INTERVIEW WITH:
INTERVIEWER:
PLACE:
DATE:
JOE PERRY
Esther MacMillan
Oral History Office, The Institute of Texan Cultures
June 5, 1984
M: Joe Perry, thanks for coming and "good morning. 11
P: Delighted to be here, Esther; delighted to be here.
M: We are, in effect, pioneers because we are the first--this is the
first interview, really, on the early beginnings of The Institute of
Texan Cultures . We hope to wind up this project with a pretty compre­hensive
look at how The Institute of Texan Cultures started, the various
contributions made by various people through the years.
And Joe, I 1d like for you to start •way back at the very begin­ning
and tell when you came on deck and what things were like when you
arrived.
P: Well, do you want to know that? Or do you want to know about the
actual genesis of The Institute?
M: J•d like to know about that; if you know about that, sure .
. P: Actually, this begins with the idea for the Fair in San Antonio :
A World•s Fair to be held in San Antonio.
M: Oh.
P: ( Initial impetus for that came from within the City but it was only
when you got a Governor in office who was thoroughly familiar with the
City of San Antonio and so forth, that it became really possible. John
Conna l ly took it under his wing and shepherded it through the Legisla­ture.
It was through his political power and his political knowhow
that the thing got as far as it did ) One of the absolute necess iti es
PERRY 2.
P: for any World's Fair was a Home State Exh~it of some magni~de.
M: Oh.
P: And it was not until this was really granted--until the Legislature
appropriated the money--until they agreed to this--that it was possible
for the Fair to be held. Consequently, one of the first orders of busi ­ness
was to attempt to get through the Legislature an act which would
get some kind of State Exhibit started. This was done, I believe, in
the 1963 session of the Legislature.
M: Oh, I see.
P: I should remember the number on it. I can't. It's been too long
since I looked up the backup documents on it .
M: 'Way ahead of the '68 Fair, though .
P: My gracious, yes. The planning for it had to be done considerably
in advance--had to decide what they were going to do. How they were going
about it. How much money it was going to cost, and so forth .
Now this particular session of the Legislature appropriated 4.5
million dollars. They had a structure of such and such a size--my
recollection is 50,000 square feet ...
M: Oh.
P: . .. which was to be located in San Antonio, Texas, as the Texas
~
Exhibit for the San Antonio World's Fair. The wording on it as to what
this Exhibit was to be is a bit nebulous. It's obvious that they didn't
have their mind made up at this time .
M: I see, uh huh.
P: But is was 4.5 million . It specified that the City of San Antonio
or the agency conducting the Fair would grant to the State land of such-
PERRY 3.
P: and-such a size, and so forth. Once this was done; once tbts act
passed the Legislature, then the preliminary work was ready to start.
Connally appointed Sue Flanagan, one of his staff members, to take the
initial look in it and I believe she had some help from a number of
other people.
M: I didn't know that.
P: Sue is now, or was the last time I heard from her, down at Stephen F.
Austin in Huntsville.
M: She's retired.
P: Oh, she has?
M: Uh huh. She retired 1 as·t year.
P: And had that Sam Houston Museum down there at Huntsville.
M: I didn't realize that she was--I've worked with her later--but I
didn't realize that she was on deck early--that early.
P: She sure was .
M: Really!
P: She had a great deal of the initial correspondence on this . •.
~1: She did?
P: . .. that she conducted with any number of people.
M: I didn't know that.
P: The other interested party in this that Governor Connally pulled in
quite early was Henderson Shuffler.
r~: Where did he pull him from?
P: Texas A & --actually, The University of Texas .
M: Oh .
P: Shuffler had gone from Texas A & M, where he was Director of Informa-
PERRY 4.
P: tion, to The University of Texas to run their Dobie Collection; to
acquire rare books and so forth for it .
M: Really.
P: This was one of the prime projects of Chancellor Ransom. And, as
you may recall, some of the tales of the acquisitions that Chancellor
Ransom made for The University of Texas System. Shuffler built that
Dobie Collection very considerably while he was over there .
While he was at A & M, he had spent his weekends roaming around the
countryside. This is a very diverse area ethnically . You have an awful
lot of Czechoslovakian people that are settled over there--Polish, Black,
you name it . It is an exceedingly diverse, ethnically diverse, area of
the State. And , it was there that he began to realize how many different
types of people, ethnically, had contributed to the early development of
the State of Texas.
He did a series of monographs for the Houston-Chronicle which
appears in their Sunday Edition on this which are excellent. We re­printed
them, or actually the Chronicle reprinted as a Sunday Edition
just before HemisFair opened . It was a beautiful thing .
M: Oh , rea 11 y.
P: But this was the basic research, right there, from which an awful
lot of the Histowalls and everything else come from.
M: For goodness sake. Isn • t that inte resting .
P: But these appeared in the Chronicle over a period of several years.
M: In the 60 • s?
P: In the 60 's and late 50's .
t~: That far ...
PERRY
P: That far back. But Shuffler had done more research on this than
probably anybody else.
M: Well, isn't that interesting.
5.
P: So, Sue corresponded with Mr. Shuffler and he had talks with the
Governor and so forth. ( And the idea began to develop that one big flashy
show, where the State would put on a continuation of the myths of Texas:
Davy Crockett, The Alamo, and so forth--the Gunslingers and the Cowboys,
the Indians--the same sort of thing that we had done many times before-­had
really been worked into-the ground.) ~e should tell the truth about ~
Texas and that we do it in terms of all,~ of the peoples who had come
together to make the State what it was. ~
This was the genesis of what became The Institute right there.
In the '65 session of the Legislature, the plans were firmed up
considerably more. Contracts had been let to architects to study the
situation--Caudill, Rowlett & Scott.
M: Who?
P: C-A-U-D-1-L-L, R-0-W-L-E-T-T and S-C-0-T-T, I believe. They were,
at the time, one of the premier architectural firms in the country .
M: Austin?
P: No, Houston. Yes. And I assume are still quite well-known . I
haven't had occasion to run into them in some years.
They, in turn , toured facilities like this all over the country.
In fact, all over the world . They went to the Museo Nacional Antropolo­gico
in Mexico City, to Europe, and so forth .•.
M: They did?
P: . . . and got a pretty good idea of what this thing could be; the
PERRY 6.
P: facilities that were going to be needed in it; and as much as could
be done in that early stage of the thing.
M: Yes.
P: They then contacted the exhibits people out on the West Coast that
we eventually wound up using, John Follis & Associates, and then the guy
that made the dome--the real genius of the lot. Jerry Kusenberger will
be thoroughly aware of who this guy was, but I'll probably think of him
in just a second. I haven't thought of the name in years. So the dome
show was half-way thought out and so forth.
In conversations with Shuffler, who was allowed by The University
. ~ '
to do consulting with the GoJernor's office for the future exhibit down
here .. .
M: But he hadn't been hi red yet?
P: He had not been hired as the Director of the thing. He was a consul­tant
at this time, to them. They used his research product of most of
a lifetime's work to begin to develop the concepts for the exhibits:
the Histowalls--the materials that could be shown to illustrate the work
that he had done--the writing; the other concepts there that could better
be done by movies and things of this nature.
And so the basic concept was laid out. It became quite evident by
this time that the initial plans were not big enough .
M: Oh .
P: Not by half.
M: For goodness sake .
P: So they went back to the Legislature, and this one got real mean,
I understand, in the political battling for i t.
PERRY 7.
M: I remember that, I think.
P: It got real mean. Considerable controversy had been aroused in
the City of San Antonio itself about HemisFair about that time. You
don't condemn that much land, step on that many toes, without having
some considerable controversy arise. And it did, in spades .
So problems were encountered in trying to enlarge the concept by
the Legislature. The thing was floundering .
M: Oh, it was?
P: And Shuffler prepared a speech and they delayed him all day long
and it was well after dark when he finally gave that speech to the
Legislature. The people who were there have told me that was the only
time they have ever seen the Legislature give a standing ovation to any­body.
M: Really.
P: And it was a real ripsnorter, where he pointed out that it was foolish
for the State to waste the amount of money that it was going to take to
make a big show down here; that this should be set into some part of a
permanent exhibit facility that could illustrate the history and the cul­ture
of all of the peoples of Texas, and outlined the concept beautifully
in a fifteen or twenty-minute speech.
M: That's all?
P: We have copies of this--mi llions of them. I assume they're still
here somewhere unless they have all been thrown out. We had copies of
all the legislation in my files . Perhaps they have retained these some­where,
I don't know . If not, it can be duplicated--all of it.
But with the results of t his speech (and) the work that the ~v~or
PERRY 8.
P: did, an ~dditional 5~5 million dollars was procured to get this thing
-------,
open.
M: Doesn't sound like very much at this time, does it?
P: No, it was a total of 10 million that we had from the two bills.
M: Ten million dollars all told.
P: The purpose Shuffler wrote, and was defined pretty durned care-fully.
It was to provide a permanent exhibit and study facility--research
facility--on the history and the cultures of the peoples of Texas; and,
to show this by means of exhibits, slide-shows, movies. (He didn't have
enough video at that time or he would, I'm sure, have brought it in.)
But all of the various things were put together in a description of ac­tivity
which he tried to follow to the letter, till the day he died, in
this Institute.
M: He did.
P: I might note also that the descriptions were sufficiently vague to
allow us to get into just about any kind of program we wanted to, in-
.... -----
eluding a thing called the Texas Folklife Festival. And justifying it
at a later time, particularly to The University's very, very skeptical
administrative people. We were able to do it by going back to the ori­ginal
law which established The I_nstitute, saying, "O.K., this is what
this thing was established to do . All we are doing is carrying out the
mandate of that Legislature when they set it up."
And nobody was willing to try to back us down on it, because it was
obvious .
M: There it was . Shuffler was really somebody, wasn't he? The right
/
PERRY 9.
M: man at the right time.
P: He sure was.
f~: Goodness, I didn't realize that.
P: So, here we are .
And it was only 18 months before the thing got rolling that they
got around to appointing any permanent staff. And this was still not
Shuffler. This was a secretary to merely handle some of the additional
paperwork.
M: Working under whom?
P: Loosely with Sue flanagan .
M: With Sue; with Sue still there. O.K.
P: It wasn't until we had less than a year .. .
t~: Oh, my goodness!
P. . .. before the thing opened that they finally got around to appoint-ing
Shuffler as Director.
M: It was?
P: Shuffler really was not too anxious to undertake it. It was going
to be an immense task.
M: Yes, it certainly was.
P: He had an exceedingly comfortable position in Austin heading up the
Rare Books program at the Dobie Collection, and he was very, very happy
over there . He knew that this was going to take an awful lot out of him
and he'd fought enough fights already; he wasn't anxious to undertake
this one.
~1: Is that so?
P: The Governor really twisted his arm a bit .
PERRY 10.
M: This is Connally.
P: Yes.
M: Well, now had the building started building?
P: Ground had been broken.
M: That's all .
P: That's about the size of it.
M: In less than a year?
P: Less than a year.
M: Wow!
P: The Smithsonian people were asked, at this time, how long it would
take to amass a collection of the size we ·were talking about.
M: My word.
P: They said, 11We wouldn't undertake it in less than five years."
M: Oh, and you had less than one . Holy Moses!
P: So this was the situation .
Shuffler reached out to--he had some help--and the first man he
hired was a man named John Whitmore . John had been editor of the
Battalion when I was in--which is the University paper--Texas A & M
University, which was under Shuffler's suzerainty as Director of Infor­mation
.
M: Oh, so he knew him.
P: He knew him quite well. John--exceedingly fine reporter--a very,
very capable man . Now he has his own public relations fi rm in Hous ton
and has been doing exceedingly well over there for many years . He was
quite acquainted with the people who could be of service to us in getting
thi s thing off the ground. So he was a tremendous help in taking an awful
PERRY 11 .
P: lot of the load off Shuffler's shoulders.
M: Was he dealing in information mostly? P.R .?
P: He was dealing in information and P.R. up until that time . And,
remember this is a horrible P.R. program to try and get going . John was
very, very helpful in that . He also proved to know a great deal more
about building and so forth than anybody had any idea that he would.
M: Oh, really.
P: So, he was a tremendous help to Shuffler and functioned as his num­ber
two . He was the Assistant to the Director.
M: Now, where was Sue Flanagan in this setup now?
P: Sue was back working for the Governor.
M: Oh, she was .
P: Yeah . She did not come back with us until after the Fair was over.
This is my recollection. You might want to recheck me on that. But Sue
was on Will Wilson's staff, as I recall, at this time--over in the
Attorney General's office. She had a couple of books she wanted to get
out of her system and so forth. And it wasn't until we really got the
research program going after the Fair that she came back with us. Please
check me on that because my memory is a little vague right there .
But it was a horrible nightmare!
M: I should think so!
P: We had to locate these artifacts, get permission to use them, bring
them in. One of the things that we were facing was memories of 1936 .
This might sound like an awfully long time before but I assure you, in
the memory of the people we were dealing with for these artifacts , 1t
was not . It was yesterday. Many of them had loaned things to the Texas
PERRY 12.
P: Exhibit at the Centennial in Dallas in '36: The Texas Hall of
History, I believe they called it at the time.
M: Sure.
P: And they had never gotten them back.
M: Oh?
P: Nor had they gotten a thank you or anything else; the problem being
that the money was appropriated by the Legislature for that thing to
operate only during the Centennial--no money to close it down.
M: Oh.
P: It was designed to go back to "ground zero" the day after the Cen­tennial
was over. And this is essentially what happened. They did not
have staff or anything else to return these items.
M: Oh . Well, wasn't O.T. Baker on deck by this time?
P: Yes, O.T. started off as a researcher and wound up running the
collection effort and the choosing of the artifacts and all that sort
of stuff .
M: Because he tells a lot about getting the exhibit (in his interview.)
Well, did Shuffler appoint him? Choose him?
P: Yes.
M: And have you any idea how early he came on? Because in his inter­view
he talks about looking for the things and going all over and the
idea of the exhibits and getting them. So he must have been in there
early on.
P: My recollection is that he talked to Shuffler the day after they
made the announcement--the fact that there would be an exhibit. This is
what he told me. The day after they announced they had appointed Shuf­fler,
he tried to get ahold of Shuffler and talk to him .. .
PERRY 13.
M: He did.
P: ... about what was going on.
M: Now where was he at that time?
P: He was in Devine and was retired as a rural postal letter carrier.
M: Really? I didn't know that!
P: O.T. had had an awful lot of experience with Chamber of Commerce
work, things of this nature; had worked with the Baptist Church back in
Tennessee while he was stationed there with the Postal Service.
M: Goodness sakes.
P: And this gave him leadership and things of this nature that he told
me were later quite helpful to him in this.
M: For heaven's sake. That's his background.
P: He--in Devine--had a place out on the edge of town and had set up a
cactus zoo there.
M: Oh, he tells about that--yes.
P: And had considerable experience with that. He built floats for the
annual parades , for example, Fiesta parades here in San Antonio.
M: Yes.
P: Of course, Devine had a representative in it. And he told of those
many, many times. I'm sure that's in his interview, as well. So that
was his background .
M: I see, that's interesting .
P: But he had not started off in this slot. I've forgotten exactly
what they had in mind for him . But he wound up pretty well on the exhi­bits
end of the thing--getting the exhibit together, deciding on arti­fa
cts, locating them, and that sort of thing .
PERRY 14.
M: Gee whiz.
P: So you had Whitmore and Baker. We had a number of other people at
that time that were there when I got to Austin. Of the bunch that you're
familiar with, Esther: John Davis was there, Phil Hewitt--gosh, I can't
remember them all . But these were early ones.
M: All men? No women at this point.
P: No, no, no. Anne--why , I haven't thought of her in years. Anne
Fears Crawford.
M: Fears? F-E-A-R-S?
P: Yeah, Anne Fears Crawford was on board and was heading some of the
research, taking off from Shuffler's work in one of the areas, I believe
it was Spanish and Mexican. Working for her was a little girl named
Montgomery and two or three others. My gosh, I 'd have to go back to my
notes.
M: That isn't important. I just wondered if it was totally male.
P: No, not at a 11.
M: Women's---!
P: Half of the young researchers - -t~ese were kids at The University at
that time.
M: Oh, were they? This was all going on in Austin though?
P: All going on in Austin.
M: Did you have a regular office?
P: We had two--excuse me, one duplex that the State had bought for the
present Finance Building location. And they were going to wreck it, so
they turned it over to us to conduct our activities up there.
M: On campus.
PERRY 15.
P: No, it wasn't on campus. That office--8th Street--somewhere in there.
Again, my memory is vague on this. It was between the Capitol and the
campus. So it couldn't have been 8th Street--it's got to be further up.
Be around 18th Street, I guess.
But this is ·where it was all going on.
t·1: It was?
P: We had people sitting in everybody's lap.
M: I bet you did.
P: The only guy that got any space--two people had space--and that was
Whitn~re and Shuffler. Nobody else had room to cuss a cat in. (Laughter)
M: (Laughter) ... cuss a cat ... Was Connally still keepi ng an eye on it?
P: Governor Connally kept an eye on this thing all the way through.
' ~-----------~--------~-------
,/"
M: Did he? I thought . . .
P: ( During the construction phase, during the phase when we were getting
our artifacts in position, it wasn't uncommon to look up and see him
looking over your shoulder. J
M: Really.
P: I'll say it wasn't uncommon . This probably happened to me only, oh,
four or five times; but still, that was more than I expected to see a
Governor. (Laughter)
M: He really loved this--he loved HemisFair, didn ' t he? / P: Yeah, he did ! He was going to make durned sure, since he put his
prestige and so forth behind it, that everything that could be done was
done to make it a success.
M: Uh huh.
PERRY ll6.
P: He is an executive. He knows how to function as one.. ~
M: Yes, he does. Now, when did you come on?
P: I came on board in October. The rest of this had gotten . started
about August--really rolling about August .
And I'd been with ~~torola down in Houston in their Account Execu­tive
Program down there .
M: Uh huh .
P: Knew John from A & M, various other places; knew Shuffler. And there
is an interesting sidelight on that. I went through A & M on a Will
Rogers Memorial Scholarship.
M: You did!
P: And Henderson Shuffler managed to wheedle it out of Amon Carter up
in Fort Worth .
M: For Pete's sake . Really.
P: And Henderson Shuffler was the man that made the award to me .
M: He was .
P: So I came on board ...
M: He knew you.
P: ... fundamentally because of "old friends" and "old debts." Shuffler
needed some help. Whitmore needed some help.
M: In what direction?
P: They di dn • t know. (Laughter)
M: Oh!
P: (Laughter) They really didn't. Any direction . The thing was just .. .
M: Oh, really!
P: Oh, Lord!
PERRY 17.
M: You didn't come in right away as a Business t·1anager? Or anything?
P: No, I came over to do whatever they had to have happen.
M: Oh, really?
P: My degree in college was in history. And I had vague ideas of
gettin' through the Fair and then being able to go back and do additional
research. However, I got over here and the thing that they needed was
not another researcher. They had plenty of those--the kids that they
had picked up from The University.
M: Sure.
P: They were exceedingly capable.
M: Yeah.
[was]
P: The thing/they didn't have anybody but poor old Kitty Brown [who]
was trying to provide administrative support for this effort.
M: Who?
P: Kitty--Kitty Brown.
M: Kitty Brown. Was she down there?
P: She was there when I came.
M: For heaven's sake.
P: She'd been there a month or so.
M: I'll be darned.
P: But the problem of providing an administrative backup was rough
enough .
M: I would think so .
P: Here you've got a thing .. .
M: Unknown territory .
P: . . . that is explodi ng .
PERRY 18.
M: Yeah.
P: The description of it that I like to give is this: We had to pick
up an unknown quantity of undescribed artifacts at various locations in
the State. The only thing that was finite about this whole thing was
that we had to have them in San Antonio in position and ready to show by
the 6th day of April of 1968.
M: '68.
P: That's all we knew. We didn't know what we had, where it was, how
heavy it was, how big it was, or anything else .
M: And this was October.
P: Yeah.
M: You came.
P: We had no idea how big a staff we were going to have to have to run
the thing during the Fair.
t·1 : S i x month s .
P: We had to make these decisions at the same time. How do you handle
payroll? How do you handle personnel? How do you handle all of these
things? The myriad details that enter into a functioning operation:
how do you provide the life to a concept is what it boils down to?
M: Sure.
P: We had people who were locating the things that we could use.
M: Sure .
P: But until you get those things here--until you provide the people
necessary to show them off--you have nothing . So this was . . .
M: That's what you came into.
P: This is the job that I undertook.
PERRY 19.
M: Nebulous, indeed .
P: Exceedingly.
M: (Laughter) Holy Moses! I di dn't know that . Very interesting.
P: The other part of it was that the only way we were able to do it,
other than the very, very considerable enthusiasm of an entire crew,
who was faced with an obviously impossible task; therefore, we were
going to do it .. .
M: (Laughter)
P: ... the unbelievable work that Shuffler had done in advance--this
is what really did it . Whitmore 's good solid knowledge of how to go
about this sort of thing--these were our real assets that we had to get
it going . We would have never made it through, really.
M: The good foundation.
P: (:he other thing that we had--ConnalJ~ again had provided us with a
document, a letter to al 1 State Agencies which said, "We waul d sincerely
appreciate your providing all the support possible to these people.~ ~
M: Oh.
P: In other words, this was the magic door opener . At that time, the
State purchasing process was exceedingly fussy ; exceedingly fussy . You
have no idea how difficult it was to try to buy something with State
money at that time .
M: Oh.
P: The safeguards that had been put there to secure the public purse
were so restrictive that it was almost impossible to do anything . And it
was only by obtaining the cooperation of appropriate State agencies--
the Board of Control, the Comptroller 's Office- -at that t ime that we were
PERRY 20 .
P: able to do any of it. Had they not gone with us to the letter of
the law, then pushed it just as far as they thought was legally per­missible,
we never could have accomplished it.
I made numerous calls on the Comptroller and his right hand man
who was a fellow named Harry Bressler, at that time . Anytime we had
anything controversial, and virtually everything we had was controver­sial,
(Laughter) ...
M: Yes. (Laughter)
P: ... we 1d have to go in and talk to Mr. Bressler about it to obtain
his cooperation.
M: (Laughter)
· P: One thing that would have killed us would have been if we had
attempted to try to 11put something over on them11 at that point; rather
than cooperation we would have had 11stonewalling, 11 and this thing never
would have opened.
M: Sure enough.
P: So all of these people assisted us very, very greatly . The Highway
Department, Texas Highway Department, went way, way beyond anything that
we could reasonably have anticipated.
M: Oh? In what way?
P: They loaned us vehicles ...
M: They did!
P: ... to go pick up artifacts all over the State. They had brand new
station wagons, Esther, ...
M: No kidding!
P: .. . and they turned them over to these kids to drive .
PERRY 21.
M: They did.
P: They shuddered and they turned their back and so forth ...
M: Crossed their fingers. Oh, for heaven•s sake!
P: .. . they did . They turned these over to us.
M: They did.
P: We, of course, paid for them- -the usage that we had on them--out of
the funds. Can you imagine a poor engineer out in West Texas has been
waitin• for that station wagon for years and then he •s got to wait a
little longer until they get the dad-burn Fair underway .
M: (Laughter) Oh, dear.
P: They provided us with trucks to pick up some of the larger artifacts.
M: They did.
P: They built things for us.
M: Did they?
P: We developed a system of handling certain things . They provided
artifacts for.
M: Was this thanks to Conne.lly again? /
P: Again, that letter.
M: That letter!
P: Then, good liaison. This was one of the prime things that I had to
do ...
M: That you had to do.
P: ... was to establish contact with these people. And from the practi­cal
standpoint, there is a lot of difference between the Governor saying ,
11You will do this 11 and then establishing the practical working relation­ship
with .. .
PERRY 22 .
M: Sure
P: ... these people where they'd do it willingly--to assist you getting
it done rather than sabotaging your efforts, blocking you every way they
can. So, my job was to establish the contacts with the proper people and
to get the thing done--part of it.
M: A lot of tact and diplomacy necessary, wasn't there?
P: Oh, Lord. There sure was. Everywhere we turned.
M: You came out of Texas A & M with a history degree and you wind up
sort of an Administrator--job of ~aving to see through a whole new
situation.
P: Exactly it.
M: You had to pioneer, didn't you?
P: There was no table of organization for this ...
M: What a jobl
P: (Laughter) ... there wasn't anything else.
M: What did you do, just live from day to day, sort of?
P: Well, if I'd lived from day to day I wouldn't have lived. I had to
live three days, five days, six months, a year in advance, or anticipate
the problems that might form down the line.
M: You did?
P: Oh, yeah. The problems we didn ' t anticipate, we couldn't handle
them when they came up.
M: I see what you mean. That was good thinking.
P: In other words, we had to be prepared for it and then be flexible so
you could handle it--maybe not in the way you had planned to do it, but
that you could figure ...
PERRY 23.
M: You knew it was coming.
P: Yeah.
M: Goodness, what a job you had .
P: So we had the problem of staffing, getting ready, getting the arti­facts
in . One of the more interesting ones was where we were going to
put the artifacts.
M: You mean, storage before they were on display?
P: Yeah . Were we going to bring them into Austin?
M: That•s right. They•re still in Austin. I forget.
P: What are we going to do about that?
M: That•s right.
P: The solution to that was rather strange. We considered putting them
in warehouses here in San Antonio.
M: Yeah.
P: Remember these are things that have no real value intrinsically .
We were dealing with a few things of real value like coins out of The
University collection, the gold coins, the Swedish Swante P.alm coins
that were part of The University col'lections. They were worth then
$60,000. Today, I imagine, they are worth a quarter to a half million
dollars .
1~: Really.
P: This was simple. They were in a vault in Austin. We waited until ...
M: . . . to leave them there--yeah .
P: ... time for the deal . We brought them down under guard and put them
immediately in the display case and so forth. These were worth something-­we
can handle that. But how do you value a surveying chain that belonged
PERRY 24.
P: to Stephen F. Austin? How do you value a theodolite that he employed? .
M: A what?
P: A theodolite--this is a s~rveying instrument that he had.
M: How do you spell that?
P: T-H-E-0-0-0-L-1-T-E, theodolite, the-o-do-lite .
M: Theodolite.
P: Yeah . And this sort of thing . A bone bead from The University
collections in Austin?
M: Mercy me!
P: All of this sort of thing. We had the problem then of, although they
are not intrinsically valuable, they have no worth in themselves ...
I~ : The senti menta 1 .
P: . . . the values to the people that loaned them to us are astronomical.
M: Sure . Oh, my word!
P: How do you insure something like this? And where do you find an
insurer that will handle it?
M: You had to do that?
P: Sure.
M: Mercy.
P: So, all of this, where do you start? Where do you insure it? Who
carries it? How do you carry it? How do you provide for its safety once
it's here?
M: Oh, my wordJ
P: This was not done well at all in '36 . And as I told you earlier,
we faced a problem--"Well, those people lost this; they lost that; they
lost something else; I never got this back; I assume they still have it. "
PERRY 25.
P: But this was the sort of thing we faced.
M: Sure.
P: And we had to assure these people that we were going to take care
of their things properly.
M: Take care of their things ...
P: They weren•t going to be damaged while we had them; they weren•t
going to be lost; and that they would be able to get them back after the
thing was over.
M: Yeah .
P: So to provide for it--where are you going to store the stuff? So
the solution that we reached--we started bringing things in in January .
For this was the target that we were going to have to start bringing them
in whether we wanted to or not.
M: January. What stage was the building in by then?
P: At that point the exterior framework was done. The concrete had
been poured only on the bottom floor.
M: Mercy .
P: We had one area back there where the 11arti facts factory .. was fo r
so long that was covered--that•s why the artifacts factory was there.
M: Oh.
P: We moved into that. We got the contractor to agree, much, much,
much agai nst his will . Th is is horrible--to have tenants in a building
prior to the time that you ' ve completed it.
M: Sure . You must have had a roof over your .. . by then?
P: The floor--the exhibits floor was up .
f~ : Was up.
PERRY 26.
P: That was it.
M: And you moved in underneath there. (Laughter)
P: So we started moving artifacts into a plywood enclosure that we had
built back there.
M: You did. You did?
P:
P+~ -~ ~xe-~
Buddy Phiter, John Kohller, Bernard Prickett were on board by this
time.
M: They were .
P: And a few other people, and we were starting to move them down here.
Prickett, of course, was Building Superintendent and he was to be present
during the construction to become as familiar as possible with the struc­ture
where he would be able to maintain it once we got together. So we
brought him in early for that reason. Thank God we did. Buddy was
brought in as his right hand.
M: Oh, was he? Did he come from Austin, too?
P: No, he was here.
M: He was here.
P: We had heard of both Prickett and Phifer at Kitty's recommendation
incidentally--Kitty Brown--
M: Her brother-in-law, yes.
P: And never regretted it . But they assisted in the care of the collec­tions
. Kohller, who had been with the Memorial Museum in Austin and with
the McNay he re . ..
M: Oh.
P: .. . in arms and armor collecti ons, we found and hired to keep track
of it.
PERRY 27.
M: Well, at this point, were you doing a lot of the hiring?
P: Yeah.
M: I would think you would be. Would have inherited that .
P: In the areas that later fell under my purview: the building, main­tenance,
security--which was another story--the administration, as we
had to build it up , and so forth .
As far as research, we had a separate staff handling guides. This
was starting but was pretty well in the .. .
M: Oh.
P: . . . ideas at that time . But anyhow, we started to bring stuff in
here and store it . We had the wettest winter in the history of San
Antonio, as I recall. And here we are trying to get this building in .
M: And it •s raining.
P: We had wet weather springs that started up all over this property.
M: Oh, no .
P: The driveway here at the back of the building- -we had half a dozen
of them . There was water trickl i ng constantly down where they had to
pave . We almost never got the ceremonial fountain in, out front.
M: Yeah .
P: Again, we were below the water table with this thing and we were
trying to put it in.
M: Got it .
P: The only way they ever managed it was to put hydrostatic relief
valves down in the bottom of it where that ground water could come into
the pool and be moved out . Otherwise they never would have gotten into
the ground.
PERRY 28.
M: Honestly, I don't--this just sounds--(Laugbter}
P: It was the most ridiculous thing you ever heard. We had a rain
storm that you wouldn't believe. I've forgotten how many inches of rain
came down in how short a time, but it was something like--we got about
six or eight inches in two hours or something like that. It was one of
the hardest rains we ever had in San Antonio.
M: A regular flood, eh?
P: We had done one thing that saved our souls that time, or other por­tions
of our anatomy--more finite portions of our anatomy--we had arranged
to get the artifacts up off the floor .
M: Oh;
P: We did an awful lot of things by hunch.
M: Uh huh.
P: And I have no idea why, really. If somebody had pinned me down and
said , "Now why are you do i ng this?" I couldn't have told them, but I
insisted that we get pallets and there was no artifact on the floor back
there.
M: Did it flood?
P: It flooded.
M: It did .
P: And the pallets were just barely high enough . The water was lapping
on top of the pallets back there .
M: Oh .
P: We sandbagged the (Laughter} sandbagged it off as best we could and
enough water got past it- -past our sandbags--to where it almost covered
the pallets .
PERRY 29.
r~: Gee.
P: It was not the greatest time that was had by all. I almost lost mY
car in Salado Creek on that one. (Laughter}
M: Really? It was awful .
P: It was a real interesting time.
M: I don't know how you survived.
P: But, anyhow, we did get the artifacts together . An awful lot of
interesting things happened.
You probably remember an old gentleman that was with us, a former
school administrator from the Chicago area, Grover Cleveland Ramsey, one
of God's chosen. One of the gentlest, kindest, most wonderful people
I've ever known.
M: Oh, really.
P: Mr. Ramsey was in his late '70s--early '80s--at this point, and had
been hired as a field researcher to contact people to loan us things.
He was very gentle, very smooth, and he got an awful lot of things for us.
He came in one day--he drove a little Volkswagen--and I said, "Mr.
Ramsey, there is a cannon that I would like very much for you to pick up
at such and such a place." And he gave me the darndest look, he was try­ing
to figure out, and I could see it, this man is obviously out of his
mind . There is no way that I can get a cannon of any size into my Volks-wagon
.
M: (Laughter)
P: Well, he didn't know that I had arranged for the highway department
to pick the thing up in one of their larger trucks . And all he had to do
was just be there and sign the papers for The Institute and make sure that
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PERRY 30.
P: it got loaded properly and so forth . But that was the most awful
look I have ever had in my life. (Laughter)
M: {Laughter)
P: There were similar stories.
M: Yeah . 1111 bet.
P: Many, many th1ngs that we picked up.
M: You went all over the State: North, south, east, west. Huh? To
get things.
P: Not only all over the State, but all over the country.
M: Oh, did you? Oh, you did.
P: One of the things that we had was a showcase of awards that had been
made to Texas Blacks--sports figures.
M: Oh .
P: One of them had been Ernie Banks who had been born in Texas--he was
living in Chicago at that time and he was 11Most Valuable Player11 two
years running. And, I guess, it was National League baseball. And he
had sent us or had agreed to loan us these awards . So we had to fly
these in . For that we used a freight forwarding company--Emery.
M: From Chicago.
P: Right . They packed it and loaded it on an airplane and we picked
it up here ...
M: You did.
P: ... and brought it in . I know we had a great many things like that.
M: I don't know how you kept track of all the details. The details,
my word.
P: We did. It was horrible.
PERRY 31.
M: It was just unending, wasn't it?
P: Yeah.
M: I don't know how you did it.
P: Camille Duane Rosengren assisted keeping track of it. She was trained
as a librarian, had some experience with the Metropolitan Museum of Art in
New York, and we employed her to keep track of the paperwork that followed
each one of these things up. Because I had a series of forms where you
had to run through the typewriter once and this gave you a form to give
to the lender, when he gave you the item, a form for our files--even went
so far as to have a form ready for the lender to return the artifact and
a receipt that he would give back to us, signed, when the thing was com­pleted.
M: Completed.
P: So she was riding herd on the details on these. But it was an ex­ceedingly
interesting time, exceedingly interesting.
M: They say this sort of thing develops character.
P: (Laughter)
M: (Laughter) You must have the greatest character of all times.
P: No. Really, a much wilder time was getting the Folklife Festival
organized .
M: Was it?
P: Yeah, much wilder .
M: Well, that I know about a little bit. I was around by then.
P: You may not know the financial business end of getting that thing
organized . I don't think many people do . It was wild.
M: I bet it was .
PERRY 32.
M: Well, the building is going up slowly. You must have been wringing
your hands. I'm interested in when the building got finished and ready
for occupancy. How close to the opening of the Fair? Awful close,
wasn't it?
P: The building was ready for occupancy after the Fair opened.
M: Oh.
P: We occupied it long before that (Laughter .) There were certain
things that the contractor had to finish up . Didn't finish up until
after the Fair was over .
M: Really?
P: Sure . These were finishing touches that we knew full well that we
could live without, that we could put on a very nice Fair without, and
agreed mutually .
END OF TAPE I
Side 1 - 45 minutes
BEGINNING OF TAPE I - Side 2
M: Go back to the contractor.
P: The contractor did a marvellous job on this thing . He had to work
under the most trying conditions that any general contractor ever had to
work under, I guess. I'm sure there is worse, but they would have to go
a long way to find one .
M: Who was it? Do you remember? It really doesn't matter .
P: I've got it--it's on plans--again, I'll probably think of it as we
go on during the course of the interview.
We had to give up certain things in order to get it finished.
M: Did you?
PERRY 33.
P: We had skylights in this building. It was obvious that if we had
skylights, we would not be able to open for the Fair .
We had windows scheduled for this whole area ...
11: Did you?
P: ... of the bui 1 ding down here and at the other end, as we 1 1.
M: That's interesti~Q.
P: These had to be given up ...
M: They did? Oh, dear.
P: ... in order that we could be open for the Fair.
I sometimes wonder if it wouldn't have been better off not opening,
(considering the subsequent history of The Institute) than to abandon those
two items.
One of the more interesting ones: Our projection showed us that we
would not be able to open at all if we didn't start laying the carpet at
"X" time . This time came up--we had no exterior walls.
M: My word!
P: We actually started laying carpet in this building prior to the time
we had exterior walls .
M: You didn ' t !
P: The construction debris on that main floor was unbelievable . If
you found lumps in that carpet and so forth, I 'm not surprised .
M: I'll be darned .
P: But this had to be done in order to finish in time to open.
M: For gosh sakes .
P: But the fountain, this constant battle they were having out there .
This trying to pour concrete in the rain ; of course, in the Pacific
~R~ M.
P: Northwest they do this all the time, but you don't normally have
that problem in Texas.
M: Sure, not in Texas, no .
P: And then, underfoot, all of these rather ridiculous people (Laughter)
that these contractors weren't used to dealing with in any way whatsover . ..
M: I can imagine .
P: . . . who screamed and yelled anytime you looked at an old spur or some-thing
else they had back there and were trying to keep police officers
in the building to protect these artifacts while you were working on it.
M: You had hired your security already by this time?
P: By the time we had artifacts beginning to come in we had to hire
security.
M: It wasn't permanent yet? This was temporary hiring.
P: No . Some of the people that we hired temporarily in the beginning
stayed with us an awfully long time .
We had to begin a security force at that time.
M: Yeah, uh huh, I see.
P: Another thing: How do you hire? Where do you go? What do you do?
This--without any real feel for a security organization, was another
interesting detail to get into .
M: Gee.
P: How many people do you need? Where do you need them? All this
sort of thing . ..
The dome--this had been designed by a computer--and we had no idea
whether it would fit whenever we got it together.
M: Really .
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PERRY 35.
P~ The fabrication of material was done out on the West Coast--the
screen materials; fabrication of steel was done someplace else. The
prime contractor bad charge of the erection of the steel; then the
people from the West Coast who had charge of erecting the screens were
in there. There was an electrical contractor who had to get your elec­trical
equipment where you needed it. There was an audio visual contrac­tor
who had to get the thing working. This gives you an idea of the
complexity of the operation.
M: Yes.
P: One thing that we had to give up there--we had originally designed
the dome to function with a projector under the floor where the darkroom
is now, where Jim's darkroom is now ..•
M: Oh .
P: ... shooting directly up to fi 11 the very topmost screen up there.
We had to drop this. It would have wound up with another layer of pro­blems
which was just a little bit more than we could undertake at that
time.
M: Whose idea was the dome? Do you remember?
P: The exhibit designers out on the West Coast.
M: Oh, you told me that .
P: Gordon--the guy I was trying to think of a minute ago--first name
was Gordon .
M: I think that name is in O.T. Baker's .. .
P: Probably is . He was the real genius of the lot . Yeah. More of a
feel for Texas than a lot of us who had lived here all our lives had.
M: Is that so?
PERRY 36.
P: The very sensitive motion pictures that he took that are in that
dome show--unbelievable. Some of the out-footage that he took is as
impressive as what we wound up showing.
But you begin to get an idea. Here's the guy who photographed the
dome show was putting it together.
M: Yes.
P: He's under contract. The electrical contractors are another, the
general contractor on the building, the steel erectors, the people who
were putting the screen material in place--each a separate contract.
Then you have the people who are going to be running the show, getting
it in place and so forth, that's another contract.
Part of them were working directly for The Institute, part of them
were working for some of the sub-contractors, part of them were working
for the contractor--the prime contractor--and it was a very confusing
time.
~1: Was there anybody that you had to depend on who was overseeing the
details, going around and saying, "How's the concrete going today?
How ' s th i s? "
P: Yes.
M: Did you have somebody to do that for you?
P: Yes.
M: Because you didn't have time to do that, did you?
P: We had a representative from the State Building Commission who was
here .. .
M: Oh, did you .
P: He was supposedly overseeing all of that . I assure you that Whit-
PERRY 37.
P: more and I were also following it every day.
M: You were what?
P: We were also following it every day.
M: You were.
P: We had to be sure that we would be open. If we weren ' t we had to
try to take the steps that would be necessary to get the damn thing open.
And so it was a real rough situation .
M: Merciful heavens . I don't know how you did it.
P: But I've forgotten one bunch when I was talking about liaison with
State Agencies a minute ago . They were very, very important. This was
the Texas Tourist Development Agency.
M: Texas Tourist ...
P: We were actually assigned to them ...
M: Oh.
P: .. . in the beginning ...
M: You were.
P: . .. by the bill. This was a place to put The Institute.
M: I see.
P: Where in the world are you going to put this entity?
M: Well, that's sensible. Sure.
P: So we were assigned to Tourist Development back in the beginning.
Tourist Development at that time had about six people .
M: Oh, really? Small!
P: Very shortly we had well over a hundred. And we peaked at about
275, I think it was, counting all part-timers and full-timers and every­thing
during HemisFair.
PERRY 38.
M: You did. Well, you could see why, after all.
P: So here the "tail 11 was really "wagging the dog .. on that deal and
we were an impossible thing for them to support, so we were having to
work directly with the other agencies and so forth. And they really
did everything they could to help us.
Their resources were quite limited. This put an impossible burden
on them, but they did marvelous work to try to help us--Hildebrand and
all those people up there .
M: Who did you say?
P: Frank Hildebrand.
M: Frank Hildebrand.
P: I don't know whether he is still Director of Tourist Development
for the State or not.
M: I don't know either. The name is familiar, but I don't know whether
he is or not .
P: A very fine fella . He did an excellent job promoting HemisFair .
He's very smooth, very polished and was a fine Tourist Development Offi­cer
for the State.
But, total confusion, and new problems every second.
M: I bet you.
P: Life was not dull, I assure you . Real challenge in trying to get it
ready.
Then, when you started trying to go out on the grounds and talk to
anybody from HemisFair!
M: Wow!
P: They were as confused as all the rest of us were.
PERRY 39.
M: My word.
P: And to establish relationships with them was another problem. With
the City of San Antonio--here is a State Agency moving in--
M: That's right. It was a State Agency.
P: We did
M: No.
P: We were a separate entity. It was necessary, if we planned on con­tinuing,
that we preserve that separation. Were we .. .
M: Of course.
P: ... t!L_!>ecome part of HemisFair, ~ were ~
M: You were, at the end of the Fair.
P: And it was a continual problem in relationships with these folks.
An awful lot of whom had never been in anything like this before, and
had delusions of importance, and so forth, over a short period. An
awful lot of fine people, as we11, that were trying their best to run
something.
M: I know what you mean.
P: So--strained relationships--difficult problems--in trying to pre­serve
independence in this milieu, so that the thing could continue to
exist after the Fair was over.
f~ : Absolutely .
P: Very interesting problems. Anyhow, it all came together . Not
without great sweat and worry. But the day before- - two days before-­the
Fair was scheduled to open, we threw a barbecue: The Houston Endow­ment
grant had made it possible for us to do things of this nature.
M: Who had?
PERRY 40.
P: Houston Endowment ...
M: Houston Endowment grant, O.K.
P: ... had made it possible for us to handle the things that we abso-lutely
could not get through as ·a ·.state Agency. Most important to us .
So they supported this thing from the very beginning.
M: I didn't know that.
P: Yes, ma'm, they sure have.
We managed to throw a catered barbecue for the people from all the
State Agencies who had been helpful for us.
M: Here or in Austin?
P: That was the first time the upper patio, out back, was used. We had
buses that brought them down from Austin.
M: You did.
P: We sort of planned the operation to handle that; but this was our
way of saying, "Thank You" to them. They were the first people to pre­view
the exhibits.
M: The exhibits were up by then? Two days before opening?
P: The lower hall was filled with construction debris.
M: When you say the lower hall, you mean what we call the basement?
P: Yeah.
M: The whole thing?
P: The whole lower hall that later became the exhibits area on the
1 ower fl oar.
M: (Laughter) Really. The gallery now?
P: It was a question of gypsum board, wood, dirt, mud, nails, you name
it, just all over that carpet, all the way out to that back door.
PERRY 41.
M: Oh.
P: So we had to make a little trail where they could go to th.e rest­rooms
through all this mess.
M: The public?
P: The people that we were showing to--the State Agencies . So that•s
the condition we ·were in. The grounds were far from as clean as we would
1 ike them . We had on the upper fl oar a mess--a pretty tborough mess .
11: On this fl oar where we are now--the second fl oar?
P: Yeah. But we had the main floor fairly well in shape . And these
people saw it.
The following evening we had a black-tie dinner . . .
M: You did?
P: . . . for the Legislature . ..
~1 : You di d?
P: ... wi th the first showing of the dome show.
M: Ah . And you had the dinner right here in The Institute?
P: Right .
But you must get Jerry Kusenberger to tell you about that first
showing of the dome show. Jerry was running the crew for the audio­visual
sub-contractor; at that time, a fellow named Bill Ralke, from
out on the West Coast . And that•s where he came to us, incidentally,
was in the audio-visual end of the thing running the dome show for us .
M: Who? Jerry?
P: Yeah .
M: How did he wind up where he is nov1? For goodness. s.ake. That • s
funny .
PERRY 42.
P: We recognized the leadership potential that be had and Shuffler
and I pulled him out of it.
M: You did.
P: And put him into tbe exhibits operation. He was running exhibits
fabrication and so forth for a while .
M: He was?
P: Then later he went into the physical plant end of it.
M: The physical plant management.
There is something that should be in here now. When did you all
move out of your duplex in Austin and down to San Antonio?
P: That was staggered. Whitmore and I moved out very shortly after we
got artifacts in there--roughly the first of February.
M: This is 1967 .
P: No. We are in '68 now.
M: Yeah, we are in '68 .
P: So we were down here with a portion of the staff .
M: Uh huh .
P: Then Shuffler stayed in Austin with a portion of the staff. His
home was there. And he was reluctant to move down. He wasn't in the
best of health right then, either.
/1 WG.S-n' + nc=. r
M:('~ No . He was insisting on editing every word that went into every
Histowall .
M: Uh huh.
P: He was far and away the finest editor I have ever worked with in my
1 i fe .
M: Oh, was he?
PERRY 43.
P: He could take. gibberish and turn it into sometbi ng faster than any­body
I have ever seen.
M: He caul d.
P: Best man with a blue pencil that I have ever known.
M: Huh.
P: But he was insisting on editing every word that went into tbe Histo­walls.
M: Yeah.
P: His reason was that there were so many political repercussions from
them that he wanted to be ready to justify ...
M: Had to be right--absolutely.
P: ... to defend them and so forth whenever they did.
But he had some real physical problems at that time . I would ima­gine
it was pure and simple exhaustion and it could have been a slight
heart attack .
M: But he hadn't got the cancer then?
P: No, no. So he managed to stay up there until roughly the middle of
March, is my recollection.
M: That far? Really.
P: Only a month before the thing opened here . He was not anxious to
come down at all. I can't blame him .
~1: I can • t either . We 11 , had they done the apartment by then for the
Director?
P: Yeah . It was in process of being done.
M: (Laughter) Like everything else.
P: Like everything else, it was a long way from fini~hed, Esther.
PERRY 44.
M: It was.
P: ( .Governor Connally had wanted Mr. Shuffler to ltve at the Lutcher
Center which had just been given to us at that time ) Shuffler saw
immediately that was another load of problems that we didn't need right
then. So he declined and chose to live here at The Institute .
M: He did .
P: Another interesting series of tales there. But we pretty well bad
the thing together.
The deal for the Legislature. The show had never been shown before .
M: Oh, it hadn't? Not even a rehearsal run before?
P: No rehearsal ever.
M: Well, for Pete's sake .
P: They worked with individual pro jectors and so fo rth . But using the
control mechanism where every projector was on at the same time had never
been done.
M: Well, that's funny .
P: This was the run-through . This was how tight we were working .
Normally , when you are showing to an audience of this nature, you would
have had 20 or 30 or 40 run-throughs before you show it to anyone.
M: Well , sure you would .
P: We didn ' t have the t ime.
M: Not one. Gosh!
P: We didn 't have the time . We had to show i t the f i r st go-around to
the people that counted . We had about a 30-minute delay and it went off,
as Kusenberger wil1 tell you, ve ry, very well .
M: It did .
PERRY 45.
P: I think we had one projector that fouled up on us but not too badly.
M: But it did go well. That's a .•.
P: Yeah. To give you an idea of what those boys in that audio-visual
area have accomplished, we had roughly ten people working on those pro­jectors
at that time to run that show . Ten.
M: Ten.
P: Ten per shift.
M: Really . And now you've got three.
P: Now we have on duty, when they are showing it, only two. So you
can begin to gather the tremendous advances that they have made.
M: Yeah.
P: We were getting life on the film that we were showing--was about a
week when we first started.
M: What do you mean by that?
P: We would run through a set of prints •..
M: They wore out fast?
P: They wore out that fast.
M: How come?
P: Well, we were showing them considerably more often. We were showing
them about every 30 minutes ...
M: Oh, yes.
P: ~ .. all day long. But the adjustments on the projector and so forth
that these guys have made to fine tuning--Jerry might not brag enough to
tell you about this--but they did a fantastic job . At a later time where
we are now getting years, or were, the last time that I checked it,
getting a year out of a set of prints because of some of the things that
PERRY 46.
P: they have done to improve 1t. And we only nave two people where we
had ten on a shift.
M: Yeah. That tells us something.
P: So it is really quite a thing.
M: Were the Legislators properly impressed?
P: Yes, they were.
M: They were.
P: They were exceedingly kind about i.t.
M: Connally was happy, I imagine, at that stage?
P: Yes, he said he was. The thing was pretty impressive, when we got
it opened at first. All our Guides in their crisp new uniforms--good
looking kids, all of them.
M: Who had the hiring and the training of the Guides? Who was respon­sible
for that?
P: A fella named Dave Tiller.
M: Oh. But you did have somebody .. .
P: Sure did.
M: ... head of the ... Dave Tiller.
P: Dave was in Austin for a long time and had a restaurant up there.
His wife was Lady Bird Johnson't Administrative Assistant for some time.
M: Oh?
P: But Dave did a fine job of hiring, training, and running that Guide
Staff during the HemisFair. He left us very shortly after HemisFair
was over.
M: Oh, did he .
P: But he did a heck of a job .
PERRY 47.
M: You know, as you talk about this, you were all awfully smart--or
awfully lucky--maybe both. You got such good people in each key posi­tion.
P: Lucky. I wouldn't claim to be smart. And I don't think Shuffler
would or Whitmore would either. We were lucky.
M: It seems like you can•t put it all to luck. It was too consistent.
P: When you have to hire people that rapidly ...
M: Yeah.
P: . . . I assure you there was an awful lot of 1 uck in it.
M: Was there?
P: Yeah . Nonnal personnel sel ecti.on procedures, and so forth, you did­n't
have time to go through with. You were--course, you have another
thing working for you too. This was a very exciting thing and we were
attracting people . ..
M: Sure .
P: ... who wanted to be part of a World's Fair . What the heck, this was
part of the attraction for me and I'm sure it was for many of the people
who came in with us at this time .
M: Uh huh.
P: But we did. We had good crews .
M: When you opened--the day you opened--on April 6, 1968--what was the-­did
you have a lot of people that first day? Or did they find it ba ck-­tucked
back here? What was the first day like?
P: I'd have to go back to our figures. My recollection is around
7,000 people came through that day.
11: That first day!
PERRY 48.
P: I had stacks of papers--in fact, I kept track of attendance each
day on an hourly basis ...
M: You did?
P: .•• during the entire Fair.
M: You did.
P: We had turnstiles and so forth that enabled us to do this. And we
had to in order to stagger our Guide crews. and everyth.ing else to make
sure that we had a sufficient number of people on hand to meet the crowds,
when they came. So we had to keep track of them as they came through
from a justification standpoint. We needed to know how many people we'd
served with this facility so we could come up with a cost per head figure
after we got through.
M: Was there an admission charge?
P: No .
M: I don't remember. This was free?
P: No, no, no. Not here.
M: Oh.
P: The only admission was to get on the HemisFair grounds.
M: That's right.
P: And we had a gate where our people could get in to come to work.
We did have certain people that Governor Connally or others wanted to
come (only) in this building who were admitted to it without charge.
M: Oh .
P: This was a cause of constant bickering with the HemisFair people,
and it should have been .
M: Sure. Was the landscaping done?
PERRY 49.
P: Partially.
M: The ferns and stuff? All the time the hoards of people were coming
to the exhibit, were the carpenters and everybody still working on the .•• ?
P: No . By this time we had the exhibit floor finished. We had the-­it
was virtually impossible under those circumstances for the contractor
to continue working. The items that I was talking about earlier, were
mechanical, finishing items on either the top or the bottom floors,
which waited until after the thing was over.
M: Oh , it did.
P: Oh yeah, we--you couldn't get anybody in.
M: In other words, they didn't go b.ack to work on the finishing of the
second floor and the basement until . . .
P: Until after everything was over, yeah.
M: Oh. What about the staff? Did you have the offices ready now on the
second floor?
P: Unfortunately, no. The only offices on the second floor were on
this string right here. That was it.
M: On what?
P: This end, right in here. There is a fire door--or was--that turns
back into this bay--here--that's where it ended .
t~: Oh, it did.
P: Yeah . Back where my office was--Scotty's office--and that complex
was not there.
M: It wasn't. Where were you? Down toward where Jack Maguire is now?
Or fono~ard?
P: My office was directly across from Jack Maguire . The other offi ces
PERRY 50.
P: ended where the General lMcGiffert) has his offices at the present
time.
M: Well, now, was there a library? Yet?
P: Yes, it was where you saw it when you first came here.
M: That was there.
P: Yes, we actually had portions of our exhibits staff in there and
this pattern held until later on.
That was designed, initially, as a conference room.
M: Really.
P: Mr. Shuffler's office, which is Jack Maguire's offi.ce now, was
designed to be a Xerox room.
M: Oh.
P: Right . We changed that up in order to provide him with a sufficient­ly
large office. The General's office, you see, they had to divide it
up. This was one of Whitmore's cost saving things that wound up not
saving us any money and it really wound up costing us . The offices were
too small that we had up here.
M: Oh, did you say 11comfort room?" One room was supposed to be a
"comfort room?"
P: A Xerox room. A conference room.
t~: A conference room .
P: Yeah, yeah. Where the library was .
M: Oh, the library was , I see .
P: It was designed to be a conference room.
M: I see .
P: And the library function grew as we developed a library . And this
PERRY 51.
P: wasn't something that we had planned from tbe beginning at all.
We planned a library instead of following the thing as it was laid out .
Well, all sorts of these things.
M: One of the things that--in working with Henderson--on two occasions
I worked closely with him on something--that library was very important
to him.
P: Oh my gracious, yes.
f1 : That was of prime importance to him.
P: Books were an important part of Mr. Shuffler's life. If you'll
remember, he was head of the Dobie collection at UT Austin. His own
library was extensive. He had collected rare books until he started
with the Dobie collection.
~1: He had.
P: He was always so concerned with a conflict of interest that he gave
up his collection of rare books at the time he went with the Dobie collec­tion.
M: Did he, really. He was such a nice guy. I have a note--in going-­I
want to pick up some things I picked up from re-reading O.T. Baker's
interview. He made the remark and you corroborated that Shuffler was a
very strict historian.
P: Yes, he was . A well-qualified man.
M: You mentioned that and that was not a bad deal to have for a thing
of this importance.
P: Absolutely not. He was an historian with administrative abilities .
You would have found few people in the country who were as qualified as
he was in the subject to also have had the ability to run a thing of
PERRY 52 .
P: this nature .
M: That was amazing.
P: So he was a rare person.
M: I have here the design company : Usher Follis.
P: Yes , that' s i t .
M: I was kind of surprised that you couldn't find somebody in Texas .
Since this was such a Texas operation . You had to go to California, eh?
P: Yeah.
M: For that particular kind of design .
P: At that time, for this particular kind of design, it was pretty well
impossible to find anybody in the State . Again, they followed the
recommendations of the architect .
M: Oh .
P: Caudill, Rowlett & Scott, who researched this quite thoroughly for
them.
M: I wondered where that idea came from . You did mention that before.
Another question that I have is, and you have already touched upon this;
it was placed under the Texas Tourist Development Office but, and you
said, it was a very poorly staffed and small group, how long did The
Institute stay with the Tourist ... ? When was it put under The University?
P: You misunderstood it . I didn't say they were poorly staffed at all.
M: You said they only had five people. I mean, they were short ... I
didn't mean poor people, I mean ...
P: Yes, they worked .. . the function of the Tourist Development Agency
wasn't to run this . This was a burden that the Legislature had just
PERRY 53.
P: thrown on them.
M: In other words, you were kind of a "step-child."
P: Sure we were.
M: Uh huh.
P: The Agency was staffed to do its job. It wasn•t staffed to do this
thing.
M: In other words, the five people, what they had when The Institute
went in, was sufficient for what they had to do.
P: For what they normally would do.
M: But what they had to do when they got the "step-child" was to
increase. I see, now.
P: Yeah.
M: Well, now how--you said it didn•t stay very long--when did it go
under the University aegis?
P: 1969.
M: Right after HemisFair.
P: The Bill passed that placed The Institute of Texan Cultures under
the aegis of The University of Texas System.
M: Oh.
P: I am reasonably sure that Henderson had at least a verbal agreement
with the Chancellor and the University officials that this would be done,
or that they would make every effort to have it done.
M: Oh, I see.
P: The thing was enough of a success, apparently, that they wanted us .
They did make the necessary effort and( the Legislation was passed which
placed us under the University aegis )
M; I see.
f
l
PERRY 54.
P: One very interesting thing--that Legislation carries the same word­ing
as far as what The Institute was designed to do--as was i.n that Bill
in 1965 which established purpose, directions, and so forth.
M: It was a little vague, in other words.
P: So the intent was carried forward right up till that time .
This presented a whole new picture of--1 might tell you a couple of
other things before we get into that th4t might be of interest to you--
The Legislature, in point of fact, had appropriated money only to
build this building and to operate it during the Fair. There was no
money--same thing as in 1936--there was no money to continue operations
past that point . There was really no money in their budget to return
artifacts; to close it down.
M: The same repeat.
P: It sure was.
M; My word, what did you do about that?
P: We managed to carve enough money out of the 11hide" of the original
appropriations to run us for two full years after the thing was over.
M; You did?
P; Yeah.
M; You must have been very economical.
P; We managed. It was not easy . We managed to run it without stinting . . .
M: You did . You did!
P; .. . to keep it going, and then to operate it until another appropria-tion
could be made. See, it was 1969 before the Legislature even met to
appropriate money which couldn't even begun to be spent until September
the first of 1969 . HemisFair was over with in 1968.
PERRY 55.
M: Sure.
P: So we had a full year there ...
M: I see what you mean.
P: . .. when we had to operate off of money that we had managed to ...
M: What you had saved.
P: .. . keep from the Fair .
M: Now, when the thing was over, did you have to let an awful lot of
people go? Surely, you had . ..
P: Oh, Lord, yes.
M: So you were cut down to a small •. .
P: We cut it down to an absolute minimum on the staff.
M: Uh huh.
P: We retained research, retained what business functions we needed to
maintain, minimal security staff, minimal building staff, and so forth.
M: What about library?
P: Minimal. Everything was minimal .
M: Business was nonnal?
P: We went from 275 people down to about 50 to 75 .
M: That many?
P: Yes. The majority of our people were either security or guide staff-­guide
staff being far and away the largest--
M: I can see that .
P: At peak we had almost 100 people on that staff. We had quite a few
in the dome , running two shifts a day.
M: That's right. You had ten on a shift .
P: ~e had ten on a shift--two a day .
PERRY 56.
M: Yeah .
P: So it was necessary to let an awful lot of people go there. Remem­ber,
Esther, the horrible confusion that existed immediately after Hemis­Fair.
One day we had 125,000 people on the grounds, the closing day.
The next day you could have shot a canon down Goliad Street and not hit
a soul.
M: Not hit a soul. That abrupt.
P: That was one of the greatest let downs I have ever had in my life .
M: I bet ya.
P: Walk out on these grounds the day before--all of the music--crowds-­joyful
noises and so forth; and now you got nothing, absolutely nothing--
absolute quiet.
M: That sudden. I can see that.
P: Horrible situation.
M: That must have been just somethin' a\'Jful.
Well now, when you quit , you had this framework ; how it had worked
for the Fair. Then, when did all these ideas begin to emerge of a Docent
Program and of an Educational Outreach Program and all these things?
Did those just kind of grow like "Topsy?"
P: No, they didn't . ( The concepts of what we'd be doing after the Fair
was over with was in this Legislation as early as 1965. )
M: You had already planned thi s? Ah .
P: Sure . The books that we were go ing to put out, the slide shows
that we were going to put out . ..
M: Oh.
P: ... and hopef ully movies, which, of course , we never did get to do .
PERRY 57.
P: Maybe we'll get to do some video now or are doing s.ome vi.deo now,
but this had all been planned.
M: Sure.
P: But this had all been planned. Shuffler had in his mind pretty
well and stated it in speeches and so forth . If you follow even that
f i rst speech that he made: This was the plan that we were ready to go
with .
M: Good. That's interesting . I wonder how many people know that?
P: The people that weren't prepared, were HemisFair . They had no more
idea about what they were going to do with these grounds than the Man in
the Moon .
M: They should have planned.
P: This gave us a horrible situation in that we were oriented--the
building was facing toward the Fairgrounds, and so forth, which was
no more than a vast wasteland after this was over.
M: That's right. And still is.
P: So we had a real problem. How are we going to get people in this
thing? What are we going to do? How are we going about it?
M: That's right.
P: This, then, brings on an entirely new phase of operations and by
far and away the roughest.
M: Rougher than getting ready? How could it be?
P: Rougher than getting ready.
M: My word1
P: Sustaining it. Every day , when you're looking out there at that
thing . Trying to get people into this operation, interesting them in
PERRY 58.
P: the thing. To tell them: yes, we're still here. The Fair is over
with but this thing is still here and is going.
A totally different style of thing, operating on a shoestring. Try­ing
to squeeze every penny three times that you possibly could so you could
keep the doors open every day .
M: My word.
P: Yes, this was an entirely different thing. The other time we had
money . We had the assistance of everybody and his dog. Like the Governor
himself had said, 11 You will do this ...
M: Yes.
P: We could make a lot of mistakes . We could afford a lot of problems.
But we had the money; we could get the people, and so forth, to do it with.
Now you're on a different thing . You are to operate on an absolute mini­mum
and you have got to accomplish miracles with nothing .
M: And a different sort of publ ic.
P: A different sort of public. A totally different sort of public to
please .
What is that publi c? Defining it. And then trying to get them i n
here.
M: Uh huh.
P: How do you staff it? Then, for the first time, we really started
running into bureaucracy from n~ end of it: from the University , from the
State--everybody else . Where we had to deal wi th them not on emergency/
cra sh basis but rather on a day to day bas is .
M: And justifi cation all the time . I remembered when ~re got into that
money business ; when we almost didn't get funded at all t hat year.
PERRY 59.
P: Oh, yeah. That was probably the most horrible period of my life.
With Shuffler with cancer.
M: That was just terrible. And of course that--all of us--the public,
knew about that because that was aired every day in the paper.
P: About Shuffler dying with cancer and then--trying to close the place
down. I had to try to fight that--without his support. It was interesting.
M: Uh huh .
P: ~ell anyhow, in 8 969 f-to continue the deal-- the Governor signed ~o
bills ov-er- here a-t- -the Alamo at the same time. One of them established .....___--- ~~~~-=~~=-~~~~~~~~~~~-
The University of Texas in San Antonio, the second one trans-fer-red- the jurisdiction over The Institute of Texan Cultures to The University of
T,e.x..a.s. .S-y-s_ te_rn_.
And incidentally, after that ceremony, a 11big old long tall drink of
water .. came over and said, 11Say, I think maybe you ought to come out and
see me. I know who you are . We might need to talk a little bit about
liaison on this ." He handed me his card and he was E. Don Walker, the
Vice-Chancellor for Business Affairs, the University of Texas Systems .
M: Walker? Or Walter?
P: Walker. The man who is Chancellor of The University of Texas System
right now.
M: W-A-L-T-E-R?
P: W-A-L-K-E-R.
M: Walker. Oh, really?
P: Yeah .
M: He's still there.
P: He is until ne xt Fall, I think, when you have the man from NASA
PERRY
P: coming in. But Walker and his staff gave us every support .
M: Did they? Oh, did they . Good.
60.
P: And this provided a very interesting series of relationships as well,
and became one of my major jobs in dealing with the System people.
Because we were an independent component there from 1969--yeah, through
1973.
M: Four years?
P: Yes .
M: Were we? Just floating in space.
P: No, we were an independent component of The University of Texas
System.
t~: Oh. But you were still in the System. Oh, I see. Yeah. Well,
what do you mean by independent?
P: We weren't attached to anybody.
M: Well, who are you attached to now?
P: We aren't. We became an independent component again in 1979. There
was a period there from 1973 through 1979, about six years, where The
Institute was a part of The University of Texas at San Antonio.
M: That I remember. Flawn was here.
P: Yeah .
M: When The University of Texas at San Antonio became a viable institu­tion,
when it actually had a staff and people, and so forth, out there ...
P: That's right .
... the Regents , who found dealing with this small entity really didn't
fit any of the pattern of what they were working with at all.
M: I see .
PERRY 61 .
P: We weren•t a general educational institution tn the sen~e that The
University of Texas at Austin, The University of Texas at Arlington,
University of Texas at E1 Paso, and so forth, ·are. We weren•t a Health
Science Center and into what they were doing.
M: No.
P: And the Regents were attempting to organize their activities and the
activities of the System so that you fell under one of these two cate­gories--
academic or health care .
M: I see.
P: So they assigned us for that period--from 1973 through 1979-- to The
University of Texas at San Antonio. But prior to that point, from 169 to
'73, we were an independent component of the System.
M: I see.
P: We didn•t fit very well in the general academic pattern either.
M: No . I bet ya.
P: So with Jack--Jack ~1agui re--we turned it 1 oose to be an independent
component again.
M: You did . And is that helpful as a matter of just day-to-day organi­zation
and also funding? To be independent?
P: That's--we thought it was at the time. Again, if the component was
a part of The Un i versity of Texas at San Antoni o--and this was UTSA 's
primary interest--The Institute of Texan Cultures--in keeping it open and
assisting The Institute's programs and so forth, this would be one situa­tion.
If they had fewer problems that they•ve got--my gracious, they have
all they can 11Say grace over11 out there now ...
M: Surely.
PERRY 62 .
P: ... in trying to procure funding for their own operations.
M: You're talking about UTSA now.
P: UTSA . They have their own fights .
M: Sure they do.
P: And they can't afford to waste their ammunition to fight for The
Institute.
So from that standpoint, sure, it's better that The Ins.titute fight
its own fights, ~; .
M: Go straight through, yeah, not with a lot of detours.
P: ... use its own constituency, which is statewide. Th~nks to the Folk-life
Fe~tival and other activities that we conduct here. So this is the
sort of thing that we were facing on down the line .
M: I want to ask you a question.
O.T . Baker mentioned that they made a scrapbook for Shuffler. Where
is that scrapbook?
P: As far as I know, Mrs. Shuffler has it.
M: She has it . O.K.
And Joan Garcia kept the minutes of all the meetings . Are those
extant somewhere? He mentions Joan--·Joan Garcia .
P: Well, Joan was our Information Officer here for a time. She came
with us in about '72, somewhere in that vicinity . And stayed with us
then for about four years. I have no idea where those are.
l~: Well, the re ~so n I'm asking this is that since Gereral McGiffert has
asked for this project to be instituted, I just wondered if the records
of these things that you've been talking about: the little detail records,
like the minutes, are stowed away somewhere where nobody knows where they
are, or should they be . ..
PERRY 63.
P: I have no idea . I didn't know she was keeping minutes or anything.
M: Well, he says she kept minutes of everything.
P: Well, now, that was Folklife Festival.
M: Maybe that was Folklife Festival. Sure it was, because that's what
he was talking about . That's right .
P: The Folklife Festival office--you see, she came on board as an Infor­mation
Officer for the Folklife Festival.
M: Oh, then, that doesn't fit this. It doesn't go into this at all .
P: Not really. This is prior to the time that she came ~! ith us and a
long time prior to the institution of the Folklife Fe~tival in '72.
Of course, we did have that one Festival that Baker, Shuffler and
others got into during the Fair in 1968--the summer of '68 .
M: In Washington?
P: Where they went up over the Fourth of July . ..
~1 : I wer.t; I was a member of that contingent. \~ow! (Laughter)
P: Wow! (Laughter)
M: I'll never forget that--never .
We're getting to the end of the tape and I want to ask you this.
You went through, to me, just a gargantuan job . I don't know how you
did it . I don ' t know how one human being or a hundred human beings
could have done this; it's just quite a story.
Do you look at it now, as it's operating, and do you kind of smi l e
to yourself and say, "Hey, this is pretty good; I was in on the begin­ning
of it . "
' .
P: Oh, sure .
M: Do you have a feeling of "parentage," sort of?
PERRY 64.
P: Oh.
M: You must have a marvelous feeling of satisfaction. Do you?
P: The thinns that I did aren't apparent. The administrative backbone
of the organization must exist, but unless you are involved in it, it's
not apparent that it has to be there.
M: It's not known to the public . No. But that's one reason why a tape
like this is very very good for the future.
P: Yeah.
M: For posterity.
P: Yeah, my smile is personal. And I know full well that this thing
would be here had I not come when I did. Somebody else probably would
have done it .
M: No . But the thing is, you did it . Sure, somebody else could have
done it . But the thing is, you did it, you sweat it out, and here it is
a going, a very fine going institution . Anybody would be proud of being
a part of it. I'm proud of it as a mere volunteer. I just think it's a
woncierful place.
P: The thing that fascinates me most is the Festival. The people who
are dealing with it now as [a] prestige operation have no recall of the
early days of it. Then, when you'd start to buy something, going to pay
somebody for something--the WHAT? The Folklife WHAT?
M: Uh huh .
P: You have no idea of hm-1 it interests me now to see , "Oh , Folklife
Festival--great outfit ." How after all those years of sweating it out
to see the acceptance that it has gained after its initial start .
M: You know now , O.T . dealt with that pretty well--that Folklife
PERRY 65.
M: [beginningJ But I have told this story to several people: Coming
back on the airplane I sat with Henderson from Washington because we were
both smoking then, and Mrs. Shuffler didn•t want to sit by us. So I slid
over in her place. And as you perfectly well know~ there were some problems
in Washington. And, of course~ Henderson was talking about nothing but all
those things. And he said to me, 11We are going to do a Folklife Festival
at The Institute of Texan Cultures and we are going to do it so much better
than the Smithsonian. 11 I •n never forget that: The beam in his .~Ye the
first time ...
P: He and Baker both came back with that firmly planted in their minds.
M: Yeah. tt•s a wonderful idea.
But a million thanks for taking the time.
END OF TAPE I - Side 2
45 minutes .