Title
John Naughton interview (Buena Vista College professor and coach), conducted by Sue Brinkman
Subject
Buena Vista College -- Oral histories
Oral histories -- Iowa -- Storm Lake
College students -- Iowa -- Storm Lake
College teachers -- Iowa -- Storm Lake
Coaches (Athletics) -- Iowa -- Storm Lake
Description
John Naughton was born in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and transferred to Buena Vista College in 1947 to play baseball. During the summers, he played for the local Storm Lake White Caps baseball team. After he graduated in 1950, he served in the Marine Corps for two years, he began coaching and teaching and later assumed those duties at Buena Vista College, retiring in 1992. He coached football, wrestling, golf, and women's basketball and also served as assistant athletic director.
In the interview, he contrasts life in Cedar Rapids with life at Buena Vista College. He remembers many professors and coaches with fondness. Naughton also recalls the differences in students between now and then.
Notes:
Scroll down to see the transcript. Numbers that appear in brackets show the timestamp of the conversation. To access the audio recording, click the arrow under the photograph to start.
To the best of the transcriptionist’s ability, this is a faithful rendition of the conversation. If inaccuracies are detected, please contact the BVU Archives by emailing archives@bvu.edu.
In the interview, he contrasts life in Cedar Rapids with life at Buena Vista College. He remembers many professors and coaches with fondness. Naughton also recalls the differences in students between now and then.
Notes:
Scroll down to see the transcript. Numbers that appear in brackets show the timestamp of the conversation. To access the audio recording, click the arrow under the photograph to start.
To the best of the transcriptionist’s ability, this is a faithful rendition of the conversation. If inaccuracies are detected, please contact the BVU Archives by emailing archives@bvu.edu.
Publisher
Buena Vista University
Date
June 3, 1985
Format
audio/mpeg
Language
English
Type
Sound
Identifier
http://bvuarchives.bvu.edu/Audio/OralHistories/JohnNaughton.mp3
Interviewer
Sue Brinkman
Interviewee
John Naughton
Transcription
SB=Sue Brinkman
JN=John Naughton
SB: [00:00:00] This is an interview conducted on June 3rd 1985 by SB: with JN: , a 1950 graduate of Buena Vista and currently head girls basketball coach there. What year did you graduate here, at Buena Vista?
JN: [00:00:13] I graduated in 1950-- And from-- I was a student from '47 to '50. I was a transfer student here, and I came from Cedar Rapids. And-- And-- Then I-- I first came up here in the summertime with Kenny Blackman, who was the athletic director at Buena Vista. Brought me up from Cedar Rapids as a baseball player, and then I went back home, and then at the semester the next year, I came to Buena Vista, so technically I was only here two and a half years but-- then I graduated in '50, and then I went in the Marine Corps for two years and then I went out coaching.
SB: [00:00:57] What was it like to attend college in the late '40s here?
JN: [00:01:00] Well, it was different. It was right after the war [chuckle]. And-- The average age, I guess, like, let's say the football team was about [laughs] 25 or 28 or something, and I was a youngster 18 or 19 and-- There were about, oh, I suppose 300 students, 350. We had two buildings on campus or maybe, maybe, three, I guess. The library was a kind of a semi-Quonset hut [laughs] down there where the dorm is now, and-- there was Old Main, and then we dedicated--the 1950 class--dedicated the women's dorm. I think the plaque over there says 1950. If not, it's an error. [chuckle] But anyway, so-- Then-- they-- Smith Hall was there, too, I take that back. That was there. But that's about all it was on the campus, and the library wasn't much, the gym was old at that time, because it had been created in 1910 or '20 or something. So-- It was-- it was a nice, peaceful campus.
JN: [00:02:11] And my problem was that I was raised in Cedar Rapids, which was at that time, a town of maybe 70-80,000, which is 120 or thirty thousand now, or 40, I don't know. And I-- come up here to play baseball, and everybody was so good to me and so friendly, that I just said that's where I'm going to go. And-- I was really-- confused. I'd walk across campus and somebody'd holler at me, "How's it going?" And in Cedar Rapids, you know-- I shoved my way on the buses and-- [chuckle] fought in my neighborhood and all that, which I didn't-- So I really didn't know what Northwest Iowa was like and what-- what people were like in smaller communities and had very, very little connection with farm people, and that's mostly what we had here. We had a lot of-- a lot of veterans and-- the school hung on for a long time by just tooth and nail. And-- It was really interesting.
SB: [00:03:12] Do you remember what tuition was then?
JN: [00:03:14] Yeah, I think I paid either $60.00 or $90.00 for a year. That wouldn't buy ya' some of the books now. [both laugh] But-- I think it got to 90 for a year. I think it was 45 a semester, and we had some athletic aid, so we paid like, 20, 30 dollars, which was kind of hard to come by. I found a job bartending out [at] the Cobblestone at night, and playing three sports and-- and going to college. Couldn't do that today. There's too much competition among students in the classroom, and there's more to be learned-- than-- than we learned, and-- not that we were dummies. But it was just the idea, there's more to be learned.
SB: [00:03:58] What kind of classes were you taking?
JN: [00:04:01] -- I majored in physical education, but I also-- had-- I would guess a major or at least enough hours for a major-- I'm sure it's-- in history. And so-- I was interested in those two areas. And-- As a 10-year-old kid, I knew I wanted to be a coach, and-- and-- This is my thirty-fifth year out and-- [chuckle] 33 of it's been coaching and two in the Marine Corps, because I haven't learned [both laugh]. Anyway, that's it--
JN: [00:04:30] So I was really-- I had some great profs, though, here. Buena Vista had some tremendous profs. Dr. Smith in-- in biology was super. He was so tough that-- guys tried to steal the test, and they still couldn't answer the questions, you know, so--
SB: [00:04:45] [chuckle]
JN: [00:04:45] And then-- then I had Dr. Reynolds, who was my all-time favorite. He cared about athletics, he cared about kids. He was a lawyer, came here for little or no pay and-- just loved to teach. Dr. Sampson was a tremendous teacher-- And then there was-- Dr. Reed, who was-- was a great English teacher. And-- and I can remember being the types of poetry class at that time. And what I knew about poetry was-- was "Casey strike out" or something but [both laugh] I didn't-- I kept telling him I didn't know much about that. And he said, "Well, that's all right. Do the best you can." You know-- I always remembered that. And-- so, you know, it was-- I just had all kinds of different things. A man named Graham [Donald Graham] was an excellent teacher and Ted Kuehl was a-- institution who wrote our-- song for Buena Vista, and his wife, Gladys Kuehl, and-- so I was blessed with a lot of good people, now. I--. There're good people here today. Tremendously good people, but they were excellent.
SB: [00:05:58] What kind of coaches did you have?
JN: [00:06:00] Well-- My-- football coach-- was Bob Otto, who-- was on the-- "ironman team" at Iowa and it was after war, and he went to Mankato State from here. And after I come back from the Marine Corps, and I was coaching over at Marathon and-- he-- hired me to come up there [Mankato], where I got my master's degree and-- so he was a great coach. But Kenny Blackman was a coach in Cedar Rapids, and he was the athletic director and the basketball and the baseball coach. And-- he brought me up here, and I had no money, none whatsoever. I didn't have a dime. I had $25.00, and an old suitcase. And-- so my aunt gave me the twenty-five dollars. But, anyway-- he took me in his home. And-- I stayed with Kenny for a year or so and worked for him and-- otherwise, I couldn't-a' gone to college. And so-- he was my other coach. And we only had the two at the time and-- and-- Baseball made me some money during the summer. It was the Iowa State League and-- which was a tremendous league right after war. But I wasn't good enough to go on in the pro ball-- could have gone on but I'd-a' been down there ridin' buses and Class D baseball for the rest of my life. But-- So I wanted a degree, and I was gonna get one no matter what. If I had to quit 15 times, I was going to get a degree. Those people were concerned that I got one also. And Bob just retired. And Bob Otto just retired. Kenny Blackman-- is seventy-two or three-years-old now, and he still lives in Davenport. And he's-- he's a tremendous guy.
SB: [00:07:47] What kind of football team did you have, pretty tough?
JN: [00:07:50] Yeah. We won the-- we weren't so tough in the Iowa conference, but we were tough in the-- Dakota. We were in Dakota-Iowa Conference at the time. We played four games in Dakota Conference, and we played the other four games in the Iowa Conference and-- we didn't win many in the Iowa Conference at the time, but we won the Dakota Conference, I believe. Basketball, we were just so-so. We were--a pretty good ball team. Baseball was the thing. We were, without a doubt, the best college base-- small college baseball team in the country, at the time. We had guys that were so good, you couldn't believe it. And-- it was just tremendous and-- Of course, base-- baseball's always been a big sport at Buena Vista. They've always been a winner. So-- that's kinda interesting.
SB: [00:08:37] Did any of those players go on to any notoriety?
JN: [00:08:40] Oh, yes. Yeah. There were-- Jim Fanning, who-- as you know, is vice president of the Montreal Expos. And-- vice president. He's-- a 1949 graduate. I graduated in '50; he graduated in '49. We had other kids-- Larry Bittner, from here, and now-- But he wouldn't play with us [because he was a lot younger] but we had-- two or three others go into pro ball and-- but they didn't make it their career-- so. They all-- had degrees and-- and have done well. You sometimes wonder back at all those people that got the degrees and-- you thought, Boy, I don't think this person is going to make-- or that person-- they probably thought the same thing of me, too, but, you know, about 99% turned out pretty good.
SB: [00:09:26] [laughs].
JN: [00:09:26] Kinda interesting.
SB: [00:09:27] What was your favorite sport?
JN: [00:09:29] Well, basketball was really my-- best sport, I guess. I played football, and I captained the college team. And-- but basketball, I captained my college basketball team, too, here. And I was most valuable player. I played in '49 or '50 and all-conference and-- but I made my living playing baseball, you know, so to speak but-- I would say basketball and golf were my favorites, so--
SB: [00:09:56] How could you make money on baseball?
JN: [00:09:58] [laughs] Well, at that time, this must have been amateurism, but we made-- three and four hundred dollars a month, and that carried me through the year with a job for three months, you know. It was right after war, and some of these people got outta pro ball because there were so many in it. There were so many leagues and-- and so much-- very little money. They might got-- they might have gotten eighty dollars a month or something, and they could sign on to one of these semi-pro teams for three, four hundred dollars a month. It was expense money supposedly, ya see, and-- we'd play-- 50, 60 games in the summer, and-- we'd have two or three thousand people out here at Memorial Field, and be on Sunday nights, and then couple, two or three nights during the week. Go to Schaller and play, go to Estherville-- out into Nebraska and-- Sioux City and-- it was really kind of-- was equal to what they would classify Triple A baseball. And it was really interesting. It was a lot of fun and-- I was just a young kid out of Cedar Rapids and-- guys used to call me the Easterner(?) [both laugh] because I was from 200-some miles away. But anyway-- we brought a lot of people in from Notre Dame, Indiana, and the league really filled up with-- with college kids, is about what it was. And the old timers, who could really play well but didn't have a place in pro ball, ya see, and didn't want that place, because that's a pretty tough family life and everything. So, it was really interesting.
SB: [00:11:33] Do you think that training has changed any when you were playing football or baseball?
JN: [00:11:39] Yes, it's better. It's better coaching and the techniques are better, the conditions are better. Medical science has been better, and, as you know, I teach the training conditioning and-- and-- I just marvel at the things that we do today. The speed of the people are-- are-- is just phenomenal. A large person, let's say a kid 6-5 or 6-6-- could run as fast as we did in those days. I supposedly ran 10:1 which, and on a guard, that was really quick in those days but-- That is not-- very quick today. [laughs] That's-- In a hundred meters, it is, but it's-- but in a hundred yard dash, it's not very quick. So, there's a lot better coaching, better techniques, just like the rest of the world. Communications, you know, is better. You know, the kids-- although I will say this: I don't think there's any more intensity. More training, but I think the people of my era-- Their training was very intense also. They were strong, strong people. They've been throwing bales, you know, and-- I worked in a steel mill in Cedar Rapids, lifted steel and was a pretty strong kid, you know, and-- We have too much automation today for that. So now we've gone to lifting the weights. That's all that's doing is replacing the kid throwin' the bales and lifting-- [laughs] you know we really got it finalized now. You build-- so many muscles you'll-- make you stronger, make you have more endurance-- fitness type of thing which is great. I'm for it, 200 percent, but it's-- quite a bit different. [both laugh]
SB: [00:13:27] What was student life like? What did you do for fun around here?
JN: [00:13:29] Not much. [both laugh] We- Oh, we found our fun. You know, like everybody else does of every era. I would say that we-- worked at night, 'course, a lot of us. But-- we just kind of hung around together and just had-- I guess you'd call it dumb fun today, you know? And-- things we thought were really, really big deal, a lot of fun you know-- They aren't so big now, you know. We'd-- We'd go to the gym, mess around and-- we went to a lot of movies. You know we'd go for a quarter, a dime, or whatever it was. And-- but we were used to it. I was brought up in the Depression, you know, right the end of the Depression, and so we were used to that type of thing. But if I were to ask you today, could you live through the Depression, your answer probably would be, I don't know, I've never had to. And, so, consequently that's why I asked my daughters, you know, could you live in the Depression? Well, the Depression wasn't all bad for us. I mean it was bad for some people. But-- that set our type of activity around college, let's face it. We didn't have much money. A ham sandwich was 10 cents, you know. And-- that was a big deal. So-- [laughs] I guess it hasn't died out. But the old popcorn and the pop's still the same, the movie's still the same, no television and what the - What came in in fifty or fifty one. So, it's been around a long time.
SB: [00:14:58] Where were all those football players housed?
JN: [00:15:02] [short laugh] You name it. [laughs again] There was--a [laughs] dorm above the old-- Oh-- the old gym down here, Edson Hall. And-- lot of 'em stayed up there. And that was-- the biggest fire trap in the world. And-- you didn't know who was stayin' there and who was comin', who was goin'. It was a Chinese fire drill, that's all it was [laughs], but-- I stayed in the home-- with Mrs. Willadsen's husband, Bobby Willadsen. And-- we stayed over here with his aunt over here on College [Street] and they [football players] were spread out all over. We didn't have too many commuters, but we had a lot of local kids going to school. And I say local: Alta, Storm Lake-- Aurelia and so forth, all through the area. So it was really like a community college-- at that time. But-- you know, then we started to branch out. And then when I started coaching later on-- When I coached football here-- in '63-- I got a bunch of kids from New York and other places. And-- that proved kinda interesting. They wondered where all the street lights were at--
SB: [00:16:18] [laughs].
JN: [00:16:21] And-- And-- [laughs] They understood the farm kid, and the farm kid understood them. It became quite a deal.
SB: [00:16:24] You were kind of a rarity when you came to school here from Cedar Rapids.
[00:16:27] Yeah, I was. I was the Easterner [laughs], as they used to say. In football, they'd say, "Here comes Easterner," so, ya know [both laugh] and there weren't many kids from my area, ya know. I told my mother and dad I was going to Buena Vista College. They said, "My Lord, where is that?" And I said, "Well, I don't know. They just told me, 'Get on the train.'" And so I got on the train and-- at night and I got off up here and-- Kenny Blackman met me and says, "I found you a room down here and so-- you start to school. And-- I said, "Okay." And-- I didn't care too much about school, when I started, you know. But I found out that, you know, I just wanted to play ball. All right, I would play day, night, everything else. And I'm one of the few that played three sports and-- I didn't care what happened, long as I could be a coach and-- and-- get a degree, you know. And then I found out a little later on what my first two years' transcript looked like. Oh, brother, you wouldn't want to see them. But then, after I finally wised up and found out that I-- I wasn't city smart anymore-- I wasn't streetwise-- [laughs] And so I became-- I became a fairly decent student then, but up to that time there wasn't much help, I'll tell you that. So, it was-- but it was interesting. It was really great-- I guess I'm kind of glad I lived in that era. And I vowed I'd never go back to my kids in college here or anything else and say, "Well, the old days I'll tell you one thing this is what happened." No, no I don't think that's right. I don't think that's right. Gotta go forward. We gotta go forward. Can't go backwards.
SB: [00:18:12] Do you think that students have changed any since those days?
JN: [00:18:18] Yeah, to some respect. They're better students than we were. But, again, now, we didn't put as much time in on it, either, you know? I mean, we were working nights. I worked till-- one and two in the morning and-- played three sports and went to college. So, I say that takes quite a bit away. I don't see how a kid can work today and go through college and compete and get their grades. That's the one sad thing I think there is about it, you know? And-- College isn't free anymore, you know, and it's not free. It's expensive, it costs money. That's-- bothers me a great deal. If somebody is hungry for an education, my God, I just wish-- I hope they can get it, you know. That-- I guess that'll always bother me. [mumbles].
JN: [00:19:09] But I-- I-- You know, I don't think the kids are different. I think they still got big hearts and-- you know, they're still great human beings. We're lucky. We get a tremendous amount of-- of good kids around here. But I call 'em balers, you know, good old people that are-- The kids say, "Yeah, I know, he's going to call me 'baler' before the year is over." [Brinkman laughs] And-- that's what they used to call me, Harry Hay Baler, you know. [both laugh] But-- that was never a part of my life. I didn't even know what a cow was but [both laugh] so-- But the idea is-- is that they-- It-- It's great. Our country is great. We're having a problem with our transition-- with our communications like it is today, and our carryover, and our movement to-- to-- Let's say the non-automation to automation and people are saying, "Oh, all these businesses and everything are closed up." Gotta find new ones, different ones, you know, go to do things different. And-- that's the future.
JN: [00:20:15] And-- I-- I learned that through college. I learned that things even changed my freshman year to my senior year, and I made all these-- adjustments and-- I guess I'm philosophying [sic] now, but the point is-- But the question that you asked me is very difficult, you know, yes, we're on the right track. I spent 13 months as a bazooka gunner in-- in Korea and a flamethrower operator and-- let me tell you something. Somebody wants to go to those other countries, they're welcome to it. I don't. I'll live right here. Finish my life right here.
SB: [00:20:54] Thank you very much, John.
JN: [00:20:54] You're welcome.
JN=John Naughton
SB: [00:00:00] This is an interview conducted on June 3rd 1985 by SB: with JN: , a 1950 graduate of Buena Vista and currently head girls basketball coach there. What year did you graduate here, at Buena Vista?
JN: [00:00:13] I graduated in 1950-- And from-- I was a student from '47 to '50. I was a transfer student here, and I came from Cedar Rapids. And-- And-- Then I-- I first came up here in the summertime with Kenny Blackman, who was the athletic director at Buena Vista. Brought me up from Cedar Rapids as a baseball player, and then I went back home, and then at the semester the next year, I came to Buena Vista, so technically I was only here two and a half years but-- then I graduated in '50, and then I went in the Marine Corps for two years and then I went out coaching.
SB: [00:00:57] What was it like to attend college in the late '40s here?
JN: [00:01:00] Well, it was different. It was right after the war [chuckle]. And-- The average age, I guess, like, let's say the football team was about [laughs] 25 or 28 or something, and I was a youngster 18 or 19 and-- There were about, oh, I suppose 300 students, 350. We had two buildings on campus or maybe, maybe, three, I guess. The library was a kind of a semi-Quonset hut [laughs] down there where the dorm is now, and-- there was Old Main, and then we dedicated--the 1950 class--dedicated the women's dorm. I think the plaque over there says 1950. If not, it's an error. [chuckle] But anyway, so-- Then-- they-- Smith Hall was there, too, I take that back. That was there. But that's about all it was on the campus, and the library wasn't much, the gym was old at that time, because it had been created in 1910 or '20 or something. So-- It was-- it was a nice, peaceful campus.
JN: [00:02:11] And my problem was that I was raised in Cedar Rapids, which was at that time, a town of maybe 70-80,000, which is 120 or thirty thousand now, or 40, I don't know. And I-- come up here to play baseball, and everybody was so good to me and so friendly, that I just said that's where I'm going to go. And-- I was really-- confused. I'd walk across campus and somebody'd holler at me, "How's it going?" And in Cedar Rapids, you know-- I shoved my way on the buses and-- [chuckle] fought in my neighborhood and all that, which I didn't-- So I really didn't know what Northwest Iowa was like and what-- what people were like in smaller communities and had very, very little connection with farm people, and that's mostly what we had here. We had a lot of-- a lot of veterans and-- the school hung on for a long time by just tooth and nail. And-- It was really interesting.
SB: [00:03:12] Do you remember what tuition was then?
JN: [00:03:14] Yeah, I think I paid either $60.00 or $90.00 for a year. That wouldn't buy ya' some of the books now. [both laugh] But-- I think it got to 90 for a year. I think it was 45 a semester, and we had some athletic aid, so we paid like, 20, 30 dollars, which was kind of hard to come by. I found a job bartending out [at] the Cobblestone at night, and playing three sports and-- and going to college. Couldn't do that today. There's too much competition among students in the classroom, and there's more to be learned-- than-- than we learned, and-- not that we were dummies. But it was just the idea, there's more to be learned.
SB: [00:03:58] What kind of classes were you taking?
JN: [00:04:01] -- I majored in physical education, but I also-- had-- I would guess a major or at least enough hours for a major-- I'm sure it's-- in history. And so-- I was interested in those two areas. And-- As a 10-year-old kid, I knew I wanted to be a coach, and-- and-- This is my thirty-fifth year out and-- [chuckle] 33 of it's been coaching and two in the Marine Corps, because I haven't learned [both laugh]. Anyway, that's it--
JN: [00:04:30] So I was really-- I had some great profs, though, here. Buena Vista had some tremendous profs. Dr. Smith in-- in biology was super. He was so tough that-- guys tried to steal the test, and they still couldn't answer the questions, you know, so--
SB: [00:04:45] [chuckle]
JN: [00:04:45] And then-- then I had Dr. Reynolds, who was my all-time favorite. He cared about athletics, he cared about kids. He was a lawyer, came here for little or no pay and-- just loved to teach. Dr. Sampson was a tremendous teacher-- And then there was-- Dr. Reed, who was-- was a great English teacher. And-- and I can remember being the types of poetry class at that time. And what I knew about poetry was-- was "Casey strike out" or something but [both laugh] I didn't-- I kept telling him I didn't know much about that. And he said, "Well, that's all right. Do the best you can." You know-- I always remembered that. And-- so, you know, it was-- I just had all kinds of different things. A man named Graham [Donald Graham] was an excellent teacher and Ted Kuehl was a-- institution who wrote our-- song for Buena Vista, and his wife, Gladys Kuehl, and-- so I was blessed with a lot of good people, now. I--. There're good people here today. Tremendously good people, but they were excellent.
SB: [00:05:58] What kind of coaches did you have?
JN: [00:06:00] Well-- My-- football coach-- was Bob Otto, who-- was on the-- "ironman team" at Iowa and it was after war, and he went to Mankato State from here. And after I come back from the Marine Corps, and I was coaching over at Marathon and-- he-- hired me to come up there [Mankato], where I got my master's degree and-- so he was a great coach. But Kenny Blackman was a coach in Cedar Rapids, and he was the athletic director and the basketball and the baseball coach. And-- he brought me up here, and I had no money, none whatsoever. I didn't have a dime. I had $25.00, and an old suitcase. And-- so my aunt gave me the twenty-five dollars. But, anyway-- he took me in his home. And-- I stayed with Kenny for a year or so and worked for him and-- otherwise, I couldn't-a' gone to college. And so-- he was my other coach. And we only had the two at the time and-- and-- Baseball made me some money during the summer. It was the Iowa State League and-- which was a tremendous league right after war. But I wasn't good enough to go on in the pro ball-- could have gone on but I'd-a' been down there ridin' buses and Class D baseball for the rest of my life. But-- So I wanted a degree, and I was gonna get one no matter what. If I had to quit 15 times, I was going to get a degree. Those people were concerned that I got one also. And Bob just retired. And Bob Otto just retired. Kenny Blackman-- is seventy-two or three-years-old now, and he still lives in Davenport. And he's-- he's a tremendous guy.
SB: [00:07:47] What kind of football team did you have, pretty tough?
JN: [00:07:50] Yeah. We won the-- we weren't so tough in the Iowa conference, but we were tough in the-- Dakota. We were in Dakota-Iowa Conference at the time. We played four games in Dakota Conference, and we played the other four games in the Iowa Conference and-- we didn't win many in the Iowa Conference at the time, but we won the Dakota Conference, I believe. Basketball, we were just so-so. We were--a pretty good ball team. Baseball was the thing. We were, without a doubt, the best college base-- small college baseball team in the country, at the time. We had guys that were so good, you couldn't believe it. And-- it was just tremendous and-- Of course, base-- baseball's always been a big sport at Buena Vista. They've always been a winner. So-- that's kinda interesting.
SB: [00:08:37] Did any of those players go on to any notoriety?
JN: [00:08:40] Oh, yes. Yeah. There were-- Jim Fanning, who-- as you know, is vice president of the Montreal Expos. And-- vice president. He's-- a 1949 graduate. I graduated in '50; he graduated in '49. We had other kids-- Larry Bittner, from here, and now-- But he wouldn't play with us [because he was a lot younger] but we had-- two or three others go into pro ball and-- but they didn't make it their career-- so. They all-- had degrees and-- and have done well. You sometimes wonder back at all those people that got the degrees and-- you thought, Boy, I don't think this person is going to make-- or that person-- they probably thought the same thing of me, too, but, you know, about 99% turned out pretty good.
SB: [00:09:26] [laughs].
JN: [00:09:26] Kinda interesting.
SB: [00:09:27] What was your favorite sport?
JN: [00:09:29] Well, basketball was really my-- best sport, I guess. I played football, and I captained the college team. And-- but basketball, I captained my college basketball team, too, here. And I was most valuable player. I played in '49 or '50 and all-conference and-- but I made my living playing baseball, you know, so to speak but-- I would say basketball and golf were my favorites, so--
SB: [00:09:56] How could you make money on baseball?
JN: [00:09:58] [laughs] Well, at that time, this must have been amateurism, but we made-- three and four hundred dollars a month, and that carried me through the year with a job for three months, you know. It was right after war, and some of these people got outta pro ball because there were so many in it. There were so many leagues and-- and so much-- very little money. They might got-- they might have gotten eighty dollars a month or something, and they could sign on to one of these semi-pro teams for three, four hundred dollars a month. It was expense money supposedly, ya see, and-- we'd play-- 50, 60 games in the summer, and-- we'd have two or three thousand people out here at Memorial Field, and be on Sunday nights, and then couple, two or three nights during the week. Go to Schaller and play, go to Estherville-- out into Nebraska and-- Sioux City and-- it was really kind of-- was equal to what they would classify Triple A baseball. And it was really interesting. It was a lot of fun and-- I was just a young kid out of Cedar Rapids and-- guys used to call me the Easterner(?) [both laugh] because I was from 200-some miles away. But anyway-- we brought a lot of people in from Notre Dame, Indiana, and the league really filled up with-- with college kids, is about what it was. And the old timers, who could really play well but didn't have a place in pro ball, ya see, and didn't want that place, because that's a pretty tough family life and everything. So, it was really interesting.
SB: [00:11:33] Do you think that training has changed any when you were playing football or baseball?
JN: [00:11:39] Yes, it's better. It's better coaching and the techniques are better, the conditions are better. Medical science has been better, and, as you know, I teach the training conditioning and-- and-- I just marvel at the things that we do today. The speed of the people are-- are-- is just phenomenal. A large person, let's say a kid 6-5 or 6-6-- could run as fast as we did in those days. I supposedly ran 10:1 which, and on a guard, that was really quick in those days but-- That is not-- very quick today. [laughs] That's-- In a hundred meters, it is, but it's-- but in a hundred yard dash, it's not very quick. So, there's a lot better coaching, better techniques, just like the rest of the world. Communications, you know, is better. You know, the kids-- although I will say this: I don't think there's any more intensity. More training, but I think the people of my era-- Their training was very intense also. They were strong, strong people. They've been throwing bales, you know, and-- I worked in a steel mill in Cedar Rapids, lifted steel and was a pretty strong kid, you know, and-- We have too much automation today for that. So now we've gone to lifting the weights. That's all that's doing is replacing the kid throwin' the bales and lifting-- [laughs] you know we really got it finalized now. You build-- so many muscles you'll-- make you stronger, make you have more endurance-- fitness type of thing which is great. I'm for it, 200 percent, but it's-- quite a bit different. [both laugh]
SB: [00:13:27] What was student life like? What did you do for fun around here?
JN: [00:13:29] Not much. [both laugh] We- Oh, we found our fun. You know, like everybody else does of every era. I would say that we-- worked at night, 'course, a lot of us. But-- we just kind of hung around together and just had-- I guess you'd call it dumb fun today, you know? And-- things we thought were really, really big deal, a lot of fun you know-- They aren't so big now, you know. We'd-- We'd go to the gym, mess around and-- we went to a lot of movies. You know we'd go for a quarter, a dime, or whatever it was. And-- but we were used to it. I was brought up in the Depression, you know, right the end of the Depression, and so we were used to that type of thing. But if I were to ask you today, could you live through the Depression, your answer probably would be, I don't know, I've never had to. And, so, consequently that's why I asked my daughters, you know, could you live in the Depression? Well, the Depression wasn't all bad for us. I mean it was bad for some people. But-- that set our type of activity around college, let's face it. We didn't have much money. A ham sandwich was 10 cents, you know. And-- that was a big deal. So-- [laughs] I guess it hasn't died out. But the old popcorn and the pop's still the same, the movie's still the same, no television and what the - What came in in fifty or fifty one. So, it's been around a long time.
SB: [00:14:58] Where were all those football players housed?
JN: [00:15:02] [short laugh] You name it. [laughs again] There was--a [laughs] dorm above the old-- Oh-- the old gym down here, Edson Hall. And-- lot of 'em stayed up there. And that was-- the biggest fire trap in the world. And-- you didn't know who was stayin' there and who was comin', who was goin'. It was a Chinese fire drill, that's all it was [laughs], but-- I stayed in the home-- with Mrs. Willadsen's husband, Bobby Willadsen. And-- we stayed over here with his aunt over here on College [Street] and they [football players] were spread out all over. We didn't have too many commuters, but we had a lot of local kids going to school. And I say local: Alta, Storm Lake-- Aurelia and so forth, all through the area. So it was really like a community college-- at that time. But-- you know, then we started to branch out. And then when I started coaching later on-- When I coached football here-- in '63-- I got a bunch of kids from New York and other places. And-- that proved kinda interesting. They wondered where all the street lights were at--
SB: [00:16:18] [laughs].
JN: [00:16:21] And-- And-- [laughs] They understood the farm kid, and the farm kid understood them. It became quite a deal.
SB: [00:16:24] You were kind of a rarity when you came to school here from Cedar Rapids.
[00:16:27] Yeah, I was. I was the Easterner [laughs], as they used to say. In football, they'd say, "Here comes Easterner," so, ya know [both laugh] and there weren't many kids from my area, ya know. I told my mother and dad I was going to Buena Vista College. They said, "My Lord, where is that?" And I said, "Well, I don't know. They just told me, 'Get on the train.'" And so I got on the train and-- at night and I got off up here and-- Kenny Blackman met me and says, "I found you a room down here and so-- you start to school. And-- I said, "Okay." And-- I didn't care too much about school, when I started, you know. But I found out that, you know, I just wanted to play ball. All right, I would play day, night, everything else. And I'm one of the few that played three sports and-- I didn't care what happened, long as I could be a coach and-- and-- get a degree, you know. And then I found out a little later on what my first two years' transcript looked like. Oh, brother, you wouldn't want to see them. But then, after I finally wised up and found out that I-- I wasn't city smart anymore-- I wasn't streetwise-- [laughs] And so I became-- I became a fairly decent student then, but up to that time there wasn't much help, I'll tell you that. So, it was-- but it was interesting. It was really great-- I guess I'm kind of glad I lived in that era. And I vowed I'd never go back to my kids in college here or anything else and say, "Well, the old days I'll tell you one thing this is what happened." No, no I don't think that's right. I don't think that's right. Gotta go forward. We gotta go forward. Can't go backwards.
SB: [00:18:12] Do you think that students have changed any since those days?
JN: [00:18:18] Yeah, to some respect. They're better students than we were. But, again, now, we didn't put as much time in on it, either, you know? I mean, we were working nights. I worked till-- one and two in the morning and-- played three sports and went to college. So, I say that takes quite a bit away. I don't see how a kid can work today and go through college and compete and get their grades. That's the one sad thing I think there is about it, you know? And-- College isn't free anymore, you know, and it's not free. It's expensive, it costs money. That's-- bothers me a great deal. If somebody is hungry for an education, my God, I just wish-- I hope they can get it, you know. That-- I guess that'll always bother me. [mumbles].
JN: [00:19:09] But I-- I-- You know, I don't think the kids are different. I think they still got big hearts and-- you know, they're still great human beings. We're lucky. We get a tremendous amount of-- of good kids around here. But I call 'em balers, you know, good old people that are-- The kids say, "Yeah, I know, he's going to call me 'baler' before the year is over." [Brinkman laughs] And-- that's what they used to call me, Harry Hay Baler, you know. [both laugh] But-- that was never a part of my life. I didn't even know what a cow was but [both laugh] so-- But the idea is-- is that they-- It-- It's great. Our country is great. We're having a problem with our transition-- with our communications like it is today, and our carryover, and our movement to-- to-- Let's say the non-automation to automation and people are saying, "Oh, all these businesses and everything are closed up." Gotta find new ones, different ones, you know, go to do things different. And-- that's the future.
JN: [00:20:15] And-- I-- I learned that through college. I learned that things even changed my freshman year to my senior year, and I made all these-- adjustments and-- I guess I'm philosophying [sic] now, but the point is-- But the question that you asked me is very difficult, you know, yes, we're on the right track. I spent 13 months as a bazooka gunner in-- in Korea and a flamethrower operator and-- let me tell you something. Somebody wants to go to those other countries, they're welcome to it. I don't. I'll live right here. Finish my life right here.
SB: [00:20:54] Thank you very much, John.
JN: [00:20:54] You're welcome.
Original Format
audio cassette
Duration
0:20:57
Bit Rate/Frequency
80 kbps