| Stewart: Today, I'm talking with Al Tatem, who's a long-time member
of the Phys. Ed. Department. Al, what-- could you briefly describe your
career and your life before you came to Old Dominion? We'll talk a little
later about how you come to be here.
Tatem: Peter, I was born in Norfolk, and so I'm a native. And I guess
one of the few around here. Of course, being a native, I was-- went
through the school system here in town and graduated from Granby High
School. I believe I was in the first June class.
Stewart: When was that?
Tatem: That was 1942.
Stewart: '42, right in the war.
Tatem: Yeah, well. Right after that I went to the Citadel for just
one semester and then I volunteered for the-- what was then the Army
Air Corps, which is now the Air Force. After I came out of the service—
as a matter of fact I came over here for a little while. Not many people
know that. It was then the Norfolk Division. It being in the history
and background of this institution. I then transferred to Springfield
College in Massachusetts. And when I came out of there I took a job
at Norview High School in physical education. I coached the JV football
team. I was the head wrestling coach. And I had a group of baseball
players. It wasn't the varsity and it wasn't the JV. It was what they
called a ___________ and we practiced at 7:00 in the morning. I guess
that's why I hate to get up early nowadays. From there I went back and
got my master's degree at the Teachers' College of Columbia University.
And went over to— got my next job at the South Norfolk High School,
which is now Oscar Smith. And stayed there a year and a half and was
head wrestling coach, also in physical education. Then I dropped out
three years and went into the insurance business. And after that, about
1957, I believe it was that I went back to Norview High School teaching
and did some coaching. And then I got the job over here, which I think
may be a little interesting. One of our characters of this institution
is Scrap Chandler, as you know, and the pool was named after Scrap.
I brought my wrestling team over one year. I guess it was 1959 or ‘60.
And I was— we used that method to try to toughen up my boys to
wrestle with some of the college students. It did make them tough! I'll
tell you that! And walking down the about eight steps from the old gymnasium-–
the stage, I don't know if it's still there.
Stewart: They just tore it all out. [Inaudible. Both voices overlap.]
Tatem: I think they're tearing it down right now, as a matter of fact.
And Scrap came down the same steps from ____________. He got on that
platform and he said, "Al, do you want to work here?" I said,
"Yes," and it was all signed, sealed, and delivered in about
eight steps. [both laugh] Of course, I didn't know at the time that
they had been investigating me. And, of course, they wanted somebody
with at least a master's, which I had at that time. And eventually--
they wanted me for tennis. Of course, that was always my mainstay. So
I came over here and I was the tennis coach for some twelve years.
Stewart: But you were familiar with the campus I guess from way back.
[2]
Tatem: Oh. I was, yeah.
Stewart: You probably used to come through here a bit.
Tatem: I came through here. I used to come to the football games. Of
course, Foreman Field was-– I don't know the exact date it was
built-- 1933 or '34 or ‘35. We used to come over here for high
school football games. And we used to try to get into the swimming pool.
Which we did on occasion, which we got thrown out on occasion too! [laughing]
So, yeah I was very familiar with the area.
Stewart: Now you were a student here, or you said? Was this right after
the war?
Tatem: Yeah – right after I got out in '46 and I don't know whether
I started in the summer or started the following fall. So I was here,
and then we--
Stewart: A lot of difference back at that time, I assume?
Tatem: Oh yeah. An awful lot. Really was. And of course, we've seen
a lot of changes since then, and of course the campus has grown tremendously.
And the old landmarks like Bud's little shop over there and the old
gym underneath the steps where we used to gather. We had our fraternities.
And--
Stewart: It was an interesting time of development, I think, here. Well,
at any rate, you finally got here and as far as being on the faculty.
Could you tell us something about your-- how the phys. ed. operated
at those times or how was it organized? Or--
Tatem: When I first came? As a teacher?
Stewart: As a teacher, yeah. How was it set up. Who was here, besides
Scrap Chandler? Obviously, he was--
Tatem: Oh. Okay. When I came, of course, Scrap was the head of the
department and the athletic director. And he was chief of everything.
Let's see. Next in line was Bud Metheny. _________ for the history books.
I always called him ________. And Lou Plummer, and let's see, Pete Robinson
was here at the time. Emily Pittman was here in the women's department.
Natalie Etheridge was here, and Beverly Johnson was here. And of course,
as of this date, she is the head of the department-– men and women.
We were-– that's interesting-– we were divided off primarily
men on one side and the women on the other. They did their thing and
we did our thing. And you may or may not know, but the original plans
for the gymnasium-– the new physical education building was to
be primarily for men. And then the women were to come along later with
their own building across the street. Evidently, we've come a long way,
and that's our integration.
Stewart: I hadn't realized that it had been on the drawing board to do
it that way.
Tatem: Yeah. Well I was there and we all, all those people I mentioned
plus some others, were there at that time. And of course we designed
it too. The doors on the tennis court side were there for visiting teams.
We could shut the building off so that visiting teams could come in
and have a place to stay and do their thing and then leave. I don't
know whether you know it or not, but the original-– the contractor
came in-- the amount of money was way over what we had budgeted for,
and they cut the pool off. It was very convenient the way the pool was
located just to chop a pencil right though there with no trouble [on
the plans]. Of course, saved a million dollars. And Charlie Jackson,
who was a graduate of this institution then on the staff, really went
to work-- went through everyway he could including Washington, got all
the ideas he could and why we should have it. They finally changed it-–
put it [the pool] back in the plans. However, in doing that, it was
a bond issue. And since all of the students were paying a bond issue,
that forced us, if you will, to include the girls in the building. And
actually we've been happy ever since. But still, that's the way they
got into the building so to speak.
Stewart: That was just before the Title 9 issue came along I suppose.
Tatem: Yes. Yeah. Let's see. We moved into that building about 1970.
Stewart: '70 somewhere in there.
Tatem: 1970, I believe. And that was the time that Jim Jarrett came
in as head of the department. He came here about '67 I think. I think
that was the year I was away at school that he came in.
Stewart: He was actually the tennis coach at first? Or what?
Tatem: No. He was never the tennis coach, as a matter of fact, which
is his specialty. The year I left, Marion Carroll took it over.
Stewart: You left to go and get your doctorate?
[3]
Tatem: Yeah I left to do that at Springfield. So I left him with a
good team, but, of course, he's a good coach. And he had about a 16-4
record, as well as I remember.
Stewart: Now the way that phys. ed. was set up then, of course, all
students for several years they had to have--
Tatem: Right. Yeah. All students had to take physical education. We
ran them all through, I think, two years. And we operated out of that
small gym, which was a mess. The locker rooms were always crowded and
inadequate. In fact, I think one of the ways that we got a new gymnasium
was to take a picture of the kids dressing on top of each other practically.
And that got us some simple sympathy. So, then of course, when they
built that $5 million building over there, I think your department and
many others were quite upset. Some nicknamed it "The Taj Mahal"
and now it's interesting to know that the building actually is too small.
Stewart: Yeah, a lot of it is taken up in lobby space. There's a lot
of glass in that building and a lot of hallways in there.
Tatem: Well, somebody counted the doors in there one time and there's
70-75-80 doors! And it's ridiculous trying to control those doors, which
has always been a problem in that building. You can never seem to lock
it up, somebody goes through the door and it's always open. People find
it and get in. But you see in the original plans they also had the plan
for the auxiliary gym. And we always thought that was coming down the
pipe one of these days, but its not here as of this day. But it got
chopped off of the capital improvement list somewhere along the line.
An investigation showed that and we went back to work immediately to
try to get it back on the capital improvement list. I hope we are moving
slowly towards a new auxiliary gym, which we need badly.
Stewart: I think we've already discussed some of the changes as far as
phys. ed. is concerned. Nowadays, the students are not required to have
phys. ed. and there is probably less pressure, but you still have quite
a number of students taking these courses I suspect.
Tatem: Yeah. That's an interesting point there, since I was in on it.
First the School of Education State of Virginia still requires two years
of physical education for those people. The rest of them do not have
to take it. It was quite a battle on campus-– I don't know how
long ago that was 6-8-10 years ago that we lost the fact that all the
students have to take it. I went-– they sent me over some sacrificial
lamb or something, but I was in on the final vote and we lost that,
which was very unpleasant because we thought all kinds of things would
to happen to us and we would lose a lot of jobs. It must have been around
'68 maybe or somewhere around '69. I remember that Charlie Jackson and
I had been to school. We had known studying the issues and things that
were happening all over the country at graduate school. We knew this
could happen, and it was happening at other places and could happen
here. So we started thinking about what we could do to cull these students
and really want them to come to physical education. We had to change
our attitudes and our goals, and objectives and give them what they
wanted really and what they would enjoy. And so we got a pretty good
jump on that situation, so when the ax really fell we were in fairly
good shape. And I think we, in about two years, recovered nearly 75-80%
of the students. So right now that is the lifeblood of the physical
education program. And as you know, sports have grown so much here.
It's the tail wagging the dog, I think. That's my own personal opinion.
Stewart: Did you have much to do-- I thought you did anyway-– with
the recreational-– that is the fraternities and the--
Tatem: Oh yeah.
Stewart: Tell us something a little about that.
Tatem: I can't remember the dates, Pete.
Stewart: Well it doesn't matter about the dates. You know something about
how that evolved.
Tatem: Well it seems when I came back from graduate school, I was typical.
I did everything but my dissertation. So I coached one more year and
then I dropped out of coaching and I think that lasted about a year.
[4]
And they needed someone to take over what was then called the Intramural
Program. It's now Recreational Sports, and I did that. It was quite
a controversy because they just kinda had one staff member in charge
and he turned it over primarily to a graduate student. And the general
student body got in an uproar because it just wasn't run that well.
And they asked me to do it and I did it for some six years. I think
I did my thing and improved it. And got it going pretty good. And then
something else came in.
Stewart: Well, it is a very big activity here. Fund of activities, really.
Tatem: Oh yeah. It's a tremendous program. I don't know how late they
run in some of these basketball games, maybe twelve to one o'clock at
night.
Stewart: Some of the softball games here-– football now I guess-–
well there was a softball __________ at night a few weeks ago. Usually
all the facilities around here I think _______ for sports events-–
a wide array of them obviously. I knew you had a role in that. We might
need to highlight that a bit. How did they, and still I guess do, work
this relationship between teaching phys. ed. courses and coaching? Is
coaching a separate function or is it a component of the phys.. ed.?
Tatem: Well it's always-- I talked to Dr. Jim Jarrett's leadership.
He's always thought that they should be-– what's a good word—integrated.
One compliments the other. The coaches, with a few exceptions-–
maybe the basketball coach and some of the others-- have split duties.
Primarily coaching. Yes, but some duties towards teaching. Maybe 25%.
Maybe 50%. Whatever. And so that gives us extra personnel to take care
of what we call activity courses-– tennis, badminton, swimming,
and basketball.
Stewart: You also have the responsibilities I guess of teaching those
who are majoring in phys. ed.
Tatem: Yeah. That's very true. However, I think the large majority
of the teachers doing that are not coaches. Have been coaches, probably,
but they're not doing it as such. At the present time, I'm just thinking
of, well before Bev Johnson took over his department. She was doing
student teaching with no coaching, doing some teaching in the graduate
school. Mel Williams coached a little bit, cross-country, but primarily,
he did the physiology of exercise. Paul Hiner, and then myself. Charlie
Jackson dropped out of coaching, and was doing primarily --
Stewart: Well, has that area been strengthened over the years or is it
about the same as it was when you first came here? How's that?
Tatem: You mean the phys. ed. department?
Stewart: The phys. ed. department, as such, as in terms of the teaching
faculty, if you will.
Tatem: We've had some very interesting things come about last four
years maybe. We lost primarily the "health" end of our department,
our teaching. That went to Norfolk State-– trying to combine and
not have an overlap of, you know, degrees and courses and that sort
of thing. So primarily lost that. Then, they went into recreation.
Stewart: Leisure Studies, I guess.
Tatem: Well, what they call it, yeah, LSS – Leisure Studies and
Services. And they, those people, of course they're part of our department.
And however a lot of the majors, they gathered up a lot of majors, some
of which were our physical education majors. So we dropped back in the
number that were going into physical education. Plus the fact that along
this time it got awfully hard to get teaching jobs, and it looks better
right now, but years there it was tough. And so kids, you know, saying
well I don't have a chance to get a job, I'm not going into it. But
along that line, here again, I think it was an interesting development.
We had to do it. Well, one, to save ourselves, we did go into recreation
and two, we went into such things as sports medicine and sports management,
which of course helped. We diversified within our own department.
Stewart: Even developed master's degrees, I think.
Tatem: Yeah. We even have master's degrees in those things. I'll tell
you another trend has been athletic training. Marty Bradley came in.
He did a wonderful job of getting that program started and getting it
accredited. And he had a lot of kids, plus some of the laws and rules
have changed and they require these athletic trainers to be with the
teams at all times. So that created immediate jobs.
Stewart: You're just now producing your first graduates of that program?
Tatem: Right. Yeah, last year was the first big group.
Stewart: I guess to sum it up then, a great deal of change, a great deal
of, well, numerous problems that you've had to deal with. The department
has adapted and gone along. Was there always a distinction between the
department chairman and the athletic director? Were those always two separate
functions?
Tatem: Well, that's very strange. There's several ways of doing it.
And here at Old Dominion, well now, we used to be a department some
years ago. We are now a division. Now Dr. Jarrett is chairman of the
division. He's head of the physical education, health, intramural sports,
recreational sports, all the academics, and all the activities. And
he reports to the dean of the School of Education. However, he's also
the athletic director. So as far as athletics are concerned he reports
to-- well right now I think he reports to the president. He did report
to John Moore, who was the academic vice-president. So he wears two
hats, in essence. And he's always been one to feel like [if] he's in
the building, he can make decisions on the athletics and the physical
education and all the rest and he should do that. And they shouldn't
be separated like they are at some schools.
[5]
Stewart: Well, at one time wasn't it sort of-- phys. ed. was the department
and then what's happened is that it's been changed so that the status
by expanding and now it's the division heads that you have to have a department
chairman. Is that how it-–
Tatem: Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah, And of course, he's got what four assistant
athletic directors-- well one associate and three assistants.
Stewart: Sure. Yeah. That's the general trend of the place.
Tatem: Yeah. Well athletics has grown. Of course, physical education
and the rest of them. Well that department has grown too.
Stewart: Okay, well that gives me an idea on that. Now let's talk a little
bit about coaching tennis and something about the people that played,
the kinds of schedules you had, and how that came along. Tennis existed
here, I suppose, as a sport before your arrival.
Tatem: Yeah.
Stewart: Did you play for the tennis team back when you were here?
Tatem: No.
Stewart: Was there a team then?
Tatem: I don't even remember. There might have been one. Ed Fraim,
assistant athletic director [for] last couple of years, has had a reunion
every September and that's helping us get the history put back together,
because really no one seems to know.
Stewart: When you came here, did-–
Tatem: I came here. I started my coaching in '61, '60-'61 year. The
year before that Pete Robinson had it. And there have been a lot of
coaches. We've had some people who came back over here; I think one
of the 1934 teams. So we're putting those pieces back together, but
we-- I guess we played about any body we could in the early years. And
then shortly thereafter, around the mid 60's somewhere, we joined the
Mason-Dixon Conference. And played ________. We played Randolph-Macon
all of the time. Of course, we were playing them at basketball at that
time too, I believe. Not just because of the conference, but I think
maybe before that. Loyola, Hampden-Sydney, Lynchburg, and St. Mary's.
And then we switched out of there. And now, they play Sun Belt schools,
but also we used to pick up a lot of teams from the north coming through
here. We used to play Colgate. We still play Penn State. We play the
University of Richmond and VPI, but we did pick up some of the Northern
Schools [who] used to come through and play with us, but our weather
wasn't quite right. But still, we did pick up some of them. They would
stop here either one way or the other-– going down or going back
up. So there was a very interesting schedule.
Stewart: Did you have any outstanding players over the years?
Tatem: One or two that popped into my head, if not more. George Consolvo
comes to mind. He's a lawyer in town. He played #1 on a very good team
that we had. We went to Ryder College. They were having a tournament
at that time and one year he won that tournament. He beat a fellow from
Hampton Institute, by the way, which he could have played that at home.
He didn't have to go all the way to New Jersey to play that. Still he
had to get to the finals. That was a good tournament. We also went to
the Easterns one year where we ran into Notre Dame, Colgate, and all
those big schools. We didn't fare too well, but then of course on that
same team, was David Howell. He was now the tennis pro down at the Virginia
Beach Racquet Club. One of my favorites was Jim Rosemergy, who graduated
here in chemistry but now is a Unity minister in Spokane, Washington.
Then Marc Balmuth. He's from New York. One thing about Marc I think
anyway, I got his name from the coach of Richmond. I don't know. For
some reason or another he didn't like it or couldn't get in or something.
The coach gave me his name and I was going through New York and I stopped
to see Marc at Long Island. We played tennis and I beat him. I guess
he figured that if the coach can beat me, I'd better go back and learn
something! But we've had a nice relationship and many, many, many others.
Well I seem to run into twins. The Saltino twins are very good and the
last time I heard they both were majors in the marine corps, but they
may be generals by now. And the Perry twins that are around town now.
We've had a lot of people who have stayed here and a lot have moved
on.
Stewart: Generally, tennis players make pretty good students in the class
I suppose. You didn't have too many problems with flunking out all the
time, did you?
Tatem: Not too many. Did have one fellow from Suffolk who went through
with a 4.0 average. He's a CPA now in the Midwest-– Banes, Dicky
Banes. We had some others. We did have some others who did flunk out,
unfortunately.
Stewart: Unfortunately, it was bound to happen, I guess. Well that's
it. |
