Stewart: Today, we are interviewing Cliff Adams, who was a teacher
and administrator here for over twenty years, starting in 1958. I wonder
if you could enlighten our listeners as to what you did and where you
were before you came to Old Dominion.
Adams: Maybe the
best way is to start at my beginning. I was born and reared in Knox
County, Indiana. It was a small town, like a village, and a farming
community of Monroe City, Indiana. The population was something like
five hundred. I was born in January, 1915. I was educated in the elementary
school and the Monroe City High School, graduating in 1932. Then, I
worked for four years in farming and was almost a junior-partner in
a major farm of my uncle's. I worked there during four of the very difficult
Depression years. I can remember distinctly that, one year, we raised
something over eight thousand bushels of corn and had to sell it for
13¢ a bushel. It probably cost us about 25¢ or 30¢ to raise, so I decided
that farming wasn't for me. When I was twenty-one, I started college
at what was then Indiana State Teacher's College in Terre Haute, Indiana.
Now, it's Indiana State University, as many of the institutions have
become state universities. I graduated from there in 1940 and did a
little bit of graduate work after graduation. Like a fool, I guess,
Illinois and decided against going on to school. So, I worked at a funeral
home, during 1940-41, in Terre Haute, as assistant funeral director
and ambulance driver, which was quite an experience I can assure you.
Then, during the 1941-42 school year, I taught at Farmersburg High School
in Indiana. I received a magnificent salary of $800 for eight months.
Not that I necessarily needed the additional money, but I did serve
as assistant basketball coach for the junior varsity team. I got an
extra $25 a month for that. So, I felt like I was pretty well paid with
$825 a month. That was 1941-42. At the end of that school year, I learned
of an opportunity at Morehead State Teacher's College in Norehead, Kentucky,
which is now Morehead State
2
University. They were
starting a program as part of the war effort, of course, for the training
of navy personnel in electricity and electronics. I applied for a job
there and was fortunate enough to be successful in securing the opportunity.
I was there from September of 1942 until the school was decommissioned
in 1944. In 1943, I met my present wife, who was then working for the
Farm Security Administration, as a home demonstration agent working
with the very low-income farmers and training the farmers' wives in
canning and cooking. Lillian Ratliff was her name and we were married
in December, 1943. Then, the school was decommissioned at the end of
December of 1944. We knew that it was being decommissioned, so, in the
summer of 1944, I went job-hunting and found a high school teaching
job in Kentland, Indiana. It is another small farming town, but it is
the county seat. It is about sixty miles south of Chicago, in the north-
westernmost county of the state. I taught high school there from 1944-46,
then I found out that high school teaching just wasn't my liking. There
were too many heartaches, really. I decided to make application for
a teaching position at Tri-State College, which was largely a technical
school in the northeasternmost county of Indiana. I was there from the
summer of 1946 until September, 1948. During my two years there, it
became readily apparent, (it should have long before that!), that if
I were to plan on staying in college teaching, I had to get additional
education. In September of 1948, I took an instructorship at what was
then the Missouri School of Mines and Metallurgy, which is now the University
of Missouri-Raleigh. The purpose of taking the job was an instructorship
with the opportunity to do graduate work. It was quite different, back in those days, going to graduate school. Basically, the way most people
did it, (at least the ones with whom I was acquainted), was that you
had a full-time teaching job and you did graduate work. You were in
graduate school, but you were also assigned a full-time teaching load.
I taught fifteen hours a week and carried six hours of graduate work
each semester. I also took six hours during the summer. I completed
my master's degree there at the end of the 1949-50 academic year. This
was a time when jobs were pretty difficult to get, but I was fortunate
enough to locate a job teaching physics and mathematics at Union University
in Jackson, Tennessee. It was a small, Baptist church school. I guess
we had somewhere around four hundred fifty to five hundred students.
I taught there one year. Again, this was one of those circumstances
where the institutional philosophy of education and my philosophy of
education were somewhat incompatible. To give you an illustration, I
was very close friends with the Chairman of the Mathematics Department
and one of the things that he always stated to me was, "When I die,
and go to heaven, one thing I'll never have to answer for is flunking
a preacher boy!" That was pretty much the philosophy of the small college
-- if you were studying in the religious field, it didn't matter much
what you did, you were going to get through alright --
3
that wasn't my idea
of what education is about. I saw an opportunity and I don't even recall
how it came to my attention. There was a munitions plant near Jackson,
in Milan, Tennessee. I went over and applied, when school was out, for
a job there and was successful, and ready to start. Somehow, maybe in
conversations, I learned that the Naval Academy in Annapolis was looking
for some physics professors. They were just going into a movement of,
instead of having all naval officers teaching at the Academy, employing
some civilian professors. Actually, they were moving into their second
year of it. I made application at the Naval Academy and was called up
for an interview. The upshot was that I accepted the job at the Naval
Academy as assistant professor, teaching in the physics department.
I was there five years, moving from assistant professor to associate
professor. Actually, I was fortunate -- I was promoted to associate
professor two years early. I could have stayed there and made a career
at the Naval Academy, but it was just too boring. You had to teach the
same thing over and over. I taught general physics and the way that
it was structured at that time, I don't know whether it still is or
not, I taught a section of physics students, three lectures and a two
hour laboratory a week, three sections for eight weeks. It was the same
subject over and over. You did that for eight weeks and then you got
a new group. After five years, that got to be pretty boring, even though
I did have the opportunity and did teach what we jokingly called the
"dumb school" during a couple of years. "Dumb school" worked like this:
Naval officers were sent back to the Academy for a three year tour.
In the physics department, it was 50/50 -- half naval officers and half
civilians. The officers had been away from academics while they had
been at sea and when they came back, every Monday morning, I taught
them the material that we would be covering during the week. That's
what the "dumb school" was and I did have the opportunity to teach the
ones who were going to be teaching. I also had the opportunity to teach
physics to the football team, which I did enjoy. During the fall semester,
they had to have a special schedule because they were gone from campus
so much. That was an interesting experience. I got to teach people like
Georgie Welsh, an All-American quarterback and is now the coach at the
University of Virginia, and Ronald Beagle, an All-American on the team
at Annapolis. The last year that I was there, just to get a change of
pace, I went over and taught electrical engineering. I enjoyed that;
it was a change of pace from teaching general physics. The only kind
of physics that we taught was elementary physics. During my time there,
I also served as one of the coaches of battalion football. As a result,
we always got a free trip to the Army-Navy game in Philadelphia and
we enjoyed that very much. We always met at the Naval Academy very early
on Saturday morning and were bused to Baltimore. We caught a train to
Philadelphia and got back late at night. It was a very interesting experience,
but I felt that I would prefer teaching. I got my master's degree in
physics at
4
Missouri School of
Mines and Metallurgy. When I was at the Naval Academy, I enrolled at
the University of Maryland to work on my PhD. I guess I completed about
twenty-four hours of graduate work beyond the master's degree. In fact,
I have all the work done for the PhD, except the research and dissertation.
Don't ask me why I didn't complete the degree. I don't know, other than
maybe I didn't want to invest the time because I did research for three
years at the Naval Academy with the Research Organization in Annapolis
during the summer. I had enough material to complete the writing of
the dissertation, if I had just expanded on it, but I just didn't get
around to doing it. Before I really did, I saw that I wanted something
that was more challenging than teaching at the Naval Academy. I got
an opportunity to go to what was then Northeast Louisiana State Teacher's
College, which is now Northeast State University. I got the opportunity
to go there as the Chairman of the Physics Department and to actually
develop a Physics Department. It was not a free-standing department
up until that time. We went to Monroe, Louisiana to take the position
and I developed a degree program there. In the end of my second year
there, we graduated three physics majors. Something that I was very
pleased about was that the three graduates took a graduate record examination
in physics and not one of the three failed below the ninetieth percentile.
They were extremely good students. I enjoyed being there very much.
I had never seen a group of students that were so eager to learn or
so appreciative of the teachers' efforts to help them accomplish something
academically. Apparently, they were eager for some education. There
had not been all that much educational opportunity for the people in that area and this institution was just building. It had been a normal
school and it was just advancing to something beyond teacher education.
There hadn't been that much of an opportunity before, outside of professional
education. There were two or three circumstances that led to my wife
and I deciding to leave Northeast after two years, not the least of
which was the weather. It was so confounded hot! The temperature would
get into the eighties in March and from that point on, up through September,
it would get a little hotter and a little hotter. It rained every day,
with the relative humidity so high. We really didn't like the climate.
They had a change of presidents. The president that hired me turned
sixty-five and he had indicated to me that he would be there until the
age of seventy. He had been assured that he would stay as president
until he was seventy. He was really interested in developing the department
for physics. I guess, probably for political reasons, that when he became
sixty-five, they moved him out and brought in a new president. All of
the circumstances teamed together to indicate that we probably ought
to leave. I made application and was offered, rather early in the summer,
a job at a teacher's college in Bremerton, Washington. I had been offered
a job at
5
the University of
Louisville. That was in the summer of '58. I was also offered a position
at Rose Polytechnical Institute in Terre Haute, Indiana. While I was
mulling over those three opportunities, I had a telephone call out of
the blue from Dr. Carl Wiseoff, who was head of the Radiology Department
at Norfolk General Hospital. I did not know of him and I had never heard
of Norfolk General Hospital. In fact, the only things that I ever heard
of Norfolk was from naval personnel back at the Naval Academy. The naval
officers had really nothing good to say about Norfolk and gave it an
extremely negative image. Dr. Wiseoff had gotten my name from the American
Institute of Physics roster, which lists all the people and their areas
of academic activities. He had seen my name while looking over it and
called me. He told me that the Norfolk Division of the College of William
and Mary was looking for someone to start a physics department and to
be the chairman. He, himself, was looking for someone to take that job
and who could also teach radiology to his radiological interns. He asked
me if I would be interested and I said that I didn't know. We talked
for a long time on the telephone and he asked if it would be alright
if he talked to Lewis Webb about me. I said that it would be alright.
Then, I got a telephone call from Lewis Webb. We chatted for a good
while and I agreed to come up for an interview. Before I left, I told
my wife, "I'll go up and talk to him, but we won't be interested in
Norfolk." I flew up and Lewis met me at the airport that night. That
was in August of '58. Lewis parked me over at the Norfolk Yacht and
Country Club. He picked me up the next morning and took me on a little
tour of the campus. Then, he asked C.S. Sherwood to take me on a tour
of the city. So, we drove around the city some and then I met with Lewis
again. He told me the best offer he could make and I outlined certain
conditions and told him that when we parted that evening, I'd think
it over. I went back to Monroe and my wife and I talked about it for
a long while. I was so impressed with Lewis and what had looked to me
like a terrific potential that we decided that we would come here, even
though the job offer was just about $1,000 less than the lowest of the
three jobs that I had been offered. The whole thing --Lewis, the people
I met, visions for the place-- really sold me. It just looked like this
was something that I wanted to be a part of, in its building stages.
We accepted the job, got here on the 4th of September, and the next
day, I bought a house. Very fast moving - because I had the furniture
on the way and I had to move. I found a real nice, brand-new house out
in the Camellia Shores section of Norfolk. I started here in September
of '58 and back then, school didn't start until the 9th or 10th. I thought
this was nice because classes started on the 10th and I got a paycheck
on the 15th, covering the first half of the month. The
Physics Department was over in the old Science Building. The general
physics lectures
6
were in the lecture
room on the first floor. On the north end of the first floor, we had
two laboratory rooms. In that building, we also housed pre-engineering,
which Eddie White was in charge of, and that was a part of VPI [Virginia
Tech] . What a lot of people now do not realize, while we were called
the Norfolk Division of the College of William and Mary, we also had
another part on that name - and Virginia Polytechnical Institute. It
was combined - the Norfolk Division of the College of William and Mary
and Virginia Polytechnical Institute. In fact, some of the engineering
faculty were paid directly through VPI, while the rest of us were paid
through William and Mary. There was Eddie White, Billy Beck, Yates Stirling,
a man named Bainbridge, and Admiral Edward Paré. In that group,
Yates Stirling taught physics, Admiral Paré taught physics, Margaret
Phillips taught physics and calculus, and then myself. During that first
year, we developed a physics curriculum and got that through the official
campus body. Lewis Webb convened it. We met, I guess, a couple times
a month and it was made up primarily of department chairmen and the
divisional people. Back then, C.S. Sherwood was chairman of the natural
science division. Eddie White was chairman of the engineering division.
I'm not sure whether Stan Pliska was head of the humanities division
at that time, but it was either then or very shortly thereafter. The
departments operated pretty autonomously, but that group constituted
what would be called "the president's academic advisory committee."
That was the group we had to go through to get degree programs approved
and that kind of thing. Actually, I believe it was '56 when the first
4-year degrees were awarded. During the '58-'59 year, we got a physics
degree approved. We had to get it approved here on the campus and by
the Physics Department at William and Mary. That was when I first got
acquainted with Melvin Pittman, who later became dean over here. He
was Chairman of the Physics Department at William and Mary and he had
come there from what is now James Madison University. The upshot was
that we got the degree program approved and started the baccalaureate
degree in physics in the fall of 1959, at the end of our first year
here. At that same time, I reached a conclusion that if we were going
to have a physics department, we could not have faculty members with
divided loyalties. I couldn't have faculty members who were in physics
and also teaching engineering, mathematics, and so on. They had to be
physics faculty. I talked to Lewis Webb and those people who had been
teaching physics only about having a faculty in physics that did not
have divided loyalties. I talked with Yates Stirling, Margaret Phillips,
and Admiral Paré. Stirling decided that he would stick with teaching
mechanics and engineering. Admiral Paré decided that he wanted
to spend all of his time with physics, which was appropriate because
he had a master's degree from MIT, with an emphasis in physics. Margaret
Phillips chose to spend her full time in mathematics. We immediately
had to start recruiting faculty. Actually, I started recruiting some
7
faculty in the spring
and summer of '59. We also had the responsibility of teaching physics
for nurses. I made a choice there of Henry Dusenberry, a retired naval
officer, to teach physics for nurses on a part-time basis. We taught
the courses for nurses only about two years. I believe the first full-time
person that we added was Dr. Earl Barkley, who had just retired from
industry and had a PhD in physical chemistry. We had to make a decision.
We did not have sufficiently high salaries to get PhDs in physics. We
didn't have that kind of money to employ those people, as salaries were
too good at other places. We made a conscious decision that if we were
going to build a physics department, we had to have some PhDs. Earl
Barkley had retired from industry and had a PhD in physical chemistry,
which meant he had quite a bit of physics in his background. We employed
Barkley then and, just about the same time, we employed a young man
named Robert Slocum, who had some work beyond his master's degree in
physics. That constituted our faculty then, until our first, real PhD
in physics -- Dr. Clay. He started in 1960, I believe. He was assistant
professor at Rutgers. He had an interest in a classical music station
here in Norfolk. He was interested in getting back to Virginia, being
a PhD at the University of Virginia, and his interest in Norfolk made
it work out perfectly for him to become a member of the faculty at Old
Dominion and be closely associated with the radio station. I guess that
carries us up through to the 1960-61 academic year. In the meantime,
we were a part of William and Mary and VPI. William and Mary was on
a semester system and VPI was on a quarter system, so we were running
simultaneous academic calendars. This meant that those departments that
had students in both the William and Mary program and the VPI program
had difficulty.
Stewart: We were talking about the situation in regard to the semester-quarter
differences between William and Mary and VPI. Could you elaborate on what
was done about that?
Adams: It was very
difficult for the faculty who were teaching under both programs because
when the semester vacation would come, the quarter system was still
in operation. When the quarter system went on vacation, the semester
system was still operating. It was almost an impossible kind of calendar
to be working under. I opened my mouth, as I frequently do and say too
much, and started protesting at President Webb's academic council meetings
that this was a situation that was intolerable because we were giving
final exams in one group and regular sessions in the other and vice-versa.
I started protesting and as a result, (I have long since learned that
when you open your mouth, you're likely to get stuck with the job!),
Lewis Webb appointed me chairman of a committee to study the academic
calendar. On that committee, Billy Beck, Stan Pliska, and I did most
of the work. We conducted all kinds of surveys,
8
looked at various
calendars, talked to people, and we were actually, at one time, just
about ready to recommend a trimester calendar for the university. Around
then, there were several institutions throughout the country that did
go to a trimester-type of calendar. But, we discarded it finally, favoring
a quarter calendar. We operated on a quarter calendar a couple of years,
with the humanities side of the campus protesting all the way. The reason
that we went that direction was that we wanted to get away from the
dual calendar. The VPI people were locked into a quarter calendar, not
only because VPI had a quarter calendar, but we were in the cooperative
program where all of the engineering students who were going from here
to VPI worked in industry, at NASA, and at other places for a quarter
and then came back. None of these places were willing to run a dual
program, with a semester-type of cooperative program and a quarter-type
of program simultaneously. We felt that we had to accommodate those
engineering students and that i
engineering students and that it wouldn't put all that much strain on
the William and Mary program to go to a quarter system. We operated
that way for a couple of years, until we started the engineering program.
Dr. Harold Lampe came here to start the engineering program and he was
perfectly satisfied with the semester program in engineering. By that
time, we had broken away from VPI and shifted back to the semester system,
which we've been on ever since. My name was "Mud" with the humanities
faculty for a couple of years because I had pushed going to the quarter
system.
Stewart: I wonder if you could emphasize
a bit your role in the development of the physics department, from the
time that it began as a degree-granting program until the time that you
moved over into the administration. What was going on in physics during
those years and what were the accomplishments of the department?
Adams: I'll go
back to when I came here in 1958. The normal teaching load ranged from
18 contact hours to 23 contact hours a week. For extra compensation,
many of us taught night school as well. From 1958-60, I taught 23 contact
hours a week, a night class two nights a week, all year long, both years.
That was 3 lectures and a 3-hour laboratory every week, for 9 hours
a night. In the summer of 1959, Lewis Webb came to me about some difficulty
they were having at Norfolk State because they had three students who
were scheduled to graduate in 1960 and they had to have a theoretical
physics course. Dr. Roy Wood was the physics professor who had gone
on a leave of absence to complete his PhD. Lewis asked me if I would
be interested in teaching those students theoretical physics that year,
which I did. We met on Wednesday afternoons at 5:00 and Saturday mornings.
That made for about 30 hours a week. At the same time, around '58 or
'59, I wrote a physics laboratory manual, parts of which are still being
used in the physics department. Also
9
during this time,
it became clear that, with the teaching loads we had, if we were going
to run adequate laboratories, we had to have a laboratory person to
set up and take down laboratories. Up until that time, the faculty had
to set up and take down all the equipment, which detracted from their
teaching considerably. I went to Lewis and we were fortunate enough
to convince him that we needed a laboratory person. So, we got a laboratory
mechanic, the first one on the campus. An interesting sidenote -- in
1959, I had a public forum at which the candidates for public office
appeared. Reed Spencer was running for the Democratic nomination for
state senator against Eddie Breeden, who was and had been state senator.
Eddie Breeden overheard me make a comment that the equipment in our
physics department was not even equivalent to the physics department
equipment in a good high school. He started talking about that publicly,
which was another example of me opening my mouth when I shouldn't have. Lewis Webb came out in defense of Eddie Breeden, but he did agree
that we were not very well funded. We had to, back then, fight with
William and Mary to get anything. That's just an interesting sideline
that shows that I'm in hot water much of the time.
Stewart: Let's talk a little bit about your political activities with
the development of the physics department here.
Adams: We developed
the physics department with a degree program. We added, as I said, Dr.
Clay and then we added Dr. John Miles, and Dr. Armando Rodriguez. We
started to build a program with PhDs. Although Dr. Miles was retired
from industry, as most were retired, we needed the PhDs to give credence
to the program. Dr. Rodriguez was a Cuban refugee and we knew we would
get six or eight years from him, before retirement. In all of this,
we were looking toward building a younger faculty of PhDs. We still
did not have the money to go out and get the younger ones. We were successful,
though, in getting PhDs, which, as you know, adds prestige to a department.
Then, we added Dr. Pritchard and Dr. Howard to the list of the other
PhDs. We continued to develop and, very quickly, it became obvious that
our quarters in the old Science Building were not only inadequate, but
we would have to put in an electrical distribution system, which would
have cost anywhere from $100,000 to $150,000 and we would still have
makeshift arrangements. As a result, we had two buildings on the drawing
boards. One of them was designated as the School of Business Building
and the other was designated simply as a classroom building. I was able
to convince Lewis that at the rate at which we would be building the
program and the way things were going, we just had to have more adequate
space. The renovation of the old Science Building would not be profitable
and it was inferior quarters. We had already begun to talk about the
engineering program and the upshot was that we convinced Lewis that
the classroom building should be designated basically as a physics building,
but
10
we could also accommodate
mathematics in it. We were successful in that and then John Tabb and
I got together to talk about the two buildings. We reached an agreement
that we would go to Lewis and see if we could convince him to put the
two buildings together, under one contract; thereby, hopefully, getting
more building space for the same money. He agreed with us and the result
was Chandler Hall. We, the physics department, moved into Chandler Hall
during the Christmas Break of 1962-63. The physics department staff
did not take a vacation; we simply did not take a break, other than
Christmas Day and New Year's Day. We moved into that building, even
though it wasn't quite complete yet. In fact, the connection section
between the east wing and the west wing had not been completed; nonetheless,
we moved in. At that time, we also got our first secretary for the department.
Up until that time, you did your own or you doubled and had Carolyn
Vann, who was the secretary for the whole building. That constituted
physics, biology, pre-engineering, chemistry, and geology and this was
too much for one person, so you had, to either rely on her or do your
own. I was able to find a student whom we paid to do typing for us.
We got Jean Harrison, who served as the secretary of the physics department
and also handled the math department during the first semester that
we were in there. Actually, she was my secretary even when I moved over
into administration. Moving along with the physics, we were successful
in getting 13 grants. I prepared about 14 proposals, 13 of which were
funded, either by the National Science Foundation, the Atomic Energy
Commission, or the Bureau of Standards. This allowed us to accumulate
something in the order of $1 million worth of equipment to fully equip a physics department. Much of that is still being used, by the way.
Also, in that, we got some $50,000 worth of machine equipment --metal
lays, drill presses, milling machines -- which now constitutes the core
of the School of Sciences shop. We got that with a National Science
Foundation grant. In 1963, I guess it was that year, we developed a
proposal for a master's degree program in physics. During the 1964-65
academic year, we go the master's degree program approved on the campus
by the Board of Visitors and by the State Council on Higher Education.
We started that program in either the fall of '64 or the spring of '65
and we had a significant number of students in that program by September,
1965. We had a fine staff and physics faculty ready to launch a master's
degree program.
Stewart: This was
obviously a period of rather sustained growth. What were the requirements
for students at this time and how were they met? Were most students expected
to take physics or chemistry? Where did physics stand in relation to the
overall distribution requirements?
11
Adams: Physics
was not required, across the board. It was not a distribution requirement.
Of course, it was one of the laboratory sciences that could be elected.
Stewart: There were
few laboratory sciences to select from then.
Adams: That's right.
They could choose geology, chemistry, or physics. At that time, they
did not have courses like physical science survey or astronomy. There
was a little bit of astronomy taught by C.S. Sherwood, in the chemistry
department. I'm not sure whether it was an elective or whether it was
a distribution requirement that you could elect. I doubt it was because
there was not much laboratory with it.
Stewart: In certain
schools, like engineering, wouldn't that physics be required?
Adams: Yes - it
was, heavily. There were a number of pre-dental students and pre-med
students who had to take physics. Aside from engineering, pre-med, and
pre-dental, we got only a smattering now and then. We had some biology
majors who would take physics, but most took chemistry as their science,
outside of biology. But some would take physics. We built a faculty
that grew to twelve, eleven of which had PhDs. I was the only one that
didn't have a PhD. We were running anywhere from 12-30 undergraduate
majors and 10-12 master's degree students regularly. The master's degree,
of course, started as purely an evening program. During the period of
1960-1966, we were running a program at night that let students get
a baccalaureate degree, going at night only. The only trouble with that
was, somewhere along the line, they had to take one semester off from
their work to be able to complete that baccalaureate degree. We had
a good number of students, something like 20-25, going through that
night program. It was one of the very few programs where you could get
a degree at night. That was a long process, though, usually taking seven,
eight, and even nine years to complete.
Stewart: That would
require a good deal of cooperation from the other parts of the school.
Adams: Yes - indeed.
It also took a lot of understanding from the employers of many of these
people, but it was something that we were able to work out. During this
period, we were also able to develop an extremely good and close working
relationship with NASA because we had a good number of students from
NASA that came over. Technicians came over to take courses and we actually
worked out a little bit of funding from NASA, in various types of programs.
We developed what we thought was a very good program. I was very pleased,
as we were one of the first four master's degree programs approved and
developed on the campus. English, history, business, and physics were
the first four. We were the first one of the sciences
12
and the only one for
a good while. We developed a real close working relationship with Dr.
Lampe. He came in the fall of '62, when we were officially separated
from the College of William and Mary, became an independent institution,
and also started the engineering program. Harold Lampe retired from
North Carolina State and came up here to start the program. We, in the
physics department, worked very closely with Dr. Lampe and the School
of Engineering in developing the physics program and the engineering
program. We were very proud of what we were doing and we were getting
a very good student body. I can recall one year when we had 10 entering
freshmen, from one high school in Norfolk, who entered as physics majors.
That was the prime example. A part of that was that physics was rather
popular. Also, I visited and gave demonstration/lectures to all of the
high schools in the area, as far away as Windsor. I gave a lecture/demonstration
to the entire student body at Norview High School and followed that,
by request, with a lecture/demonstration to just the physics classes
at Norview. In the following fall, we got 10 entering freshmen from
Norview as physics majors. We had a very strong department and we did
a lot of work with the high schools all around. We got, at one time,
about 55 physics majors at once, which was our highest number.
Stewart: Do you have any idea what happened to a lot of these people?
Did some go into industry? Did any go on to get their PhDs?
Adams: Out of one
graduating class, we had five that went for their PhDs. Ronnie Zaneveld,
[Dr. Jacques] Zaneveld's son, went to MIT to complete his master's degree
and then went out to the west coast to complete his PhD in oceanography.
He followed in his father's footsteps. One went to the University of
Arizona to get his PhD and the last that I heard, he was Chairman of
the Physics Department at Randolph-Macon Women's College. Joe Mullen,
who went to the University of Virginia to pursue a PhD, transferred
to Florida State, after two years at UVA. We had two others go to the
University of Virginia and receive their PhDs there. We were funneling
them into graduate school from here. We had an extremely good reputation
with several Nobel laureates who came here to work with our physics
department. We had a real close relationship with the National Bureau
of Standards, the old Atomic Energy Commission, and NASA, which carried
over and developed even further in other areas. I think we did a reasonably
good job at developing a physics department that any institution could
be proud of. This was the result of the thinking, help, and advice of
very prominent people in this field, outside of the university and this
area. Marsh White, from Penn State, was not a laureate, but he was very
active in the National Physics Students Organization. Mark Zemanski
and Frances Sears were both extremely well known people, both nationally
and internationally, not only because of their research, but also their
excellence in teaching and their development of textbooks. Both of
13
them worked with me
very closely. Mark Zemanski was here for a specific purpose. We had
a course that was part of the physics curriculum, thermodynamics, that
I felt needed to be developed beyond our faculty. Mark Zemanski's book
on thermodynamics and statistical mechanics was the "Bible" of physics.
He and Frances Sears developed what was, for many years, the most widely-used
general physics textbook. This was the real, technical kind of physics.
We used this at the Naval Academy, for example. I brought Mark in and
he gave a seminar, held meetings with the School of Engineering, held
meetings with the faculty, and the upshot was the development of a course
in thermodynamics and a course in statistical mechanics. He felt this
should be two separate courses in the undergraduate curriculum. Statistical
mechanics was a senior, graduate-level type of course. We had all kinds
of help in developing the physics program. I guess that's one of the
reasons why I was always very defensive of it because it was not my
product alone, nor my faculty's product alone, or even the two of us
together. We had some of the best minds in the country come in here
and help.
Stewart: What you are saying is that the thing was well thought out?
It didn't develop topsy-turvy?
Adams: It was not
a helter-skelter type of development. You're exactly right. Even including
that, all of it came into good stead when we started to develop a PhD
program in physics because we could still rely on much of the information
and advice we had gotten over the years and we also went to the "disciples"
of the same people we had consulted for the master's degree program
and they evaluated what we had.
END OF
TAPE 1
Interview
with
CLIFFORD ADAMS
TAPE
#2
Stewart: We've been
talking about the growth of the physics department. I wonder if you could
elaborate some more about that particular subject. What happened to that
department over the years and your association with it?
Adams: Let me take
it in two phases because there's an interlude, during which I was away
from the physics department and, many years later, came back to it.
I indicated that we had good student enrollment at both the undergraduate
and master's degree levels. Around late '64 and very early '65, I was
one of four or five people who were instrumental in developing what
is now the Old Dominion University Research Foundation. Jimmy Howard,
who was then a member of the Board of Visitors, was probably the lead
person. He was a lawyer; therefore, he did all the legal work. In fact,
he still serves as the registered agent. It was organized as the Old
Dominion College Research Laboratories. Over the years, there have been
name changes, but it is still basically the same organization. It was
separate from the university, but it was the "research arm" of the university.
That was incorporated in February, 1965. Jimmy Howard put $5 in the
bank so that it would have a bank account! Lewis Webb employed a man
named Bob (I can't ever remember his last name!) as a student-placement
person to help get jobs for students and, at that same time, named him
to be the executive secretary of the Research Laboratories. That was
in June of 1965. In 1966, Lewis and John Johnson asked me to assume
the responsibility, on July 1, 1966, of the position of executive director
of that organization, in addition to my duties as the chairman of the
physics department. Actually, it turned out that I carried, for two
years, three titles: chairman of the physics department, executive director
of what is now the Old Dominion University Research Foundation, and
research administrator for the university. I was carrying three jobs
at one time. In '66, I assumed the role of all three jobs and, as a
consequence, I had to reduce my teaching to only one course. We started
developing the Research Administration activities and the Research Foundation
as the "research arm" of the university. We carried that on from 1966
until February 1, 1968, at which time, the load had become so heavy
that I just could not handle all three activities. As a result, on February
1 of that year, I resigned as the chairman of the physics department
to devote full time to central administration and the administrative
activities of research on campus. Now let me go back a little ways;
I just wanted to bring that up. We also got another PhD in 1966, Dr.
Govind Khandelwal. In the summer of 1967, Dr. Melvin Pittman, who had
been chairman of the physics department at the College of William
2
and Mary through 1966,
was employed by Lewis Webb as Dean of the School of Sciences. Up until
that time when we organized into schools, science had been a part of
the School of Arts and Sciences. It was divided and Melvin Pittman was
brought in as Dean of the School of Sciences in September 1967. At that
time, it was just called the School of Sciences, but later the health
professions were added to it. When Dr. Pittman came here, he brought
three faculty members with him, all of whom were involved in optical
research, which was also his field. Those three were Dr. Jacob Becher,
Dr. George Ofelt, and Dr. Lee Kernell, who did not have his doctorate's
degree at the time. In fact, he came in '67, but immediately took a
year's leave of absence to complete his PhD at the University of Tennessee.
On February 1, 1968, I resigned as chairman of the physics department
and Dr. Clay was named acting chairman. I
went full-time with my administrative responsibilities as executive
director of the Research Foundation and as research administrator. This
was the first time on campus that we had a research administration activity.
Let me wind up the physics department now by saying that the master's
degree program continued to develop and grow, even though there was
a period in there when the enrollment in physics all over the country
was declining. What was responsible for that decline during 1966-70,
I'm not sure. In the late '70s, the master's degree program had grown
to the point that it was quite large. Among the institutions in the
nation that awarded master's degrees as a terminal degree, we were the
second-largest in the nation. It was a very big program and a very good
one. We were running as high as 35 people in that program and graduating
as many as 10 or 12 a year. One year, I think we had maybe 16 graduate
with a master's degree. I'll come back to this later. I'll go now to
the Research Administration office. There had been no coordinating activity
for research grants or any other kinds of grants on the campus up until
I assumed that responsibility on July 1, 1966. For example, somebody
would develop a proposal and it had to be signed by someone at the institution.
They always tracked Lewis Webb down to sign them. Someone had to be
delegated to commit the university and Lewis was the only one who could
do that. There was no way that he could keep track of all this as busy
as he was. Somebody would stick a proposal under his nose and just briefly
tell what it was. He would sign it and the first thing you know, there
were commitments that were contained in the proposal that nobody knew
anything about, except the proposer. Not even the department chairmen
saw them. As a result, there was a need for some kind of coordination,
so that someone would be on top of this and know what was being committed.
That was the function that I was asked to serve, together with the executive
director of the Old Dominion University Research Foundation. As we very
quickly developed the Foundation, we got the policy to be the research
administration "arm" of the university. All the financial matters would
be handled by the Research Foundation and they would
3
not go through the
university business office. There are many reasons for having the Research
Foundation serve as the research administrative "arm" of the university.
First of all, it was an autonomous organization; therefore, there was
no state control over it, other than the reviews of the State Corporation
Commission. It was just like any corporation in town, except that it
was purely organized as tax-exempt, both on the federal and state levels.
It was an educational organization, so it was non-profit. Being in that
category, if a faculty member had a proposal that called for the employment
of a student or even a technician, there had to be a job description
and it was to be approved by the State Personnel Office. If it called
for money for a piece of equipment to be used in the research, it went
through the business office to
through the business office to get through the normal purchasing procedures.
If the faculty member wanted a piece of equipment tomorrow and he had
a vendor and the money to pay for it out of his grant, he couldn't buy
it because he had to go through all the state procedures. While there
was a great deal of concern initially on the part of the university
business office about this, the Research Foundation would accept the
grant. The faculty member would send through a proposal, it would be
signed off, and it could then be approved. He also had to have money
for personnel service of any kind. We had policies that we followed
because we couldn't let them get out of line with what the university
was doing. Nonetheless, if they had money to put a student to work,
for a technician, or for a graduate assistant, all they had to do was
write out a simple request form and send it through. Once it was authorized,
the Research Foundation immediately put' them on the payroll and started
paying them. The same was true with equipment; we didn't have to go
through the state for anything like that. Before we developed this,
I had Dr. Ray Carpenter from VMI [Virginia Military Institute] come
in. Dr. Carpenter was the chairman of the physics department at VMI
and he was also in charge of the VMI Research Laboratories, which operated
in somewhat similar fashion, but a little bit different. We had him
in and spent a day with him reviewing and talking. After I became the
executive director, I visited the Purdue University Research Foundation
to see how it operated. I spent three days there and they took me through
the entire operation. I also went to Ohio State University's Research
Foundation, which in one of the biggest in the country, and then I went
to Oklahoma State. I visited three different places to see how they
operated and that's the way we began to develop our Foundation. We started
that in 1966 with a banking account of $5 and the first thing I did
was to get with Bob Fuller, the executive director of what is now the
Southeastern Virginia Planning District Commission. I suggested to Bob
certain things that we could do for him, to which he agreed. We arrived
at the idea that if they would make a contribution of $100 a month,
we could provide certain things for them. If any major jobs came along,
we could do them under a grant or contract. That's the way we started
to build up a little bit of money.
4
We got $100 a month
from him for about eighteen months. Likewise, we had two research grants
on campus. One of them was Jacques Zaneveld's, which was the Antarctic
thing. There was another guy in biology who brought a contract here
with him, but he was never satisfied with the way it was handled in
the business office. That's no reflection on the business office because
grant and contract activity was totally foreign to them. I think those
two [grants] totaled around $150,000. We gradually built up the Foundation
and worked along with the faculty. We built a very good research relationship
with NASA. We had already had a good relationship, but we developed
an even closer, working relationship with NASA-Langley then. We took
faculty over there regularly to meet with people at Langley. We felt
we had some pretty good research expertise in engineering and science.
I renewed my acquaintances with the National Science Foundation and
the old Atomic Energy Commission. I started working with the offices
of ATW in Washington, Philadelphia, and Richmond. We tried to develop
working relationships with the planning departments of all the cities
in the area and the regional planning commissions. I do not want to
leave the impression that this was all my effort alone because this
was totally a cooperative effort on the part of the faculty who wanted
to get involved in research. When Pittman and his faculty members who
came with him brought their research grants and contracts in 1967, they
had a couple hundred thousand dollars worth of grants and we began to
further develop that. As time went on, Earl Kindle was brought in as
the assistant dean and he began to develop various activities. Gene
Goglia, in engineering, started to develop major activities, particularly
summer programs at NASA, and we just grew and grew. I stayed in my dual
capacity until June, 1974. During that period, the research and grant
contract money that came into the university grew from about $150,000
to $21/2 million during that fiscal year, ending June 30, 1974. We grew
very rapidly in a relatively short period of time.
Stewart: All that time, you maintained that distinction as being separate?
Adams: Always -
even though I served and received no pay as the executive director of
the Old Dominion University Research Foundation. My salary was paid
as the assistant provost for research and sponsored programs.
Stewart: Was this taken out of some of the grant money?
Adams: No - that
was for my role as the research administrator for the university. I
also had two secretaries who were paid from the state payroll. I had
one assistant, Don Walsh. Then, after Don left, a fellow named Boyer
came in and replaced him. We were all on the university payroll and
the primary func
the primary function here, of course, was the coordination of the activity,
plus the development of research and grant activities.
5
The Research Foundation
served as the administrative "arm" of all the research activities. All
other personnel were paid directly by the Research Foundation. My assistants
and my travel expenses were paid for by the Foundation. It was my salary
and the two secretaries on the state payroll.
Stewart: I would assume that there was a sort of connection between
the timing of our becoming a university in '69 and the research thrust.
Adams: That's right
- it had already begun to build. I might say, at the beginning to build
up a little nest egg, that all of the overhead money, which is associated
with grants and contracts, stayed in the Research Foundation. It was
from that that all of the Foundation personnel were paid. It was also
from this that the travel money was paid. After some three or four years,
we let that nest egg build up in the Research Foundation and we started
budgeting each year. Incidentally, the Research Foundation was governed
by a Board of Trustees. When the Board was first organized, there were
seven members. There was always some concern, especially at the beginning,
as to whether or not the state would permit an independent corporation
such as this, being it was so loosely tied with the university. So when
it was organized it did have the approval that was needed. I am quite
sure that Jimmy Howard and probably Lewis Webb got Governor [Mills]
Godwin's approval for such a corporation. There was not always, I must
say, a complete sense of cooperation on the part of state agencies in
Richmond for this kind of office. When [Linwood] Holton was elected
governor and assumed office, there was a move afoot, primarily out of
the finance office in Richmond, to see what was going on at the colleges
and universities in the area of research. I have heard (I cannot verify
the truth of this) that one of the reasons for that was one of the two
major state universities, [VPI and UVA], started to buy a major piece
of real estate with that overhead money, to be owned by the university.
All of the sudden, here was an important expenditure that they had neither
approved nor were they even aware of it. The upshot was that a look
was taken at the overhead monies of all research grants and contracts. Even non-research grants and contracts that had overhead monies associated
with it were included. They did a survey in all of the universities
and the research administrators for the universities that had such,
VPI, UVA, VMI, ODU, and VCU [Virginia Commonwealth University], had
two or three meetings with the finance and personnel people in Richmond.
The upshot of which was a policy-document from Ed Templeton, on behalf
of the governor. Ed Templeton was Secretary of Administration for Governor
Holton. This document specified the ways that research overhead monies
would be used and handled at the state educational institutions. It
was a restrictive type of thing that would have caused us considerable
grief. When I say us, I mean that it would have caused any institution
considerable grief with the way we were structured. Not that it couldn't
have been done, but it would have been back to the old bugaboo on anytime
you
6
wanted to put a student
or anybody else to work, you had to fill out a job description and get
it approved. The overhead monies would have to be initially deposited
in Richmond and then used from there. Well, I prepared a very lengthy
document on behalf of Dr. Bugg and our Research Foundation, pinpointing
the areas of difficulty that it would give us, not the least of which
was that we had some major contracts with NASA-Langley in which we did
not receive payment until job completion. Everything was on a reimbursement
basis. So, we could not initially put that money in the state finance
office and draw on it because we didn't have it. I had two or three
meetings then with Governor Holton, Ed Templeton, and the director of
the budget. The upshot was a policy statement that came down, saying
that the Old Dominion University Research Foundation could continue
to operate and would not be subject to those rules and regulations,
but there could be no other in the state. We were lucky! I was able
to present to them the total picture and the problems that it could
cause us. We weren't trying to dodge anything; we were just trying to
expedite. As a result, they exempted us and, as far as I know, we still
operate as a separate corporation to this day. There is no other in
the state of Virginia. I believe the VMI Research Laboratories still
operate, but they have to operate differently and within the framework
of some policies that we developed. But, as far as I know, we still
operate separately. I guess that I'm as much pleased about being able
to do that as I am about anything else, not only in the development
of the Research Foundation, but also being able to keep it out of state
agency control.
Stewart: Were you the one that worked out the overhead monies in the
case of a grant?
Adams: No. As a
part of the agreement that I worked out with the Governor's office,
there could be only one university person on the Board of Trustees.
I decided upon the president of the university to be the sole representative
of the university on the Board of Trustees for the Old Dominion University
Research Foundation. I had seven businessmen as Trustees for the Foundation.
Before, we had faculty representation on the Board. We had Gene Goglia,
somebody from business, Jack Ludwig, and somebody from biology who was
heavily involved in research. I guess we had about five or six faculty
members who were on the Board of Trustees. Well, obviously, they couldn't
be there any more if we were going to operate as an independent organization.
It took until December, 1971 for me to get that whole thing worked out.
Believe it or not, I had to call a meeting of the Board of Trustees
on Christmas Eve and every single one of them showed up. All of those
businessmen came. I explained the circumstances and had already had
my, secretary type the letters of resignation for the faculty for them
to sign. On Christmas Eve, 1971, we appointed [James] Bugg as a member
of the Board of Trustees. After that, we expanded the Board and got
more businessmen. That's the way that we were able to preserve the Old
Dominion University Research
7
Foundation. While
I was the executive director of the Research Foundation, for the first
three or four years, we kept the overhead money that was left over after
the payment of salaries, travel expenses, and so on in the Research
Foundation to build a reserve. When this happened, at our annual meeting
in March of '71, I fixed the budget so that everything would be clear
to the state offices. I put in a payment to the university, so that
the whole thing was prepared: the personnel section, the travel section,
and the payment to the university. Fifteen percent of the overhead money
went directly as a payment to the university. We indicated that this
was for the use of the facilities because part of their argument was
that we didn't own anything and that the research was being done on
state property. We immediately put in 15% and each year, I put 15% of
the overhead money into the budget to be paid to the university. I always
listed it as the "use of facilities," but obviously that was partly
the payment of my salary and so on. Let's say that we had $100,00 in
the overhead money. Roughly $50,000 went as payment for staff salaries,
materials, supplies, and the other costs of operation. Fifteen percent
went to the university. We always set aside a percentage for awarding
faculty grants. That was done through the proposal route. We set aside
some for the capital account because we did not know what we'd have
to buy down the road or if the university might want it for some major
effort. That was just set aside. Incidentally, when I left in 1974,
we had, that account built to about $150,000. That was over and above
paying all the expenses and making faculty grants and contracts. We
ordinarily awarded $25,000 or $30,000 for contracts or grants, for which
the faculty applied. We had no distribution formula. We made the allocations
through a faculty-senate research committee. That committee made the
award and set aside the money. I think that the last couple of years
that I was there, there was about $75,000 each year to award to faculty
for grant activity or just to get somebody started. We worked on a reimbursement
basis and that was another reason we needed that capital account. If
we got a major contract that called for payment at the conclusion of
the job, we could not wait until the conclusion of the job to pay students
and faculty who were working; we had to pay them as we went along. So,
we had that backlog that we could use and when we got the reimbursement,
the overhead money would go right back into that capital fund. With
conventional grants, like the National Science Foundation, for example,
you may get the whole thing at the beginning or it may be one of those
contracts where you get 50% of it at the beginning. It could be a three-year
contract and you'd get money each year. But, you have commitments all
the way through. So, you've got to have some money to work with! With
NASA-Langley, we worked on a reimbursement basis, but everything, up
until '72, was done by grant. I had taken some faculty members to Langley,
where we worked with the technical monitor and had gotten approval at
the associate director's office
8
for a grant of $50,000.
Even though we worked all of this out in advance, it would take up to
six months to get all of the review taken care of, to get everything
done, and to get the document coming to us which authorized us to proceed.
That was somewhat of a problem for us because we might view that a grant
should start on September 1. We would put it through in plenty of time
and the first thing we knew, maybe we would get the grant document in
November. Well, we have been doing one of two things: we have either
been delaying until the faculty member's time is committed or we have
operated on faith that is was going to come. I got Mel Pittman involved
in this and we had several meetings. I finally evolved the idea of developing
a master contract. That master contract was a gosh-awful, thick document,
but it specified that the Old Dominion University Research Foundation
was to provide certain research services in the physical sciences and
engineering. The individual jobs would be instituted through what we
called a "task order." We evolved that document and got all of the sign-offs
all the way to Washington. I got President Bugg's authorization for
a sign-off and everybody was in agreement with exactly what we were
doing and how we were going about it. I was very proud of it because
it was basically my idea. Under it I might take some faculty, go to
Langley, and [talk] with the technical monitor, who had this much money
in his budget for a specific job. We'd define the parameters: this is
what is to be done, this is when the final report is due, this is the
time schedule, and this is how much it is going to cost. I might develop
a detailed budget, but usually not at that stage. I would have worked
out a [rough] budget with a faculty member, but we'd just give the monitor
a figure. He would immediately have this typed up and sent to me. This
task order would say who the person here was so that there would be
no misunderstanding as to whom would be doing the job. He would ask,
in a covering letter, for a figure. I'd pick up the telephone and say,
"$25,000." He'd ship us the document and we'd work it out. We could
have a turnaround on the dollar figure from the time a job had been
agreed upon until we had the authorization to proceed. It could be as
little as a week for the turnaround time, where it had taken as much
as four to six months before. If we had agreed on a particular job that
was going to last for twelve months, then we knew we'd have the commitment
within a week. I was very proud of that. Initially, we had set it up
with the master agreement and under that, task orders could be issued
up to a total of $250,000. Within two months, we boosted that to $1
million. It was working beautifully and it was still working when I
left.
Stewart: I imagine
that you missed your teaching responsibilities.
9
Adams: Very definitely
- because I had been the chairman of the physics department and had
developed the department through the master's degree [level]. I had
been the chairman from September 1958 until February 1, 1968. I had
been working those three jobs for a good, solid eighteen months. At
that time, I changed over and was in administration completely. Frankly,
I reached the point where the central administration activity was taking
me. My average work-week was anywhere from seventy to eighty hours.
The thing that finally started to get to me was trying to sit down and
develop some paperwork while the telephone was constantly ringing. I
could not, because we were rendering a service, decline to talk on the
telephone. When it rang, I had to talk because, almost invariably, it
was either an agency that we were dealing with or it was a faculty member
who had some problems with research and needed assistance. It really
got to the point where I just didn't want the administration any longer.
I missed the physics activity, of course, that I had before. We operated
as a complete, separate entity (the Research Foundation). I reported
directly to the president in all of the university relations. I was
also responsible to a Board of Trustees in that side function as the
executive director of the Research Foundation. That did not bother me
particularly, but I knew I was going to be getting out shortly. It was
and is still my belief that research is not only a faculty matter, but
also an academic matter. It properly belongs, not as an independent
reporting agent, but as a part of the academic administration of the
university. That's my very strong feeling and I can show you documents
where I indicated that to President Bugg. John Johnson never wanted it that way. When Johnson was provost, he really did not want the responsibility
of the research activity. I guess he figured he had enough of dealing
directly with the faculty in the teaching-academic matters. As a result,
as long as John was provost, he did not want the Research and Sponsored
Programs office as a part of his activity. That doesn't mean that we
didn't have a very close working relationship, because we did. I could
never have felt right in trying to operate separate and apart from the
chief academic officer of the university; therefore, John and I always
consulted about these matters I don't mean that we didn't develop some
things that he wasn't totally in sympathy with, but, as far as he was
concerned, it was my activity, I report to the president, and for me
to go right on ahead. I never dealt with faculty members separate from
John. I feel that research on a university campus is just as much an
academic function, as teaching is an academic function. Therefore, when
Chuck [Burgess] was appointed provost in the fall of '72, Harold Eickhoff
and I had many meetings about the university structure. I indicated
to him that I thought that the research activities should be a part
of the academic side of the campus, rather than trying to fight its
battles with the academics, the finance office, [etc].
10
As a result, Chuck
and I finally came to an agreement on the way that we would handle it.
In January of '73, I put the research activity under the academic vice-president.
Then in August of '73, I had had enough of the administrative chores
and I found that pile on my desk seemed to get bigger on Friday afternoon
because I hadn't gotten to it during the week. At that same time, I
wrote to President Bugg and indicated that I would be leaving the research
administration job at the end of June 1974, which I did. I guess there
are a couple of things with which I feel reasonably satisfied in my
career here. I think that we did do a respectable job at developing
the Research Foundation into a very strong, viable operation that is
a vital part of the university, even though it's a separate corporation.
I feel like we did a more than halfway-decent job at developing a research
administration job at the university level, namely the associate provost
for Research and Sponsored Programs. Throughout the entire development
of that, we operated it and developed it from the standpoint that the
faculty members are the ones who do the research; therefore, while we
may have to do certain things that a faculty member might not like,
my philosophy always was and still is that the faculty is in the driver's
seat, where research is concerned. The research administration's and
the Research Foundation's function should primarily be one of helping
the faculty members do the research they want and need to do.
END OF
TAPE 2
Interview
with
CLIFFORD ADAMS
TAPE
#3
Stewart: We've talked
a good bit about your work in central administration. What happened after
you parted from central administration? What did you do next?
Adams: Well,
let me back up just a little bit in the central administration because
there are one or two items that you may be interested in or that history
might like to record that happened during my time in central administration.
I emphasized research in that role, but I referred to my position as
the associate provost for Research and Sponsored Programs. Under Sponsored
Programs, there are all kinds of activities that are not research, such
as our academic programs that also had to be coordinated. One thing
that comes to mind that I think bears a little bit of discussion is
the Kaufman Mall. The university began to develop along what was originally
47th Street and 48th Street, which we laughingly called "the wasteland"
or "the mudhole." The engineering and education buildings also started
developing. For a period of time, there was discussion of what we could
do with that vacant land. The Garden Clubs of Norfolk wanted to beautify
it. There were all kinds of ideas. I don't know where to, put the initial
spark for this, but it could have been George Kaufman, Bill Whitehurst,
or Harold Eickhoff. Nonetheless, there was a spark raised that maybe
there is federal money that would help us develop that "wasteland" into
something that could be attractive. I do know that George and Linda
Kaufman talked to Bill Whitehurst and I know that Bill Whitehurst and
Harold Eickhoff talked. I also know that there was some indication that
there might be some way that federal money could be found. There was
a piece of legislation called "The Legacy of Parks" which Congress passed.
Under that, there were a number of different categories, such as historic
preservation. When I got that document and started reading over it,
I found, as a subsection of a subsection, public malls. I studied over
that and talked with Eickhoff. I'm sure that he talked to Kaufman and
Whitehurst. Finally, we said that we'd develop a proposal. I worked
with my Research Foundation staff and we developed a proposal, which
we submitted to the Department of Housing and Urban Development [HUD]
in Washington. Actually, I think Harold Eickhoff and I probably hand-carried
it to the Regional Office. Carroll Mason, who had been at the Housing
and Redevelopment Office in Portsmouth, was the administrator in the
Richmond area for HUD. We carried that to him. Bill Whitehurst pushed
on it in Washington and we pushed on it here. Finally, to make a long
story short, it was approved. Dr. Eickhoff and I worked a great deal
with
2
the Richmond office
in getting that thing launched. I think Harold Eickhoff referred to
it and still does as the "Eickhoff Mall." It was a combination of grant
proposal from the Research Foundation and legwork and telephone work
from Eickhoff, Whitehurst, the Kaufmans, and myself. I can understand
Dr. Eickhoff sort of laying claim to the "Eickhoff Mall" because it
was he, after I signed the grant document at a press conference over
in Webb Center in the spring of '74, who got the plans approved, got
it to contract, and worked with the architects and contractors. I don't
think the job was done even when he left the university and went to
Kansas. I guess I would like to take a little bit of credit for it.
Another activity that happened on campus that I'm sure the people who
occupy the spot have no knowledge of the roles people may have played
in it. We have on campus a center for urban and regional research. That
center was a product of my thinking, which was influenced to a considerable
extent by visits that Dr. Eickhoff and I made to the University of Chicago,
Cleveland State, the Center for Social Work in New York, and [we also
studied] urban research activity in Washington. We had been discussing
this for a number of years. We had even brought people to campus to
give seminars, talks to the faculty, and advice. Dr. Overton was one
who advised on the development of involvement with problems of the community.
I was also on the urban studies committee. So, Dr. Eickhoff and I took
off and visited several of the universities that had strong, functioning
activities of one kind or another, dealing with the setting in which
they resided. After making those visits and going through some of their
documents, I sat down and began to develop a concept, then a philosophy,
and finally a detailed outline of a center for urban and regional research.
I presented this to the president and his academic council. It was agreed
to; they bought the concept and even the implementation document that
I had along with the concept. Since there had to be some funding attached
to it, we developed a budgetary outline that called for a total of $85,000.
The budget, however, of the university would not accommodate $85,000.
As a result, I went to the Research Foundation Board at the annual meeting
and proposed that they allocate $85,000 from the capital account of
the Research Foundation to launch this center for urban and regional
research. They approved and Bugg took it to the Board of Visitors, which
also approved. I immediately started working with the #1 civil service
man with the Urban Mass Transportation Division of the Federal Department
of Transportation. I knew the director, who was a Nixon-appointee, and
I talked with him at the Naval Academy. He indicated to me that he was
looking for a place to put money from the Urban Mass Transportation
Division. I got to know this man who was his top civil service person.
He wanted to come to Old Dominion to start the Center for Urban and
Regional Research. There was legislation that encouraged high-level
federal
3
employees to take
a couple years of leave of absence and go to a university campus. The
government would pay all of their salary and the university had to come
up with an equivalent of up to 50% of their salary in terms of things
such as a secretary, materials and supplies, and travel. We had this
worked out with this man and it would have cost us, back then, just
about $18,000 a year to get a $49,000 a year man for two years to start
and develop the center. We had it worked out with him and we went right
up to September of '73. At the very last minute, the federal civil service
division encouraged him to go, but told him that while he was gone,
they would downgrade his position by one step. He obviously could not
do that, so I quit looking then. That was in September of '73 and I
was stepping out in June of '74, so I thought that I would not
go to all the trouble to get another person. I left it pretty much to
Chuck, to get someone for the Center for Urban and Regional Research.
That was the start of that.
Stewart: OK - do you want to come back to the physics department now?
Adams: Yes - but
let me mention that I left my central administration work in 1974. I
came back to the physics department in the fall of that year and was
teaching one class, while doing a few other things for the dean of the
School of Sciences and Health Professions. I was working on developing
a total long-range plan that would involve private fund raising to implement
all of this. I was having meetings with department chairmen and taking
brief things from them to develop the plan. That was the first semester
of the 1974-75 academic year and I must confess that it was difficult
to get back into the swing of teaching after being away from it. I hadn't
taught a class since 1966.
Stewart: A lot of things have happened in physics during that period!
Adams: You're not
kidding and there's been a lot of change in students! Anyways, it was
difficult for me in teaching. Dave Shufflebarger came to me about a
fund-raising drive they had launched in conjunction with a grant that
had been awarded by the Norfolk Foundation. That grant called for about
$300,000 for the Institute of Oceanography from the Norfolk Foundation,
but it had to be matched from other sources. They had limits -- a lower
limit and an upper limit. We had to match the lower limit to be able
to get that grant and then anything we got above that, they would match,
up to a certain point. That fund-raising campaign had been launched
and had literally gone nowhere. Dave Shufflebarger talked to me two
or three times about doing two things: working with him in the legislative
affairs and helping them in that fund-raising effort to meet that challenge.
I agreed to do it and I worked
4
in that activity from
January of '75 until June of '76. This other thing with the dean was
put on hold because I was at Shufflebarger's office full-time. I worked
on both the legislative relations and helped to meet the challenge grant
from the Norfolk Foundation, which we did meet. I, from visits to people
asking for contributions, raised just under $300,000 myself, which put
us over the top in our requirements. At that time, I started working
full-time as assistant to the dean in the School of Sciences and Health
Professions. I also completed the development of the private fund-raising
plan for that school, which took fifteen years to complete. I worked
with him, in developing a building plan, which is still in operation.
Among that was the moving of the School of Business to the old Hughes
Library building, which they have done. I did that in 1976 and, even
though we had a change of presidents, that has now evolved. I worked
as the assistant to the dean, Dale Lick, from that time until the summer
of 1977, in all kinds of activities that he needed to have done. All
of these were development-type of activities, like long-range planning,
facilities planning, fund-raising planning, and program planning. In
the spring of '77, Dean Lick prevailed on me since Dr. Earl Kindle,
who was then chairman of the Department of Physics and Geophysical Sciences,
was stepping down at the end of the 1976-77 academic year. Dale Lick
was so nice that I couldn't say no to him when he asked me to assume
the chairmanship of that combined department. So, I served as the chairman
of the combined departments of physics and geology, called the Department
of Physics and Geophysical Sciences. During the 1977-78 academic year,
we developed a plan of re-separating this non-compatible marriage of two departments. After having a faculty retreat in the fall of'77, we
developed a plan that was agreed upon by an overwhelming majority of
the two department faculties. We made our recommendation, at the end
of that academic year, that the department be re-divided and that the
physics department be re-established as a free-standing department.
Astronomy was to be located out of the physics department and there
was to be a department of geophysical sciences, which there is now.
Also during that same academic year, we developed a proposal for a PhD
program in applied physics. It was a lot of hard work and here Dr. Govind
Khandelwal deserves an awful lot of the credit because he took the lead
in writing the proposal. He did a tremendous job. I have to give him
an awful lot of credit for his development of the proposal. When we
separated the departments, we got that proposal completed. The separation
meant that there had to be a chairman of the Department of Physics and
a chairman of the Department of the Geophysical Sciences. I had been
chairman of the combined departments and Dr. Dennis Darby had been assistant
chairman for the geophysical sciences side. I agreed then to continue
another year as chairman of the Department of Physics and Dr. Darby
was made chairman of the Department of Geophysical Sciences. During
5
that year, we completed
the development of the PhD proposal in applied physics, guided it through
all of the campus politics and approval spots, and got it through the
administration. It was taken to Richmond by President [Alfred] Rollins
and obviously he did a good job selling it to the State Council on Higher
Education, as it was approved for the PhD program in applied physics
to start in 1981. Actually, some of the courses were started in 1980.
At that point, I had started the physics department, gotten a baccalaureate
degree approved, gotten a master's degree approved, and now we had a
PhD in applied physics approved. I figured that was the time for me
to let a new person come in and start this physics PhD program. I then
retired in May, 1979.
END OF TAPE 3
[Tape
#4 was unplayable for digitization
12/00]
Interview
with
CLIFFORD ADAMS
TAPE
#4
Stewart: We've
been talking at some length about your work in the physics department
and your role in central administration. I wonder if you might enlighten
us a little bit about your work at the university, as far as your service
is concerned and other activities. I know you were very active in campus
activities.
Adams: I expect
that the best way to approach this is to talk about what I would really
call a discussion of some of the professional services in which I was
engaged on campus. Some of this will be state-wide, even though they
are campus-related. From 1958-67, I presented a series of sixteen to
twenty lectures annually to the radiology interns at Norfolk General
and DePaul Hospitals. That was basically for the purpose of getting
the radiology interns at these hospitals in position to pass their medical
state board examinations. During the 1960-61 academic year, we were
very fortunate to be able to organize a student section of the American
Institute of Physics and get national approval for the section. That
later evolved into a chapter of Sigma Pi Sigma, the national honor society
for physics students. At that same time, I taught a course in theoretical/mathematical
physics at Norfolk State College, so that Dr. Roy Wood could take a
leave of absence to complete his PhD degree. We were involved with Norfolk
State way back. I was not the only Old Dominion University faculty member
who did that; I think Dr. William Spencer also taught a course over
there. Also during that year, I organized and served as chairman of
the committee that established a national Sigma Psi club on campus.
That's the National Research Society and it is still a strong, on-going
organization on campus. It promotes several things during the year for
students, as well as serving as the forum for research people. From
1961-71, I served as a participant and advisor to the Tidewater Science
Congress, which annually organizes and conducts the Tidewater Science
Fair for all the junior and senior high schools in the Tidewater area.
I served also as chairman of the judges and as the awards presenter
in 1969 for that organization. Between 1962-63, I gave a series of physics
demonstrations on Channel 3. Warren Hull, a national television figure,
came back to Tidewater and I presented several programs with him. From
1964-67, I served as Visiting Scientist for the high school visiting
scientist program, sponsored by the National Science Foundation and
the Virginia Academy of Sciences. I gave lectures and demonstrations
at more than 25 different high schools in the area. In fact, we maintained
a close relationship with all of
2
the high schools back
during that period. From 1966- 69, I served as president of the Virginia
Chapter of the American Association of Physics Teachers and was Board
chairman of the Chesapeake section of that national organization. The
Chesapeake section includes Virginia, Maryland, and Washington, D.C.
During 1967- 68, I organized an ODU Chapter of the National Society
of Physics Students. From 1968-70, I served as a member of the state-wide
coordinating committee for state-wide crime study, which, as result
of my working with Senator Stanley Walker, gave rise to a state crime
study commission within the state legislature. Walker served as chairman
for many years. Also, starting in 1968 and continuing through 1974,
I was co-organizer at the beginning and continuous member of the Research
and Development Advisory Committee of the State Council of Higher Education
for Virginia. I was chairman of that body from 1972-74. I was also a
member, from 1968-70, of the state advisory committee for Title 6 of
the HUD Act of 1964. From 1969-77, I was an annually invited participant
in the National Conference on the Advancement of Research. This was
an organization whose invited participants were limited to about 120
people nationwide, composed of 1/3 university people, 1/3 government
research administrators, and 1/3 industry people. That was a very interesting
organization because we were able to establish research policy at the
national level. The advice that was achieved from those meetings normally
served as the guidepost for national research policy during the coming
year. From 1970-76, I was a member of the state advisory committee for
Title 1 of the Higher Education Act of l968. This is one in which the
state agency participated with the federal agencies in the field of higher education. I was on the advisory committee for the state agency.
From 1971-73, I served as a reviewer of proposals for the National Science
Foundation. These proposals came in, were screened by the staff, and
a group of university people across the nation served as reviewers to
rank the proposals. During l976-77, I conducted the needs assessment
and developed the private fund-raising plan for the Schools of Sciences
and Health Professions. In 1976, I served as the co-organizer and advisor
of the Science Museum Association of Eastern Virginia. Currently, I
am a member of that Board of Trustees. I served as president and secretary
of that organization, as well as a member of the executive committee.
From 1977-78, I was co-organizer and president of the Old Dominion University
chapter of the National Honor Society of Phi Kappa Phi. Over those years,
I guess I participated in probably some fifteen to twenty national science
conferences that were called by either the National Science Foundation
or the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. In addition to
that, on campus, I served as chairman of President Webb's academic advisory
council. I served on the university senate as chairman of the research
and publication committee. I was a senator from the central administration
while I was the associate provost for Research and Sponsored Programs.
3
Stewart: That's quite
an impressive list! Did you have any spare time during this whole thing?
Adams: Sure - you
have time for just about any of those things that you really feel you
want to and ought to do. We were very active, as I think you can readily
see. The work-week for me was normally around seventy hours. I guess
I'd have to say that I look back with some fond memories. I think we
had a little bit of success when I look at some of these things that
I organized on campus that are still in existence and going strong,
such as the Sigma Psi club. I like to look as the National Society of
Physics Students, which we organized very early as a student section
and then became a chapter of the national society. I really look at
this one with a great deal of pride because they have been awarded plaques
5 out of the last 6 years, as one of seven outstanding student clubs,
in the nation.
Stewart: That is a good record!
Adams: They've
really done well. I might add that one of the guiding forces that has
kept them at a high level is Dr. Gary Copeland. He served as advisor
for several years. It is really a dedicated organization.
Stewart: Was this whole business more of a conscious effort on your
part? Did you have some sort of objective in mind or did things just sort
of happen? Did you really think this thing through?
Adams: Yes - my
goal was always to develop as strong a physics department with national
recognition as we could possibly develop, within the framework of our
academic programs and with the student body we had. I wanted to do everything
we could to be recognized as having some stature around the nation.
Stewart: This would also be true for the university as a whole, in
relation to enhancing its image.
Adams: That's correct.
I don't think we have yet realized all the potential that there is for
a university of national repute that serves the Tidewater area. I think
I really had an understanding of what was needed and that's what we
tried to accomplish. We tried to be of service to the Tidewater area
in higher education, but we tried to do it in a way that would also
be recognized nationally as an achievement. That's why we wanted the
national organizations to be recognized. Even as far back as 1960, I
knew that if you are going to start becoming involved in research, you've
got to have some credibility. That's why we got people together and
developed an interest in trying to get Sigma Psi chapter on campus.
We were successful in doing this. That is also why the other person
who took the lead in organizing the Phi Kappa Phi chapter was Earl Alluisi.
We worked together on this because we had no university-wide national
4
organization. Engineering
had their national honor group, business probably did, and there were
some in humanities who had their national chapters. Phi Kappa Phi is
an honor society that cuts across all disciplines. We felt that it was
time that the university did become recognized as having some excellence
in all disciplines, not just a single one. Earl and I worked very hard
at getting this and we had a major ceremony for the installation with
the national president and the eastern regional group coming down to
help us with the organizational meeting, as well as the installation
of the first officers. That has become recognized on campus as a very
worthwhile organization for which students can strive for membership.
Stewart: I know it's almost impossible to believe,
but you were also recognized as a very active person off campus in a wide
variety of activities, both public service and political. Could you elaborate
a little bit on that facet of your life?
Adams: Yes - I
would be glad to. Some of it was deliberate; a lot of it was purely
happenstance. I moved to Norfolk in September 1958. We bought a home
in the Camellia Shores section of Norfolk. We did not know it at the
time, but that section was part of the old Princess Anne County. It
had already been annexed and would become a part of the city of Norfolk
on January 1, 1959. Obviously, I did not know this, nor did I know what
the implications were when I came. I was working on my lawn one Saturday
morning and a gentleman came by and invited me to attend the Camellia
Shores Civic League meeting. I questioned him a little as to what it
was about and he said that it was an organization that tries to bring
the needs of the community to the attention of the Kellam family in
Princess Anne. I went to the October meeting and, for some reason, they
prevailed on me to accept the presidency of that organization in January
of '59. On the first of January, there was a meeting held by the city
of Norfolk at the airport. The mayor and some people from the city government
officially welcomed the residents of the area, into the city of Norfolk.
It was quite interesting because Mayor Duckworth made the public comment
that the taxes were going to be lower this year, but to wait until next
year -- "we'll get you!" The upshot was that, within two weeks, the
presidents of the civic leagues got together and we started talking
about the problems and some of the things that we could look forward
to being in as a part of the city. One of the first things that struck
me, as I got in my car and rode around the boundaries, through the area
that was annexed, was the annexation of Little Creek Primary, Little
Creek Elementary, and Larrymore Lawns Elementary. I started questioning
because I could see that the number of children that had been annexed
was going to put a terrible burden on those three schools. I talked
with the other civic leagues presidents and met with
5
the School Board.
The first conclusion that I reached was that there should be somebody
on the School Board from this annexed area because we obviously had
housing problems for school kids. I also talked with Mayor Duckworth.
The upshot was (not that I had anything to do with it because I could
not claim responsibility for it) that Stanley Walker was appointed to
the School Board. At the same time, I guess I would claim credit for
taking the lead somewhat in getting an understanding among the civic
leagues' presidents and the civic leagues that we would be much more
successful if we were to band together as a single organization. During
1959-61, I co-founded and served as the first president of the Norfolk
Federation of Civic Leagues. We didn't call it by that name at first.
That is its name now. We called it the 1959 Norfolk Annexation Federation
of Civic Leagues to designate that we were a federation of civic leagues
residing in that area annexed in 1959. I also served as a member of
the advisory board of that organization from 1961 up through 1976. I
spent virtually every Saturday of the academic year for two years, giving
tours of that annexed area to one or more members of the School Board,
school administration, and City Council, as well as other city people
so that they could clearly see what the problems were. When I appeared
for the first time before the School Board in 1959, they insisted that
they had figures from the superintendent of schools, Frank Cox of Princess
Anne County. They insisted that they had accurate figures on the number
of pupils that had been annexed. They had figures showing something
like 3,000 [students] I argued that their figures were wrong and said
that we had a much better picture of it. They said that those figures
were accurate. So, I organized, in each civic league, a group of people
to do a house- to-house survey in the entire annexed area of how many
school kids there really were. There turned out to be 7,000! We only
had seating for about 2,700. Obviously, the first push that we got involved
in was for schools. That's one of the big reasons that I was driving
people throughout the area, to see the housing projects. We were successful,
by the way. Stanley Walker, who was on the School Board, and I developed
a long-range plan for school buildings, which was followed right up
to the building of Lake Taylor High School. That was the last of anything
that I was involved with there. Anything after that period, I had absolutely
nothing to do with at all or was not involved. In that, I appeared before
City Council at virtually every meeting, as with the School Board meetings.
From 1960-64, I served as academic examiner for the University of London,
for which I primarily served as the examiner for those British students
assigned to NATO Headquarters. I got to know the military pretty well.
I had lunch three or four times a year at NATO as a guest of the British
admiral. That was very interesting. One time, my wife and I were invited
to a big party down at the Hague Club to celebrate the birthday of the
Queen.
6
Back it 1961, during
the Democratic Primary for gubernatorial candidates (which was tantamount
to election for whomever won that), Albertice Harrison was the Byrd-organization
candidate for governor and Gy Stevens from Smithfield was the outsider
who ran against him. When I became president of what is now the Norfolk
Federation of Civic Leagues, one of the first things that I felt we
ought to do was to try to get all political candidates to become acquainted
with the citizens of the [annexed] area, as they had not been citizens
of the city for very long. I immediately got the Federation of Civic
Leagues to sponsor public-forum meetings, at which all the candidates
came to present themselves to the people. We followed a general format:
a brief talk by each [candidate], questions and answers, and then a
sum-up at the end. We normally had TV or another news media people as
the questioners and/or moderators so, that it would be totally impartial.
We had already established that, so by the gubernatorial primary, we
felt that it was rather important that the people in Tidewater have
an opportunity to meet, see and hear these people directly. I did this
with [the help of] a committee from the Federation of Civic Leagues,
which included Stanley Walker and Vincent Thomas. Vincent Thomas had
also been appointed to the School Board and lived in the annexed area
at that time. The upshot was that we, in planning this, discovered that
all of the political leaders we talked to said that you don't do that
in Virginia -- you do not have debates between candidates. Now, I'm
one that, when I'm told I can't do something, I'm just about bound to
try it, whether I can have any success or not. The first thing we did
was to go to Smithfield (four of us) and talk with Gy Stevens. As the non- organization candidate, he was eager to participate in a debate
with Albertice Harrison, but he didn't think we'd have any success at
all at getting Albertice. Stan Walker and I went down and talked to
Billy Preer, the Byrd-organization political power in Norfolk. We convinced
Billy, to try to influence Harrison to accept. We then arranged a meeting
at Stanley Walker's home, at which we convinced Sidney Kellam, Billy
Preer's counterpart in, Princess Anne County, that he should exert whatever
influence he had on Albertice Harrison. We had a meeting with Harrison,
who was in town at the time, at the old Norfolk Yacht and Country Club.
We got his agreement, strangely enough. In June of 1961, the Golden
Triangle, which is now Holiday Inn-Scope, agreed to provide us with
all of the rooms that we needed -- quarters and meeting rooms. Each
of the major organizations in town, such as the League of Women Voters
and the Junior Chamber of Commerce, had a reception room. Joel Carlsen,
the public affairs man on Channel 3, and I had become fairly close because
I had moderated some TV programs for him before. The upshot was that
we had a debate between the candidates. I served as moderator. That
was on live television on
7
a Wednesday at 9:00
p.m. This was the first of anything like that in the state of Virginia.
We were worried about the attendance; therefore, we made admittance
by tickets only. We made a thousand tickets available to Billy Preer
and a thousand tickets available to Sidney Kellam. Believe it or not,
we had to open the partition between the two ballrooms to accommodate
1,100 people and the rooms were filled. We had 1,100 people, it was
on live TV, and it was carried on radio state-wide. That is where I,
incidentally, asked each of them to go on record regarding a school
of engineering at Old Dominion University. Strangely enough, they both
supported it! That was in 1961 and it stands out in my mind because
it was very exciting. I enjoyed participating and getting that thing
organized. For a period of about three weeks before the debate, we had
a public affairs program on all of the radio stations in town, asking
people to send in questions for the candidates. We made contact with
all of the stations during that time. From 1962-64, I developed the
formats and moderated several televised public service programs on Channel
10. That was when Vern Jones was the newsman at Channel 10. I developed
the format and moderated several public service programs for him. From
1962-65, I was the co- founder and first president of the Norfolk chapter
of the American Field Service. That organization has changed its name
now, but I don't know what it is. The American Field Service is a high
school student-exchange program. It was formed at Norview High School
and we brought rising high school seniors from foreign countries to
here. They completed their senior year here. Likewise, we sent students
from here to foreign countries for their last year. That was a very
interesting program. Also in 1962, I had a call from Mayor Duckworth,
asking if I could drop by his office because he wanted to chat with
me. I stopped by and he asked me if I would be willing to serve on the
citizens' advisory committee of the city. This had just gone in as a
federal government requirement, that those cities involved in redevelopment
must have an advisory committee to work with the city. Of course, I
told him that I would. He named me to that committee in January, but
in late February, before we had even had an organizational meeting,
I got another call from him, asking me to resign that appointment and
accept an appointment to the City Planning Commission. I talked to the
people of the Federation of Civic Leagues to see which one they'd rather
have. As an upshot, I accepted the appointment to the City Planning
Commission and I served on it from 1962-66. I resigned in March of 1966
to be a candidate for City Council on Mayor Martin's ticket. While I
was a member of the Planning Commission, I was instrumental in establishing
the Norfolk City Fine Arts Committee, which was basically the idea of
Fred Herman. It still exists and it reviews the plans of all public
improvements to see that they are aesthetically rewarding, as well as
being functional for city purposes. Actually, during this
8
period from 1962-66,
we established a Norfolk City Planning Department. They had not had
a department of planning when I became a member of the Planning Commission.
Likewise, the membership was about five citizens who had no connections
with the government, but the city manager and the director of public
works sat on that commission. One of the first things that we did was
to get City Council to approve the removal of those two people from
the Planning Commission because it is one of the top advisory bodies
in the city. The members of the commission felt that it was more appropriate
for it to be free of city employee membership. We did get that accomplished.
Incidentally, when I was appointed, I took Henry Clay Hofheimer's place
on the Planning Commission.
Stewart: I'm sure future [readers] would be interested in knowing
how city government actually worked at that time. It depends, to a large
degree, on voluntary efforts. These commissions are not compensated, except
for perhaps travel expenses. The city of Norfolk seems to have done quite
well with this kind of thing. Do you think that is the case?
Adams: I do. I favor the volunteerism approach and I do not believe in paid School
Boards, even though there are some places in the state of Virginia that
do pay School Board members. I'm not in favor of it. Nationwide, there
are far, far more paid commi
are far, far more paid commission/board organizations connected with
city government than non-paid. I really favor the non-paid approach
for many reasons, not the least of which being that there are no political
payoffs and no political obligations for volunteers. I might also add
that I totally favor appointed bodies, not elected bodies, in the committee/commission
organizations of city government. There are always a little bit of inherent
dangers in that. The power structure of a city may be able to control
appointments to the extent that all citizens can't participate, but
I don't think that is true in Norfolk. I think that if the citizens
watch carefully, they can see that it doesn't happen in any city so
that the committee/commission structure of volunteers can be pretty
representative of the people at large. I think the volunteer approach
is the approach. Contrary to Chicago where everything is paid, I don't
like that approach. There can be a lot more independent thinking when
you have volunteers. I like it because people feel more willing to talk
to members of public bodies who are appointed. I think they feel more
free to open up than with a paid body.
Stewart: The person serving in that position does not have to worry
about elections all of the time. At the same time, he wouldn't take a
course of action because he may get fired, as he isn't losing any pay
as a consequence of being forced to resign.
Adams: Some of
the community service things that I was involved
9
in were out of circumstances
developing, like the Federation of Civic Leagues. I didn't deliberately
start out to be a participant. It just happened. Some of the things
that I did, such as the Norfolk chapter of the American Field Service,
were deliberate. When we instituted the City Planning Department, the
individual who was named to become the first director of City Planning
was actually employed by the city manager, Tom Maxwell. Yet, we had
the opportunity to meet with that individual, Phil Steadfast. If we
had been strongly in opposition, then he would not have been employed.
We were responsible for setting up the Norfolk City Planning Department.
A group of us, including Mason Andrews, Johnny Watts, Pretlow Darden,
Larry Cox, and Billy Dixon, took a tour of the New England area. First,
we went to Rochester, New York to see what they had done in redevelopment
there. Then we went to Hartford and New Haven, Connecticut. We went
back to New York, then to Philadelphia, and back home. It was about
a five-day swing that we took to view what was going on on redevelopment
there and their planning. Following that, we developed the Planning
Department in the city of Norfolk. From 1963- 64, I was also a member
of the seven-member Norfolk Medical Center Commission. I was a representative
from the Planning Commission. From this, we developed the Norfolk Area
Medical Center Authority. From 1964-66, I was a member of the Architectural
Committee of the Norfolk Medical Center Authority, Much, of the development
that had been going on for some years now, around the hospitals and
the medical school complex, evolved from the Architectural Committee.
At that same time, 1964-65, I was vice-chairman of the [Norfolk] Arena
Expansion Study Committee, on which we were asked to take a look at
the city arena. Clearly, we had outgrown it as a place for conventions
or athletic contests. because it was entirely inadequate. We did a study
and John Sears was the chairman. The final report was not completed,
but we did come to the conclusion that something had to be developed
aside from that if the city was ever to go into housing any conventions.
If the city was ever going to have major athletic facilities and exhibition
halls, we had to have something other than the old Norfolk Arena. One
Sunday afternoon, I got a telephone call from, Mayor Roy Martin, asking
if I could come to a meeting at City Hall. So, I hastened down there.
As it turned out, Larry Cox had just learned, through Senator Robertson,
that Congress was getting ready to vote on a bill that would provide
for help with the funding of a cultural and convention center in Denver.
He thought that the city of Norfolk might like to participate, also.
The upshot of this meeting was that we decided that we ought to make
an effort. Senator Robinson put an amendment on the bill to include
the city of Norfolk. It turned out that Norfolk completed its cultural
and convention center and Denver did not. There were only the two cities
included
10
in that legislation.
The result of all of that was what is now Scope. It is a theatre for
the performing arts, as well as a convention center and athletic hall.
I feel very proud of having some minor role in that.
*NOTE* This is the end of TAPE #4 as the rest of the tape is inaudible due to a malfunction of the tape. |