THE INSTITUTE OF TEXAN CULTURES
ORAL HISTORY PROGRAM
INTERVIEW WITH: James Patrick McGuire, Director of
Program Management , ITC
INTERVIEWER: Esther MacMillan
PLACE: Oral History Office, ITC
DATE: March 20, 1985
M: This interview is part of an on-going project •
you migh t call it: Institute of Texan Cultures , Early
Days; The Beginnings; or something like that. What the
project is really about is to put on tape the memories of
those key people who made a real contribution to The
Institute in the beginning days . And James Patrick is
one of those . I would like to have him start by saying
when he came on board and in what capacity .
JM: Esther , when I was teaching high school in Austin in
the spring, say March , April , period of 1967, I was in
the middle of a lecture one day and one of my former
students came rushing in . (I taught him Texas history at
Austin High School) . He dis rupted my class so I stopped
and went out in the hall and said, "What do you want?"
a nd he said, "Have you heard about The Institute of Texan
Cultures? " I said, " No ." He says, "Are you looking
MCGUIRE
JM: for s ummer employment? I said , "Yeah, I could use a
job this summer to tide me over from one school year to
the next . " And so I went over, at his suggestion, and
that was the first time I had met O.T . Baker •
M: Oh, it was O.T . you
JM: and talked to O. T . Baker and, forget exactly, but it
was the March/April period, so he did hire me to begin
work June first of 1967 as a researcher. I had no idea,
really, what that entailed or what position he was going
to place me in . But O. T . and the small staff that they
were putting together during that spring, were operating
out of a commandeered , condemned duplex apartment house
on 17th street behind the capitol .
M: This is Austin?
2
JM: In Austin, yes . I had been teaching in Austin about
three years . So June first • I was just as tickled
as a plum to have a job for the summer a nd make a little
money because teaching school in those days didn ' t pay
much .
So I went to work with a whole crew of brand new
people that were reporting that day in that old apartment
upstairs . And O.T. named me a research associate, which
meant that I headed certain re search sections on ethnic
history and certain research assistants were assigned to
help me gather information . My initial assignment was to
collect and record the history of the French and the
Polish in Texas .
MCGUIRE
JM: And I started in looking at materials that had
already been gathered and seeing where we needed to go to
finish it out. It was , I think, the blind leading the
blind initially because we were all learning what we were
doing in much over-crowded space and it was very
exciting . Because we were beginning to hear about
Hemisfair ' 68 in San Antonio , the Texas pavilion ; the
exhibition that we were preparing on the ethnic history
of Texans . I had been teaching Texas history in the
traditional manner for many, many years . And suddenly,
here was a way to approach it in a different way .
So with my handful of research assistants , we began
to look at the French and Polish ethnic groups in Texas .
And I will always remember we had yellow station wagons
from the Highway Department d etailed to us although we
were operating as part of the Texas Tourist Development
Agency at that time under Henderson Shuffler .
M: Henderson was already on board by then?
JM: Oh , he had already been there for a long time, I
think .
M: Did he guide your research? He was the history man .
JM: As far as he had time . He was overall
administrator; he was coordinating not only research but
the exhibition plans ; the building;
M: He was?
JM: Oh, he was on top of everything . He was working
many , many hours a day .
3
HCGUIRE
H: You were hired by a .T. and not by Henderson? That
surprises me . I didn ' t realize a . T .
JM: That ' s right . a . T . hired most of the researchers.
M: I didn ' t realize O.T. was o n that early .
JM: He must have been on through the spring of ' 67 •
the way I look at it. I don ' t know exactly what day .
M: I have an interview with him . Now you were assigned
some help . How many did you have?
JM: ah , there were a handful of young people; generally
college age students .
M: Did you work the state or did you stay close in in
Austin?
JM: We went allover the state .
M: You went allover .
JM: We had the wonderful station wagons and everybody
had their own Polaroid camera . We were all issued Smith
Corona portable electric typewriters .
M: Mercy!
4
JM: We were taking historic photographs of artifacts and
sites that relate to important ethnic personalities
within our assigned areas .
M: Were you interviewing people themselves;
actual . . ?
JM: Some of them , yes . Making a lot of grass roots
contacts. For example, in the case of the Polish, we
went down to Panna Maria, met the leaders of the
community and the church there, and began to learn more
MCGUIRE
JM: about their history .
I think that a lot of traditional museums and
research libraries around the state looked rather askance
at us initially because we were a bunch of kids running
around trying to do a job that they thought trained
historians were probably more qualified to do.
That summer was when I met John Davis , Phil Hewitt,
Crystal Ragsdale, of course Henderson Shuffler, John
Whitmore, his assistant, and so forth and so on . There
were just a whole lot of people, probably between thirty
and forty working in the research section .
M: That many! But you were still in Austin , weren ' t
you?
JM: Headquartered there but we traveled the state .
M: I mean , there was nothing down here yet , was there?
JM: This building in San Antonio was under construction
and we •
M: Was it already under construction?
JM: Uh huh . We did n' t move down here, and I don ' t
recall having been down here to see the building until
the next winter . Winter of ' 67, ' 68 .
M: Oh really?
5
JM: When they began to get this building into some shape
where we could have an office here, I remember we began
to travel more and more, in the fall, to San Antonio to
the building and began setting up in the unfinished
building for the preparation of the exhibit installment
MCGUIRE
JM: so that we ' d have the place ready to go by April the
eighth, 1968, which was the opening of Hemisfair .
But, I ' ve gotten ahead of my s t ory. Most of the
researchers who were hired that June were just summer
workers . And most of them didn ' t intend to stay beyond
the fall semester because they were in college, or like
me , had a teaching position . But by August, I was so
thoroughly involved in what we were doing I went to
Henderson Shuffler and asked him if I could have a
permanent job with The Institute .
M: Sure .
I wanted to stay on .
JM: And he mulled around for a while and made up his
mind , yes , that he would keep me on .
M: Were you the only one?
JM: Oh no, there were several others .
6
During the fall, we began the pick-up operation on
artifacts allover the s t ate for the exhibition . And
those items had to be picked up in homes, museums , all
over the place . And I remember Joe Perry giving us all a
lesson on how to pack these things . We had gigantic
wooden crates that went in the back of the station
wagons . very heavy, and we packed everything as if it
were made out of china and crystal . Seemed like there
was nothing we wouldn ' t go after .
I remember one time that winter flying into Amarillo
or Lubbock ••• it was Amarillo . . blizzard • • • and
driving from there to Borger to pick up a churn . It had
MCGUIRE
JM: been selected by the designers in Los Angeles .
M: They did some , eh?
JM: That 's a different story.
7
The only way I could find my way from Amarillo to
Borger, was to drive right in the middle of what I
thought the road was, covered with snow, and the wind
whipping the snow straight across . I kept right
immediately between the fence posts on either side. I
even passed a snow plow heading up that way . And when I
showed up at that lady ' s house in Borger , she looked like
I was a ghost . Where had I come from?
M: You did it!
JM: We were on a heavy schedule, though, and everybody
was working very fast to pick up the artifacts.
What we did in the re~earch was not only to
document the history but to locate artifacts that
illustrated that history. And with our Polaroid cameras,
we made photos of everything you can imagine . Those
photos were sent to the designers in Los Angeles , Usher,
follis , and they made the final selection on what
artifacts would be used in the show cases .
M: Oh , they did?
JM: I think you ' ve probably been told already, all the
exhibit furniture , walls and photographs, Textpanels and
everything, with the exception of the artifacts, were
manufactured in Los Angeles, broken down in trucks and
shipped over here for the final installation in the
MCGUIRE
JM: early spring of ' 68, which they did .
We began to collect the artifacts that winter and
bring them and store them here in the building where we
had a little space, although the construction crews were
still putting the place together .
I wil l never forget that I moved to San Antonio
January 1, ' 68, so I ' d be on hand here . Gave up my
apartment in Austin. We were working down where David
Hayne ' s production off ice is right now . That is the
space we had . We put desks, typewriters, secretaries,
everybody in there . Desk to desk; the place was just a
mad house . There was no heat. We had electricity . I
think we had plumbing . There was no paving outside all
the way up that back drive; all the way across where IH
37 is now ; all the way over to Alamo Iron Works . Just a
8
sea of mud . It rained that winter like you wouldn ' t have
believed, Esther . Rain , rain, rain . And the whole
Hemisfair grounds on the front side ot our building . And
of course you know, the landscaping, putting down the
grass came at the very last and some of the paving of
walks so it was a muddy affair .
Many a day , we had to wear knee rubber boots to come
to work . On certain days , when it was really raining,
the men would go up to the top of the hill, where we had
a little parking area out there, and we ' d pick up the
secretaries in our arms and literally carry them into the
building .
MCGUIRE
M: It was that bad .
JM: Yeah, it was terrible .
Fascinating watching the exhibit floor coming into
shape . I remember that the carpeting was laid down in
great rolls from one end of the building to the other .
M: This was on the first floor?
JM: Uh huh . On the exhibit level . The carpeting was
just rolled from one end to the other .
And then the largest artifacts were b r ought in on
flat bed trucks and literally driven , rolled in before
the doors were installed . For example , that steam
tractor in the Anglo area, which we borrowed from Texas
A&M University , was literally fired up, the engine
started, and Joe Perry drove it across the br idge , into
the building and put in its place .
M: No! On its own steam .
9
JM: I daresay it still runs. They ' re going to have to
tear a lot down to get it out the door one of these days.
Hut that ' s an example of some of the original exhibit
material that was here.
M: You mentioned the California people . That ' s Usher,
Follis, isn't it?
JM: I bel ieve that ' s the name .
M: Something like that , seems to me . But you said they
voted on what artifacts to be used . How could they do
that?
JM: Well , the selection was made by designers . We
MCGUIRE
JM: would send them all of our ~rench photographs or all
of our Polish photographs . I don ' t recall having any
choice other than just simply submitting the photographs
to them . The designers chose what they wanted to be
illustrated in theme cases . Maybe Mr~ Shuffler had some
direction there but I don ' t know . I certainly didn ' t .
M: Did they have a feel for Texas history? I 'm trying
to think • •
JM: They were directed by Mr. Shuffler . He and other of
the hierarchy would go to California occasionally to
consult with them . Their officials were over in Austin
10
or San Antonio working with us . But when the eighteen
wheelers started coming in from California, they had the
show cases ; they had the walls; everything . And right up
until the day we opened, in that winter and spring, soon
as the carpet was down , they sent a whole crew of workers
over here and they sometimes worked for twenty-four hours
a day . Just absolutely fascinating to wa t ch them put it
altogether. And it did come together.
I remember before the dome screens were put in ,
looking up in that big hole in the middle of the floor,
up to the roof, and then slowly they constructed all of
the steel work and began to hang those screens to get the
dome show ready.
M: But you were working in the meantime down on the
floor.
MCGUIRE
JM: Uh huh . And we were traveling all over
We were gone more than we were here .
M: Were yOll?
JM: Hringing in the last of the artifacts .
M: When you say "wen, how many of you were
operating at that period?
JM : Probably two dozen .
M: That many!
the
still
JM: I don ' t know exactly . I don ' t remember .
state .
M: Was G.T . sort of in charge of that operation at that
time?
JM: Yes, he was . He and Joe Perry were more or l ess
running the thing . Shuffler was busy running the whole
operation; coordinating it.
11
M: Somebody told me that Mr . Shuffler didn ' t really want
to come down . He loved his job in Austin , building the
collection and
JM : He never talked to me about it .
M: He was not very well; that he came reluctantly . Did
you ever know that?
JM : No, he never told me .
M: Hecause when he got here , of course, he was just a
dedicated person.
JM: Once we got closer to the opening date of April the
eighth for Hemisfair, and Dave Tiller and his crew, the
hired guides were brought in; trained; dressed in
beautiful uniforms. Finally they began to sod the berms
MCGUIRE
JM: outside and plant the confederate jasmine on the
interior of the berms , pave things, it began to shape up
beautifully . Everything seemed to come together .
During Hemisfair when, I guess , about three million
people visited us, there was a tent in front of the berm
that was air conditioned and people who waited in line to
come into the building stood in air conditioning . There
were turnstiles at the end of the bridge and they passed
through the turn stiles so we could get a count .
M: There was never any charge for The Institute, was
there?
JM: No .
M: You had to pay to get into the Hemisfair grounds .
JM: That's right. We were the official state of Texas
host pavilion .
M: You were ready the day it opened? More or less?
JM: We knew there were certain deficiencies but no one
else did . Things were added in slowly but it really
looked super and it was absolutely a block-buster .
People were just high in their praise for it.
M: What did you continue to do after The Institute
opened?
12
JM: Number one, we had to operate the building on an
extended schedule for Hemisfair . And all of our energies
seemed to be directed to that .
M: What do you mean by operate?
JM: Well , we had to staff the daily operation of The
MCGUIRE
JM: Institute . By that time the research staff had
begun to shrink . And we began to organize our files and
materials . And Shuffler was beginning to formulate the
continuation of The Institute ' s operation after the Fair
closed . It was a hectic time . The Fair was wonderful,
it was beautiful, exciting . We were all so tired by the
time it opened because we ' d been working so hard the last
nine months that I think a lot of us were just totally
exhausted by the time it opened .
M: I should think you would have been . Everybody I ' ve
talked to tells about that harried feeling of making the
deadline.
JM : We made it!
M: It ' s astonishing , isn ' t it? This floor we ' re on now ,
the second floor , and the basement were not finished ,
were they at that time? It was just the exhibit floor
that got done?
13
JM : The offices , a nd it was only along this business
line over here were finished out that summer and we began
to move up here . The basement , most other than the
public viewing area for the Texas ••• what was it?
. there was a Texas art show Pat Thatcher and Selma
weiner were the hostesses under Bill Robinson .
M: I interviewed Pat before she left and she talked
about that .
JM: The Texas Art Show in the basement .
The mach i ne rooms were there but all of the
MCGUIRE 14
production space behind that was just an open bay . There
were no walls, very little any thi ng back in there except
packing crates .
M: Did you have to be on deck every day after it opened?
Did you do any guiding or anythi ng like that?
JM : I did a certain amount of it . But I was not on the
guide staff . We had a paid guide staff; people, boys and
girls, who wore uniforms .
M: And they were paid , weren ' t they?
JM: Oh yes .
M: Did you have any trouble about money?
JM: Not that I recall.
M: Didn ' t you? Because here you were using highway
station wagons and people were generous and cooperative
and what not but I can remember Governor Connally had to
go to the Legislature more than once to get enough money
to run this operation .
JM: I 'm not familiar with any of that .
M: Aren ' t you? There was a lot in the paper about it
and there were some hitches , there always are when you ' re
dealing with the Legislature. One of the things I was
impressed with . . I have interviewed most of the
movers and shakers of Hemisfair. And in every interview,
I said at the end, "What plans did you make for the use
of Hemisfair?" I got many answers . But the people I ' ve
talked to here and you just said that Henderson was
working on post-Fair use of The Institute . You, all
MCGUIRE
M: along, had in mind that this was not going to shut
down on the last day of Hemisfair .
JM: Well , the Hemisfair closed down and The Institute
did close down for a number of months following that .
M: Oh , did it?
JM: As we began to prepare for a more permanent
operation as an educational facility, under the Texas
Tourist Development Agency . We knew that our property
belonged to the state of Texas and whatever the city did
with the rest of the Hemisfair area , we were going to
continue to operate .
And sure enough, when we re- opened in ' 69,
M: , 69 . It closed in October, didn ' t it?
JM : Of ' 68 . We were closed part of the winter . We
re-opened, I believe , in the spring of ' 69 . And here
came the school children on the yellow busses!
M: Ah .
JM: Oh my word, you have never in your whole life seen
anything like the number of people coming to see us . We
had tremendous school attendance .
M: You must have had PR , or some sort of . somebody
15
out doing , saying, "Hey, look we ' re open again. Come see
us ."
JM: Yeah . People heard about us .
M: You must have sent letters out to schools or
something to let them know that you were open .
MCGUIRE
JM: I believe we din .
M: Here you are , you ' ve stayed with The Institute up
' til now . You were with it when it closed, getting ready
for the re-opening . Is that when you kind of stepped
into the Educational Services?
JM: No . No . I stayed in the research department for
nine years .
M: Oh, did you?
JM : As some of our researchers began to leave the staff
during ' 68 and ' 69, I accumulated additional ethnic
research areas and John Davis was our leader under Mr .
Shuffler. I inherited eventually, the German research
area, which was one of the largest and really exciting
areas . I worked with that for a number of years .
16
I ' ll never forget , though, in the summer of ' 67 when
Shuffler was trying to decide if we should have an
exhibition space for the Greeks and the Lebanese people
in Texas . The preliminary research that had gone on
before I joined The Institute , indicated there was not
much material available on these small ethnic groups . So
I told him I would be willing to do the primary research
in time to get an exhibition up if that was what he
wanted .
And so I did all the primary research on those two
groups . I traveled to the Greek churches and
communities; individuals allover the state . And put
together a good core history on the Greeks and then on
MCGUIRE
JM: the Lebanese and the Syrians in Texas . As a result,
we had these two additional galleries in the original 26
ethnic gal leries that we presented during the Fair .
M: That many! Whe n you are starting on . • say
Shuffler had said to you there isn 't much material or
something . so let's take the Greek . How did you
start out? Did you have secondary stuff to refer to?
JM: Very little secondary material existed on the Greeks
ot Texas; or the Lebanese of Texas . Very scattered
information . So most of the work had to be done in the
field deal i ng with . number one, you go to churches;
17
clubs; organizations ; businessmen . And you talk to a lot
of people and they will generally give you a consensus of
who is the historical or the l eader character in their
community . You interview them and a lot of other people .
Then you try to sort out what is fact from fiction . And
in the process you ' ve collected old photographs and you
document where artifacts relating to the immigrants are .
M: I should think that would be fun to do.
JM: Oh, it ' s fascinating .
M: Then you did the same thing with the Lebanese •
went to their churches and • •
JM: and the Jugo Slavs eventually . But the French and
the Polish were the first ones I worked on. Of course
there ' s a good bit of secondary information but also a
lot of primary material that was gathered during that
period . And is in our vertical files .
MCGUIRE
M: Is it? Available for research then . That ' s great .
JM: Oh yes . We made an awful lot of good contacts:
librarians , historians and museum people allover the
state . That was excellent .
For the first nine years I was here, I was in the
reseach department . When Mr . Maguire came to The
Institute in January of 1976, they determined that we
would formulate an educational department . They reached
into my department and plucked me out of there and said,
"U . K. , you ' re a former teacher; we ' re going to make you
Director of Education." And so I took an existing guide
staff , paid guide staff, operating under O. T. and Mrs .
Thatcher, and began to formulate programs and to change
the entire educational stance that we had for school
children . It took me a couple of years to bring in
professional teachers on the staff . We created the
Alliance, our volunteers, to aid in the educational
process .
M: You created that under your aegis?
JM: Yeah . This was the idea of Mr. and Mrs . Maguire to
18
have this . We eventually abolished the paid guide staff,
which was not a very effective way of dealing .
From that point on, in ' 76, I was Director of
Education Programs, originally called Educational
Services, but later we changed that title.
M: Is that what it is still called?
JM: No , it ' s called Educational Programs today .
MCGUIRE
JM: I had charge o f operating the Exhibit Floor; of
staffing the Educational programs coming up with
educational materials; and creating the Alliance from
scratch. Selma Weiner and I did that and we didn ' t know
where we were going because we had never had any
experience with it before . We just bravely marched forth
and started with a trainee class in January of '77 and
kept going from that point , in building the Alliance to
what it is today . It was kind of exciting .
Our office space was behind the neon flag on the
exhibit floor .
M: For heaven ' s sake!
JM: There was no ceiling; we could hear all of the
voices and noises from the gallery outside . Rocky
Stallings was the Indian . We could hear him lecturing
daily at the teepee . And Selma and I were sandwiched
into that tiny little place . Leila Beth Thomas was
part-time with us during part of that and helped us in
establish ing the Alliance . She had some experience with
volunteers in museums before .
M: Did Selma go out into the community and rake people
in, as it were?
19
JM: Well , we discussed how we were going to recruit . We
also discussed the basic philosophy that we wanted . And
we came to a firm conclusion that we wanted it to be a
very popular organization of volunteers . We were not
going to restrict it or turn it over to a Junior League
MCGUIRE
JM: type operation . Which other museums in San Antonio
had done and they did it fairly effectively but we felt
that because we represented all ethnic groups in Texas
that Junior League would not meet our needs .
We wanted to have minorities of all sorts in our
All iance . So we let the word out; we publicized through
the papers ; we got a listing from the Chamber of Commerce
of all the clubs in town; sent out notices ; things like
that. We even took Junior League placements initially
and still would if they wished to make them with us . We
took in practically anyone that walked in off the street .
And they were wonderful people .
M: Were they? You had a good response the very first
time out , then?
JM: Started with a class of about fifteen people .
M: Fifteen .
JM: And they were the guinea pigs because we learned
what we were doing, with them .
M: One of the thinys that just fascinates me about your
program is the outreach program . . the trunks . I
think that is such a wonderful idea. Was that your
idea?
JM: We had been operating for a few years as an
education department; we began to have that capability .
We knew about museum trunks from the very begi nning
because many museums in this country do that . And we
sought advice everywhere we could find it from other
20
MCGUIRE
JM: museum education departments • on how they did
their job because we were in essence, trying to set up a
good department here . We did not want to re-invent too
many wheels and spin our wheels and waste time. We
looked very closely at a system of museum trunks that the
museum in Santa Fe had . And they had an excellent
program .
But it took us a while to get geared up to do that .
We started out with one and then two . And initially
these were sent out to old folk ' s homes, retirement
homes . And then we began to expand to children .
M: Not children in the beginning?
JM: We made them available within a year to classes .
And this program has grown in the last years very
rapidly.
M: Has it? How many trunks have you got out now? Do
you know?
21
JM: We have mUltiple copies of individual trunks . There
are approximately a dozen now . These are called
Tex-Kits . I think I gave that name to them . Texas Kits .
We argued it initially • . what type of artifacts we
would put in there, whether we would use reproductions,
or where we ' d get our artifacts. We had to establish
policy as we went along, in every case .
We needed more personnel and we were trying to cover
that water front . Our education department was doing so
many things then with a very small staff, that it would
MCGUIRE
JM: amaze you today . We were not only trying to operate
the exhibit floor and run tours and education and set up
interpretative programs which we did slowl y . But to
organize outreach, we did it with just a handful of
people .
M: Is there any organization that is similar to The
Institute? I haven 't heard of it . • in Texas?
JM : No.
M: As far as the education goes •
touching •
• kids
JM: Oh yes , a lot of museums have outreach programs .
M: I mean like ours . The one at The Institute.
22
JM: They ' re similar . The idea is to take artifacts from
the museum to the classroom to teach .
M: One of the things I like about it • l<ids like to
feel everything and you le t ' em touch and put them on
and
·JM : That was part of our basic decision from the very
beginning . any artifact i ncluded in the kits tha t
could be handled, and we wanted all of them to be handled
by the children . Therefore we resorted to any
exped iency ; we had very little money; so we asked docents
to clean out their garages . we needed items that
represented material culture , basically, of the
nineteenth century .
We went sometimes, as a group , down on South
Hackberry street with just a few dollars and we ' d go to
MCGUIRE
JM: the junk stores . And slowly we began to acquire
what we needed . Then we also realized we couldn't buy or
find certain categories or artifacts like Indian
material . So we made a decision: we ' d go with replicas .
And Rocky stallings was here and he could make a few
things . And we slowly began to put together an Indian
Kit .
M: I didn ' t know that. Rocky • •
here any more . He was interesting .
I ' m sorry he isn ' t
JM: An interesting man . He was brought in here by O.T.
Baker.
M: Was he?
23
JM: Rocky said he was a medicine man; fascinated the
public in the way he talked. I don ' t know whether
historians or anthropologists would ever have agreed with
Rocky or anything . Number one , they couldn ' t check his
files . I have met some scholars who thought he was a
total fraud. On the other hand .
M: Good storyteller .
JM: on the other hand , he was an excellent storyte ller .
He would sometimes make you think he was going into a
trance at the teepee .
My biggest problem with Rocky was that he mumbled .
So I eventually got a lavaliere mike on him and a speaker
right above the teepee so that people could understand
him a little better .
M: I interviewed him one time sitting on the bench back
MCGUIRE
M: there . What I wanted to know about was the use of
herbs for healing . On just that one subject .
JM: We had to be awfully careful because very early on
we discovered that Rocky was prescribing and he couldn ' t
do that .
M: I should say not .
JM: So Rocky had to learn not to prescribe herbs or any
other healing process .
M: He really believed in them so you see he just wanted
to share it with other people , I suppose .
JM: People came to him too .
M: Did they really?
24
JM: He had quite a following. People would come looking
for Rocky . These people would be herbalists and they
wanted to share information; things like that . So O. T.
had to talk to him about how to talk to them about it.
M: This is sort of a gradual thrust I feel as you talk .
Gradually you developed the program; gradually it got
bigger; gradually you had more people, I expect , to work
with .
JM: Absolutely . Every year the Alliance grew larger .
Every year, we were able to add one or two additiona l
staff members . We soon had to hire a paid coordinator
for the All i ance . I couldn ' t handle i t all from my desk
anymore so we reached out into the Alliance and picked
Sa lly Wiskemann, who was originally a docent here.
M: Oh, she was?
MCGUIRE 25
JM: And eventually, when we created the Division
Administrative system here, I was asked to take over Program
Management . And I reached down and pulled Bonnie Truax onto
the staff off of the docent force .
M: Oh, she was a docent, too!
JM: She was also a docent . She and Sally were in the same
class, about six years ago .
M: For goodness sake .
JM: I brought Bonnie into the staff and made her Director
of Educational Programs .
M: And now she has two paid people?
JM: Oh , she has more than that . She has a total of nine
full and part- time people . And she has carried all of the
programs I initiated on into great success . The Back Forty
programs; the puppet programs . I had initiated the puppet
theater program here . She carried it right on through . And
all of the education and outreach programs and the trunk
programs. The traveling trunks that we began to initiate
for outreach programs around the state .
M: In other words, she took your ideas and enlarged them .
JM: She has done a magnificent job .
M: That ' s marvelous . You must have a very good feeling.
You ' ve done a lot of constructive things here, haven ' t you?
Since your early beginnings .
JM: I always fe lt like The Institute staff was rather small
that that we had a lot of talent here and as l ong as we
could work as a team, we could accomplish a great deal .
MCGUIRE 26
JM: One of the basic rules was that I a l ways wanted to be
like a sponge; to listen to everybody ' s ideas, suggestions .
I even t old the doce nts when I was training them, we don ' t
have all the answers , we ' re listening to anybody or
everybody to be part of the team here . And that ' s one thing
I was able to accomplish almost from the very beg inning was
to create a feeling in the Alliance that these people were
treated as staff . And that their knowledge and experience
and suggest i ons would be taken seriously .
M: That ' s good . That ' s a very good point, I think , because
they might feel like step- ch ildren) otherwise .
JM: We d idn ' t want that.
M: No . You ' ve got a wonderful docent program . As far as I
know and from what I hear, the docent program here a t The
Institute is the best one in town .
JM: Well, I don ' t know to judge that . Certainly not the
largest in the state of Texas ,
M: Not larg es t but .
JM: Initially the docent program was intended to do
educat i onal functions here . In the last f our years, we have
expanded to provide services to as many departments in The
I nstitute that requested it . And this includes the library,
exhibits , and so forth and so on . A lot of people who have
a great deal of talent, particularly adept at teaching
children .
~hen I took over the creative educational program here ,
we had practically no policy how to deal with the flow of
MCGUIRE
MJ: traffic . Number one , Shuffler never wanted accurate
statistics kept on attendance .
M: He didn ' t?
27
JM: Number two, we had no pre-arranged programs for
children at different age levels . Number three , people came
and went at will. In any given morning of the year, we
didn't know who was going to arr i ve, how many, whether we
would have a hundred or a thousand children . We had a very
rUdimentary booking system . So I quickly analyzed the
situation as total chaos and realized in the old days ,
before our department was set up, when we had two thousand
kids on the floor at one time, nobody did anything except
make noise .
So I devised a system of dividing our day into three
teaching periods . of limiting the numbers of children who
would be admitted to each, to five hundred each period so
that we could count on a maximum of fifteen hundred kids in
the building at a time . At a day. Each teaching period .
And we began to develop the Back Forty program so that
we 'd have a spill-over area .
M: Is that your idea . . the Back Forty?
JM: Not really . I think it was shared by a number of
people.
M: That ' s a remarkably successful
JM: It began really as a Folklife Festival thing . The
building of the log cabin. Arnold Griffin as a Folklife
Festival demonstration.
MCGUIRE: 28
JM: We began to set up a very definite booking system for
t ours . We began to count . We began to look at the grade
level of the kids corning in here . We realized very quickly
that our old canned tour system of taking people through
here was not going to work . The exhibition itself was a
very sophisticated, adult level exhibition . We had to
translate and interpret it to school children .
And so we began to train staff , the teacher staff we
brought on board . Mos t of the people I hired were certified
teachers . I did it on purpose to improve our professional
level .
M: You could get enough?
JM: I didn ' t know initially I could because we work year
around and we were working for less money than teachers were
making .
M: Is that still true?
JM: Well , I don ' t know . The fact is I began to find people
who wanted to teach but in the non- classroom atmosphere .
And we began to grade-level certain programs; set up our
interpretive areas . I remember working with the exhibit
people who moved show cases back in certain areas so that we
could have a little mini-teaching theater in the Indian
area; in this area; and that area . So that we coul d have
space on the exhibit floor and so we could have these
interpretive areas set up and that ' s how we really got
started on that .
We began to bring into our training sessions with the
MCGUIRE 29
JM: docents not only historians to teach about Texas
history but to bring in professors of education from UTSA to
teach our volunteers how to instruct children . And that has
been very successful .
M: You were just all geared up and certainly prepared to
handle the new education bill that is demanding certain
things . You were just ready to step right into the program ,
weren ' t you?
JM: Bonnie has gone right ahead this past summer . She
proceeded with some consultants to draw up new guidelines
and co-relating our programs with the essential elements
required by law . So we ' re right on top of the can .
M: You ' re doing it right now , aren ' t you?
JM: And she is coming up with we published years ago
a teachers ' guide to The Institute . She has since revised
that and we ' re going to republish it .
M: One thing I would like on the tape . this book
you ' ve written recently that ' s been such a success. will
you talk a little bit about that?
JM:
1967 .
well, my interest in culture goes back, of course, to
And prior to that I taught about the Texas
revolution , the Civil War, Reconstruction/in a traditional
manner . When we began to delve into ethnic history, I found
that the research possibilities were almost limitless .
Especially in some of the larger areas like the German
material . And although Crystal Ragsdale and certain other
people had had that research section, prior to my
MCGUIRE
JM: inheriting it .• • I eventually did inherit it and
sort of took it on .
30
I worked, back in 1972, I was working in the
Sophienburg Museum in New Braunfels . We were photographing
when Dav i d Haynes was in charge of our photography
we were photographing all of their historical
photographs in their collection. We went i n, took our
equipment , they dismantled their exhibitions and we began to
photograph everything they had.
M: Why that one particularly?
JM: Because we had permission and we realized that the
sophienburg was a very good German center .
Well, in the process there, with the volunteer staff of
the Sophienburg , particularly Mr . Frederic Oheim, who was
the retired editor , the last German editor of the New
Braunfels Zeitung newspaper, I discovered some original
German art work in the museum they had no idea that they
owned . It turned out to be by an immigrant artist named
Carl Von Iwonski . I got interested in Iwonski •• who was
he? what did he do? • I ' d seen a few samples of his art
around. And so, in the next four years in conjunction with
The Institute and the Witte Museum , decided to do an
exhibition and a catalogue of Iwonski . By 1976 had the
manuscript prepared; had catalogued all the works by the
artist .
We cooperatively presented an exhibition on his works
out at the Witte in September , I believe it was, 1976 . My
MCGUIRE 31
JM: book on Iwonski was published by the San Antonio Museum
Association .
M: I thought it was published here.
JM: No .
M: It has been quite a successful publication, hasn't it?
JM: I think so . I enjoyed doing it .
M: You just have had a lot of fun do ing it .
JM: I really enjoyed the research as much as writing .
Writing a manuscript is no problem; research is all the fun.
Traveling allover visiting people he r e , there, and yon for
these hidden things . I eventually catalogued over a hundred
of his known works.
M: You did ! Were they all in Texas?
JM : Uh huh . They were scattered everywher8 . Iwonski was
an interesting character . Nobody had ever done a good
biography on him . So I did what I could from whatever
primary and secondary sources existed . Used the libraries
here extensive l y and the ones in Austin . And even got a
little data out of Poland. Iwonski had gone back to
Poland .
M: Did you?
JM: He went back to Germany in 1873. After World War II,
that area was taken over by Poland . So I rea l ized that any
records on his life would be in what is now Poland . I
eventually found a professor there who went to some archives
and retrieved a little information to help me .
M: That ' s fun. In the day to day operation that you ' re
MCGUIRE 32
M: responsible for, it must have been kind of a nice
JM: That occurred in 1976, right at the end of the period
when I had been a researcher and was just beginning to take
over the Education Department and create all of our programs
and set up the Alliance .
Well, in the spring of ' 76 also , the Rosenburg Library
in Galveston came to me and they wanted to do a project on
an artist in Galveston whose name was Julius Stockfleth who
was a marine painter . He also turned out to be a German
immigrant in the late nineteenth century . He was one of the
first and most renowned of the marine painters that worked
on the Texas coast .
END OF TAPE I , Side 1, 45 minutes
TAPE I, Side 2
JM : So John Hyatt, who is the Director of the Rosenburg,
talked to me about doing a biography and catalogue and I
did . Mr . Maguire agreed that we would do a cooperative
thing with them. And so I wrote the manuscript and the
cataloguing . I brought in Eric Steinfeldt of San Antonio ,
who is a marine expert .
M: Is that Cecilia ' s husband?
JM : That ' s Cecilia's husband .
He has a tremendous collection and library . He did the
introduction for my book, on the history of marine things
MCGUIRE 33
JM: on the Texas coast . Different types of vessels that
were involved . I did the biography and the cataloguing on
Stockfleth ' s work . I spent a lot of time in Galveston, when
I could afford to.
In December of ' 76, the book was out, published by
Trinity University Press for the Rosenburg Library and The
Institute . In the Bicentennial year, I got two books
published! They were my first. I enjoyed it.
M: Two in one year! Holy cow! Are you going to do any
more?
JM: As a result of my work on Iwonski , I ' d been working
closely with the staff of Texas Memorial Museum in Austin
which was in the process of cataloguing Richard Petri and
Herman Lungkwit z . They had begun their project in the late
'60 ' s or early 70 ' s under the direction of Dr . William
Newcomb . Iwonski and Lungkwitz had been business partners
in San Antonio during Reconstruction .
M: I thought there was a connection there.
JM: And I ' d shared data with them and they ' d shared data
with me . We knew about each other ' s research . About 1978,
Texas Memorial did publish a book on Richard Petri, dealing
with his Indian works.
Shortly thereafter, (they had an exhibit that traveled
and came to The Institute ) on Richard Petri ' s works .
Dr . Newcomb and Mary Carnahan, who was his registrar
and had been associated with him in this project that had
been going on for a decade, suddenly offered all of their
MCGUIRE 34
JM: materials and research on Herman Lungkwitz to me. I
said, "Well , gee, that would be wonderful . It ' s a large
job, I know that and I 'm going to have to go and ask the
boss if I can do it ." So I came back and talked to Jack
about it; he agreed that we ' d take it on and that I ' d have
certain time that I could work on the project . So that
started late ' 78, or early ' 79 on the project.
I proceeded to use what materials Texas Memorial had
gathered and to supplement that material that they had not
even reached out to . And to comple te their catalogue of
Lungkwitz ' paintings and studies and what have you. I soon
discove r ed that they had only used basic material that had
been available to most scholars, which were secondary
materials. They hadn ' t done much primary research . And so
I really got to work on that . I was able to use primary
materials for the first time out of collections in the
Austin Public Library and the University of Texas . And
within the family, the descendants of Lungkwitz defined a
great mass of family papers that was invaluable in my
research .
The long and short of the story was I organized an
exhibition; p ublished a catalogue with UT Press that came
out November, December ' 83 . And we opened the exhib ition in
December of ' 83 . That project had been very exciting and
was one of the largest that I had done .
You must realize that all of this time, I was Director
of the Education Department . I was, in essence, working
MCGUIRE
JM: outside my field but I found time to do everything .
M: But you love to do research, don't you?
JM: I love to do research . I spent my weekends and my
vacations doing it . Things like that . I typed the
manuscript at night up here, things like that . We
catalogued about 350 of Lungkwitz ' works .
M: Have you got anything else in the hopper right now?
JM: Temporarily, no .
M: Quiet period for you .
35
In summarizing the development of The Institute and how
much it has grown; how it has expanded , what is your feeling
about The Institute of Texan Cultures right at this time?
Is there room for improvement: Do you have plans t o
enlarge? Or have you gone as far as you want? How do you
feel about it right at this moment? 1985?
JM: Well , within my division work at program management,
which involves education and volunteers, I feel l i ke we ' re
on solid g round . We ' ve made tremendous strides in the last
nine years . We have a very solid program in education and
in volunteer work . We have gained national and
international recognition at this point for what we ' re doing
in education. Our directors and our personnel in both of
those departments are called upon statewide to ass is t others
in setting up programs and giving advice in workshops and
services for teachers and professiona l s .
are on very solid ground .
I think that we
In one area, though , we are beginning to expand very
MCGUIRE 36
JM: rapidly and that is in statewide outreach . And we have
spun off part of our volunteer program which we have named
the Ambassador Program, which is a program to recruit and
train and maintain a statewide voluntee r force of
individuals in every county . . 254 counties in Texas.
We're creating a grass roots support in education, a
volunteer arm of The Institute that will represent not only
our education department but our News and Information, our
Library and Research; our Folklife Festival; our Development
and Membership ; and al l of the other functions that need
this type of representation in the counties a llover the
state where we can't afford to send pa id personnel .
M: How is it working? Is it prospering?
JM: It ' s growing. It is absolutely growing .
covered about half the state at this point .
We have
M: Can you find somebody in every county that ' s willing to
take it on?
JM: We're trying .
M: Does that largely fallon your shoulders?
JM: I 'm in charge of the program right now . I 'm actively
recruiting. I ' m traveling allover trying to get people to
sign up . I 'm writing letters; planning training sessions,
materials, things like that. Keeping records, of course .
M: That must keep you awfully busy.
JM: I enjoy it .
M: When you start, for instance, you 're going to some
MCGUIRE
M: obscure county way out in west Texas, do you have ,
before you go, a name?
JM: Sometimes .
M: Or do you go blind sometimes?
37
JM : Sometimes I have a name . It ' s always most helpful
either to know who runs a museum in those counties. These
people have a natural affinity for what we do here at The
Institute . And they know us because they recognize The
Institute as a leader in exhibitry and in other program
areas. The Institute is very well known allover Texas . I
happen to want to go into a county, say Llano County . I'll
pick up the phone and call the museum people there , arrange
for an appointment, go up and talk to them . Look at their
collection, talk to them and tell them about the Ambassador
Program and get their suggestions for people in their
communities . We ' d like , number one, public service type
individuals who know their own communities; who have some
influence, recognition in the community .
M: What assignment do they have? What are their
responsibilities once they accept the responsibility?
JM: There ' s a whole line of service ways, Esther . Right
now we've given all of them an assignment to look in the
local papers for interesting articles for our library .
M: Historical .
JM: Yeah . And News and Information .
Some of the Ambassadors are on the outlook for special
talent for the Folklife Festival. Things like that .
MCGUIRE 38
M: In other words, they ' re helpers .
JM: Others, are carrying Tex Kit programs in to the
schools . M: Can you show your Tex Kits way out that far?
JM: Only on a very limited basis . We don ' t have that
many .
M: But you tell them how t o do their own . Is that right?
JM : If we can prov ide the type of expertise. And so
forth .
M: Whose idea was that? The Ambassador Program. Was that
your idea?
JM: It grew out of an informal grouping of people who were
involved with the Folklife Festival, initially . These were
participants who became good friends to The Institute . They
lived allover the state . So we started calling them
Ambassadors for the Festival . Then we began to see the
Ambassador system could have a larger scope . Not only
support the Festival but all other operations of The
Institute.
This is our way to provide a community service to Llano
or Mason or Junction that otherwise we might not have.
M: One of the troubles I run into in my work , we ' re here in
San Antonio and you have to keep remembering this is a state
institution. We have to spread our efforts out over the
whole state . That ' s one of the things that interests me
about the Sesquicentennial .• • we ' ve got an Oral History
program going on allover the state , as we did for
Bicentennial . • out better organized this time . There
MCGUIRE 39
M: will be a final deposit in certain places . That
comforts me; it ' s not lost . In other words , you ' re not
losing your efforts, either, because it ' s being carried on
in all this great number of counties we have.
Can you think of anything else that you want on this
tape? Thinking back to the beginning or . ?
JM: Well , you know the beginning year was one of the most
exciting because it was so hectic . We worked so fast . We
were plowing new ground, as it were . We were learni ng our
craft as we went along . No ne of us were trained museum
professionals . None of us . And very few of us were
historians . Wha t criteria O. T. used to hire, is still a
mystery to me .
M: Really? He must have been good at it .
JM: Well, I think he had some successes .
M: He sure did . Here you were at the very beginning, a
temporary person for one summer
JM: I intended to go back to my teaching position in the
fall that year .
M: And here you still are what? ' 85 .
JM: Almost eighteen years.
M: Is it that long?
JM: I 'm what you call an old- time r .
M: That's why I wanted you on tape . Never any regrets , I
betcha .
JM: No, it ' s fascinating work .
M: Isn ' t it fun.
MCGUIRE 40
JM: Although we ' re not technically a museum, we act like
one . Yet we have the all-embracing mission to educate and
provide educational materials for the entire population of
the state .
M: The Legislature can ' t say , "Hey, we ' re not going to give
you enough money because you ' re just a museum. We don ' t
need any more museums . " I remember that very well .
I do thank you, ever so much .
JM: You ' re welcome.
END OF TAPE I , Side 2, 15 minutes
END OF INTERVIEW