Sweet MUMories Oral History Project - Lois Lafayette & Marsha Lafayette Miller
Title
Sweet MUMories Oral History Project - Lois Lafayette & Marsha Lafayette Miller
Description
Date
December 2, 2016
Duration
46:35 minutes
Transcription
Sweet MUMories Oral History Project
Transcript: Lois Lafayette & Marsha Lafayette Miller, interviewed December 2, 2016
Donation record #Lafayette.L.12022016.1
Transcribed by Erika Nisbet 08/03/2017.
Approved for deposit by Marsha Robinson 02/15/2018.
Copyright Miami University. All rights reserved.
0.0 MRR My name is Marsha Robinson and we are recording an oral history with Lois Lafayette and Marsha Miller as part of the Sweet MUMories Oral History Project. This project marks the fiftieth anniversary of the Miami University Middletown, Ohio, campus. This interview is taking place on December 2, 2016 at the Gardner-Harvey Library. Mrs. Lafayette and Mrs. Miller, do I have your consent to proceed with this interview?
0.31 LL Yes.
0.31 MM Yes.
0.31 MRR Thank you. Now, we are talking to the Lafayette family who’s been connected with the Middletown campus since it first started. Can we start with the news that a Middletown campus was going to open in 1966, how did your family respond to that opportunity?
0.51 LL Oh, I was overjoyed because I didn’t get to go to college and I thought how wonderful my children will get to go and so my son came. Now, I don’t know that he came the very first year.
1.09 MM He did.
1.10 LL Did he?
1.11 MM He graduated from high school in 1966.
1.15 LL And came right over? Honestly, I’m sorry. I wasn’t sure if that was the very first time but he was very happy here. And his major was art. And he graduated from Oxford campus then later and he worked all the time that he was going to school because, you know we really didn’t have a lot of money and he really almost supported himself while he was going. And he’s living in Florida now and he’s retired.
2.09 MRR And then a couple of years later, Marsha, you came and so tell us about your decision to come and maybe about your friends in high school and what they were saying about the local campus.
2.22 MM My decision was, you know we didn’t have very much money so it was great that it was close by. I could live at home and I could also work. So, that’s why it was great for me. Plus, you know the campus activities were, you know, a big thing I could do too. As far as the kids in school, I’m not really sure. I think some of them went other places, the ones that, you know, that I was involved with. So I was pretty much meeting new people when I came here.
3.06 MRR What was it like to meet so many new people?
3.09 MM Usually, it’s hard for me but I joined a sorority and that just helped everything.
3.17 MRR Tell us about the sorority.
3.18 MM Well, ours was called Sigma Epsilon Chi and it was, they were all friendly and nice and we had a good time and did some community work, too, went on trips and.
3.36 MRR Do you remember any of the community projects?
3.39 MM I know one was supporting a child in a different country. I don’t remember which country but that’s the one I remember.
3.54 MRR You always were involved in other student organizations like Future Secretaries. Could you tell us about Future Secretaries?
4.02 MM I believe it was Evelyn Day that actually had me, you know she started it with me. And I don’t know if it went past that first year that we started it or not but that was nice. That was another opportunity to meet people.
4.21 MRR Can you tell us more about Evelyn Day? What was she like?
4.23 MM She was very nice and very helpful.
4.29 MRR You also participated in Model United Nations. Tell us about Model UN.
4.35 MM Well, that was fun too, The Model UN was fun. We learned about different countries because we were assigned a country and then we had to learn about some aspect of it. We had to write a proposition. And then when we went to New York for the Model UN, it was, I guess, like a regular UN. People would make resolutions and you would vote on them. You would meet other people and try to get them to vote your view or, you know vice versa. So, that was a good experience also.
5.20 MRR Were trips like this important for students from Middletown and from MUM?
5.25 MM I think it was, yes. It was very important because you got to see the world a little more outside our little box of Middletown.
5.43 MRR Can you talk to us about the technology that was available to people in the Applied Science program?
5.50 MM Wow. Back then they had like the regular adding machines, the machines that duplicate things. I don’t even remember what they call those now.
6.05 MRR Mimeographs? Mimeographs.
6.06 MM Mimeograph. That’s it - the mimeograph. I do believe we had the electric typewriters but I’m not positive.
6. 14 MRR The keypunch cards?
6. 16 MM The keypunch, yeah for, I took some computer classes later and in those we had the keypunch cards.
6.29 MRR Could you describe what a keypunch card is?
6. 33 MM It’s just a little oblong card and it had little holes in it and those holes, depending on where they were punched, meant different words.
6. 48 MRR Did you have a job while you were a student?
6. 50 MM Yes. I always had a job.
6.54 MRR What did you do?
6.55 MM I, let’s see.
7.00 LL You had three.
7.00 MM Three? I had three jobs.
7.02 LL And four when you count the library.
7.04 MM Yeah.
7.06 LL Or maybe I didn’t count the library. You worked at Ford Motor.
7.08 MM I know. Actually, I worked at Howe Motors.
7.12 LL Oh yeah.
7.13 MM Yeah. Yeah. And then I was an aide here and I’m not sure, you said I had another one?
7.22 LL Yeah. You had another one. I can’t remember either.
7.26 MRR Can you tell us more about being a library aide?
7. 30 Being a library aide was really fun also. The thing I remember the most are the receptions that they would have. They would have maybe an artist’s collection of things or a writer’s, you know, reception and that was fun to work on and also to see what the artists or writers were doing.
7.56 MRR Who attended those receptions?
7.59 MM Students, teachers attended it. Some community people would come to that also.
8.08 MRR Ok.
8.09 MM Yup.
8.10 MRR And…
8.15 MM And I also remember the microfiche room which later became the computer room.
8.22 MMR What’s a microfiche?
8.24 MM Yeah, a microfiche was how they used to copy information. It was some kind of little machine with little tape or something on it and then to find it you’d have to look through a viewer to find what you want and crank to whatever you wanted to see. Yeah. [Her gestures suggest a microfilm reader.]
8.45 MMR Ok, for future scholars who may not see that technology.
8.50 MM Yeah.
8.51 MMR Thank you. Now, I’d like to move forward with the Lafayette story. Lois after your children graduated you started working here, or before they graduated?
9.06 LL No.
9.08 MRR When did you start your association as an employee here at Miami Middletown?
9.14 LL I was hired November of 1976. They had just celebrated their tenth anniversary and I knew the head of the campus, Dr. Bennett, and I knew the English teacher, Dr. Elizabeth Krukowski. And they both, well Elizabeth, told me that there was an opening in the office for a night person and I’ll just tell the truth. I took a test and I couldn’t type fast enough so I didn’t get it. I didn’t get the job. So they got someone. And of course we worked till ten o’clock at night. Well, there were not many young people that wanted to be a student worker or a faculty person that wanted to work that late. So that person quit and I took the job. I went over, I took the test and I passed. I got over here. And in those days we did not have computers so that was a new. And I can’t pinpoint the date that we got that but I loved it. You know, the computer you could back up and erase your mistake whereas, if you ever…before what you did-- that was it. You better do it right. And so that was a much easier job then. And I just enjoyed everybody and I just enjoyed the faculty so much. They were from all over. You know I was here thirty years. They were people, faculty members from India, from China. You know it was a world experience for me even though I was in little Middletown, Ohio. I became a student in 1980. I finally decided I wanted to try. You know, I was sixty years old so I was not a normal person taking classes. But I was treated fairly and I enjoyed all my instructors. My French teachers were Mark Plageman and I cannot think of the other. He was a young man and a handsome young man but I can’t think of his name. Maybe somebody will remember it for me. I took history. My major was English Literature. Well, you know, I couldn’t take a lot of classes all at once. It took me eight years. I was in my eighth year when my friend said, “Quit doing this. You’re too old to be doing this and you must have something that you can graduate with by now.” So we looked at my credits and I had enough to use history as my concentration so I got a associates degree in arts with a concentration in history in 1988.
13.14 MRR What was it like being in a classroom in your sixties with twenty-year-olds and eighteen-year-olds? How did the students treat you?
13.21 LL Well, I don’t know. I did not, to be with the young people was wonderful. I didn’t feel out of place. They might have thought I was out of place but, you know, I just felt it was a wonderful place to meet people and to learn together. And it’s just something that I wish every child would have a chance to come and see. Come and see what you’ll learn here. Many things, many things. Not just subjects you’re attending but with your friends and the many opportunities to learn. I too was in the…
14.11 MM Model UN.
14.12 LL Model UN. I went to New York. We had Ghana. Our country was Ghana. And it really was an experience. It was a true experience of how that would be if you were really there. We were in the UN. We were really in the UN building. And you had to go around. If you had the thing you wanted passed, you had to get people on to vote for what you wanted. So you were learning a lot of things. Plus, New York City.
14.51 MRR We heard stories about people taking a taxi for the first time. Do you have any stories about that from either of your trips? Like what was it like to be in the big city of New York for the first time? Did anything stand out about your teammates and looking at the buildings or anything like that?
15.09 LL Looking at the buildings. Well, the UN is a beautiful building. And of course the Metropolitan Opera, it’s a beautiful thing. So I would tell students, “Get into things like that and if it’s not that there’s other things.” We had a French Club. I was president of the French Club and we sold some, I forget what we sold, to get money to go to Quebec and we went. Mark Plageman was our teacher and our mentor in our club. And we went in the winter time. And first we went to Toronto, which was a first. All these are firsts for me. Going to Toronto and stayed overnight over there. And one of the students wouldn’t, we went out to eat and walked around downtown. One of the students wouldn’t come out with us. And I said “Why didn’t you come out?” She did, when we got to Montreal she did come out with us. But I said “Why didn’t you come out in Toronto?” She said, “All those people.” I said, “They’re not all outside at one time.” You know, so she blossomed, I’d say, on that trip. Oh, and when we got to Montreal, it was probably after midnight, I’m not sure, but it was late at night and all the lights went out in the town. Well, I don’t know about the whole town but they went out in the hotel that we were in and I had thought that some of those kids in the French Club had caused a, but it wasn’t. It was a transformer, they claimed, out in the plain somewhere that caused it. Oh, well, the day before we got there, there was a stri--, I’m trying to remember, it was some kind of a, this is showing you how old I am. I can’t remember what the word is to, but it was the Quebec people that they wanted, they were down in Montreal to give this demonstration that they wanted to just have French and move away from the Canada. And they didn’t want to be a part of whatever the government was at that time. And I also thought about that. I thought, maybe those people did it. Well when I found out it was the whole city, it wasn’t our people who caused it
0.27 MRR I’d like to talk about some of the other people that you worked with. You mentioned Leon Childs.
0.37 LL Oh, yeah.
0.37 MRR Tell us about Mr. Childs. Who was he?
0.39 LL Well, he was our police guard. He was a real policeman and was very nice, very nice man and I was working late one night and I didn’t know it but he fell. He fell between Johnston Hall and the library in the snow. It was snow and he had fallen and broken his leg. And I didn’t know that till the next day then they told me that he was in the hospital. I felt so bad that I was there. I might have been able to help him but I didn’t know it. I didn’t know.
1.22 MRR Can you tell us stories about the security team in any situation? What was it like to have, to know that there were security officers on campus when you’re working the night shift. What was that like?
1.37 LL That was nice. That was nice to know there was somebody there. Because, let’s see by that time I think I had started out down on the main floor of Johnston Hall and then I moved upstairs to the faculty office. And that, they closed that downstairs so I was really, and then the person at the switchboard went home at eight o’clock so I was actually the only non-faculty person in these three building. You know and things would happen, you know. You’d have to call, somebody’d get sick you’d have to call the ambulance for them and that as sometimes hard to do.
2.44 MRR I’d like to talk about some more faculty and staff. Did you want to talk about Carolyn Kiefer?
2.21 LL Oh, yes. She was a wonderful person, is a wonderful person. I’m sure she’s still here and she was instrumental in seeing to all the flowers around and I never got to take a class from her. My botany class was a man from Oxford and he was wonderful too. Yes, because we had, this campus had regular faculty. Then when I was taking care of the night regular faculty plus people who came over. I think I had about forty-seven or forty-eight faculty. People from Oxford campus, the Hamilton campus, the business world, other university faculty people came in as faculty and that was interesting to know all those people.
4.03 MRR Did you want to tell us about David Gelwick?
4.07 LL He was the history teacher. We had three history teachers, David Gelwick, Joe Baxter and Jim Lehman. And I am saying this, and I don’t know if I should, but David was right, right what we would call “on the right.” Joe was a middle person and Jim was more to the left and there was a philosophy teacher, no it wasn’t philosophy. It was political science and I can’t think of his name.
4.55 MM Fenning?
4.55 LL Fenning, Marsha.
4.57 MM Ray? Was it Ray?
4.58 LL Ray Fenning.
4.58 MRR Ray Fenning.
4.58 MM Yeah.
4.58 LL Wonderful man. He’d been in the Army I believe. He was…
5.05 MM Could be.
5.05 LL Big person and he was sort of a moderation sort of for all those other three. Somehow, I always had them together as thinking about what they seem to be.
5.25 MRR So we’ve got stories about the three of them arguing. Do you have any stories about them arguing?
5.28 LL Yeah, and Ray is sort of a moderator. Oh, yeah I can tell you about David Gelwick. He stomped up to the, that was when I was in the office on the main floor, he stomped up to me and said, “Well, I just sent a message to the President.” “Oh, yeah?” That was when Carter was president and there were hostages. And he said, “I told him to get an Army in there and get them out of there.” It didn’t work, well maybe it did work. They did try, you know they did try to do it. And it was a riot. It really was. And Joe, I don’t know if you want this either, Gary, what was the guy that was running for president?
6.27 MRR Gary Hart?
6.27 LL Gary Hart? Yeah, well Joe liked him. Oh, he was so angry about all of the scandal, you know and he came up to me and he didn’t think that Gary Hart should have quit. I said, “Not quit?” You know, “He, we wouldn’t want him as a president.” He said, “Why?” And I said, “Because he urged those journalists to find out if he was a womanizer and they did.” And I say anybody that that’s dumb shouldn’t be president. So, I don’t know how that fits in but that was Joe. That was the only argument we ever had. We were always friendly and even after that, too. Oh, another thing about Joe. Oh, they had a system about the classes and it was a complicated thing that, I can’t remember his name, he invented it and Joe stomps in and there were orange card and he says, “Now who would want an orange card?” I mean, to me these are funny things. I don’t know if it’s funny…
8.02 MRR Was it registration cards? Were those the registration cards that you’re referring to?
8.06 LL Well, it was the classes, the timing. I believe they were for the time. And each class had a different color but he definitely did not want orange cards.
8.21 MRR Ok. Can you tell us some more stories about Clare Easton?
8.25 LL Now, there’s the heroine of this campus. She initiated the Artist and Lecture Series and she had some opposition because she wanted the best. And she would go to New York and see the demonstrations that they give for people to pick to come to their whatevers. And she got the best she could and they were very expensive and some of them she had to enlist other colleges to take them too, you know, to split the cost. And the opposition wanted to have, the kids, the rock and roll people. She said they go to that, the children go, if they see, if they want to see things like that there’s place they got the money to go to. You know, students were free to these things. We had the man who invented the Geodesic dome. We had, oh I never thought about this looking this up, all the people we had were the top, they were the tops. One of the bands that she had was not too well known at the time and I remember they went to be the top in their field. It was a band. James Taylor was here. I just can’t think of all of them. And I don’t think they had as good as programs then, now of course I’m prejudiced, because after she left it wasn’t the same.
10.37 MRR Can you tell us stories about Dr. Bob Seufert?
10.41 LL Oh, he was a wonderful man too, he is a wonderful man. He has brought thousands of programs, you know as sponsors of research he was doing. And everybody that took his class, it is something everybody should take. And that’s another thing. You have your major but there are certain things you should also try to squeeze in somehow so that you are a well-rounded person when you go wherever you go from here. And it’s important that you know that there are other things besides your major.
11.37 MRR Tell us about Lee Horvitz.
11.49 LL He died last year and he was a very good person. And they all seemed to like his work. And he and I became very good friends. We were both interested in art and when he moved away he was, went to New Orleans, he was writing a book. And when he came back to Cincinnati, he’d always come and see me. And we’d go to, one time we went up to Dayton. There was an exhibit I wanted him to see. We got there and it was, they had changed it. I wasn’t paying attention. They were closed on that day so and he had brought a friend with him and I said, “Well” Marsha, the nature center there?
12.36 MRR Cox?
12.36 LL Cox Arboretum. Took him to Cox Arboretum. Do you know it? How beautiful that is? And it was a good time. Oh, they loved that. So we got to do that together. And I visited with him and his friends in Cincinnati. And he was very intelligent. And in fact on my email, as I told you I really didn’t like it. No it wasn’t that. It was my cell phone. He called and he said he just read something so interesting and he said, “I knew I wanted to talk it over with you so call me as soon as you can.” and I’m keeping that. It’s on my telephone so it’s on the telephone at home. I don’t know if they let you keep things like that.
13.34 MRR You also wanted to talk about Harold Nadel.
13.39 LL Oh, now Harold taught English. He was what you would say was a teacher because he brought so much to a class. I mean, he knew so much. I can’t, I, Did I, yeah Marian Cheatham [Pyles] was a teacher too, English teacher also and she was good too. But Harold was a scholar and there’s a difference. I don’t know what the difference is except that a scholar knows more, I think they know more of course because a scholar is investigating certain things whereas maybe a teacher is, I shouldn’t downgrade a teacher. I don’t want to but I just mean there’s a difference and you get to know some. I did not get to be a student of his but I sat in on a couple of the classes and I knew how wonderful he was.
14.49 MRR Some people talk about their surprise of the quality of instruction at the Regional campuses.
14.57 LL Really?
14.57 MRR And that the quality of instructors is just as good as in Oxford. Would you like to continue talking about that teacher/scholar idea that you observed?
15.03 LL Well, I’m not putting down the English teachers because, you know they’re all wonderful, every one of these teachers. I can’t think of anybody that I would call a bad teacher. I wasn’t in everybody’s class. I didn’t take a class from every faculty person. But I knew them and I knew what they talked about and they talked to me about their classes. I mean, this is candy land for me to be there, you know. And they all had degrees. They weren’t all PhDs. That’s another thing. Maybe that’s what they’re referring to but you don’t have to have a PhD to be a good teacher. In fact, it might be a hindrance.
16.09 MRR What I’d like to do is refer to the vision that the founding committee had for the Middletown campus: that the campus would provide opportunity for people from Middletown; that the campus would continue to return to the community a higher-quality of life perhaps. Can you say if that vision of the Middletown campus was accomplished and how have you seen that accomplished?
16.40 MM I think it was accomplished for me. I would have never been able to go to college or have as many experiences that I did and my life would have been so much different and not as nice, you know, had this not been here.
16.02 LL Well, I guess that would be a very good research project to see what people think about that. The ones that went here and the ones that didn’t go. You know, sometimes in that era in this town I know for a fact that some groups didn’t want to come here and thought the ones that did come here, you know were sissies or something. It really discouraged them from coming here. That really was going on but they came anyway because it is very hard for people to, I think it’s probably easier now than it was but maybe I’m not right on that. But they’re coming, a lot of them are coming [tape/segment 3] 0.00 right from high school where they’ve known everybody, you know probably two or three grades down and up for years. And then they come here and they don’t know anyone and it is kind of scary I think to be there. It wasn’t scary for me because I worked here, my kids have gone here, wasn’t scary for me to go into classes. Except, because of my age, it was a little daunting you know. Because I always thought the kids knew more than I did, you know but they were good to me. All those classes that I had I was friends with children, students that were in there.
0.47 MRR What advice would you give to a frightened student?
0.52 LL I believe that they should get into activities as their times permits. I think if they haven’t already done it in their lives they have to have a schedule to stay to, to have it so that they can keep, they got to study but they have to also go out and meet other people. That’s the part of education: learning how to get with people who are not like you at all and how to reach out to other people and think, and think, and think and have time to think. I think it’s a helpful thing for them to know this that you have to have a schedule to hold onto because otherwise you’re just spending your time in pursuits of things that are not going to benefit what you’re doing, you know.
1.55 MM To add to the theme, my brother went here, I went here, my mother went here, her granddaughter also went here. Missy took nursing classes.
2.06 LL Oh, yeah, yeah.
2.07 MM And…
2.09 LL I have a great granddaughter that’s going to start.
2.13 MM Right.
2.14 MRR So it really is a family experience?
2.17 MM Right. It Is. It is, yeah.
2.20 MRR Is there something from the early days of the campus’s culture that you hope continues for the next fifty years?
2.33 LL Well, I don’t know if they still have their newspaper. That was, they don’t have a newspaper?
2.39 MRR KAOS no longer is published.
2.41 MM They used to have a radio station also.
2.43 MRR We don’t have a radio station anymore. Tell us about those.
2.48 LL That was another organization for students to join and learn how to do these things that they wouldn’t have a chance to normally. I don’t know. I shouldn’t say because I’ve been gone almost ten years so there can be a lot of changes I don’t know about.
3.14 MRR What was good about KAOS?
3.17 LL Oh, we did have a big thing. They wanted to get rid of the title.
3.24 MRR Tell us about that.
3.25 LL Because they, there was a group and it was backed by one of the teachers and it was an English teacher to get rid of that name, you know with a “k.” And I thought I liked it because that was sort of what in the movies what a newspaper always was, going, hurrying up for the edition and getting the news and that was an experience for them to know how to do that and it was another thing they could join. That to me, that was, it was my life of joining on the events that they had. We never really had a club about it but I don’t know if they do this, they take the students to Chicago or New York.
4.25 MRR Not anymore. Well, yes we do we just had an art group that went to New York.
4.32 LL Oh, good. Oh, so good because when I went with, I went every one they went. They never took them to the art museum. And when I was rooming, there were three of us in a room, and I said “You are going to go to the art museum.” They didn’t want to I said, “You’re going” and they did and they were just in awed with that and they said “We’re bringing our boyfriends back” and they did. They brought them back to see it. I mean, there was, one thing I remember they were all and they have, I guess they still have it, the statues with the, I mean of course they got the statues with the helmets and all that and they loved it. But that’s it, you got to have somebody. I don’t know, that every time I went I took a student with me to the art museum.
5.40 MRR Can you tell us about the radio station?
5.42 MM I don’t really remember that much about it.
5.45 LL Maybe, did they have it?
5.47 MM I just remember that there was one.
5.49 MRR Ok.
5.50 MM Yeah.
5.50 MRR Is there anything else you want to add to the record that people should know about this place when they’re doing research in the future?
5.59 LL There are help, there is help here. There’s the student, well I don’t know what they call it now where they could go for help and talk about things and they should. It is kind of amorphous that you don’t have the structure that you had in high school where they told you what to do and where to go and you better be there. That does not happen here. You are on your own as far as doing what you’re supposed to do. They are not overseers here. But there are people here for you to help you. And probably the newspaper should be saying things like this. Maybe they are. I guess I’m amiss and not keeping up with the newspaper.
7.00 MRR You wanted to talk about what kind of campus or school this should be.
7.05 LL Yes. There came a time when there was a certain section of the town, I guess, and maybe Oxford too that thought we should be turned into a technical school. Oh no, nuh uh. They wanted the real deal and that was it was started for. That was what it was meant and Armco, I don’t think I mentioned what a wonderful source Armco was for it, to the start of it, and I was thinking about something else that they did. Oh, they sent their workers here to be trained. I don’t know what they took, I’m sorry, but they paid for their training, their classes. And I think that was a wonderful thing and maybe other companies do it too but I know for a fact that Armco did cause I knew some of the men that came to take the classes, the older men, you know. And I just thought that was such a big show that Middletown wanted this campus to be a campus for scholars or, well, we had other things. We had the nursing department and it was important. It gave dignity to their degree, you know and it didn’t happen. Oh, Barry Levey over there, he was instrumental in getting it started and keeping it going. And that was wonderful, you know. He was from Middletown. He was an attorney here and the people that had power were for it, because they wanted intelligent people. They wanted them. Well, that wasn’t to say that the technical people weren’t intelligent. I’m sorry if I give that impression because they are. But there are other people too that we don’t have here. We don’t have the resources that technical people have. They wanted to get a job and learn their trade, you know. But that’s not possible for university training. You just can’t go out and get a job somewhere and learn in French or whatever. So, it really was a blessing for this town.
10.00 MRR Do I have your permission to turn off the recording?
10.03 LL and MM Yes, you do.
10.03 MRR Thank you.
Indexing terms:
Applied Science program
Armco
Army
Arts
Baxter, Joe
Botany
Carter, President Jimmy
Cheatham, Marian [Pyles]
Chicago
Childs, Leon
China
Cox Arboretum
Day, Evelyn
Easton, Clare
Family – multiple generations at Miami University
Fenning, Colonel Ray
French Club
Future Secretaries Club
Gelwick, David
Ghana
Grandchildren
Hart, Senator Gary
Horvitz, Lee
Howe Motors Company
India
Information Technology (IT)
KAOS Newspaper
Keypunch cards
Kiefer, Carolyn
Krukowski, Elizabeth
Lafayette, Lois
Lehman, Jim
Library assistants
Microfiche/microfilm
Military
Miller, Marsha Lafayette
Mimeographs
Model United Nations (Model UN)
New York City
Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Nadel, Harold
New York City
Plageman, Mark
Pyles, Marian Cheatham
Quebec City, Quebec, Canada
Radio station
Seufert, Robert (Bob)
Sigma Epsilon Chi sorority
Sorority
Student job
Student workers
Switchboard
Taylor, James
Technology
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Typewriters
Transcript: Lois Lafayette & Marsha Lafayette Miller, interviewed December 2, 2016
Donation record #Lafayette.L.12022016.1
Transcribed by Erika Nisbet 08/03/2017.
Approved for deposit by Marsha Robinson 02/15/2018.
Copyright Miami University. All rights reserved.
0.0 MRR My name is Marsha Robinson and we are recording an oral history with Lois Lafayette and Marsha Miller as part of the Sweet MUMories Oral History Project. This project marks the fiftieth anniversary of the Miami University Middletown, Ohio, campus. This interview is taking place on December 2, 2016 at the Gardner-Harvey Library. Mrs. Lafayette and Mrs. Miller, do I have your consent to proceed with this interview?
0.31 LL Yes.
0.31 MM Yes.
0.31 MRR Thank you. Now, we are talking to the Lafayette family who’s been connected with the Middletown campus since it first started. Can we start with the news that a Middletown campus was going to open in 1966, how did your family respond to that opportunity?
0.51 LL Oh, I was overjoyed because I didn’t get to go to college and I thought how wonderful my children will get to go and so my son came. Now, I don’t know that he came the very first year.
1.09 MM He did.
1.10 LL Did he?
1.11 MM He graduated from high school in 1966.
1.15 LL And came right over? Honestly, I’m sorry. I wasn’t sure if that was the very first time but he was very happy here. And his major was art. And he graduated from Oxford campus then later and he worked all the time that he was going to school because, you know we really didn’t have a lot of money and he really almost supported himself while he was going. And he’s living in Florida now and he’s retired.
2.09 MRR And then a couple of years later, Marsha, you came and so tell us about your decision to come and maybe about your friends in high school and what they were saying about the local campus.
2.22 MM My decision was, you know we didn’t have very much money so it was great that it was close by. I could live at home and I could also work. So, that’s why it was great for me. Plus, you know the campus activities were, you know, a big thing I could do too. As far as the kids in school, I’m not really sure. I think some of them went other places, the ones that, you know, that I was involved with. So I was pretty much meeting new people when I came here.
3.06 MRR What was it like to meet so many new people?
3.09 MM Usually, it’s hard for me but I joined a sorority and that just helped everything.
3.17 MRR Tell us about the sorority.
3.18 MM Well, ours was called Sigma Epsilon Chi and it was, they were all friendly and nice and we had a good time and did some community work, too, went on trips and.
3.36 MRR Do you remember any of the community projects?
3.39 MM I know one was supporting a child in a different country. I don’t remember which country but that’s the one I remember.
3.54 MRR You always were involved in other student organizations like Future Secretaries. Could you tell us about Future Secretaries?
4.02 MM I believe it was Evelyn Day that actually had me, you know she started it with me. And I don’t know if it went past that first year that we started it or not but that was nice. That was another opportunity to meet people.
4.21 MRR Can you tell us more about Evelyn Day? What was she like?
4.23 MM She was very nice and very helpful.
4.29 MRR You also participated in Model United Nations. Tell us about Model UN.
4.35 MM Well, that was fun too, The Model UN was fun. We learned about different countries because we were assigned a country and then we had to learn about some aspect of it. We had to write a proposition. And then when we went to New York for the Model UN, it was, I guess, like a regular UN. People would make resolutions and you would vote on them. You would meet other people and try to get them to vote your view or, you know vice versa. So, that was a good experience also.
5.20 MRR Were trips like this important for students from Middletown and from MUM?
5.25 MM I think it was, yes. It was very important because you got to see the world a little more outside our little box of Middletown.
5.43 MRR Can you talk to us about the technology that was available to people in the Applied Science program?
5.50 MM Wow. Back then they had like the regular adding machines, the machines that duplicate things. I don’t even remember what they call those now.
6.05 MRR Mimeographs? Mimeographs.
6.06 MM Mimeograph. That’s it - the mimeograph. I do believe we had the electric typewriters but I’m not positive.
6. 14 MRR The keypunch cards?
6. 16 MM The keypunch, yeah for, I took some computer classes later and in those we had the keypunch cards.
6.29 MRR Could you describe what a keypunch card is?
6. 33 MM It’s just a little oblong card and it had little holes in it and those holes, depending on where they were punched, meant different words.
6. 48 MRR Did you have a job while you were a student?
6. 50 MM Yes. I always had a job.
6.54 MRR What did you do?
6.55 MM I, let’s see.
7.00 LL You had three.
7.00 MM Three? I had three jobs.
7.02 LL And four when you count the library.
7.04 MM Yeah.
7.06 LL Or maybe I didn’t count the library. You worked at Ford Motor.
7.08 MM I know. Actually, I worked at Howe Motors.
7.12 LL Oh yeah.
7.13 MM Yeah. Yeah. And then I was an aide here and I’m not sure, you said I had another one?
7.22 LL Yeah. You had another one. I can’t remember either.
7.26 MRR Can you tell us more about being a library aide?
7. 30 Being a library aide was really fun also. The thing I remember the most are the receptions that they would have. They would have maybe an artist’s collection of things or a writer’s, you know, reception and that was fun to work on and also to see what the artists or writers were doing.
7.56 MRR Who attended those receptions?
7.59 MM Students, teachers attended it. Some community people would come to that also.
8.08 MRR Ok.
8.09 MM Yup.
8.10 MRR And…
8.15 MM And I also remember the microfiche room which later became the computer room.
8.22 MMR What’s a microfiche?
8.24 MM Yeah, a microfiche was how they used to copy information. It was some kind of little machine with little tape or something on it and then to find it you’d have to look through a viewer to find what you want and crank to whatever you wanted to see. Yeah. [Her gestures suggest a microfilm reader.]
8.45 MMR Ok, for future scholars who may not see that technology.
8.50 MM Yeah.
8.51 MMR Thank you. Now, I’d like to move forward with the Lafayette story. Lois after your children graduated you started working here, or before they graduated?
9.06 LL No.
9.08 MRR When did you start your association as an employee here at Miami Middletown?
9.14 LL I was hired November of 1976. They had just celebrated their tenth anniversary and I knew the head of the campus, Dr. Bennett, and I knew the English teacher, Dr. Elizabeth Krukowski. And they both, well Elizabeth, told me that there was an opening in the office for a night person and I’ll just tell the truth. I took a test and I couldn’t type fast enough so I didn’t get it. I didn’t get the job. So they got someone. And of course we worked till ten o’clock at night. Well, there were not many young people that wanted to be a student worker or a faculty person that wanted to work that late. So that person quit and I took the job. I went over, I took the test and I passed. I got over here. And in those days we did not have computers so that was a new. And I can’t pinpoint the date that we got that but I loved it. You know, the computer you could back up and erase your mistake whereas, if you ever…before what you did-- that was it. You better do it right. And so that was a much easier job then. And I just enjoyed everybody and I just enjoyed the faculty so much. They were from all over. You know I was here thirty years. They were people, faculty members from India, from China. You know it was a world experience for me even though I was in little Middletown, Ohio. I became a student in 1980. I finally decided I wanted to try. You know, I was sixty years old so I was not a normal person taking classes. But I was treated fairly and I enjoyed all my instructors. My French teachers were Mark Plageman and I cannot think of the other. He was a young man and a handsome young man but I can’t think of his name. Maybe somebody will remember it for me. I took history. My major was English Literature. Well, you know, I couldn’t take a lot of classes all at once. It took me eight years. I was in my eighth year when my friend said, “Quit doing this. You’re too old to be doing this and you must have something that you can graduate with by now.” So we looked at my credits and I had enough to use history as my concentration so I got a associates degree in arts with a concentration in history in 1988.
13.14 MRR What was it like being in a classroom in your sixties with twenty-year-olds and eighteen-year-olds? How did the students treat you?
13.21 LL Well, I don’t know. I did not, to be with the young people was wonderful. I didn’t feel out of place. They might have thought I was out of place but, you know, I just felt it was a wonderful place to meet people and to learn together. And it’s just something that I wish every child would have a chance to come and see. Come and see what you’ll learn here. Many things, many things. Not just subjects you’re attending but with your friends and the many opportunities to learn. I too was in the…
14.11 MM Model UN.
14.12 LL Model UN. I went to New York. We had Ghana. Our country was Ghana. And it really was an experience. It was a true experience of how that would be if you were really there. We were in the UN. We were really in the UN building. And you had to go around. If you had the thing you wanted passed, you had to get people on to vote for what you wanted. So you were learning a lot of things. Plus, New York City.
14.51 MRR We heard stories about people taking a taxi for the first time. Do you have any stories about that from either of your trips? Like what was it like to be in the big city of New York for the first time? Did anything stand out about your teammates and looking at the buildings or anything like that?
15.09 LL Looking at the buildings. Well, the UN is a beautiful building. And of course the Metropolitan Opera, it’s a beautiful thing. So I would tell students, “Get into things like that and if it’s not that there’s other things.” We had a French Club. I was president of the French Club and we sold some, I forget what we sold, to get money to go to Quebec and we went. Mark Plageman was our teacher and our mentor in our club. And we went in the winter time. And first we went to Toronto, which was a first. All these are firsts for me. Going to Toronto and stayed overnight over there. And one of the students wouldn’t, we went out to eat and walked around downtown. One of the students wouldn’t come out with us. And I said “Why didn’t you come out?” She did, when we got to Montreal she did come out with us. But I said “Why didn’t you come out in Toronto?” She said, “All those people.” I said, “They’re not all outside at one time.” You know, so she blossomed, I’d say, on that trip. Oh, and when we got to Montreal, it was probably after midnight, I’m not sure, but it was late at night and all the lights went out in the town. Well, I don’t know about the whole town but they went out in the hotel that we were in and I had thought that some of those kids in the French Club had caused a, but it wasn’t. It was a transformer, they claimed, out in the plain somewhere that caused it. Oh, well, the day before we got there, there was a stri--, I’m trying to remember, it was some kind of a, this is showing you how old I am. I can’t remember what the word is to, but it was the Quebec people that they wanted, they were down in Montreal to give this demonstration that they wanted to just have French and move away from the Canada. And they didn’t want to be a part of whatever the government was at that time. And I also thought about that. I thought, maybe those people did it. Well when I found out it was the whole city, it wasn’t our people who caused it
0.27 MRR I’d like to talk about some of the other people that you worked with. You mentioned Leon Childs.
0.37 LL Oh, yeah.
0.37 MRR Tell us about Mr. Childs. Who was he?
0.39 LL Well, he was our police guard. He was a real policeman and was very nice, very nice man and I was working late one night and I didn’t know it but he fell. He fell between Johnston Hall and the library in the snow. It was snow and he had fallen and broken his leg. And I didn’t know that till the next day then they told me that he was in the hospital. I felt so bad that I was there. I might have been able to help him but I didn’t know it. I didn’t know.
1.22 MRR Can you tell us stories about the security team in any situation? What was it like to have, to know that there were security officers on campus when you’re working the night shift. What was that like?
1.37 LL That was nice. That was nice to know there was somebody there. Because, let’s see by that time I think I had started out down on the main floor of Johnston Hall and then I moved upstairs to the faculty office. And that, they closed that downstairs so I was really, and then the person at the switchboard went home at eight o’clock so I was actually the only non-faculty person in these three building. You know and things would happen, you know. You’d have to call, somebody’d get sick you’d have to call the ambulance for them and that as sometimes hard to do.
2.44 MRR I’d like to talk about some more faculty and staff. Did you want to talk about Carolyn Kiefer?
2.21 LL Oh, yes. She was a wonderful person, is a wonderful person. I’m sure she’s still here and she was instrumental in seeing to all the flowers around and I never got to take a class from her. My botany class was a man from Oxford and he was wonderful too. Yes, because we had, this campus had regular faculty. Then when I was taking care of the night regular faculty plus people who came over. I think I had about forty-seven or forty-eight faculty. People from Oxford campus, the Hamilton campus, the business world, other university faculty people came in as faculty and that was interesting to know all those people.
4.03 MRR Did you want to tell us about David Gelwick?
4.07 LL He was the history teacher. We had three history teachers, David Gelwick, Joe Baxter and Jim Lehman. And I am saying this, and I don’t know if I should, but David was right, right what we would call “on the right.” Joe was a middle person and Jim was more to the left and there was a philosophy teacher, no it wasn’t philosophy. It was political science and I can’t think of his name.
4.55 MM Fenning?
4.55 LL Fenning, Marsha.
4.57 MM Ray? Was it Ray?
4.58 LL Ray Fenning.
4.58 MRR Ray Fenning.
4.58 MM Yeah.
4.58 LL Wonderful man. He’d been in the Army I believe. He was…
5.05 MM Could be.
5.05 LL Big person and he was sort of a moderation sort of for all those other three. Somehow, I always had them together as thinking about what they seem to be.
5.25 MRR So we’ve got stories about the three of them arguing. Do you have any stories about them arguing?
5.28 LL Yeah, and Ray is sort of a moderator. Oh, yeah I can tell you about David Gelwick. He stomped up to the, that was when I was in the office on the main floor, he stomped up to me and said, “Well, I just sent a message to the President.” “Oh, yeah?” That was when Carter was president and there were hostages. And he said, “I told him to get an Army in there and get them out of there.” It didn’t work, well maybe it did work. They did try, you know they did try to do it. And it was a riot. It really was. And Joe, I don’t know if you want this either, Gary, what was the guy that was running for president?
6.27 MRR Gary Hart?
6.27 LL Gary Hart? Yeah, well Joe liked him. Oh, he was so angry about all of the scandal, you know and he came up to me and he didn’t think that Gary Hart should have quit. I said, “Not quit?” You know, “He, we wouldn’t want him as a president.” He said, “Why?” And I said, “Because he urged those journalists to find out if he was a womanizer and they did.” And I say anybody that that’s dumb shouldn’t be president. So, I don’t know how that fits in but that was Joe. That was the only argument we ever had. We were always friendly and even after that, too. Oh, another thing about Joe. Oh, they had a system about the classes and it was a complicated thing that, I can’t remember his name, he invented it and Joe stomps in and there were orange card and he says, “Now who would want an orange card?” I mean, to me these are funny things. I don’t know if it’s funny…
8.02 MRR Was it registration cards? Were those the registration cards that you’re referring to?
8.06 LL Well, it was the classes, the timing. I believe they were for the time. And each class had a different color but he definitely did not want orange cards.
8.21 MRR Ok. Can you tell us some more stories about Clare Easton?
8.25 LL Now, there’s the heroine of this campus. She initiated the Artist and Lecture Series and she had some opposition because she wanted the best. And she would go to New York and see the demonstrations that they give for people to pick to come to their whatevers. And she got the best she could and they were very expensive and some of them she had to enlist other colleges to take them too, you know, to split the cost. And the opposition wanted to have, the kids, the rock and roll people. She said they go to that, the children go, if they see, if they want to see things like that there’s place they got the money to go to. You know, students were free to these things. We had the man who invented the Geodesic dome. We had, oh I never thought about this looking this up, all the people we had were the top, they were the tops. One of the bands that she had was not too well known at the time and I remember they went to be the top in their field. It was a band. James Taylor was here. I just can’t think of all of them. And I don’t think they had as good as programs then, now of course I’m prejudiced, because after she left it wasn’t the same.
10.37 MRR Can you tell us stories about Dr. Bob Seufert?
10.41 LL Oh, he was a wonderful man too, he is a wonderful man. He has brought thousands of programs, you know as sponsors of research he was doing. And everybody that took his class, it is something everybody should take. And that’s another thing. You have your major but there are certain things you should also try to squeeze in somehow so that you are a well-rounded person when you go wherever you go from here. And it’s important that you know that there are other things besides your major.
11.37 MRR Tell us about Lee Horvitz.
11.49 LL He died last year and he was a very good person. And they all seemed to like his work. And he and I became very good friends. We were both interested in art and when he moved away he was, went to New Orleans, he was writing a book. And when he came back to Cincinnati, he’d always come and see me. And we’d go to, one time we went up to Dayton. There was an exhibit I wanted him to see. We got there and it was, they had changed it. I wasn’t paying attention. They were closed on that day so and he had brought a friend with him and I said, “Well” Marsha, the nature center there?
12.36 MRR Cox?
12.36 LL Cox Arboretum. Took him to Cox Arboretum. Do you know it? How beautiful that is? And it was a good time. Oh, they loved that. So we got to do that together. And I visited with him and his friends in Cincinnati. And he was very intelligent. And in fact on my email, as I told you I really didn’t like it. No it wasn’t that. It was my cell phone. He called and he said he just read something so interesting and he said, “I knew I wanted to talk it over with you so call me as soon as you can.” and I’m keeping that. It’s on my telephone so it’s on the telephone at home. I don’t know if they let you keep things like that.
13.34 MRR You also wanted to talk about Harold Nadel.
13.39 LL Oh, now Harold taught English. He was what you would say was a teacher because he brought so much to a class. I mean, he knew so much. I can’t, I, Did I, yeah Marian Cheatham [Pyles] was a teacher too, English teacher also and she was good too. But Harold was a scholar and there’s a difference. I don’t know what the difference is except that a scholar knows more, I think they know more of course because a scholar is investigating certain things whereas maybe a teacher is, I shouldn’t downgrade a teacher. I don’t want to but I just mean there’s a difference and you get to know some. I did not get to be a student of his but I sat in on a couple of the classes and I knew how wonderful he was.
14.49 MRR Some people talk about their surprise of the quality of instruction at the Regional campuses.
14.57 LL Really?
14.57 MRR And that the quality of instructors is just as good as in Oxford. Would you like to continue talking about that teacher/scholar idea that you observed?
15.03 LL Well, I’m not putting down the English teachers because, you know they’re all wonderful, every one of these teachers. I can’t think of anybody that I would call a bad teacher. I wasn’t in everybody’s class. I didn’t take a class from every faculty person. But I knew them and I knew what they talked about and they talked to me about their classes. I mean, this is candy land for me to be there, you know. And they all had degrees. They weren’t all PhDs. That’s another thing. Maybe that’s what they’re referring to but you don’t have to have a PhD to be a good teacher. In fact, it might be a hindrance.
16.09 MRR What I’d like to do is refer to the vision that the founding committee had for the Middletown campus: that the campus would provide opportunity for people from Middletown; that the campus would continue to return to the community a higher-quality of life perhaps. Can you say if that vision of the Middletown campus was accomplished and how have you seen that accomplished?
16.40 MM I think it was accomplished for me. I would have never been able to go to college or have as many experiences that I did and my life would have been so much different and not as nice, you know, had this not been here.
16.02 LL Well, I guess that would be a very good research project to see what people think about that. The ones that went here and the ones that didn’t go. You know, sometimes in that era in this town I know for a fact that some groups didn’t want to come here and thought the ones that did come here, you know were sissies or something. It really discouraged them from coming here. That really was going on but they came anyway because it is very hard for people to, I think it’s probably easier now than it was but maybe I’m not right on that. But they’re coming, a lot of them are coming [tape/segment 3] 0.00 right from high school where they’ve known everybody, you know probably two or three grades down and up for years. And then they come here and they don’t know anyone and it is kind of scary I think to be there. It wasn’t scary for me because I worked here, my kids have gone here, wasn’t scary for me to go into classes. Except, because of my age, it was a little daunting you know. Because I always thought the kids knew more than I did, you know but they were good to me. All those classes that I had I was friends with children, students that were in there.
0.47 MRR What advice would you give to a frightened student?
0.52 LL I believe that they should get into activities as their times permits. I think if they haven’t already done it in their lives they have to have a schedule to stay to, to have it so that they can keep, they got to study but they have to also go out and meet other people. That’s the part of education: learning how to get with people who are not like you at all and how to reach out to other people and think, and think, and think and have time to think. I think it’s a helpful thing for them to know this that you have to have a schedule to hold onto because otherwise you’re just spending your time in pursuits of things that are not going to benefit what you’re doing, you know.
1.55 MM To add to the theme, my brother went here, I went here, my mother went here, her granddaughter also went here. Missy took nursing classes.
2.06 LL Oh, yeah, yeah.
2.07 MM And…
2.09 LL I have a great granddaughter that’s going to start.
2.13 MM Right.
2.14 MRR So it really is a family experience?
2.17 MM Right. It Is. It is, yeah.
2.20 MRR Is there something from the early days of the campus’s culture that you hope continues for the next fifty years?
2.33 LL Well, I don’t know if they still have their newspaper. That was, they don’t have a newspaper?
2.39 MRR KAOS no longer is published.
2.41 MM They used to have a radio station also.
2.43 MRR We don’t have a radio station anymore. Tell us about those.
2.48 LL That was another organization for students to join and learn how to do these things that they wouldn’t have a chance to normally. I don’t know. I shouldn’t say because I’ve been gone almost ten years so there can be a lot of changes I don’t know about.
3.14 MRR What was good about KAOS?
3.17 LL Oh, we did have a big thing. They wanted to get rid of the title.
3.24 MRR Tell us about that.
3.25 LL Because they, there was a group and it was backed by one of the teachers and it was an English teacher to get rid of that name, you know with a “k.” And I thought I liked it because that was sort of what in the movies what a newspaper always was, going, hurrying up for the edition and getting the news and that was an experience for them to know how to do that and it was another thing they could join. That to me, that was, it was my life of joining on the events that they had. We never really had a club about it but I don’t know if they do this, they take the students to Chicago or New York.
4.25 MRR Not anymore. Well, yes we do we just had an art group that went to New York.
4.32 LL Oh, good. Oh, so good because when I went with, I went every one they went. They never took them to the art museum. And when I was rooming, there were three of us in a room, and I said “You are going to go to the art museum.” They didn’t want to I said, “You’re going” and they did and they were just in awed with that and they said “We’re bringing our boyfriends back” and they did. They brought them back to see it. I mean, there was, one thing I remember they were all and they have, I guess they still have it, the statues with the, I mean of course they got the statues with the helmets and all that and they loved it. But that’s it, you got to have somebody. I don’t know, that every time I went I took a student with me to the art museum.
5.40 MRR Can you tell us about the radio station?
5.42 MM I don’t really remember that much about it.
5.45 LL Maybe, did they have it?
5.47 MM I just remember that there was one.
5.49 MRR Ok.
5.50 MM Yeah.
5.50 MRR Is there anything else you want to add to the record that people should know about this place when they’re doing research in the future?
5.59 LL There are help, there is help here. There’s the student, well I don’t know what they call it now where they could go for help and talk about things and they should. It is kind of amorphous that you don’t have the structure that you had in high school where they told you what to do and where to go and you better be there. That does not happen here. You are on your own as far as doing what you’re supposed to do. They are not overseers here. But there are people here for you to help you. And probably the newspaper should be saying things like this. Maybe they are. I guess I’m amiss and not keeping up with the newspaper.
7.00 MRR You wanted to talk about what kind of campus or school this should be.
7.05 LL Yes. There came a time when there was a certain section of the town, I guess, and maybe Oxford too that thought we should be turned into a technical school. Oh no, nuh uh. They wanted the real deal and that was it was started for. That was what it was meant and Armco, I don’t think I mentioned what a wonderful source Armco was for it, to the start of it, and I was thinking about something else that they did. Oh, they sent their workers here to be trained. I don’t know what they took, I’m sorry, but they paid for their training, their classes. And I think that was a wonderful thing and maybe other companies do it too but I know for a fact that Armco did cause I knew some of the men that came to take the classes, the older men, you know. And I just thought that was such a big show that Middletown wanted this campus to be a campus for scholars or, well, we had other things. We had the nursing department and it was important. It gave dignity to their degree, you know and it didn’t happen. Oh, Barry Levey over there, he was instrumental in getting it started and keeping it going. And that was wonderful, you know. He was from Middletown. He was an attorney here and the people that had power were for it, because they wanted intelligent people. They wanted them. Well, that wasn’t to say that the technical people weren’t intelligent. I’m sorry if I give that impression because they are. But there are other people too that we don’t have here. We don’t have the resources that technical people have. They wanted to get a job and learn their trade, you know. But that’s not possible for university training. You just can’t go out and get a job somewhere and learn in French or whatever. So, it really was a blessing for this town.
10.00 MRR Do I have your permission to turn off the recording?
10.03 LL and MM Yes, you do.
10.03 MRR Thank you.
Indexing terms:
Applied Science program
Armco
Army
Arts
Baxter, Joe
Botany
Carter, President Jimmy
Cheatham, Marian [Pyles]
Chicago
Childs, Leon
China
Cox Arboretum
Day, Evelyn
Easton, Clare
Family – multiple generations at Miami University
Fenning, Colonel Ray
French Club
Future Secretaries Club
Gelwick, David
Ghana
Grandchildren
Hart, Senator Gary
Horvitz, Lee
Howe Motors Company
India
Information Technology (IT)
KAOS Newspaper
Keypunch cards
Kiefer, Carolyn
Krukowski, Elizabeth
Lafayette, Lois
Lehman, Jim
Library assistants
Microfiche/microfilm
Military
Miller, Marsha Lafayette
Mimeographs
Model United Nations (Model UN)
New York City
Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Nadel, Harold
New York City
Plageman, Mark
Pyles, Marian Cheatham
Quebec City, Quebec, Canada
Radio station
Seufert, Robert (Bob)
Sigma Epsilon Chi sorority
Sorority
Student job
Student workers
Switchboard
Taylor, James
Technology
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Typewriters
Interviewer
Marsha Robinson
Interviewee
Lois Lafayette
Marsha Lafayette Miller
Location
Gardner-Harvey Library, Miami University Middletown
Collection
Citation
“Sweet MUMories Oral History Project - Lois Lafayette & Marsha Lafayette Miller,” First to 50 - Miami University Middletown Digital Archive, accessed April 26, 2024, https://mum50.omeka.net/items/show/870.