes. Also everything changed with the medical school, because all of a sudden we got a lot of Black professors in the medical school, so the economic level of the Black became much higher. And so now we have a lot of professionals that are Black that we did not have. For example, I have a professor that teaches in the planning department, I don't know if you have met Mulatu Wubneh? EL: 45:11 No.PL: 45:12 He's from Ethiopia. And of course, they're Black. They have [unintelligible] faces. You know, they don't have the Black mouths or anything, but they're Black. And Kinde started going to public school. What happened to the, that the Blacks found here the professional Blacks is that, there are very few of them, and because there's so many elementary schools in the city, they're scattered around, depends where they live. So these kids, the only, the whites, don't associate with Blacks very often in school, or they may be nice to each other, but no, they don't visit in class or something like that. And and and see the people that associate with him, his mother didn't want them associated with them, they came from the worst ghettos across town. You know, you know, it's not a question, it could have been purple, black, or blue. If they came from [unintelligible], they don't want your kid to do anything to do with them, because the drug infested area and it's, it's terrible.[END OF SIDE 1]

[BEGINNING OF SIDE 2]PL: 0:01 And and right now, I think it's getting better, because I went the other day to one of the elementary schools here, and I saw a lot of the people I know, that, I know the parents from the medical school, because I work there now that, that are there. So it has been changed, but it was done very difficult for them,EL: 0:21 What was it like for a Black student, do you think to come at ECU in the beginning?PL: 0:26 Well, when I was here, [interviewer interrupts]EL: 0:27 Were there any in [unintelligible]PL: 0:29 When I was here, it was integrated, school was already integrated, right? And they, I never knew, to be very honest with you, if they had different dormitories for them. I don't think so, because it couldn't do that. But maybe they had Black roommates, I suppose maybe it felt more comfortable? But the problem in Greenville is that the Blacks were economically, so deprived, and that's the problem that happened now, all of a sudden, the younger generation decided that they were not going to work in agriculture, but they're not prepared to work anywhere else. So they are all, well, not all, but any non majority on welfare. I used to own a building here that, where the Private Security Commission was in, and one day there was this kid in there that was looking for a job, and the director said, see if you can help him for me. So I went there to help him, and he was at the computer having great difficulty finding what he wanted. I realized that he couldn't barely read, you know. He was not, he couldn't read very well. So I was talking to him, and there was a job available as a janitor at ASMO, that is the Japanese company. I said, paid well, it paid some $11 an hour, plus benefits. I said, honey, get this job, work there for two years, they'll pay you to go back to school. "I will never be a janitor." So this attitude that they have because my great, great, great, great grandfather was a slave, so I'm not going to do anything that is [unintelligible] from this [unintelligible] you cannot get them to do. EL: 2:12 Well,PL: 2:12 So that becomes a very serious problem.EL: 2:14 Yeah. But when you, for example, see at the janitors and the cleaning staff at they [speaker interrupts] now to their 99% of them are Blacks [speaker interrupts].PL: 2:22 Oh yeah, oh yeah, but these are they're older too.EL: 2:25 Yeah. PL: 2:25 But the younger kids will not come. See the younger kids don't do these things. The idea is that if they cannot get an office job, they will not have a job. And that is the thing that the Black leaders in here are trying to change, because doesn't go anywhere. Then they get mad, furiously mad with, with the Mexicans that make a very good living because they work from sunrise to sunset, but they don't. They refuse to do the job that they do. I did a lot of work with migrants here, and I talked one time with the farmer, big farmer here, he said, here, if I have to go back to local labor, I quit fine, and that's the attitude. And I think it's going to take a long time, I don't know if it ever could clear up, but at least they're not mistreated any form or shape. Of course, they are so economically deprived that the consequences of economic deprivation cause lots of trouble.EL: 3:21 Do you remember when the first Mexicans started to come here?PL: 3:24 Yeah, there were very few. When I came here, there was none. And they started coming somehow around the end of the '70s, but.EL: 3:32 How did Americans look at on that time?PL: 3:34 Oh, at first they liked because they came to work on the farms. EL: 3:40 Yeah.PL: 3:40 And I think today they are seen very well, people are very impressed with the work. I have a friend that has a huge construction company, and the Mexicans that come here have to work from April to September in agriculture. That's required. So Rick was telling me, when March came, I start crying because I lose all my employees. And I said, I have no problem with the Mexicans. If they say they're going to be there, they're there. They never get sick, they never do anything. They're wonderful workers. But then from April to September, I am so sad, because I cannot find anybody to work, and they cannot work because otherwise they lose their visa. They are very hard work, very hard workers, and they got smarter. When they first started coming here, they couldn't speak any English. There was nobody to do, and there was no control. These people in Florida got them in trucks and brought them here and delivered them to a farmer that housed them in obnoxious conditions, awful conditions. And of course, since they didn't have an automobile, they have to buy these things on the store that the farmer had. They were abused. And so by the time they got their paycheck, they had to pay for the house they were living in, for the food that they bought, they had, but they got smart. The problem, which you have, the difference you have between a Haitian immigrant here and a Mexican immigrant, that the Mexicans may not know English, but they know how to write and read in Spanish. They are not illiterate. The Haitians are illiterate. They don't know how to write and read in any language, so it's very difficult to teach them any other language, but see the next version, so what they did, three or four families get together, they buy one car, they rent a trailer somewhere, and they get their paycheck full, and they do their own buying. But it took them 10 years to get that thing straight, until the Primary Security Commission started going to the farms and register everybody that was there, there were a lot of people that were being paid, not very good wages, but right now they are pretty united.EL: 5:35 What do you think will happen? Because right now, if you look at the student body at ECU, for example, you don't see many Mexicans there. But now, after everywhere, yes, I would believe that they would start [speaker interrupts]PL: 5:57 Oh yeah, yeah. You see what happened, I don't know if you have realized that a husband and wife come here, and the first thing she does is to get pregnant, to have a baby born here. That baby's an American citizen. Then there's a second baby in America. So I think when these kids get to be 18, they request the parents to move to here. The parents are very, very strict with the kids in school. You don't see much problem on the school children, they all went to public schools like the Vietnamese. The same way we received a lot of Vietnamese after the Vietnam War here. Those people did beautiful and, and I think they are most, most of them, I noticed, my daughter has a maid that's Mexican, and her children are in school, and I was there, when I was there last time, I was talking to her husband that had to come to fetch her, and she said to him, my kid is going to college, and I'm already start saving. Said I never had a chance to go, and I'm, the United States has given me this opportunity. They think this way. Unfortunately, we cannot make the Blacks understand. We have the same trouble with the Indians in Lumberton. When I first came here, there was not an Indian from Lumberton here now, it's full of them. When, for a period, of every girl that came from Lumberton is the Lumbee Indians. They all went into nursing. We had a bunch of them that work as student helper in our department. They were all from Lumberton. They're all in nursery, nursing. But it was, I think it was about the '80s when they started coming, because they used to go to technical schools around there, south of here. Lumberton, you know what it is, it south of here towards Fayetteville. And but now, now they all come to college. I think that in 10 years, we're going to see a lot of Mexican kids in college.EL: 8:02 Yeah probably, probably. I guess we can start trying to end this. I know that you must see many people come and go from from the students. Do you, did you have any contact with any of them after they were there?PL: 8:21 Oh, yeah, many of them that, you see, I was that, the, the charge of all the students, student coordinator,EL: 8:34 Course advisor?PL: 8:34 Coordinator, yeah. And I also was in charge of getting all their internships, and so every time I wanted an internship, I had this wonderful, wonderful list of people that worked, that had been here, that were heads of this and that other function, and we will get students like that have a kid that lives in the mountains and he wants to do his internship, but he didn't want to come back here in the summer, he would do internship for three months in town. So I would to call there, the planner, and said, Joe, do you remember me? I need that place, you know. So we have a lot of things that like that. And so it's a very, very nice integrated network. And this was done predominant by the planning department. They have a wonderful network that we used a lot. It has been wonderful, without which I don't know we could. I had to place 30-40 kids every semester. So, and they did, they did, helped a lot.EL: 9:39 Because that's, kind of makes me a little bit sad, or I love the Geography Department the way it is now, but there's really not so much interaction between the students anymore. I don't know, I think maybe it's, it's because of that we do so different things you have like, the technology people over there, and then you have the physicals here, so.PL: 9:58 They don't, the graduate students don't get together?EL: 10:01 Well, we try, but it doesn't really work out, you know.PL: 10:03 Oh, what a pity. That's a pity, because for a while we used all to go Friday evening to Chico's, all the graduate students had a couple of beers, having a treat. It was always fun, you know, and and also had some pow wows, you know, discuss things. I remember my, my ex husband, used to do a lot of work in field, and one day, one weekend, they made the ed lady, so they got, they got all the films that he had been part of, and all the graduate students show up. It was fun, you know, it was interesting.EL: 10:41 How? How was it like to retire after so many years?PL: 10:46 I love it. I like to work. I see, when I retired at first, I was afraid I was going to be bored in two years. So I got myself involved in too many things. I worked for the hospital, I worked for the blood mobile, I worked for the Ronald McDonald House, and all of a sudden I found myself, I didn't have time to breathe. I was doing so many different things, so I'm cutting down, and I work in the university once in a while. The first semester I was, after I retired, they had a problem in the departmetn, I went back and I taught one course and, and then I worked for the advising, advising, called general college advising. I worked them, for them for two years, but I quit, that is nonsense. Now I'm just a [unintelligible]. I work my [unintelligible] off, but I joke that I, I quit, I quit, I didn't quit work, I just quit getting paid. EL: 11:39 Yeah, exactly. Did you, when you first came here, did you miss your home country; did you miss Brazil a lot, or family there?PL: 11:47 Yes, some, but remember, I was for 40 years in Texas. And yes, I did, but I go to Brazil, in those days, I would go to Brazil every year. And my family used to come here too. EL: 11:54 So your parents came here. EL: 11:56 Yeah my mother used to come all the time. My father never came, but my mother came all the time, and my brothers came. My son got married in June, and we had a lot of people, it was in Maryland, but my daughter got married three years ago, there were more "Brasileiros" in the family, and so it was quite fun. And I, when my kids were young, my parents were alive, I would take them to Brazil every year. But then after my mother, my father died, I still continued. Then when my mother died, I go maybe every second year. And now it's very difficult to get the kids to go, because they have their own life, you know.EL: 12:39 But your sisters and brothers that you, live in [speaker interrupts]PL: 12:42 Oh yes. I have a sister that lives in Washington, D.C.EL: 12:44 Okay.PL: 12:45 But all the, everybody else lives in Brazil. And I am, I know it's a huge family. EL: 12:50 Yeah.PL: 12:51 We had five additions the last, since January, of grandchildren.EL: 12:56 Oh, really.PL: 12:57 Yeah.EL: 12:58 So but when you worked here, did you have anyone to take care of your children?PL: 13:01 Oh, yes, I had a maid that came at seven and left at five. She was very nice. Yeah, she was good. And I was very spoiled.When you get up, when you get up to go to work, she had the breakfast on the table for you. She was wonderful. EL: 13:14 Oh really.PL: 13:15 I love her.EL: 13:15 Yeah that's good. So, yes, do you have anything else you want to tell me?PL: 13:23 No, I want to tell you a story that I think you might enjoy. EL: 13:26 Yeah.PL: 13:27 I had in the 1960s during the Vietnam War '70s, early '70s, the kids were, you know, the 'flower child' and things like that, they didn't wash their hair, they didn't take a bath. They looked like a [unintelligible]. EL: 13:40 Oh, really! [Elin laughs]PL: 13:42 It was awful! It's all over the world, was like that, but here was bad. I had to teach cartography, and I had to be close to them [unintelligible]. I tried to put a close pin in my nose. Their hair was long and shed like that, you know. They didn't shave, it was awful, it was awful.EL: 13:57 [Unintelligible]PL: 13:56 God, oh, it was terrible, it was terrible, anyway. So one day, I decided I'm going to take photographs of all of you. So I took photos of it, and I gave each one of them on their own photograph. I said, I want you to keep this photograph, and I want you to look 20 years from now on this photograph, and said, oh my gosh, did I ever look like that? But I didn't hear from them from any time, just about the year before I was to retire, this gorgeous guy walk into my office, dressed to kill and he said, Miss Pia, do you remember me? I said, boy, if I ever known you, I would remember.EL: 14:22 [Elin laughs] PL: 14:23 Because he was such a good looking so he said, he pull up his wallet and gave me this photo. I said, Johnny, I don't believe you. This kid had a beard that looked like Grazinski, had a hair that went up to here, his whole, his clothes had more holes than I had ever seen, and he had sandals, and he had tape, duct tape, and he was bright, he was pretty, but he would have, he said, I've been carrying these things for 22 years in my wallet. My wife kept telling, he lives in the West Coast. My wife tell me throw these things out, said, no, I'm going to Greenville and I'm going to show it to Miss Leahy. He came to meet, to have a meeting with the president here, he said, my chance! So after I said, now you give the picture to your wife. EL: 15:16 Yeah that's a cute story.PL: 15:17 It was so cute!EL: 15:19 I guess, yeah, how do people, I guess, the students and everyone, changed a lot during those 30 years, like with clothing and hairdresses. PL: 15:27 At first, the students dress very proud because it was a code. Then went to the phase of the Vietnam War, that was a disaster. And then I think the kids now dress pretty acceptable. And and, but, you know, you don't have, between, the '70s was the worst time. [Pia whispers: they look like hell, I tell you.] I don't think they ever washed their face when they got up in the morning. It was, oh, PL: 15:53 Oh, really.PL: 15:54 They stink! They smell so bad you couldn't believe it. It was just, I think, I think they made competition who could look the worse than the other. And also they use a lot of how they call thing that smell, incense, incense and that incense get into their hair. EL: 16:14 Oh yeah.PL: 16:15 The incense combined with dirty hair, I'll guarantee you, is an awful feeling.EL: 16:19 But how did that work out when they had such long hair, and they were sitting there drawing maps?PL: 16:22 Do you know what I did? I went downtown and I bought Indian beads. Every desk in my classroom had them in it. I said, you people don't, you walk into this class, you have to put all this on. It was big fun. So everybody wear Indian beads. EL: 16:23 And you had to buy them.PL: 16:27 I bought them, every semester I bought them because I couldn't take it. But I had, I had a very good time with my students. I always got along beautifully with them. And so it was, it was a marvelous experience. I would not have trade for anything.EL: 16:50 Yeah, do you remember, like during the Vietnam War? How was it like?PL: 16:55 Was terrible. Because, you see, I would, I would get into my office and my secretary come running, and said, don't go to the office, there's a parent there. See the kids, if they didn't go to school, and university notified the draft that they were not going to school, they'll be drafted. So you walk into this room and, or if they didn't come to class, if they flunk the course, that was a draft condition. So you get in the office and there was this sobbing mother, pass my child or you're killing it. I said, ma'am, I'm not killing him, he's killing himself. I cannot give him an A when he never came to my class one single time. Yeah, it was, it was terrible, you duck these parents like most you could, because it was the son, what can you do? Things are tragic. I have a son that's going to war, I'm sure I am very panicked, too. But, you know, they had a choice, and they did not know how to make the [unintelligible] for them not to get the draft, they had to stay in school at the moment that they flunk this course, off to war they went. And it was a terrible thing, because it was a miserable war, totally unreasonable, but I couldn't do anything. So our secretaries are very good. If you saw a parent waiting for you, I would get out and go out for half an hour, two hours, or two, maybe they would leave, because what could you say? EL: 18:10 So, actually, parents showed up all the time. PL: 18:12 Oh, all the time, all the time. Soon as the bombino got his draft papers at home and the parents show up here. Why you got draft? What? Lady, he never came to class. He spent the whole time bombed with drugs somewhere.EL: 18:29 So, but then what happened when the war was over and they came back?PL: 18:34 We got a lot of Vietnam veterans here, and it was a very sad case, because we had a lot of quadriplegics, paraplegics, and but there were some of them, very, very nice. We had a lot of other, because, because of the military bases around here, we got a lot of the veterans in here. Unfortunately, many of them were highly screwed up. Their brains were just they, they really were very difficult. They had terrible mood swings, and they were very upsetting. And some of them did very well. Some of them finish up in the streets, some of them finish up in hospitals. I had one kid that had shrapnel on his leg, and he's going to have to have leg amputated, and his name was Mr. Hart, I'll never forget it, I would get out in the classroom nine o'clock. He was sitting on the back of the room [unintelligible]. I said, Mr. Hart, are you going to watch class today? Or you're going to sit over there? And then he would cry. My surgery is next week, and they're going to cut my wrong leg. So I got a big it was very short, a big mark, magic marker, and I wrote in the leg, 'this leg, not this leg.' Somehow that thing solved his problem. He was afraid that somebody was going to cut the wrong leg instead of the right. And then I had a student, he's a very good student, and all of a sudden, you know he was in the [unintelligible] this guy was a big fella, he stood up, pick up the guy that was sitting next to him by the neck. Anyway, the guy fainted.This guy was twice the size of the other one. So there was big panic in the class. I said, what's happened? And the boy said Miss Leahy, I couldn't take it anymore, and so they enabled it [unintelligible] he sits down said Miss Leahy, it was more deserving. This kid was a Vietnam veteran. He had one of these famous cross that you get for valor or whatever. And this little kid that was about a shrimp of the guy was teasing him for weeks, but I never knew about it. I would have changed him, or he should have moved. But was teasing him, making fun of him, telling him he's stupid. He had gone to the war. I think this kid got the limit. And really I was expecting a big [unintelligible] the guy didn't do a thing, because all the students said, if anybody comes here, we'll tell him what he was doing. So the students back him up pretty good. But he said, Miss Leahy sorry. I'm so sorry, I couldn't take it anymore! But see there was a lot of this, you know, people, they were never received as heroes, never. And it was a, it was a war that was very unpopular, and, and, and so the people that came quite hurt, it was not very well treated at all. The quadriplegic were the ones that were better treated because people, i think, felt very sorry for them. I had one student that the only thing he could move were his lips. He had a tube that he moved. He could he typed with a tube, but he could, nothing else moved on him. There was a lot of them like that. EL: 21:44 Because that's the sad part, I guess, on your career. PL: 21:47 But you know you when you saw them doing good stuff, it was very nice. EL: 21:57 How many students do you think I went in and out of your classes?PL: 22:00 Good Lord, everybody in this town, seems. I think half of this town has gone to me one form or another. EL: 22:04 If you go to Walmart, do you ever meet any? PL: 22:06 Oh, yes, everywhere, everywhere, everywhere, everywhere. And I always, I always got along very so nice with them. So that was very nice. I think I can count in my hands the people that I dislike intensively in my class, I have one that actually, [unintelligible].PL: 22:26 Okay. EL: 22:26 Well, I'll end it with asking you, do you think that ECU has something special? Is there anything with this university that makes it special compared to?PL: 22:36 Other universities? EL: 22:36 That you went to.PL: 22:39 My experience, for example, I found that the Department of Geography, when my time there was very, very together, and the students that went through our hands were treated very well, and were, we did all the efforts we could to find them jobs. Because that is what the kid, he graduates from here, he needs to find someplace to go. He may not stay there forever, but he know, know that somebody likes them, and the only way you can do this is by helping them find who is that person who is going to like them, because there's not anymore depressing then a year pass and you have nothing and you're flipping hamburgers at McDonald's. I think the Geography Department was very good on that. I don't know what situation, but it was. I also find that for the City of Greenville, university is a must, would not work without. And we have some wonderful departments in university here that are outstanding. The Music Department is one of the best in the country. The School of Business had a high reputation here. You know, you have what's called the accounting exams for the United States. Our students always on the top of them, that beating Harvard, Duke, Chapel Hill, so on. The School of Art has a very, very good reputation, so does the Theater Arts. And there are other schools too that, I think, for example, the Allied Health has a very good reputation. So overall, I think the university offers to the students a very, very good education, of course, if they take advantage of it. We have a lot of students here that are here because mom and dad want them here. They don't care. And, and, and these kids somehow seem to make big more publicity than the good kids do.EL: 24:24 Yeah and that's one thing, or they are here because they want an exact job and make that [unintelligible] money afterwards. Do you think that? I think, myself, a personal interest, and it's very important.PL: 24:36 I think that you find them on the professional schools yes. A kid wants to go to School of Business, 90% of the incoming freshmen want to go to School of Business because they know they can find a job. But unfortunately, I think that maybe 20% of the incoming freshmen, plus every year, they are here because mom and dad, want them to be here, they didn't care less. And so the drop out on the first the first semester is, first year is enormous. But this is not only special from here, all the university in the United States is like here.EL: 25:11 Okay, but thank you very much. It was interesting, there's probably like 50 more things I could ask you, but I'm not gonna keep you any longer. So I'm just stop it here.[END OF SIDE 2]