Sweet MUMories Oral History Project - Timothy C. Carberry
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Sweet MUMories Oral History Project –
Transcript: Timothy C. Carberry, June 29, 2016 –Donation record #____________
0.00 MRR My name is Marsha Robinson and we are recording an oral history with Timothy C. Carberry as part of the Sweet MUMories Oral History Project to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the Miami University Middletown, Ohio, campus. This interview is taking place on June 29, 2016, at the Miami University Middletown campus. Mr. Carberry, do I have your consent to proceed with this interview?
0.29 TCC Yes, you do.
0.30 MRR Thank you. What is your name and what is your relationship to Miami University?
0.36 TCC My name is Timothy C. Carberry and I was a student here from September 22, 1970, to June 9, 1974, when I graduated from Miami in Oxford. I obtained my elementary education degree here because there was a four-year program.
0.59 MRR Thank you very much. So, can you tell us what it was like to be able to get a four-year degree from the Middletown campus?
1.07 TCC To get a degree, a four-year degree, from this campus meant everything. I’m the kind that was a homebody. I could live at home, leave, come to college, go home, study and still earn a degree which a lot of my friends here at Miami those four years did the same thing. We loved Miami for what they did for us.
1.34 MRR Are you a graduate of Middletown High School?
1.36 TCC I am not a graduate of Middletown High School. I graduated from Springboro High School in 1970.
1.45 MRR One of the visions for creating the Middletown campus was to provide that option for those who could not afford the dormitory cost. Could you explain more what that meant to you, your peers? You started to tell the story of that but what does it mean to your family that you have this option?
2.05 TCC I was the person in my family to go to college and so having this opportunity to come to Miami Middletown meant the world to my family, too, because they knew since I was three years old that I wanted to be a teacher. And that way I could earn my degree, come to a nearby campus and still obtain my goal. And I did obtain my goal and that made my parents very proud. And it made me very happy because I could get that degree.
2.45 MRR Let’s talk about the four years that you were here. Were you a reader of the KAOS newspaper?
2.52 TCC No, I was not a leader [sic] of the KAOS newspaper but I worked at the Gardner-Harvey Library. That’s where I just loved it because I met so many people. In the library you had a lot of people that came in to get books, to get periodicals. And, like on Tuesday nights, it was my job to take care of the periodical section downstairs where there are now computers. They would fill out a card and you’d go back in the stacks and get the magazines for the people. It was wonderful. So I met so many wonderful people.
3.34 MRR How many years did you work at the library?
3.36 TCC Okay. The first year, my sophomore year, I worked the whole year. As it got into the junior and senior year, part of the year I was doing my student teaching in my junior year. And senior year I became a substitute teacher because I had enough hours. So, it was really altogether, it was over a three-year period but not the whole year.
3.59 MRR The library was fairly new, then, while you were working here. Can you tell me what it was like to start up the library and create its space on campus among the student body?
4.08 TCC Okay. The library was like, I would say it was, the focal point for a lot of people because you took your classes of course. But then you needed research. You needed books to read. Different things that you could do. And this is where, this is the place, actually the library became the place where you met people and it was a focal point. It was also a focal point if you needed quiet, it was quiet. And Virginia Brown, one of the first librarians, the Head Librarian, made sure that it was very quiet.
4.52 MRR Tell us more about Ms. Brown.
454 TCC Oh, Virginia Brown was a very stately woman, a very classy woman, but had a sense of humor. She was very sweet and she loved her workers. And we loved Virginia.
5.10 MRR So, it was almost like a family?
5.14 TCC It was a family, I mean. When you had Mrs. Essig and Mrs. Noble and Mrs. Gerber, Mrs., I think Bose was her name, Miss Bose, there were just so many people that were just like a family. Marilyn Loeb was there as the Reference Librarian. Wonderful, wonderful people. It was a wonderful time. It was a wonderful job and I was also making money to pay for my college.
5.41 MRR You went on to get a degree in education. What prompted you? You said you wanted to be a teacher from the age of three. How did the teachers and the faculty and staff here help you toward that?
5.53 TCC The faculty and staff were so good to me. But it was kind of different because remember, I was a male. Back then, you didn’t have many males that wanted to be an elementary teacher. In fact, I only know about two or three of us that ended up actually graduating with a degree of an Elementary Education, in Elementary Education. They supported you. They made sure that you were ready. The methods courses that were given here were very good and they helped me when I did my student teaching.
6.38 MRR It sounds as if you had the same pressures as the first men in the nursing program.
6.41 TCC Oh, yes.
6.43 MRR Could you explain that?
6.45 TCC The pressures were that men were supposed to be more of the upper elementary, like maybe the fourth or fifth or the sixth grades. And we that chose to do the lower grades sometimes were looked on as maybe not as masculine, maybe? But we had that love and we had that care for those little children. And that’s why I ended up loving elementary and teach twenty-two years of third grade.
7.17 MRR What school district did you work in?
7.21 TCC I worked in Carlisle Local Schools and I also did teach four years of fifth grade but that was in between the third, the different times of third grade. But I loved third graders.
7.67 MRR So, you went into education, Early Education. We were talking about some of your teachers. Is there any teacher that you would like to discuss?
7.45 TCC Well, there was James Lehman who was the World History teacher and like the American History teacher. He was fantastic. He had a way of discussion and he just got everyone into the discussion. He was just so much fun. He demanded that you, you know, that you really study like anyone else did but he made it fun. And, you just couldn’t wait to go to his class because you never knew what you were going to be discussing, the lesson of course but it would go off to other things. It broadened a lot of people’s minds, the way that we could express ourselves, express ourselves with dignity and not judge.
8.36 MRR That sounds like it is part of the original vision that the community of Middletown had for the campus, to be a cultural institution as well as a technical institution. Did you sense that vision in your time here?
8.53 TCC Yes. I feel like a lot of these people that I went to college with, I found out that a lot of them were also first-time in their family to go away, to go to college and get a degree, and that we were very, very happy that Armco did do everything they could to start a regional campus here in Middletown. And without Armco, too, we knew that we could not fulfill the dream that we were trying to pursue.
9.27 MRR What was your family connection to Armco?
9.29 TCC My father worked at Armco from 1942 until 1977 when he retired. He had worked at a place called the Polar Bear or the P. Lorillard plug tobacco place before that. And then during the war he came to Armco.
9.53 MRR What did he do at Armco? Do you know?
9.55 TCC He, believe it or not, he filled kegs with nuts and bolts and then shipped them off to all over the United States. He was in fabricating.
10.08 MRR So, he was among the employees?
10.10 TCC Yes. He was not in the office. He was out in the mill.
10.17 MRR Can you talk about the employee culture at Armco in Middletown? Was there family gatherings, annual picnics, anything like that?
10.24 TCC Oh, yes. That’s why the great Armco Park was made because of all the different picnics, family reunions. In fact, our church would have a picnic there every summer after Vacation Bible School. And we’d all get on the train because there was a train and it went on a track and it went through this wonderful, um, what would I call it? I can’t remember…It was a bridge-like area that was covered over. And that was, your job was to scream. It was just something for the kids to do. They also had a carousel, a beautiful carousel. They had a ferris wheel. So there was always something for the kids to work, do, play, have fun. This Armco Park was started by Armco, of course. They just thought of everything in the community. They thought of the children. They thought of the men that worked for them. They did everything for them. So, Armco was the backbone.
11.40 MRR So, when the decision was made to put a campus in Bunny Hollow, how did the families of Armco receive that news? Do you remember?
11.52 TCC Would you please repeat that?
11.58 MRR When it was announced that Armco was donating land to create the campus, do you recall that time? Was anything said about how the community was receiving the news that a campus was coming?
12.12 TCC Okay. When they first started the campus and the idea that the campus was coming, it was received with much appreciation, because like I said, many people maybe didn’t have the money to send them to Oxford, Miami Oxford. So the local campus was the one that was going to actually give us the chance to have an education. So yes, the community was very happy. Not just Middletown. I grew up out near Red Lion, Ohio, and Warren County was very excited, too. Preble County, even part of Montgomery County was very happy because they were going to have something near their homes.
13.03 MRR I’d like to go back to a thought you had started about being one of the two or three men in Early Childhood Education. We’re talking about, you said, 1970 to 1974. It’s the time of Watergate. It’s the time of feminism, gasoline rationing, winding up the Vietnam War. What were, what was it like to be on campus in that time?
13.34 TCC Speaking for myself about the time that I was here from 1970 to 1974, it’s kind of like this. We were seeing a lot of the Vietnam fighters. The men that went to war were coming back. But they really didn’t say that much. It was a memory that they didn’t want to talk about. Vietnam War was something you saw on the television and you had your own thoughts and your own feelings. Because the draft was open and it wasn’t always the most fair way they fought. So, a lot of people wouldn’t talk about it that much. So really, I didn’t hear that much about Vietnam except on television. It was kind of a hush-hush thing. Watergate? That was more the talk because of what was going on. And I have to say with Elementary Education majors, it wasn’t as much. We were more talking about school and what we wanted to do. Political Science majors were more the ones who were more vocal and that’s where it was vocal in the KAOS, in the newspaper.
14.56 MRR What were some of the changes in education styles that you were seeing because that was the beginning of the era of forced busing. There was still integration of schools. Were there any changes in curriculum? I think we were switching from the Dick and Jane book series into new textbooks. Can you talk about some of the changes that were going on in your education curricula?
15.22 TCC What I remember, one of the big changes I remember, was that when I was in school, it was separation of like history and geography and you had specific subjects. By the time that I was getting into college, it was called Social Studies and so they were melting geography and history together. And that was quite a bit different because all of a sudden here you are with one subject instead of two. Also, we got rooted into the modern math and that was a little bit different. I remember Catherine Mulligan who taught elementary math, she brought as much she could to us about how to show math and how it was changing. Different things like that. Like you said about the reading, Dick and Jane was kind of on its way out. By the time I started teaching it was a thing called Open Court which was more phonics and it wasn’t sight so much. It was actually blending the sounds together and that was what was happening in reading. There was a time of change.
16.35 MRR My next question. How is that you stayed connected to Middletown MUM over the years after graduation?
16.45 TCC I have stayed connected with MUM because I also took some graduate courses here. And after that, I still lived in the area. I live in Middletown now. And, I just love the campus. I was so proud of where I went to college that I wanted to be part of it and come back and do what I could. And I’ve done different things. We had a, I think it was called a “Trunk and Treat” or something like that back in 2010 and I helped out with that. It was, of course, Halloween time and they had like six different spots or areas where they had a kind of activity for the children. So, I helped out with that. Anything I could do for MUM. I even willed them some money when I leave this world.
17.46 MRR Thank you. You are still talking about that sense of family. From the time of the park, then it is into the campus, and now it is back to Trunk or Treat. It is still family. How does Miami Middletown maintain that sense of family?
18.02 TCC Well, I think Miami in Middletown had kept family orientation, like that or however you want to say that, because one generation now has gone to Miami in Middletown and of course the next generation hears about this and so they want to come here. And it keeps on and on. My brother finally graduated. He was about thirteen years older than I am but he finally graduated from Miami. I’ve had at least two nieces graduate. One was a nurse. One was a teacher. They also worked at Gardner-Harvey because of Uncle Tim so [segment/tap 2] [0.00] it’s been a family affair, just passing it down from generation to generation.
0.08 MRR That’s beautiful. Which professors left the strongest impression on you?
0.16 TCC Well, I had a lot of great, great professors. One passed away earlier this year – Harvard McLean. He meant the world to me. He was the Social Studies, I think, and Science. Someone had to leave and he took over that. He was my methods teacher. And then, when I got my master’s from Miami, he was on the oral board. He was the one I wanted to make sure he was the head of my oral board. And so I really, really think the world of Harvard McLean and I miss him. I miss him very much. Others were like Phillip Hines who was English. Don Ferris was Physical Science. Catherine Mulligan was Math. So many. I could just go on and on and on.
1.16 MRR So, you are saying that the faculty here had men and women from an early time.
1.24 TCC Yes, there were faculty members that I had that were women. The majority of them were probably men but, yes, I had some lady instructors or professors. Wonderful, wonderful people.
1.39 MRR Can you talk to me about being a first-generation student and any of your friends? How did the campus make you feel welcome? Were there any, did the campus do anything to help with being that first-generation student.
2.01 TCC Being a first-generation student, I was just in such awe. I was just glad to be here. But I remember, like I said, Dr. Don Ferris who was Physical Science. He had a special way with the students and it just made you feel like you are welcome. Every one of those people made you feel welcome. Now remember, this was the fifth year that Miami Middletown was open. So, it was fairly new. And so you just had people that wanted to help the students and you just felt welcome.
2.39 MRR From the beginning it was student-focused.
2.42 TCC Yes, from the very beginning it was student-focused. You would come to class and you couldn’t wait to get there because they were going to be there and the lectures were wonderful. Everything was just a glorious time for me. I really enjoyed it. And Lorna Becker. I forgot about Lorna Becker and her Zoology Lab where we did all kinds of different things. It was just a wonderful time.
3.11 MRR Did you attend any of the sporting events?
3.13 TCC Okay. At that time, I don’t know, I don’t even remember the gymnasium being built because I graduated in ’74 and I think it was farther down the line. But I am very proud of one of my former students named Heather Imfeld became a very good athlete here on this campus.
3.38 MRR Your students have entered here? Talk about that.
3.41 TCC Oh, yes. My students have. I am so proud of them because a lot of them went to Miami Middletown and now they are teaching in Carlisle where I was a teacher and I was their teacher. So, it is always a joy to find out that another student has graduated from Miami University.
4.03 MRR Was there any support from the community to make all of this possible?
4.07 TCC The community did support this. I mean I don’t know how many people gave out of their pockets or even maybe out of their check that was part of donation to this campus and made it possible for people like myself to become educated and to become a teacher and now a retired teacher.
4.39 MRR What did Miami teach you that kept you in your career for so many years?
4.51 TCC Miami taught you one thing if nothing else. Students come first. And that was what it was. When I taught my class, it was me giving me to them. In other words, I wasn’t just a teacher. I felt like I was their friend. I was their dad and mom. I was that man those parents entrusted me with their children. So, that was. Miami taught you to be a family and that was the way that I felt. My children knew that they were “Carberry Kids.” And that’s the way I always felt about my teaching. The children came first. Without them, I’d have no class.
5.40 MRR Is there any particular moment during your four years here when you picked up that ethos?
5.48 TCC I don’t know if it was a certain time that I felt like the family, that this was a family. I think that almost from the very beginning, I entered these halls and it was always family oriented. It was. It was just my goal. My goal was to do what I wanted to do: to be a teacher.
6.19 MRR Were you paying attention to the recent transition of the regional campuses to a separate college and did you hear anything in the media? Did you have any concerns? How do you feel about some of the press over the last couple of years?
6.37 TCC I can remember that about a year or two ago there was a meeting here on the campus about how and what they were going to do in the future with this campus. And I remember that, here I am. I’ve already graduated. I’ve already had my career. But it was still important for me to listen to what was going to happen to the young people because they were concerned. They were nervous. I watched them. They didn’t know what was going to happen. So, they came together. I don’t know that much about in the paper but I know that here on this campus that it was a big concern because just like if that had happened when I was a student, I don’t know what I would have done because I wanted to go all my four years here on Miami Middletown.
7.32 MRR Do you sense that nervousness still?
7.35 TCC I have not seen that much out of the students recently. And I haven’t heard the, how shall I say, the upheaval or anything like that. It seems like it has calmed down. I think they know where they are trying to go and what they are trying to do. So, I think I have not seen as much. But two years ago, they were very concerned.
8.01 MRR With the news that there are more four-year degrees and some new master’s degree available uniquely at the regional campuses, how do you see that fitting into the continuing atmosphere of opportunity that you sensed?
8.17 TCC I feel that with these new four-year degrees, I see a lot of people that are excited. Because I can’t remember exactly who it was, someone had just gotten their four-year degree, and it was an accomplishment for that person and they did not have to go to another campus and they could spend their time here. I think it was like how I felt. When I was here and I knew I could get all four years, you don’t have that worry or that sensation of, “Am I going to be uprooted and put somewhere else.” I’m glad that there’s master’s programs and like the BA/BS, different kinds of degrees that this campus can afford because we are a good campus. Middletown can afford to do that for the people that love them so much.
9.20 MRR What advice would you have for the students who are here now, whether those who are nervous, those who are returning from wars. Some of the same opportunities and challenges that you experienced these students are experiencing. Can you give some advice on how they should approach their time here?
9.46 TCC Any student, any student that comes to Miami in Middletown, one thing that I have to say, when you are having a class and you feel that you do not understand something in that class, make sure that you talk to the instructor, the professor, whatever, because most of them, I would say all of them, will take the time to talk to you. If you are concerned, that concerned, they will find the time. I was always, I don’t know how to say this, I was just always so fortunate to have people that would talk to me, go over things with me, and treat you with the dignity that you know you want to be treated. And, I never was disappointed. And I just feel like the students coming back from any kind of war or coming to college, the one thing is to make sure you listen, of course, but just give that professor a chance to show what they really can do as a teacher. And then, if you don’t understand, go to them. If you don’t ever go, they never know. Mark this for UNV 101 and SOAR
11.02 MRR So, let’s say the students do graduate. What is the benefit of this campus to the several counties that you’ve mentioned? How does this campus fit into the multi-county region?
11.19 TCC Speaking from a elementary teacher or a teacher, there’s so many people that are now working in the Preble County, Montgomery County, Butler County, and Warren County, just different school districts. You’d be surprised how many teachers either graduated from Miami Middletown or went over to Oxford and graduated from Oxford. It has supplied many, many teachers. Because I know that I taught in Carlisle, some of my best friends from Miami in Middletown I taught with. So they’ve done that. I know they’ve also, um doctors, nurses, oh plenty of nurses at Miami are now at Atrium, different hospitals. So I know that the impact of the students from this campus have made a difference in at least four of these local counties.
12.22 MRR The careers that you mentioned are not the typical science, technology, math careers. Can you comment on the importance of the liberal arts to this area?
12.42 TCC I really don’t know too many people that have gone into what I would call the entertainment section of the different jobs, but I know that with Finkelman Auditorium and different kinds of plays and things like that, I know some students from the past have learned a lot about theater, about costumes, about things like that. I really don’t know how many people have taken advantage of that. I know that we get here at Miami, I feel like you become a well-rounded person if you find the right place that you want to be.
13.39 MRR And do you have any memories of student organizations?
13.43 TCC Back in 1970-1974, there were not that many organizations. It was just kind of starting. I think the organizations really bloomed probably in the ‘80s and ‘90s. I don’t really remember a lot of organizations at that time.
14.03 MRR Okay. Is there anything else you would like people to know about when they read this transcript and look at this video?
14.09 TCC I would like them to know that Miami in Middletown will do anything they can to make a person succeed, to make their life rich, and to make it full. That’s the way I feel.
14.32 MRR Do I have your permission to discontinue the recording?
14.33 TCC Yes, you do.
Index
Armco
Armco Park
Bachelor’s degrees
Becker, Lorna
Bose, Mrs.
Brown, Virginia
Butler County
Carousel
Church
Diversity
Draft, military
Elementary education major
Essig, Mrs.
Family
Ferris wheel
Ferris, Don
First-generation
First-generation student
Four-year degrees
Gardner-Harvey Library
Gender
Gerber, Mrs.
Halloween
Hines, Phillip
Imfeld, Heather
KAOS
Lehman, James
Master’s degrees
McLean, Harvard
Montgomery County
Mulligan, Catherine
Noble, Mrs.
Oxford campus
P. Lorillard Company
Polar Bear Tobacco Company
Preble County
Train
Trunk or Treat
Vietnam War
Warren County
Zoology