Interview with David and Janet Muir

Interview with David and Janet Muir

Muir, David ; Muir, Janet ; Gashurov, Irene

Harpur College – Seventies alumni; Harpur College – Alumni in law; Harpur College – Alumni on Harpur Law Council Board; Harpur College – Alumni in New York City; Harpur College – Alumni living in Connecticut

David is a retired philosophy professor who taught philosophy at Onondaga Community College. He owes a debt to Harpur College, which spurred his lifelong interest in philosophy. He met his wife, Janet, there. He earned his degree in philosophy from Syracuse University.
Janet met her spouse, David Muir, at Harpur; she did not finish her degree at Harpur College since she supported her husband through his PhD program at Syracuse University. She earned her degree at Syracuse subsequently and worked as an adjunct instructor in English at Onondaga Community. Looking back, Janet says they've led a "charmed life."

2018-01-12

In Copyright

David and Janet Muir.mp3

2018-01-12

Oral Histories from 60's Binghamton Alumni

105:00 minutes

Alumni Interviews
Interview with: David and Janet Muir
Interviewed by: Irene Gashurov
Transcriber: Oral History Lab
Date of interview: 12 January 2018
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(Start of Interview)

IG: 00:01
Okay, so David, please tell me your name, your full name, your birth date, our relationship and where we are.

DM: 00:13
My name is David Muir. I was born in 1945 April-April 13--the day after Roosevelt died.

IG: 00:29
The day? Excuse me.

DM: 00:30
Day after FDR died.

IG: 00:32
Yes-yes.

DM: 00:33
Died April 12. So I know, I know exactly what the headlines were in every paper in the country on the day of my birth. [laughs] And we are in my home, which is in Marcellus, New York, Dunbar Woods Road.

IG: 00:52
Okay, very good. Do you mind speaking up just a little bit? Okay, all right, so tell me a little bit about your family background. What did your parents do? Where did you live?

DM: 01:13
I grew up in Western New York. My father was all his life unskilled labor. Worked in various jobs throughout his life. My mother was a homemaker when I was first born. She went back to school to Buffalo State Teachers College, got a teaching degree and taught second grade after that. And so I was not the first one to go to college, but my middle brother, I am one of three boys. My middle brother, Richard, also went to college. He went to Buffalo State and got a degree in Art Education. My youngest brother Tim, decided not to attend college after thinking he was going to go to Harpur College as well, but he-

IG: 02:20
Thinking what?

DM: 02:21
He was going to go to Harpur College.

IG: 02:23
I see.

DM: 02:23
But did not.

IG: 02:24
But you-you did.

DM: 02:25
I-I did, and so-so uh, and I went in, you know, graduated high school in (19)63 and entered Harpur College in that fall on the trimester.

IG: 02:39
What were the expectations of you and your family in terms of education? Did they encourage you to go to college?

Speaker 1 02:52
Yeah, it was understood my brother, my youngest brother, not going to college was the exception. It was understood all the way through that, that we were going to college. My- I went to high school and that had homogeneous grouping they had actually pioneered at Kenmore. Kenmore system had pioneered homogeneous grouping so that we had blue circle groups, which were the students who were thought to be most advanced, were given more advanced instruction, and I was part of blue circle group from the time I was in junior high right up through senior high. So my expedition so I was surrounded by students, all of whom had the expectation that we were all going to college. And it varied, you know, what their backgrounds were, whether their parents had gone to school. But I did grow up in, you know, in Kenmore, in the school system I was in, and in the particular classes I had, that was everybody's expectation as we were going to college.

IG: 04:15
And so why did you decide on Harpur College? Was this your first choice? Or how many other colleges did you apply to?

Speaker 1 04:25
I ended up only applying to Harpur. Dean Porter came to Kenmore at Ken-Kenmore West, it was and they had divided into two different high schools. So he came to Kenmore West, where I was going to school, and it was a college night, and I talked to him, and he was tremendously enthusiastic about Harpur College. He was a tremendous sales salesperson for the, for this school. And I had some-some literature about it, and checked on it, and I just decided from that time on, that would have been November of (19)62 November of my senior year, that that is where I was going to go. And uh-

IG: 05:17
What-what do you remember? What reputation did Harpur College have at the time?

Speaker 1 05:25
It was, I think, just building a reputation. But what-what it did have was a very low student faculty ratio. It had a very high percentage of PhDs on the faculty already, and number of those PhDs were very young. So it- if you read about it, it was impressive. But the joke when we were there is, you know, you would say, "Where do you go to school?" "Harpur," "Harvard?" "No-no. Harpur," but the joke was, yeah, but in 20 years, somebody's going to say, "Where do you go to school?" "Harvard." "Harpur?" "No-no, Harvard." [laughs]

IG: 06:03
So what reputation did Harpur College have at the time?

DM: 06:08
Just building? I think it had a good reputation. It was the first liberal arts college in-in the state of New York, and I think because there was lots of money going into this. And the Rockefeller years, as I say it-it did not have a reputation that outside of probably New York State, many people would have recognized it, but-but as I say it was, it was building a reputation.

IG: 06:40
It was building a reputation. And what did you, did you have a clear idea of what you wanted to study?

DM: 06:49
Well, yes and no, I-I was sure that I was going to study philosophy, but I did not have a really clear idea what that meant, but that is what I ended up doing. I majored in philosophy and then went on from there to dig it, came up here to Syracuse, and got a master's and PhD in philosophy. So.

IG: 07:13
From Syracuse in philosophy.

DM: 07:15
Yeah, so-so what I had thought I was going to do turned out to be what I did do. So I guess, guess in a sense, and guess in a sense, I had, I had a clear idea of what I thought I wanted to do, and then I had to sort of discover that it really was what I wanted to do.

IG: 07:33
And so when you first arrived on campus, I mean, what- how did it strike you? Was it-it-it [crosstalk] a huge difference from the environment that you were used to?

DM: 07:49
Well, the major difference was coming from upstate New York, the percentage of downstairs who were there. That was a huge difference. First time I visited, it was a sea of mud, and you walked on planks because they were just finishing the dorm, set of dorms that we saw. So it-it was not extremely impressive in that way, when I got to campus and-and the- those dormitories had been completed, it was, I guess it was an atmosphere somewhat similar to what I was used to in high school, because, because of the homogeneous grouping, I was used to being surrounded by other students who were highly motivated. And there was a whole college of them. Our incoming graduating average of the class I came in with was somewhere around 63 or excuse me, 93 in (19)63 but it was somewhere around 90-93 was the incoming average. You had a number of people, the people who did not like being at college were people who were very bright. Wanted to go to Ivy League schools. Some of them had gotten in but could not afford them because they did not get financial aid, and they were unhappy because they thought that if they were there, their lives would be perfect. And then there were a whole lot of us who were perfectly happy.

IG: 09:24
Did you find any differences between yourself and the students from downstate? Did you think that there were any cultural differences or...?

DM: 09:38
Not-not. No, yeah.

IG: 09:41
I mean downstream, New York City, and Long Island.

DM: 09:43
Well, one of the, one of the things was that a number of them were from the, cannot remember, what is PS program, something which meant they graduated age 16. So there were a number of-of not-not the ones from Long Island, but a number of the people from the city were young, but these were people who became friends right away, as far as--well, still, we were just together at New Year's time with friends from Harpur who have been friends ever since. Of those friends, let us see two from Long Island and the rest from the city. Well, no and one from upstate, one other actually from Syracuse, but met him in Binghamton.

IG: 10:46
So how so you have this tight knit circle of friends that you have kept throughout-

DM: 10:51
Oh yeah-yeah.

IG: 10:52
-your life actually.

DM: 10:54
Oh yeah, yes, from, yeah, there-there-there were only, let us see eight of us got together this time because one person who comes regularly had knee surgery, lives down in New Jersey. His wife is not a Harpur grad, and Janet is not a Harpur grad, but, but, but we met. She was, she was a freshman, the same time I was so we entered together. [Janet speaks in the background]

IG: 11:27
What was that meeting like?

Speaker 1 11:30
Well, I think we met first because we met her roommate, who was at the-

IG: 11:37
Reception, yeah.

DM: 11:38
The reception, Bev Gross, but Bev Gross came bursting back into their-their dorm room and said, I met somebody else from Buffalo, as if, is it that was the rarest thing in the world? Not only was there one person, but she had met two others [laughter] at the cafeteria. Uh, but we met, I think the-the first thing was Patty's Wake, which was the introductory party that started off the-the semester back then.

IG: 12:17
Oh, tell me about that. Because this is a rich this-this is, you know, something that I really do not know.

Speaker 2 12:24
Oh, Patty's Wake we got, we got on busses, busses and went in. Oh, I am trying to remember the name of the bar. It was-

JM: 12:31
Sharkies.

DM: 12:32
No-no. Was not Sharkies. No. Sharkies was a, was a good place. This was a, this was a dive, but it was on the bus route, and so he and so all the freshmen would go Pat- the-the story of Paddy was that Patty died because he studied too hard and-and never had any fun, and finally he just wore away. So this was so in celebration of Patty's Wake. This was the back then the annual first, first thing that freshmen went off campus to do was go off and-and drink. What was it? 25 cent drafts or something like that?

IG: 13:10
And did it? Did it happen around St Patrick's Day or...?

DM: 13:15
No-no, this was, this was in the first this was in the first week of being here.

IG: 13:15
Oh semester, I see.

DM: 13:17
Very beginning of the semester, probably orientation week. I do not know it was, it was, yeah, this was the first thing and all, yeah. So freshmen went off [inaudible] so we met there. And-and then we have, we have been together for ever since.

JM: 13:37
We actually met in Whitney dorm.

DM: 13:38
Okay, did we meet?

JM: 13:39
[inaudible] came in and said-

DM: 13:40
Oh my god, did she, did she introduce-

JM: 13:42
the dining hall [inaudible]

DM: 13:44
Okay she introduced, yeah, because I had thought we had, because-because that was the first and Patty's Wake was very first week. Yeah. So anyway, that was so you drank a lot of cheap beer. And everybody you know, all the freshmen over drank, and the 16-year-old managed to get in somehow, and even though they were illegal. But it was 18. Was the drinking age back then,

JM: 14:07
it was a dry campus.

DM: 14:09
Yeah-yeah. It was. It was a dry campus because the student government kept being told that it was a state rule that you could not have a pub on campus. You could not have alcohol on campus, and then, oh, somewhere second or third year that I was there, some young, some of the-the student government leaders, went to Albany and found out there was not any such rule, and that began the process of bringing the pub onto campus. We mean, there is no rule we cannot do this.

IG: 14:49
Janet is on the conversation, which is a wonderful thing. Janet, would you mind introducing yourself so we would- please tell us. your name, your birth date, and you know what your affiliation with Binghamton is, well with Harpur College.

JM: 15:09
[inaudible] Janet, actually James Muir. James is my maiden name. I was born March 30, 1946, I went to Harpur, not as my first choice, again for financial reasons, I was not admitted in the fall semester, I- but I was put on a waiting list, and I could go in the summer ahead, if I wanted to, but I did not have, you know, the highest average from high school. I went to a very small school, smaller graduating class than David did. So I was a bit overwhelmed, I would say, by, you know, the whole size and atmosphere at Harpur. But what was fun was we were in the Co-Ed dorm, and at that time, they had the curfews, and so, you know, it was unusual to be able to meet, you know, David and the others, and we had friends in the dorm that would do things as a group, and that was really fun. That was really a nice thing to do, but at that time, they were switching to the trimester, and the course load was very heavy, so I found it overwhelming, which is why I did not stay past the first year.

IG: 16:44
Past the first year.

JM: 16:44
Yeah-yeah.

IG: 16:45
Okay. And where are you from?

JM: 16:49
We are from Easter, Elmo, New York, Western New York. David is from the north of the city, and I am from the south,

IG: 16:56
I see, I see.

JM: 16:57
So we had to go to Binghamton to meet.

IG: 17:02
So where did you continue your education?

JM: 17:04
Well, when I went back home, worked at Fisher Price toy company, and David and I were married when I was 19 and he was 20. He was still at Harpur just finishing.

DM: 17:19
And I still had a year to still had two semesters to go.

Speaker 3 17:22
Right. So we lived in Johnson City was it, Floral Avenue? We had an apartment there. I worked at Endicott Johnson while he went to school.

DM: 17:35
And then we came up here. I continued graduate school. She worked at Upstate Medical and then decided she wanted to go back to school.

IG: 17:45
So what-what did you do?

JM: 17:47
I went down at a community college. I graduated from there, and then I transferred into Syracuse University, and I have a master's in English literature, undergrad degree in English literature and journalism.

Speaker 3 18:01
Oh, so you remember [crosstalk]

JM: 18:04
It took me about 10 years to get back.

IG: 18:06
I mean, you were supporting a husband, right?

JM: 18:08
Yeah. And when he graduated, I said, “Okay, it is my turn now.”

Speaker 4 18:14
And so-so what did you, what did you do in your working life? You were uh-

JM: 18:19
I worked in the offices Medicare at Upstate Medical. I worked in business offices at both Fisher Price and Endicott-Johnson. Actually, I started at Fisher Price on the assembly line and-and I said to myself, I do not want to be a lifer putting these together. So I took a test for computer. What do I want to say skills which I did not have? I mean, nobody did at that time, but they brought me into the office, and I worked in their office after that. So that started me in office.

IG: 19:00
I see, I see. Well, so as-as married students, you had a completely different perspective on-

DM: 19:11
Yeah, we-

IG: 19:11
-the college.

DM: 19:13
Yeah. Well, let us see. We arrived in fall of (19)63 November, because that was the second trimester. Excuse me, and I went home to Buffalo the first summer. And then when I came back, I stayed right straight through until I had finished. So I actually I am commencement class of (19)67 but I finished my degree at the end of October (19)66 so I was back for my-my commencement in (19)67 but so for the last two trimesters. Janet and I lived on Floral Avenue off campus, but we still had, you know, our friends came over to our house. [laughs]

IG: 20:17
So it was, it was a kind of a seamless transition for you to, you know, move from dormitory life to your own apartment.

Speaker 1 20:29
Yeah-yeah. It was not, I do not remember any anything in terms of-of any kind of special adjustment. The only thing that was really tough was I had the ideal senior schedule. No class started before noon, but I had to drop Janet off. I- we had to be up before six o'clock because Janet started work at Endicott Johnson. I think it was something like 7:30 and I had to drive her to Endicott-Johnson, drop her off, drive over to campus, get there about eight o'clock and not have any classes until noon.

JM: 21:05
It is time to study.

DM: 21:07
And-and because most of my friends were either seniors or juniors, they were still asleep at eight. And so I would go down into the common room at Whitney and-and study or-or nap.

IG: 21:25
I am curious, how did you conduct your courtship leading to a marriage at a college with curfews, especially for women?

DM: 21:36
Yes, well, on-on her-her birthday that that spring, one of our friends came back with a car for second semester, only car among all of us, Alan Gurwitz and my mother had had walking pneumonia when I was in high school, and with three boys, we had to take over doing her chores for a summer. And my chore at that time was ironing, and so I had learned to iron, and back then you did not have wrinkle free shirts. And so I offered to iron five shirts for Alan if he would lend me the car for Janet's birthday. He told me afterwards, if I would told him one shirt, he would have given me the car. Five shirts, he was in heaven. So I ironed five shirts for him, and got the car and we went off had dinner, and then went to see Lawrence of Arabia, which is too long a film.

IG: 22:51
Yes.

DM: 22:51
Because this was a weekend, and her curfew was not 10:30 which it was during the week, but noon, excuse me, noon. Yeah, midnight, midnight. And so, yeah, noon, [laughter] midnight, and we got, we got to-to the intermission in Lawrence of Arabia, looked at the at the time and thought, there was no way in the world we were going to have a 15- or 20-minute intermission. Watch the whole second half and get back to make curfew. So I do not think Janet ever saw the second half of Lawrence of Arabia for another 15 years, nor did I, but no we- courting, I think is fairly easy on a college campus. If you have a close relationship, you see every you see each other every day.

JM: 23:45
Yeah.

DM: 23:45
So for that first year, and by the end of the first year, we were pretty much committed to each other. Then we lived in Western New York, so when I went home for that-that summer, Janet was on the south side, I was on the north side, but I was back and forth. You know, all the time I worked at a wholesale florist, which is where my father was working. At that time, he was a salesman for a wholesale florist, and I got a job there, and they would throw out flowers that were beginning to turn a little bit on wholesale level, which meant that they were still really good, because they had not even gone to retail yet. And so all that summer Janet had roses, probably-

DM: 24:34
-because they would throw out sprigs. The guy who handled the orchids, as soon as there was one spot on one of the orchids, and they come in sprigs, you know, as soon as you saw one brown spot, they would go out. And we were not supposed to pick them up, but I was not going to let these gorgeous orchids lie in the garbage. So I would pick them up and [inaudible], so she would get sprigs of orchids for that in that summer.

JM: 24:35
And orchids. That convinced me. I married this guy. [laughs]

IG: 24:40
That is lovely.

JM: 24:44
Yeah.

DM: 25:02
So-so, and then I went back to school.

JM: 25:05
But also because in Whitney, we played ping pong all the time. We socialized all the time, because it was a co-ed dorm.

Speaker 1 25:13
Yeah-yeah. The atmosphere, the atmosphere in Whitney, was very different. And of course, this was a different era. You know the- this was a radical notion of having one wing male and one wing female. I mean that, and that was as far as it went. At 10:30 you had the common areas were separated. The men had the upstairs, the women had the downstairs. All of all the vending machines were downstairs. So people would call down if they would hear one of the women downstairs call down, throw down money, and they would get, they would get things from the vending machines and throw them back up. But- and the other interesting thing is that when the 10:30 curfew occurred, a bunch of us, one-one night, sat down, and one of me said, "Okay," right, you know, "Why-why do the women, why do the women have a curfew," right? And you know, what would we think if we had a curfew. So-so remember, this was the (19)60s, when things were being challenged. And of course, by the time we were done-

JM: 26:24
[inaudible] early (19)60s.

DM: 26:25
This is early (19)60s. This is (19)63.

JM: 26:28
(19)63-(19)64.

DM: 26:28
And so this is when things are just beginning to be challenged. But-but tremendous change. By the time the- a number of our good friends left. They were in Co-Ed suites, in-in-in, what the-the?

JM: 26:50
Hinman [inaudible]

DM: 26:52
Yeah, the Hinman, the com- the complex is over there.

JM: 26:56
Yeah.

DM: 26:56
I mean, when we were there, they none of the, none of this was well-

Speaker 1 26:59
And, you know, because of the separate wings, we would have open houses, and you would be able to visit the others' rooms.

IG: 27:03
Right.

JM: 27:03
Leaving the door open, leaving, what, three-

DM: 27:12
Three feet on the floor and a door open.

IG: 27:14
So I am, I am interested, how did do you remember challenging any of these rules, or questioning these notions about segregating the sexes. Um, I mean-

DM: 27:26
Not there were not any, there were not any major-

IG: 27:28
Your-your close friends.

DM: 27:30
We talked about it. I do not think there were any. We did not get involved in any actual protests of it that I recall

JM: 27:38
How about the boards? They would, they call them, the student-

DM: 27:44
Judicial Board?

JM: 27:45
Judicial Board to deal with-

DM: 27:48
Yeah, people who buy violated curfew, yeah. We were the only dorm that had males on the on that-that panel, because, in every, in every yeah-

JM: 28:01
[inaudible] feeling that this was not fair.

DM: 28:03
Yeah, you try to be. Yeah. because I served on it for-for a semester. We had friends who served on it.

IG: 28:11
So if you had so the judicial board that you served on, how would the complaints or escalate. Who would hear them? What impact would that have?

DM: 28:25
Yeah. Mostly it was, yeah. Mostly it was violation of curfew, and you just had to decide. And there were penalties, you know, you had to decide, and whether there was a legitimate excuse, right?

JM: 28:36
[inaudible] campus, you would be restricted.

DM: 28:39
Yeah, and the- so it was, you know, that I think at that point we thought that it was ridiculous, but at that point we were not ready to-to start protesting. I think that came about just sort of naturally, as I say, by the time we were finishing up, the campus situation had changed tremendously from-from what it was, but it did. It did create for us a unique atmosphere unlike any of the other dorms. Because we did, it was just a group of friends and somebody say, you know, tired of studying, you would walk down to one of the common room, say, "Anybody interested in going see a ball game?" If there happened to be a ball game that, right? You know, basketball game, we go down and-and together, and it would just be whoever was there. And when we got a little bit older, and people, more people, had cars the place, we would go, Oh, I almost had the name of the of the dive, but I cannot remember, we go to Sharkies. Fact, that is where we did not go to the dinner that was sponsored at the reunion. The group of us who were there went to Sharkies because that was, that was the place we-we would go to speedies.

Third speaker 29:55
I have a question related to that. So were there any women like in your dorm that rebelled against this idea and took an initiative?

DM: 30:10
Not that I recall, I think that, I think there were some complaints about it, but at this point, this was pretty much what the practices were everywhere, you know, was not, it was not, it was not as, yeah, it was not as, yeah, it was not as if it this was something unique to Harpur, you know, I kind of understand. So I do not remember any-any kind of organized protest. I just remember that, you know, people beginning to question it, and-

JM: 30:42
It was more restrictive than what I had at home.

DM: 30:45
Yeah-yeah. That was something else saying, [crosstalk] yeah-yeah-yeah. A lot, a lot of- for some of the 16-year-old out of the city, it was different, I think.

IG: 30:57
How so?

DM: 30:58
Well, because they were 16 years old, although, I mean, I have a lot of city friends, and city friends are sophisticated in some ways, and parochial in others.

IG: 31:08
How so?

DM: 31:10
Well, because they-they are exposed to-to culture in the city of a rich kind. I mean, New York is one of the greatest cities in the world. So you are exposed to-to a richness of culture that you just do not have in certainly any other city in New York State, and in few cities in the world that you can match that. So they have that. But by the same token, a lot of them just know New York City. [crosstalk] So, yeah, so it is you know. So it is you know that there was an expansion of their world to be in upstate New York.

JM: 31:51
We took some friends to Western New York, to our good friends farm, dairy farm, and they were like, "Cows. Wow!" Me, "This is where milk comes from."

IG: 32:08
I am curious about the youth movement that was kind of growing in momentum in around that time, (19)63-(19)64. Did it have any influence on you? You know, rock and roll was beginning, um or...?

DM: 32:30
Well, the-the actually-

IG: 32:33
Sexual freedoms, drugs, that was all in the air, that was kind of filtering through-

JM: 32:38
And Vietnam.

IG: 32:40
-and Vietnam, which I will [inaudible]. Absolutely.

Speaker 1 32:45
The theme of our orientation, which was chosen by the upperclassmen who ran the program, was all the orientation was completely run by students, as I recall it, but their theme was, do not think that at your age, you have to now know what you are going to do for the rest of your life. Take your time. It you know who says you have to be done in four years, you can take as much time as you want, take a take a semester off, take a year off. Do right! If you are not sure, find out what you want to do. And three years later, you could not do that without finding yourself in Vietnam. So it was a tremendous- that was, that was one of the biggest changes, was that, all right, I mean, the-the war in (19)63 was-was not anything yet that had had really was affecting people. Yeah, I had a good colleague who graduated from West Point and was over there as an advisor in the early days of Vietnam. But I-when we went on the campus, that was not an issue. It became an issue. As I said, it became an issue of, I was reclassified one a three times, but never went.

IG: 34:09
I am sorry.

DM: 34:10
I was reclassified one A, which, right, which meant immediately draft eligible three times, but I was never drafted. I was as I finished up at Harpur in the fall of (19)66 and I was immediately reclassified one a I challenged that I was going to challenge it as an objector because I did not agree. I did not think we should be in Vietnam. Changed that to arguing that I was class of (19)66 not class of (19)67 because even though it was my commencement class, and if you were (19)66 on and you were accepted to grad school, you continued to get a student deferment, and my draft board accepted that argument. And so I was defied that gave me my deferment until I finished grad, graduate, grad school. And then I forget how it came that it was the three times but-but by the time I finally was draft eligible, they had had the lottery system, and they never got to my number. They were nowhere near getting to my number.

IG: 35:27
I am sorry-

DM: 35:28
They never got anywhere near my number. They- the war was winding down. Then I finished my graduate work in (19)71, right? And so I never had to. I-I had to face it in the sense that I went through a I went through a physical in Buffalo. I got called for a physical. Went through a whole physical.

JM: 35:50
And a lot of soul searching.

DM: 35:52
Oh yeah, because I did not, because I did not, I had pretty much decided I would not, I would not serve in the war, because I did not think that it was a war that we should have been in. And so-

Speaker 4 36:05
Was that, was that a common feeling among your friends?

DM: 36:09
Yes.

IG: 36:11
On campus?

DM: 36:12
Among the friends that we were just with or get together with regularly, two of them were-were graduates of-of (19)66 and-and they got their-their deferments and managed not to go. One of them got his medical degree and served in the Public Health Service out in Arizona with the Native Americans. But of-of those group, one way or another, none of us ever ended up going to Vietnam. Another one was a conscientious objector, but racist and atheist, and his draft board rejected it because he did not have a religious affiliation. He refused. He refused induction. Was a fugitive from justice for two and a half years, without them ever pursuing him. He- his first wife, and he decided on a divorce because she, although she agreed with him, she did not want to, you know, continue that it was an amicable divorce. But they were, you know, they were also a Harpur couple. He continued on his own. He ended up in, I think it was in Philadelphia, at a Quaker protest, sit down protest, and when they checked his record and found out, all of a sudden, they put cuffs on him. Off he went. He had to go to but when his case came up, the judge looked at it and said, "This is the most arbitrary decision I have ever seen by a draft board," because he had, he had documentation of his conscientious objective status, and they just rejected it because he had no religious affiliation. So after all of that right, he was, he was free, and the case was dismissed. But all of us, all of us, that was, I think, the-the largest issue, and I, none of us favored the war, and all of us, through good fortune, were able to avoid service.

IG: 38:32
And yet you grew, you probably experienced a very pervasive sense of anxiety, and that that really had an impact on your personal lives.

DM: 38:45
Yeah, that, yeah. Once I once I was given the, once my draft board accepted my status, as long as I was in graduate school, my anxiety, well, I actually was not, I think I got reclassified as I when I completed my master's, but they immediately reversed that on the basis that I was continuing the PhD program, that there was no, there was no break in my- in my graduate school.

IG: 39:16
Right.

DM: 39:16
So I had to, I had the master's degree, but it was, it was continuous graduate school, and so that was, I think, the second time. But that did not, that did not upset me, because at that point, I think I pretty much knew that it would be automatic, that I could write, that I could get it. So the most tension we had was when I was first reclassified, and we were-

IG: 39:40
At Harpur College?

DM: 39:41
We had just finished Harpur College. Actually, we were up here in Syracuse, because I, and I cannot remember was-was the reclassification come when-

JM: 39:58
I think it must have been up here in Syracuse.

DM: 40:03
Yes, it had. Yeah.

JM: 40:03
Because we were here in (19)67.

DM: 40:03
Yeah, but, yeah, but-but as soon as I, as soon as I graduated in (19)66 so it may have been, it may have been, it may have been November. It may have been November, December. I think it was November of December. And we were still down in Binghamton, yeah, was right after out of Harpur, we were still living in Floral Avenue that-that-that was the, that was the greatest tension for those two months.

IG: 40:22
So did you feel any support from your professors? Did they shelter you somehow? Did they encourage you to stay in school and pursue your graduate degrees to avoid the draft? Did you feel that kind of involvement from faculty or...?

DM: 40:41
When okay at Harpur, it, I do not remember it being an issue within my classes at Harpur. It was an issue when I was in graduate school here and in talking to person who was the chair of the department, he sort of, he did not really agree with me, but he did not say outright that. He did not. He did it in a sort of backhanded way. But so in that one instance,

JM: 40:42
But that was in Syracuse.

DM: 41:14
Yeah, but at Harpur, I do not, I do not remember being involved again. I was off campus, you know, from the time we were married. And I do not remember any- anything. On campus itself, except that the general atmosphere, pretty much of almost everyone I knew, was that the war was a mistake. So-so that I think that pretty much predominated. I do not know that we knew people who-who really were in favor of the of the war. Certainly none of our close friends were.

IG: 42:12
And do you suspect the-the faculty?

Speaker 1 42:16
My suspicion would- was that the faculty was, for the most part, not pro war either.

IG: 42:22
What do you remember about- were there any influential professors that you remember from Harpur College and that they took a personal interest in you and your career?

DM: 42:35
Yeah, the very first philosophy course I took, still not really understanding fully what philosophy was-was-was from, and by the name of C. Wade Savage, yes, because he went by Wade. And by the- my first philosophy paper, I got a D minus, minus. He did not fail me, but I ended up getting an A in the course. And he wrote a really nice note at the end, saying, you know, because I had let him know that, you know, that this was, you know, this is something that I really thought I wanted to pursue, and I had other people were writing philosophy papers- were coming and talking to me and writing their papers. And I-I started out very poorly, but he wrote me an encouraging note. And then I, there were two others that I took most of my courses from somebody else who did not use his first name. Thomas was his first name, but he went by Patterson, T. Patterson Brown, and who was and very young, Brown was published when he was an Amherst- at Amherst as an undergraduate, and I think got his PhD from the University of London at age 24-25 and was hired. And then Emilio Roma, who also was very young. So these were all people who were only six, seven, maybe eight years older than I was, who were there and I got encouragement. In fact, Roma had what I thought was the ideal life. He lived with his wife in a farm house across the border in Pennsylvania, because I did my senior thesis with him and-and I was finishing up over the summer semester, and he was not teaching the summer semester, so I-I drove to his house to go over, go over it with him. And he had two absolutely beautiful children living in this rural setting, you know, as a professor of philosophy, and I thought, what a wonderful world, and he died young. I cannot remember now how many years ago, but I remember seeing a notice that-

IG: 45:08
Do you think he might have been a role model for you, that-

Speaker 1 45:14
I certainly-certainly the he had. What for me was, an ideal life, you know, as because, as a philosopher, if you do not teach, they do not hire many industrial philosophers. [laughter] So-so-so yeah, so, so he had, yeah, and I got encouragement from him. I got encouragement from Brown. I took a couple of courses with Brown where there were only junior level. There were only four or five of us in the class, so it was a lot of one-on-one discussion. He was the one who had me go to Syracuse. Brown encouraged me to go on to Syracuse because I was, I was interested at that time in philosophy of religion, but at that time, philosophy of religion was sort of dying out. And he said, "Yeah, well, you got Austin at-at Michigan," but he said, "I would not really go there." He said, "Better go someplace that has a really solid foundation in history of philosophy. You are better off building on that and then you can specialize later." And he said, "Syracuse has a, has a good program." So I was accepted into three different programs, but because I was finishing in the beginning of November, nobody had money, right. Everybody said, “No, you can apply, but you are not going to be able to get financial assistance until the following fall.” And so one of the three places I was skeptic to was San Diego, University of California in San Diego, North Carolina, Chapel Hill and Syracuse, all accepted me. All said, you know, you can apply for financial aid, but we are not going to have any available. So-

JM: 47:18
Neither one of us came from wealthy families [crosstalk]

DM: 47:21
So we were not going to go all the way out. We were not going to relocate that far without any guarantee. So we came up here to Syracuse, and I was on finance. I had NEA fellowship, and I had a I got a Woodrow Wilson dissertation fellowship, so I finished without having to pay a cent in-in tuition, except for the first semester that I had to go in and back then that was affordable.

IG: 47:50
Well, I have this question, actually two questions. But first of all, what was the emphasis of the philosophy department at Harpur College of the time? Did it have a focus on the philosophy of religion, or what kind of philosophy were you studying?

DM: 48:12
I was, I was taking a smattering of courses. I do not know that I thought of them as having any emphasis, mainly because, remember, there was no, there were no grad programs. And if you have program in philosophy, it was geared for graduate programs. They were building one. In fact, the joke used to be retired studying, let us, let us go over the Esplanade and look for the graduate student. I do not remember how many. I remember only one ever being identified. So, you know, they were just building grad programs. So Harpur was pretty much a, you know, the range of courses, and I think, if you were majoring in philosophy, they expected you to take a range, and you might find something that you were mostly interested. I did- ended up in esthetics with Roma. Brown taught philosophy or religion, and as I said, he sort of discouraged me from pursuing that. But again, saying that, rather than pursue anything immediately, you know, pursue-pursue, general background history of philosophy, because that gives you a foundation to go any-any direction you want.

IG: 49:30
You had a very important experience in your first philosophy class from you know, you were- you did poorly on your first test, and then you completed it with flying colors. What do you think what changed you and what did you learn from that first course? Do you recall it at all?

DM: 49:55
Well, it was, it was, I think that it was simply a matter of-of focusing differently, on-on the issue. I cannot even remember exactly what I had done wrong in the in the first one, that was such a disaster. But again, just, I think, I think being in class, engaging in the classroom discussions. I think getting encouragement through the give and take within the classroom is what probably brought me to, you know, to doing better.

IG: 50:36
You said, you said, when you first came to Harpur you had no understanding of what philosophy was, but you wanted to study it. What did you learn in that first class about philosophy? Why did it open-

DM: 50:52
Well, I think that it involved [crosstalk] it involved critical thinking about important human questions. That is, that is because I spent my-my career teaching and teaching on a community college level. So I was teaching freshmen and sophomores, and so what I did for my whole career as a teacher of philosophy was to focus on how to develop critical thinking skills and apply those to the questions that human beings find, find most important. So I think that became my-my emphasis from the time I you know, from-from Harpur College on and right-right through my professional career.

JM: 50:53
Excuse me, but your classes, what was the class size? And you are talking about the give and take of discussion-

DM: 50:53
Yeah.

JM: 50:53
-and that depends. I mean, I remember the student ratio was very good, right? And so your classes were very small.

DM: 51:29
Yeah. I think the biggest class I probably had in philosophy was probably no more than about 25 students, and a lot of them were-were smaller, as I said, I took several classes with-with-with Patterson Brown, that there were, you know, six, seven of us in in the class. And, of course, there you get, you know, it was, it was very-very immediate, give and take.

JM: 52:18
When you get the lecture hall experience-

DM: 52:19
Yeah, vastly, [crosstalk] different yeah.

JM: 52:20
-different than philosophy,

DM: 52:25
But-

Speaker 4 52:27
Small classes. And did you have an occasion to discuss the ideas that you learned in class with your classmates and-

DM: 52:37
Some it was interesting. None of, none of the close friends of mine were philosophy majors. They majors in lots of different things, chem major, bio majors. They went on-

JM: 52:49
Psychology majors-

DM: 52:50
-psychology majors-

JM: 52:51
-math majors.

DM: 52:52
Yeah. So no, what most of my discussions were when people found they had to take a philosophy class. Friends of mine who were not into philosophy would come and talk to me about-about that, and I would- I was able to help. I think some of them

JM: 53:12
And your roommates saying "David, you are not [inaudible].”

DM: 53:15
Oh yes, I remember there was a running joke roommates or various friends would come into the room and when I would be lying back on the on my bed, say, "Do not you ever study?" And I say, "Yeah, I am." But-

IG: 53:35
So did-

DM: 53:36
Actually, that is true, because before you write a philosophy paper, a lot of it is simply the you know, the working out through your head, what you know, what-what-what you are going to do with it, but, but that was a running joke.

IG: 53:50
So do you credit your professors at Harpur College in really giving you the foundation for your future career?

DM: 54:01
Oh, yeah-yeah. I-I thought I had a wonderful education. I think all of the good friends that we have all considered that they had really solid-solid foundation from-from Harpur College. I think almost all of us are proud to be graduates of Harpur College. By the way, one of, one of the people who was there when I was there, was there when we came back for the trimester thing, Anthony Preus, I do not know if he is still there or not. Professor Preus, Professor Preus, he was in. He ancient-ancient philosophy was his-his area,

JM: 54:25
Which is one of the areas that you I went into.

DM: 54:49
Later on, yeah, but as I say there, I touched on various things. The only thing that I specialized at all in was I wrote my uh, senior thesis in esthetics. But for the rest of the time, it was just touching on lots of, lots of different periods of the history of philosophy in the different areas. You know, I took a logic course, I took an ethics course, and

Third speaker 55:12
So you were into classical thinking, classical-

DM: 55:20
Well, I have

Third speaker 55:21
Plato?

DM: 55:23
Yeah, when I ended up doing my-my-my doctorate in-in Plato, on Plato, on Plato's esthetics, actually, so, so.

JM: 55:35
But you used the Socratic method in your teaching.

DM: 55:37
Yeah [laughter]

IG: 55:41
Did you discuss what you were learning with your wife since you were living off campus? Did you how do you remember him during this period?

Speaker 1 55:54
I do not know. It is hard to say I remember one of the things, not while he was at Harpur, but when he was working on his dissertation, going to the beach while I was in at work.

DM: 56:06
That was my master's thesis. [laughter] I had a, I had a summer in which I was all of my courses were paid for because I was on a fellowship, and it covered the credits for my master's thesis. And so I was registered as a full-time student for all those credits, but my task was simply to write my master's thesis, and I would drop her off at work, and I would drive to Green Lake State Park, [laughter] spread my blanket on the beach and get out my books. [laughs] And if, if a friend of ours had not come back and needed to be driven around looking for a job, I would have actually completed it at the beach. I was had almost written the last part.

JM: 56:57
I also typed his papers. And then when it came to his PhD, I said, "No [inaudible], I am not going to type your PhD."

IG: 57:05
So you know, were there any women in your philosophy classes?

DM: 57:15
Yes, one I remember by name Laurie Billing, because the person who was most influential in my undergraduate was Patterson Brown. And Patterson Brown was married. At the time, he divorced his wife and he married Laurie Billing. [laughter] So yeah, and Laurie and I used to sit around and talk about because we- she took a number of courses from Brown as well as I did. So we knew each other from a number of different courses. So she and I would, you know, would talk over the material in the courses on a regular basis.

IG: 57:57
At that point, there were really no rules about professors dating their students.

Speaker 1 58:05
I think there probably were rules, but since he divorced and married her, I do not know that there was-

IG: 58:09
Yeah.

DM: 58:10
-I do not, I do not know. I do not know if that created problems. He had, he had real problems after I left. He ended up leaving without finishing a semester. And friends of ours found him in their suite, asleep on a on a couch one-one night. So what happened with-with him? I do not know. I never got a full-full account. I think it probably was a case of a whole lot of success and pressure from too young an age, because I think he completed his PhD at London by age 24.

IG: 58:53
You completed your PhD by age-

DM: 58:55
26.

JM: 58:56
-26.

DM: 58:56
But the 20-24 is-is, you know, because he had, he had expect-

JM: 58:59
He probably had a lot of pressure.

DM: 59:00
Well, he had expectations because he published as an undergraduate.

IG: 59:08
Right.

DM: 59:09
No, so-so anyway, that that I do not know what, what happened to him after that, and I asked once, and somebody else did not know either.

IG: 59:23
Were there any international students in your philosophy classes? Do you remember any students of color?

DM: 59:32
Not there.

IG: 59:33
International from anywhere?

DM: 59:37
Yes. Well, yeah, there was from Africa. I never got to be a close friend of his. Our other friends did. Who knew him very well. He went back. He was part of political and I am even blanking on his name. But you know, friends, yeah, you probably have because you. You have interviewed Jeff and Jan Strauss, and they were, they were close friends of his, but again, because I think he became a close friend of theirs at the time that we were off campus. And so I knew him, but very- I did not know him well as they did, and-and-

Speaker 1 1:00:21
That was the difference, I think, between when we were there and our daughter went to Harpur, and graduated from Harpur, well, from Binghamton, and she went there for the diversity and, and I think that it built up, you know, over the years-

DM: 1:00:40
Yeah.

JM: 1:00:40
-but I do not recall it being, I mean, to us, diversity was all these Jewish friends

DM: 1:00:47
for her, for her. What was really interesting, though, is-

JM: 1:00:50
I came from a rural area that there was one Jewish family, no blacks. It was very, you know monoculture.

DM: 1:00:57
Yeah, but my high school was interesting because even though we- I was, you know, in upstate, you know, North of Buffalo High School and was huge, my graduating class was over 600. I went, I went to eight graduation parties as a senior, seven of them were in homes of Jewish friends. So and, you know, I was raised as a Catholic so-so going down to-to Harpur, where there was a very high percentage of Jewish students, to me, was not unusual at all, but for a lot of upstate rural New Yorkers, you know, the that-that was a difference, but-but well, and you know, and just you know, there is, there is, there are differences between upstate and downstate, but never-never, never, any that that we found troubling or bothersome, as I say, you know, these are, these are these are friends we have had ever since. And, yeah, and, and I do not ever remember any clashes of that, of that sort. Again, it was, it was the beginning of open mindedness.

IG: 1:02:19
How about your family? How they, how do they look upon you, the philosopher, their son, the philosopher?

Speaker 1 1:02:27
Well, my father never quite got it right. I had to constantly correct my father on it. My mother, my mother idolized PhDs, so the fact that I got one was-was something that was tremendously important to my, to my mother, so that you know that-that, I guess, was, was, of yes, as I said, of tremendous importance that my parents were in the as I went off to school, my parents were in the process of getting divorced, and that is another real good friend of ours, also from Harpur days, who lives in Larchmont. She is right across the tracks from Larchmont, but she and I formed a close bond because both of us had family tensions that we were really happy to be at Harpur because we were away from those family tensions.

DM: 1:03:34
Well, that is part of the reason we got married so young, was David did not want to go home, and I did not want to be home.

IG: 1:03:41
So you know, during your time at Harpur College, during your years, what changes did you see the campus go through the physical campus?

DM: 1:04:00
Yeah, well, they started the building. Let us see they built the-

JM: 1:04:03
The camps in the woods.

DM: 1:04:06
-the administration tower went up. They actually, they were just building the-the ones down the hill, when we first started, when-when we were first there, there was only one dining hall. It was Newing when they when they started the second one, most students called it brand Newing. The-the dorm complex opened, I think, the second year, which was the one by Lake Lieberman and-and my story of Lake Lieberman is different from everybody else's story about Lake Lieberman, so I do not know what the real story is, but my story about Lake Lieberman got his name because a bunch of student government people over the summer wanted to name the lake they went randomly through a list of students. Finger landed on Elliot Lieberman. He was not attending that trimester, so they called him up and paid his bus fare to come in, up, dedicated the lake to him, and then threw him in. And Lake Lieberman was just that. I do not even know if it is filled in, it is just a pond anyway, that is that is the story I heard of how Lake Lieberman got his name, named for Elliot Lieberman, and he was special invitation. He was a student. He just was not attending that-that semester. But you know that by the time I was the commencement, we had friends who were in, you know, in the-the new dorm, complexes that were being built when we first started there. You know, it had the shape of the brain, and there was nothing to the- let us see, that would have been the south off the top of the brain. That was just all woods. In fact, I used to hike through that. That was, it was I started that as a, as a habit when I was in high school. I just go out for long walks as a way of relieving tension. And I would just wander off over that hill and through-through the woods, sometimes even at night, just, you know what, if it were clear enough that you could see where you are going. So, so that is all champion. You know, what was all wilderness now is all, is all developed. And then, yeah, and then, then we, you know, we had the-the Esplanade, which was the site every year of the stepping on the coat ceremony, which you probably, if you have interviewed other people-

IG: 1:06:46
Yes-yes.

DM: 1:06:47
-which was- it would be, you know, there would be one, one person who was formally discarding the coat. And then they would, and it would, I it was either April 1 or the first week of April. But anyway, you take off the coat, and then they would recite one that [citing in old English], throw it down and stamp on it. And that was the-the official start of spring was-was the stepping on the coach ceremony?

IG: 1:07:25
You went through enormous changes during your undergraduate career, personally and intellectually. And how did you- at the end of this period? How did you begin- did you have any How did your perception of where you came from, of yourself change during this period?

DM: 1:07:49
Oh, I do not know that. I do not know that I would say that there was, I do not, I do not think that I went through anything during that time that I would call a major change. I think it was just a sort of steady progression of who I was from the time I was in high school, right through my undergraduate, I formed friendships. I had formed strong friendships in high school. I still were getting together with a couple in a couple of weeks, he and I have been friends since seventh grade, and so, you know, I do not know that there was any major change, except, of course.

JM: 1:08:45
No, I was thinking, you came in join Newman Club.

DM: 1:08:50
That, okay, the major-major change was probably my religious beliefs. The first thing I did was join Newman Club. I was up here in Syracuse the first week that I was on campus at Harpur, because I came up with somebody they wanted, they needed somebody to represent Harpur College's Newman Club at a at a statewide Newman Club mentioned, and I came up here for that,

IG: 1:09:18
And the Newman Club was after Cardinal-

Speaker 1 1:09:21
No, yeah, that yeah, that is, yeah, that is the, that is the campus-campus Catholic youth student organization. And so I, that was the first thing I joined. By the end of the-the first semester, I told the head, the- then president-

JM: 1:09:42
John Phillips.

DM: 1:09:43
John Phillips that I was dropping out of Newman Club because I was no longer a Catholic, and he knew that I was going with Janet, and he told me that it would never last, which is why we are still like. Other, yeah, which is why we are still together. It is just despite John, [laughter] I was not let him be right, but, but that and I went from that, I mean, you know, we have talked personally, I went from that to-to having no religious faith at all. I- religious skeptic. Even though I taught philosophy of religion for 20 some years, I would never let them know where I sit. I wanted them one day to be sure that I was a firm theist, and be sure the next day I was an atheist, and the day after that, because I wanted them to think for themselves, and I wanted just to introduce them to the give them the tools by which they could do some serious critical thinking about it, but that my own serious critical thinking just led me to doubts. And doubts are not things that you choose. Doubts come just as you, as you entertain them and-and once they-they become that way. I mean, if you doubt a person, a person's integrity, you cannot choose.

IG: 1:11:13
No-no. Well, how did these doubts arise at you know, from-from this early period in your intellectual life?

DM: 1:11:24
I think it had, I mean, I think that I chose philosophy simply because what little I knew about it was that it was asking, you know, asking questions. And so the doubts-doubts come, which is why so many strict fundamentalists do not want questions raised.

JM: 1:11:49
And your grandparents, your grandparents growing up?

Speaker 1 1:11:53
Well, yeah, I grew up in a very interesting environment, because my-my grandparents were people who were Protestant and thought of all Catholic as papists, but my father had been raised as a Catholic, and so my mother converted and promised that the children would be raised as Catholics. And but when I was with my mother's parents, and that was really close to them, I was born when my father was in Tinian in the war, and so I was born into their home. And so she taught Sunday school, and I would be as a little toe head. I would be, I would go along with her to Sunday school. So I, you know, [crosstalk] I was exposed since then

JM: 1:12:40
-in the sense of, you know, why would my grandparents go to hell?

Speaker 1 1:12:45
Not-not then, not, then I raised. My questions actually were raised when I first had lots of Jewish friends in high school and-and it seemed to me absolutely absurd that they, you know, the- my good friend Bob and I, who were Catholics, were saved. Our friend Dave, who was Protestant, had a smidgen of a chance, because he might come, he might come around. And our good Jewish friend Dick was, you know, he did not have a snowball's chance in hell [laughter] of ever making it, and all of this just seemed ridiculous to me.

IG: 1:13:23
Right.

DM: 1:13:23
And so my question, my questioning came about, religion came from-from early on, and then when I went but-but I was still, I was still a firm believer when I went [crosstalk]

JM: 1:13:33
-into philosophy.

DM: 1:13:34
Yes, yeah-yeah. Those are the, those are, yeah, those are the basic questions. And people still ask those questions. I mean, philosophy, what the earliest philosophers are asking those questions? Plato was the first one to develop a theory that there is an immortal soul. I mean, that is comes out of Greek philosophy. Does not come out of Judeo-Christian tradition. It is integrated into it much later. So-so those, yeah, those, those were what led me. So I think it was, it was just that experience, the continuing of the experience I had. I have been tremendously fortunate in the friendships that I have had throughout my life, people I would trust implicitly with, you know, with anything important to me and to have had so many from high school through college to now, has just been-been wonderful.

IG: 1:14:32
Did you keep in touch with any of your professors?

DM: 1:14:38
No, as I say once I came up here, Brown, shortly thereafter, was-was gone. I think Savage had taken a job somewhere else already, and Roma was the only one who was still there that I had connection with, and I did not, I did not keep up connection with-with-with him. So no, the other person actually was interesting. I was just thinking the other day. Another person who had influence on me was Edmund Wilson [Edward Wilson], who was a black sculptor. Because I found I could take my fine arts requirement by taking a studio art course. And I had always loved to draw, but had never really pursued it, and I took just an introductory drawing course from Edmund Wilson, and Wilson taught me how to look at things and how to conceptualize. And I took, yeah, I took a second course from somebody else who was a shy man. I cannot even remember his name. He was shy. The second course was all art majors, and he would talk to them. And I just felt kind of lost, so I just did whatever projects were necessary to get through it. But Wilson, I- we just fiddle around with drawing for ages. And then when I was coaching, I had a student who wanted to know if she could find a figure drawing class, and asked me if at the college there was one, and I called over it was, and they said, well, one of our adjuncts runs a program over at the Westcott center. So I knew she would not, she did not have transportation get over there. So I-I have been interested in getting back into drawing. And so I took her over there, and I have been doing that ever since. But it- you know, so the drawing has been, is now a part of my life, has been a part of my life. But Wilson-Wilson had a had a real influence, because I thought he was going to teach me how to draw, and he did not. He just taught me how to look and how to conceptualize. And-

IG: 1:17:14
Far more important.

DM: 1:17:15
It was the key was, and it was something that stayed with me right until I finally had an opportunity to do something on a regular basis, and-and I have been doing that for what, 25 years, I have been going to open figure drawing and-and just enjoying that. So-so yeah, Wilson was- he did a series of I went into his-his studio once or twice. Later, I guess I cannot remember what the occasion was, because I was not taking courses from him, but he did a series called minority man, you know, and as a black sculptor, they were all in wood, and they were very expressive. They were emotional. They-they were figures in emotional trauma just done in-in, you know, in what I, you know, getting tree things, and then just carving them. But they were very powerful. And I saw one of his works in one art history thing that I saw after that, but-

IG: 1:18:29
That must have been highly unusual to have a Black art teacher.

DM: 1:18:38
Yes, yeah.

Speaker 1 1:18:40
Pretty much all one school.

Third speaker 1:18:46
How diverse the faculty was at that time?

Speaker 1 1:18:48
I do not remember it being an overly diverse faculty, but Wilson-Wilson had a tremendous impact on me because-because he not only was an artist, but he knew how to teach art, you know, and that is, that is, you know,

JM: 1:19:01
That is a gift that.

DM: 1:19:03
Yeah, that is a gift as well, yeah, and-and he and your grade was on the basis of how he thought where you went, from where you started to where you finished. So there was a young man in there who could not draw to save his life. He would work hard at it, right. [laughs] But Wilson did not fail him, because he worked hard at it, and he was encouraged to do that. The other thing about the difference, going back to how things were different back then, the art studio was open 24 hours a day. The only thing you did not have access to was painting stuff or clay materials, because those you had to pay for. But all the drawing materials, which included, you know, chalks, pastels, uh, charcoal, you know, and drawing paper was there. And I remember one of the projects-

IG: 1:20:07
And the doors were open,

DM: 1:20:08
-and the doors were open. One of the projects was, I just was not getting it. And so I went over there at, I think, 10:30 at night, and sat down. It was a, it was a pen, and pen and ink still life that I was supposed to do, just a series of bottles, and I had done them, and I, you know, he would go by, and I would look up expectantly, and he would shake-shake his head, no. I mean, he would just say no, right? Actually, we never say no. He just, you know, and I knew that I was not getting it and but I could go over there at night and just work on this on my own. So I went over there, and the bottles are all there, right. And I am looking, I am drawing, no, that is not right. I am doing that, and it is just outlines, right. That is not and all of a sudden, I drew an- oh, right. And I stopped looking at the bottles, because I draw them so many times, I knew all their shapes, and I drew five in a row that I knew he was going to say yes to. Because, again, it is a matter of looking right.

JM: 1:21:10
Yeah.

DM: 1:21:12
But-but that was the thing. It was those materials were just available at the- at dinner. Only time I have ever put on weight in my life was the first spring semester I was there because I ate two dinners every night. [laughter] My roommate and I had a, had routines going. We played off each other at the table, and group would we go over there early, and a group would sit down with us, and then they would all leave, and we would go back and get a second meal, and another group would join us and go through a second meal. But you could do that. We had lobster tails and steak once a month for birthday-birthday right.

IG: 1:21:57
At the cafeteria?

DM: 1:21:58
At the cafeteria, lobster tail and steak once a month for- we for special events, they would have a roast beef where they would cut off, you know, you want it from the rare part, right. Unlimited- go back for milk, anything you wanted that first couple of years was unlimited. I had a friend going to Hamilton, who ate nowhere near as well as I did for all the money his parents were paying to send him to Hamilton.

JM: 1:22:29
I remember, you know, a bunch of us from Whitney would go over, you know, and he and his roommate, also from Kenmore, at that time, would be doing these routines back and forth. And they were so funny, you know, and everybody was spraying their juice, laughing, things like that. And I remember that. I do not remember the food, except for Blintz. Oh, I could not understand why a Blintz was a dinner.

DM: 1:22:55
Yes, they would, they would serve Blintzes as dinner

Speaker 1 1:22:57
And bagels and locks, no, that is just no food.

DM: 1:23:04
But-but also, when they opened up brand Newing, they had the sandwich lady. And I was- no, I just, I might have gone there once, but the people who regularly went there the sand- is sandwich lady would make up any kind of sandwich you wanted. And you have seen dagwoods, well, people would walk out with sandwiches this high, yeah, okay, that, right? And then that, then, then some of that, right. Another slices, then some of that. [laughs]

IG: 1:23:32
Did you take food into your dorm?

DM: 1:23:35
I think they were eating those just at the cafeteria that was just said, Just be lunch time ago, and sit at a table, and because it would be tough to carry it, they did not bag it for you. It was not, was not a fast-food place.

IG: 1:23:45
The cafeteria was opened certain hours, right?

Speaker 1 1:23:48
Yeah-yeah. The cafeteria was, yeah. Cafeterias just-just open for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

IG: 1:23:53
What was your relationship with the library? Did you spend a lot of time in the library, or was it open all hours?

Speaker 1 1:23:58
I do not remember if it was open all hours. I remember being in the, I remember more in graduate school, because I-I had to, you know, I had a carrel that I had used there, but I remember some very clever graffiti in the Harpur College Library men's room, [laughter] but yeah, the- I do not remember spending that much time in the library, because most of what I was doing was reading primary sources, and those were the books you bought each year. So, you know, if I was not reading commentaries on Leibniz, I was reading Leibniz, I was not reading commentaries on Plato. I was reading Plato. So-so again, was not that grad school level?

IG: 1:24:59
Did not the library have these books, these primary materials?

DM: 1:25:03
It did as far as I can recall, I never remember anybody complaining that there was something that they could not get. But I did not have call to-to use it that much.

JM: 1:25:15
Did you bought them all, right?

DM: 1:25:17
Yeah. And back then, books were, books were reasonable. I mean, you know the book-book industry-

IG: 1:25:24
How do you how do you think that your classmates from Harpur would remember you?

Speaker 1 1:25:29
The only ones who remember me are the ones who still know me. [laughs]

IG: 1:25:35
How did they talk about you from this period? How do you think that they would remember you?

DM: 1:25:40
Oh, I do not know. I think we all laugh and joke. We were just this last get together, New Year's from an earlier get together when Mark Weinstein was not able to make it, somebody had picked up a badge with his picture from back then on it. And I think the running joke was, well, at least he improved with age. But it was, I do not know. I think that we all pretty much had. I think we are the same people now that we were then, even though Mark Wolraich has had a tremendously important career as a pediatrician, he has, he has written a number of books on dealing with children with special needs. He coordinates a program in right now, out of the University of Oklahoma, that works through the state to coordinate all the services in the state for students with special needs that he organized and put together, but we still rib him the same way we did across the campus, one family across the campus and but it is that it said we establish, yeah, we established an easy kind of relationship of people who are serious when we need to be serious and able to laugh. And I think we, you know, our individual personalities are just developments of what they-they were then. So it is not as so much of thinking how people would remember me, so much as thinking about how glad I am that all those so many of those good relationships I had, them are still a part of my life. Now.

IG: 1:27:48
What lessons did you learn from this important period in your life?

DM: 1:27:54
I do not know. I think, I think we have kind of-

IG: 1:27:56
Covered a lot.

DM: 1:27:57
Covered that, yeah-yeah, in general-

IG: 1:27:59
But just-

DM: 1:28:01
Yeah, no, I think that, as I have said, there was the-the beliefs and-and beliefs I have had about what is most important in life are things that simply developed through the associations there that I was fortunate enough to have good friends. You know, continuation of these, of these good friendships. And so I think that, I think that the- we were open minded to a diverse world. I think that meeting other people who were like that has just established a sort of-of a way of life in which you are critical about things that you think are wrong, but you are open to-to a diverse world of people who-who managed to get to those same places in life by a lot of different routes. And I think that-that started a little bit in in high school, really expanded in college.

JM: 1:29:35
I remember, you know, sitting around talking to people about some serious things.

DM: 1:29:42
Yeah-yeah.

JM: 1:29:42
And, you know, and I think that is came out of that era, um-

DM: 1:29:50
Yeah-yeah, no-no topics, no topics seem to be out of bounds. And the discussions that we would have were-were very serious. Whether they are about religion or about politics or about social conditions, or-

IG: 1:30:06
Were they ever about the social conditions of women, women's rights?

DM: 1:30:10
I think those developed as we went. I think that every woman I still know who is someone I knew back then I would describe as a feminist and-and I had, I had a student, Janet, and I shared a student, you know, went from my class in philosophy to her class in English, came in one day and said, "Dr Muir just yelled at us for not being feminist." And I had not really yelled at him for not being feminist. What I just simply asked him, "How many of you would-would be [inaudible]", this is in the (19)90s. "How many of you would-would say you were feminists?" And very few would raise their hands and I say, Well, you know. And then I would start to explain what feminism, you know, what the early feminism movement meant, and what people would try say and-and talk about, you expect that you can go out for any sport in high school? Of course, you can back then you could not, right? There were not any right. And just try to let them, let them know. I said, yeah, what I said, somehow people who are against feminism have made it a nasty word for young women. I do not understand that. I said, "How can it be a nasty word? Are you against equal pay for equal work? Are you against equal opportunity for in in every profession? Are you?" So-so that was yelling at them, asking, ask him, asking him a series of questions. "Dr. Muir was yelling." But anyway, she was one of the ones I got to, I think it was not yeah, but yeah, it was something that built. It built, I think, you know, it started to build in those years, and it just, you know, it just can continue to build from-from then on.

JM: 1:31:59
In short of time, was, I was at Harpur when I decided, you know, to start going back to school and taking classes. I took music appreciation because at Harpur, I had been in a music appreciation class, and it introduced me to opera. I loved Aida, Leontyne Price, and all this music that, you know, I never was exposed to in my family. They were doing Lawrence Welk and stuff like that. But that was what I went back to. And the first literature classes I took was literature by and about women, you know, in the feminist mold and-and I got to teach, and I think it was the last semester I taught her. Last year I taught at OCC. I got to teach a course in literature by and about women. But those things, I came from a family of five girls, and my parents were out of the depression area- era, and they both were interested in going to college, but could not, because they both had to work. And my mother graduated from high school at the age of 16, and, you know, was very much interested in going on to school, and my father wanted to be an architect, so they were determined that all of their daughters would go to college, so there was not a question in my family about trying to go to college. My older sister went to a business school and then dropped out. She was not terribly interested. I went to college and dropped out after a year, which was, I think, a big disappointment to them, but then my next sister, my next sister, my next sister, all three of them went to college, went into nursing, occupational therapy and-and all of that. So growing up in a family of girls, I did not really recognize the lack of opportunity, although when I think back now, there were not any sports for us. And I might have been interested in sports. I now play tennis. I have been playing tennis for 40 years and-and enjoying it, and but there were not those things. So, you know, the feminism, they- was a big thing for me, and I think it started in those years, but I did not capitalize on it until- I did not capitalize, [crosstalk] I went back to college in the (19)70s.

IG: 1:34:30
And-and your husband supported you?

JM: 1:34:32
Absolutely. And you know, through grad school, there were a lot of couples that Syracuse that broke up because the wives were working and the husbands were in grad school, and they just went different ways. But when David finished his degree, his PhD, that is when I was pregnant with our daughter, and I-I wanted to go back to school. And he said all. Take care of the baby.

IG: 1:35:03
How progressive of you.

Speaker 1 1:35:05
Well, I still cook all our meals. After [crosstalk] Yeah-yeah-yeah. Because we were, we were married for seven years before he had a child, and then, and then, just as she decided she wanted to go back to-to school, all of a sudden, we found she was pregnant, and-and, but then, yeah, I said, I can I have a flexible- I can manage my schedule, and we can do this and-and-and we did, and made sure that she was able to go back to school.

IG: 1:35:38
Well, what concluding remarks do you have? What message would you like to convey to future generations, or this generation listening to your interview?

DM: 1:35:57
It is tough, because we came through a golden era that I do not know is going to be repeatable, because with what was happening in the (19)50s, the Cold War, and then Soviets launching Sputnik, and all of a Sudden, huge amounts of money being poured into education, and you combine that with the post war economy, where-where you just had the fastest growing middle class that I think there is ever been, and all of those things coming together for us at just that time, New York State converting their-their colleges into from State Teachers colleges into liberal arts colleges, forming university centers. I mean, Harpur was the first one, but Stony Brook had already begun by the time, you know what, By the second year in or sooner than that, Stony Brook was beginning, and then Albany, and then they purchased [inaudible]. So all of these things are happening at once. We are and I do not see those factors coming together again. We had not to have taken advantage of that would have been a real shame. Everything was there for us. Everything was there for us. But I guess the message would be, look to try to recreate those opportunities wherever you can. It is you- you are not likely to have the same set of circumstances, but we do not want to restrict. We want to-to open up. And I see too many things that are tending toward restricting, again, limiting again. Too many people who are afraid of diversity, afraid of various other things. This was as great a period, I think, as you could live through, and whatever anybody can do to recreate those open conditions, I think that is what they should be trying to do.

IG: 1:38:17
Thank you very much. Would you like to add your concluding remarks to this interview?

JM: 1:38:27
We have had a really charmed life and-and the fact that our daughter has picked up on a lot of the values that you know, we experience with our friends. We are very proud of her, and that when she wanted to go to college, she looked at Geneseo and she looked at Binghamton. She did not want to go too far, and luckily for us, she did not want to spend a lot of money. [laughter] But when she looked at Geneseo, she said “It is a lot of the same people.” She went to Marcellus High School, which is very small and rural. She said “It is a lot of the same people,” you know, a monoculture of middle class white upstate. And she said, I want to go to Binghamton because of the diversity and-and it was hard for her to go into that big school from here, but she was in Hinman, she was in a suite with, you know, that gave her a smaller cohort of-of students to be with, and she made wonderful friendships, and she had a wonderful experience at Binghamton. So even though it is bigger, she still had a core experience there that was very positive for her. So you know, it is still a great place to go. Yeah, I would say, even though my experience was not a positive one there, I have seen that it was-

DM: 1:40:12
There was one thing that I did not that I did not say that-that to me, characterized the- an attitude that is no longer there, because Binghamton went division one sports and-and my understanding was that the President wanted to do it, and the faculty was against it, and as I was against it, in fact, I talked to people who were calling on fundraising drives, and I saying, oh, the most thing I am most disappointed in it was going Division One, because division one and what happened? It was a scandal. Why? Because you cannot build a division one program. Why would you go to a demanding school like Harpur instead of Cornell, right, which is still right, still, it is Ivy League. It still has the name. Why go there right when neither one is going to be able to offer you scholarship, and Cornell has been added a law a lot longer, and they know how to they know how to work the system. And I did not think they could write and what did they have? They had a scandal when we were there. It was Division three. I ran Division Three track until I got married [laughter] and-and it was fun, right. We, we played games on the on the small- it was a van we would go in, right? The coach would drive us in a van. Coach Lyons would drive us in a van, and the basketball team, right.

JM: 1:41:41
Harass them. [inaudible]

DM: 1:41:43
Yeah, that was, that was, that was that was the cheer we would go down there, "Harass them, harangue them, make them really relinquish the ball." I mean, that was, you know, that was the kind of fun sort of thing that you did. And it was, but it was very different. And because it you-you did not go there for athletics. The athletics were there because they were part of a traditional education. And the people in the in the phys ed department were wonderful instructors. Were great down there when we when we started the- but it was an academic institution, thoroughly and division one schools are not, first of all, academic institutions. If you are a division one, of course, they are never going to go football, thank goodness. But I have a loyalty to SU [Syracuse University] big on Division One, everything, but I really liked Harpur as a division three school. I wish it could have stayed a division three school. I think. I wish they were still chanting, [Harass them, harangue there. Make them. Make them relinquish the ball] at basketball games.

IG: 1:42:53
Because that would have kept the emphasis on academics.

DM: 1:42:56
Yes, yeah, because then-then-

JM: 1:42:58
And sports are for enjoyment.

DM: 1:43:00
Sports, yeah, they are, they are, yeah, they are for enjoyment. And you do that, right. You run track because you want to run track. You go out, you know you are out for the basketball team because you want to play basketball. But-but that, to me, was-was what Harpur College was, and I wish it was, was now what Binghamton University is, but it is not. It is not. And that that, to me, is a shame. I think that that is something lost that will never be regained. And I think it is a real shame that, but it is a totally different campus. I mean, you got a school, and you got all these different schools that it was, but still-still, I would love to have seen them have the courage to be a university center and a division and do division three sports. That would have been great, that it would have taken courage, but it would have put them on the map. And I think the best, best way.

JM: 1:44:04
I do not know if they have sports for women down there. I really do not have a clue about that, but they did not when we were there.

DM: 1:44:09
But they-they-they, they must not.

Third speaker: 1:44:11
They have tennis.

DM: 1:44:11
Do they have a women's basketball program?

Third speaker 1:44:13
Yeah? They do. They have lacrosse-

DM: 1:44:20
Yeah-yeah, all the same things, yeah, I will say yeah. But that is-

JM: 1:44:28
Now.

Third speaker 1:44:28
[crosstalk] tracks obviously.

DM: 1:44:30
Yeah-yeah, but-but that-that-that to me, was something that I would have liked to have seen them keep, and it would have been a uniqueness that I think would have-have been a good. So, yep.

IG: 1:44:47
Thank you so much. Thank you for a very interesting-

DM: 1:44:50
Thank-thank you for having the interest in doing it.

JM: 1:44:55
What-what is this going to be used for?

(End of Interview)

2018-01-12

Irene Gashurov

1967

David and Janet Muir

David is a retired philosophy professor who taught philosophy at Onondaga Community College. He owes a debt to Harpur College, which spurred his lifelong interest in philosophy. He met his wife, Janet, there. He earned his degree in philosophy from Syracuse University.

Janet met her spouse, David Muir, at Harpur; she did not finish her degree at Harpur College since she supported her husband through his PhD program at Syracuse University. She earned her degree at Syracuse subsequently and worked as an adjunct instructor in English at Onondaga Community. Looking back, Janet says they've led a "charmed life."

Audio

Harpur College – Seventies alumni; Harpur College – Alumni in law; Harpur College – Alumni on Harpur Law Council Board; Harpur College – Alumni in New York City; Harpur College – Alumni living in Connecticut

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Harpur College – Sixties alumni; Harpur College – Vietnam War; Harpur College – Alumni living in Marcellus, New York; Harpur College – Alumni in Higher Education - Spouses of Sixties alumni; Harpur College – Former Harpur students in higher education; Harpur College – Former Harpur students living in Marcellus, NY