>> Today is Tuesday,
April 19th, 2022.
This is Helen Thomas,
outreach archivist for the Department of
Museums, Archives and Rare Books.
Today, I'm interviewing Karen Randall.
Ms. Randall moved to Cobb County from Alabama in
the late 1960s and later attended Kennesaw Junior College.
Mrs. Randall, thank you for
taking the time to talk to us today.
Let's start off talking a
little bit about your early life.
When and where were you born?
>> Well, I was born on
a Marine base in Quantico, Virginia,
and my father was, at the time,
serving in the Marines for a short period of time.
And then he mostly worked for AT&T,
but it was that point in time that I emerged.
So we really didn't live there.
We moved South after
he was discharged because he
got frostbite in his hands from the Korean War.
And he was better off in warmer climates,
so that's how we got around this area of Alabama here.
>> Okay. And you
moved from Virginia to Alabama; is that right?
>> Well, there was a stop in Nashville.
My brother was born. But we were
probably about 10 years in Alabama and
it was right outside of
Alabama, old town called Theodore, Alabama.
>> So what was it like growing up in Theodore?
>> Well, we had fun.
But I think from
the standpoint that I always remember is,
well, as kids, we didn't think much about it,
but the time we got into school,
realized we were front and center
of the civil rights movement.
And how I started paying
attention to some of that stuff was,
it seems to me like it was a
very different than where we had lived before.
Today, we call it Jim Crow.
Back then, we just said
it was just the way everybody lived.
And I remember it,
and I don't know why my friends
don't, because I assume
most people in the South lived through it,
but I don't know.
There was a white water fountain
and there was a colored water fountain.
We went to the bathroom and then there was four of them.
Then there was colored and then there was white,
white women, colored women,
and you went to the train station and you had
to wait in the white waiting room,
there was white and colored and so forth.
It was just kind of the way society was back then.
And that was pretty much in the late '50s early '60s.
And I remember where I came home to meet my mother,
took me shopping downtown
one day and we took the same bus.
And we were boarding the bus and I guess my mother was
paying for our trip the coins.
And so I dark to the back.
I just thought that back looks like a fun place to sit.
So I moved to the back and my mother's
following behind me and the bus wouldn't go anywhere.
And we perplexed.
And then the bus driver said,
"You need to move up front."
So we did, and then the bus moved on.
And of course, it was the colors
in the back and the whites in the front,
regardless of where you wanted to sit.
Taking back on it,
that was your kind of "place" in society.
And you caught onto that pretty quickly, even as a child.
>> I see. How old were you when your school
integrated and how do you remember that experience?
>> Well, looking back at it,
I know it was 1963,
and I was in the fourth grade.
And there was a lot of discussion over
the summer about school integration in the fall.
And we had, at the time, Governor Wallace
was Governor of Alabama and he
was in a big clash
with the president of the United States,
which was, at the time, President Kennedy.
So there was a lot of this, you know,
I think in this early in the summer,
they had the University of Alabama,
people trying to register for the school year.
And you just heard about all that.
Something they talked about.
And Wallace, you know, over those years,
he was a very large figure
and everybody loved him.
And everybody hated President Kennedy
because he was trying to integrate.
So we knew the summer of that integration was coming.
And it came that fall at my school,
and mine was like a K through 12.
So it was a lot of students.
So even though we were divided,
it was like the school there.
And I remember the first day of school,
we had everybody's parents there.
I mean, not mine, but there was a lot of parents outside.
We came to school and I didn't
really understand what was going on.
I saw a lot of parents and it just felt weird.
And then we saw a lot of police officers,
which I now know were the state patrol.
And I got to say I was afraid.
I was glad to see the police there,
but when they're there, you knew what was going on.
So why were all these parents here?
Why were all the police there?
And then it was quite frankly,
rather a frightening time.
I remember that first day school, I went
into the bathroom and people were talking about,
there was something bad going to
happen to the new students
that were coming in. Obviously, the Black students
were coming in for the first time that year.
And they said that
something terrible is going to happen in recess.
We're going to make them all go back where they came
from, back to Africa.
Send back that kind of thing.
Well, nothing really ever happened.
I thought something bad was going to happen and I was
just terrified that whole day, that whole week.
But no real violence happened.
It was just kind of unsettling.
And she knew, you were just trying to go to school,
and there was all this stuff swirling around you.
>> How do you remember or do you remember
the issue of intergration being discussed in your town?
>> Maybe, and I'm thinking
why maybe I kind of remember some of the details here,
maybe more than than some of my friends,
because my parents were from the North.
My dad was from New Jersey and my mother was
from Wisconsin and I
remember just talking maybe like raising the issue.
And there was a particular time, well,
another memory that later that year.
We all know
the day President Kennedy was shot,
well, I was in school that I
think it was the same year, that same year.
And my teacher, I remember name Mrs. Sprinkler.
She walked in the room and she says,
children, something terrible has happened.
What has happened and she was crying.
And she said that the president has been shot.
And I just thought, "That's terrible."
Somebody's been killed, it's a terrible thing.
And so then we were dismissed and we went to our buses.
And this is the buses where we had,
like elementary school and older kids on the bus as well.
And I remember feeling very
sad because our president was shot.
And when we were riding home, they were yelling,
it was a cheering erupted on
the school bus and they said,
yay, the president's been shot,
you know, has been shot, you know,
the President Kennedy has been shot.
I think at that time,
we didn't know if he was dead or what.
I just thought, and
my best friend was sitting next to me,
and she was doing the same thing.
And I went home,
talked to my mother about that and she said,
well, here she is, your friend,
Jeanie, who was just crying when her dog died,
and yet something similar happens to
the president and she's in there cheering with them.
So anyway, I think maybe
my mother had a little bit
different point of view as mothers,
and that's probably why I noticed so many things.
>> So how did it go over the rest of that year?
>> Well, things calmed down.
It had to because the students that were
coming, and there's only a handful
of them that came that,
well, it's only that
my friends would talk with
their parents would say about everything.
So I hear what their parents had to say.
I didn't wasn't getting any of this from my family.
But they said, well,
the students must have been "Paid" to come to our school.
I'm just sitting there thinking about this.
Why would they be paid?
I'm looking at these students.
I'm thinking to myself, I mean,
my father had a pretty good job,
but I would consider us like lower middle class.
And a lot of the students at
my school, they struggle to afford shoes.
So I'm looking at these kids that are coming in,
and they looked to me like pretty well dressed.
So I'm sitting there thinking,
I don't know if that makes any sense.
And then I'm thinking
to myself, because they were
shunned and they were treated pretty poorly.
And I thought, why would you allow your
kid to do something like this?
It's not worth it. I don't know what they're being paid.
It just didn't make any sense to
me that that would be the case.
And then I remember, this
was probably towards the end of that year.
I was just really curious about
the students and maybe some of the others were too.
And I don't know, was that year or the next year,
but I had a lockers what I do remember.
And one of the girls that had come to the school,
one of the Black students had
a locker near mine and I'd see
her and I would smile, and that was about it.
So one day, she was there at
the same time I was and I had
a couple of girlfriends around me,
and everybody was talking, you're curious.
You don't really have a whole lot of experience
with white people, not doing the same thing
that you're doing.
And so I think there was some,
at least there was on my part,
and we were curious about the hair.
The hair looked different.
It was, you know, curly,
maybe it seemed like a little wiry, weren't sure.
So one day, we were at the lockers at our locker and she
was there and after I had
smiled at her and I think said hello a couple of times,
and I finally got up the courage and I said,
"Do you mind if I touch your hair?"
And she said, "Sure."
So I touched her hair and I was
expecting something different, something really coarse.
And so I said, it is so soft and some of
my real friends were around me and they're like, wow.
And then she touched my hair and it was just one of
those moments in time where you
realized that their hair felt the same.
>> So how old were you when you moved away?
>> Well, I was 15.
So we moved to Cobb County and actually,
it was my sophomore year. And so 1969.
>> And that was to Smyrna?
>> Yes.
>> Then you went to,
was it Wells High School?
>> Wells High School.
>> So what did you think of Smyrna when you lived there?
>> Well, we liked it. It was, I guess,
I'll say a little bit more
urban than what I was used to,
there were more stores and maybe a
little bit more rural where we had lived,
but we liked it.
It was adjusting to something new.
>> So how was it similar or different from Theodore
other than being a little bit more urban?
>> A little bit more urban, a little bit
more sophisticated.
And quite frankly,
we had a couple of black students in my class,
but not that many,
very much the minority,
but the whole racism thing
just didn't seem to be an issue.
it really didn't. It was
different, you just didn't think about it.
It's almost like they had dealt with it and
moved on a lot quicker. I don't know why.
>> Interesting. So what
was your first impression of Wells High School?
>> It was a good school.
I think, of course, I had moved
into the high school ranks
and I enjoyed it, I enjoyed the area.
>> What kind of activities did you involve with?
>> Well, the one thing I was interested in is
making good grades because I knew that
was the key to getting ahead in life.
My dad had always stressed out.
And so I was in
national art society and then there was this thing
called pepper tree at school that was
with maybe some of the kids that
were a little bit more accelerated.
But as far as the fun thing was,
I got elected to the pep club,
which means that you get to wear a cute little skirt
and pompoms and that kind of thing, not a cheerleader,
but you were elected
and then you had some friends as a result of that.
I'm trying to think. Was there something else I did?
I know what it was.
I had an aptitude for writing,
so I was one of the co-editors
of our local school newspaper called Tiger Type.
>> I know you said you remembered there would be
a few black students enrolled at Wells.
Do you remember having any black teachers?
>> No, I don't think there were any.
>> What about administrators?
>> I don't think so at all.
I don't remember any,
just a couple of students.
And when I mean a couple, I mean less than five.
>> So you were there
for three years at Wells and then graduated?
>> Right.
>> And at that point,
you went to Kennesaw Junior.
>> That's right. That's when I went to Kennesaw.
>> And you went straight to Kennesaw.
>> Right. Correct.
>> So when was that that you enrolled at KJC?
>> I graduated in June of '72 and then that fall,
I guess it was September, I
went immediately to Kennesaw.
>> So you were enrolled at KJC fall of 1972?
>> That's right.
>> And what led you to choose Kennesaw Junior?
>> Well, I think there was several factors at play here.
One was we didn't
have the resources for me to go away to school.
And so those weren't an option.
My dad really wanted me to go to Kennesaw.
So that's really the only thing he talked about.
And he felt like,
it hadn't been here that long,
and he really paid attention to it.
It had a good reputation at the time,
and it was an up and comer.
And my father worked at Western Electric,
which eventually became AT&T.
I was the first in my family to go to college.
And he really wanted that for me.
And at one time, I asked him, I said,
why were you so hip on me going to
college since you didn't go?
Well, he worked over there at his office and
he came from the field
as an installer when he moved here.
He was in a professional position,
that the people that were coming in
really were requiring college degrees
to do the work that he did.
And he said he noticed how articulate, how
different they were than himself.
So he found himself working with college educated people.
And I don't know whether he heard about it
from his AT&T workers or he read about it,
but he was just really wanted
me to go there because
there's some other places you could've driven to.
So that's what we did.
And I was interested in it.
I wanted to go to college and I was
real focused on my career.
And to be honest with you, I think at the time,
I wasn't really ready to go off
to the ones with the dorms.
So there was a lot of factors in there.
>> You said it had a good reputation.
What was the kind of reputation or the impression?
>> Well, it was an up and comer and like I said,
I think he got the information from the people at work.
So it came from a work standpoint.
It was new.
This whole area up here was starting to grow.
And it was just the newest in
the University of Georgia
system and there was stories about it in the media.
I didn't know anybody that went there.
>> So not a lot of other people
from high school that went there?
>> No. They weren't. Well, here's the thing.
When we were graduating,
everybody was talking about
where they were going to school
and it was all these supposedly exciting places.
And then they said, well,
Karen, where are you going? I'm going to Kennesaw.
And here's what they called it,
they called it advanced high school.
So it was a way to make fun of where I was going,
but what they were really talking about was,
I think, the fact that you
weren't getting away from home,
and we didn't have dorms here and we didn't have
a football team and all that kind of stuff,
it was just serious school,
which suited me just fine.
But here's what I noticed,
I came, everybody goes, well,
I'm going to all of these and they ticked off
all the little interesting places they were going.
And after that first quarter, then all of a sudden.
I started noticing other people
from my high school showing up
here for whatever reason.
So it all worked out.
I found it to be challenging and
get me those core courses that I would need.
And subsequently,
when I went to the University of Georgia,
those core courses had a hundred people in there or more.
And over here, you had,
I don't know, 25 people or something.
Looking back on it, it was really good at the time.
>> So where did you live while you were in school?
>> Well, I lived with my family and we commuted.
Well, in fact, I certainly wasn't the only one,
everybody was commuting,
it was a commuter school is what it was.
And I commuted with
one of my neighbors who also went here.
So we would take turns driving up.
I don't know if you want me to continue on,
but we'd be from 9:00-1:00 or something like that.
And the student center was the place.
It was the hangout place,
which I don't know,
maybe it is today as well, but it was.
There weren't that many buildings on campus,
so the student center, it was a big one.
And you go in there,
a lot of people, they played cards in there.
Well, I only did that in between my classes.
If I didn't have a class,
I'd go play cards, and it was funny.
Some of them weren't all that serious
and they would just play cards
through the next class
that they were supposed to be attending,
but that was a fun thing to do
for an hour if
you had something in between or during lunch.
And that was a good place to get lunch.
It was inexpensive and and quite frankly,
it's not like you're going to drive to
a whole bunch of places to go eat because
now you've got restaurants all over the place,
but not so then.
And actually, when I first came up here, we drove up,
and I remember, if I'm remembering correctly,
it was just a long drive
into the campus to the beginning of it.
And it was what you would consider like out there.
It was way out. The whole Kennesaw.
And you drove up
and it was just trees all over the place.
So it was really more of almost rural compared
to where we were in Smyrna if you drove out to Kennesaw.
And previously, the only other thing
out here is Kennesaw Mountain.
Now you have the college.
There was stuff growing up around it,
but nothing like it was today.
Absolutely different.
>> So was the next closest place to go get
something that you were that became the town of Kennesaw?
>> No, Marietta.
>> Marietta.
>> That's how I remember. Maybe that wasn't the case.
And I don't think I was alone with this.
I think most of the people worked there.
So at least that's what I did.
So we came in the morning,
we commuted, we went to our classes,
had lunch, and then went home.
Well, I had a job Monday through Friday in
the afternoons and it was
actually around the Cumberland Mall area.
Interestingly enough, the job that I had,
it was in a company that really did early computer work.
So it's totally different than
the way we think of computers back then.
But it was an office job and I went in there,
and they had like little cards
that we would proof against.
So my job was a proof reader.
And they had people that were,
I guess they were typist,
and they typed this information
from the card onto this computer.
And then into the computer,
and then it printed out this pages and pages,
and I would proof it
against the little cards to get the information,
and the name of the company was Input Services,
and that's exactly what they did.
They just inputted information
into what was the early computer at that time.
So I did that in the afternoons,
and then during the summer,
and it pretty much paid for my tuition for here,
and for a lot of my time at
Georgia because it actually paid pretty well.
And the other interesting thing of it is here,
when you're a freshman and a sophomore,
I didn't know what I want to major
in and that was the whole thing.
I was just taking the core courses.
And so I started
to realize that I was pretty
good at that kind of a thing,
proof reading and communications.
And so it wound
up being a good skill that I used later on,
it actually helped me get
my first job for them to know that I was
a proof reader. But I wasn't unusual.
Everybody pretty much, the ones I knew, had a job.
>> So you did get a degree
from Kennesaw but you just transferred?
>> Yeah. Because I thought,
I wanted to get a degree.
I want a piece of paper.
So we actually walked.
I went to graduation.
I got an Associates of Arts in June of,
what is it, '74, and I walked.
It was cool. I graduated.
My family, I think everybody came,
and we thought it was like a big deal.
And I wasn't the only one here like that,
that was first generation college.
So it was great. And the students
here, I got to meet people.
There were more people from Cartersville as I recall,
and Cherokee County and places
around there that I would have never met previously.
>> Did you remember what building they
had the graduation ceremony here?
>> I don't. I can't remember
that part of it. I wish I could.
But there was only really a handful of buildings
on campus. Very few.
>> Are there any classes that you remember being
particularly enjoyable or challenging or useful to you?
>> I remember I had a history class.
I had a professor. I can't tell you his name,
but I took two classes from him
because I really enjoyed history.
And I think it was the second class that he gave us
the option of doing
a term paper, and don't we all love term papers,
[LAUGHTER] or you could do an oral history.
So I'm doing the oral history.
I don't know a thing about it, but I'm going to do it.
And so that's what I turned in as my final project.
In my oral history,
I took a cassette player, not a video.
We couldn't even afford the equipment then.
But I did a cassette and I interviewed
three senior citizens,
and it was about The Depression.
One of them was my grandfather,
and he had lived in New Jersey,
and he talked about
the bread lines and he talked about Roosevelt,
listened to him on the radio and he
would say, "My friends."
And you are my friends. And then some of
my grandfather was remembering as he was
doing his recollection of those times,
and he had stayed
employed because he was a bus driver there,
but he did remember the bread lines.
And then I talked to somebody that was South,
somebody that lived in Alabama,
an older person during and
they did okay because they grew their own food.
And then, I talked to somebody,
one of my neighbors' fathers that was in the the Midwest.
He remember the dust bowl that went on during that time,
and the difficulty, and all this.
So anyway, so I had
three different people for
this oral history of The Depression,
and it turned out pretty good. So good.
Well, of course, I got my A and
it was a lot easier than doing term paper.
And he said,
"Are you going to keep this?"
And I said, "Well,
I don't know what I'm going to do with it."
Back then, I was just glad to get
my A and get out of there.
And he said, "Well, I'd like to have it."
So somewhere,
maybe it's in the archives somewhere. I don't know.
>> It could be. That sounds like you
might have had that class with Dr. Scott.
>> Well, the
other lady was too thought it was Dr. Scott,
and I looked at the picture of him and
I didn't look like him.
There was another guy, when I looked at the annual,
I saw who it was.
I didn't recognize the name Scott,
so I could point him
maybe because he was working with him.
He was an associate professor I think then.
But anyway, so here we are,
doing an oral history and I
actually did one that was turned
out to be more fun than I thought.
But actually, there was one of the class that I remember,
and I think I got it by fluke.
I was in types like an English 101 as
a freshman and I got in there and to be honest with you,
I was pretty good at English and so I was bored.
This first day and I thought, oh, my God.
[LAUGHTER] So then I got out.
I got a class and there was something
posted on the front of the door,
everybody has started looking at, and I
realized it was somehow from the SAT.
If you did real well on it,
they had a list of names that
were exempt from that class.
Lo and behold, there was my name on that list.
And so, I said, "Good."
So I got whatever it was,
I think it was five credits for just taking the SAT.
So I dropped that class and got to pick up another one.
And as I recall, there weren't that many available.
So I got music appreciation,
which I would have never signed up before,
but I really enjoyed that class and
other professor had us go, well,
it was extra credit, and I'm all about the extra credit,
and we get those grades in.
So we could go and listen to
some music and we had to show
him like the program that we went to.
And I was also all about the free ones
and he told us some places you could go,
and like Georgia State
had some music programming going on
and that was my really my first exposure
to different kinds of music.
And to this day,
I have a really good appreciation for music.
I'm at Reinhardt College,
they have the Falany Performing Arts
that I'm on their advisory board,
and we go to just about everything they have over there.
But it all started here in music appreciation.
>> That's great. So you
mentioned there were not that many buildings on campus.
What was your first impression on that campus?
>> Well, just that driving in
and seeing the trees and the handful of buildings,
but it was my first day of college.
And so I thought it was pretty
exciting and not overwhelming
to me because I really
didn't think I was ready for University of Georgia
even if we could afford it at that time.
That was just a lot. So I
was pretty excited about it because I knew that
it was a way to move ahead
and my friends were calling it advanced high school,
but it looked like college to me on a small scale.
>> You mentioned that you met students
from some of the surrounding counties.
Would you say that most of the students,
everyone was in driving distance,
but were most of the students from
Cobb County or was it mixes?
>> It was a mixture, but the ones
I met, it was surprising.
The ones in my circle that I
hung out at the Student Center with,
they did seem to be Cherokee County,
Cartersville, and all over,
and I don't know if that was just a fluke,
but it was just some different places
than what I was used to because we just hanging
out in small little Cobb
and I really didn't thought much about it
and I think even we
thought of a lot of people with rednecks.
Let's face it. If you're not from where you live,
then you're the redneck. [LAUGHTER]
>> Do you remember if there were
more male students or female students, or about even?
>> It did seem like there
were more guys than women, and I don't know.
Maybe it's once again,
the group that I was hanging out with.
I really didn't date in high school.
So I did in college and a lot of them were some of
those folks that we met in the student center.
But it did seem like
more men than women from my perception.
>> Were they most of your age
or were there older students?
>> They were I'd say mostly my age,
but it was real obvious to
me that there was
some that were older and they were vets.
And how I knew the vets was it was older,
and that's like why are they here?
And then there was some I remember,
like in wheelchairs and things like that.
Not a lot, but just enough that you notice.
You just noticed that and they were older in wheelchairs
so that was obvious that they had served in Vietnam.
This was what they
were doing next on the I guess the
[inaudible] as we learned.
>> Do you remember many students of color
like Black students [inaudible]?
>> I don't. I mean,
I know they were there, but it
just not something that struck out.
It's funny. I just recognized the vets.
I mean, it was just something that struck me.
Also, there was some talk,
and my class was starting to get away from that
because I think they got rid of the frat for a while.
But for a while,
if you were in college,
you can avoid the frat.
I don't know if that played a role into
my perception that there were
more young men there or not.
But maybe because there was some discussion about that,
even though nobody was like a lot of anti war sentiment,
mostly the kids was like they'd
rather be to school they were going off to Vietnam.
So let's give it a shot.
>> Do you remember any other ways that
the Vietnam war impacted the students on campus?
>> No. I don't. The vets,
I think some of those guys would wear like red,
white, and blue flag type things.
I can't remember exactly what they are.
It almost seemed like something flag looking
on jeans or jeans jacket and that kind of thing.
>> If there were
students who were using wheelchairs at the time,
they must have had to have made
the buildings accessible to the wheelchair?
>> Well, I hadn't thought about that.
But it wasn't a lot.
It was obvious that they had served in Vietnam, and yeah.
I don't know how that worked.
But I don't recall it then climbing a lot of building.
Now, when I went to Georgia, it was
a lot more climbing and
difficulty to get around than it was here.
I thought it was pretty easy to go around here.
There were concentrated, the buildings.
So to your point,
it probably was very
accessible more than a lot of other places.
>> So you mentioned the student center.
It was the student services center then.
That was the center of
social life and food and everything like that.
>> Well, it seemed to be.
That's where you'd meet up on each in
the lunch and some activities.
I'm sure there's more, but there was a lot of
cards [inaudible] excited now,
but that's all I recall in there.
But that was like the center of life at least for
me and the people that I spent time with.
>> That would have been the original student center
that faced the crowd out there.
>> That's funny. Yeah, it was. [LAUGHTER] I don't know.
Again, I bet I wouldn't even notice where it is.
>> So they built what's now the student center.
It opened the next year,
but I guess that wasn't being
built yet when you graduated?
>> I guess not if it wasn't built in 1974.
>> In the fall '75, so [OVERLAPPING].
>> How about that? Sorry. Darn it,
I missed that good one. I missed it.
>> So do you have any memories
of student organizations on campus?
>> No. I really don't.
And it's probably because I was just in and out.
I was there for the the morning education
and the afternoon working.
So I was rarely there.
I didn't get involved as I mean, now, and
I'm very much active,
but I think that was just because for me,
I was just working.
I didn't have time to join any of those activities.
But I think there were some,
but I don't content what they were.
>> I know that, well,
today it's KSU day but back then it was
the Spring Festival that they were having in May?
Do you have any memory of either of that?
>> I don't. I wish I did.
>> What about sports?
I know they had mural sports going back to again.
Do you remember seeing anything about that?
>> I didn't go to anything like that.
I was out of it. I was more on
the academic side, I think.
I can't elaborate on it, unfortunately.
That was just it.
I thought other people were having more fun.
I was busily focused.
>> What about parking?
How was parking back then?
[NOISE]
>> I don't remember being a problem at all.
Plenty of parking.
I would have recognized it
because when I got to the University of Georgia,
you had to drive around and drive
around and find a parking space.
So here, it was easy.
You just came and you parked.
I mean, everything was easy here, quite frankly.
The classes were small,
the food was good,
the parking was good.
It was easy to find your building.
I mean, you didn't have to get here so early.
And just walking around
was easy. It's all convenient.
>> I know you mentioned a couple of instructors,
but were there any other faculty members or
staff or administrators that stand out in your memory?
>> I don't. I mean,
I took some other classes.
I know I took chemistry.
Chemistry and math were not my strong points.
I took Spanish, but I don't, I mean, worked out great.
I wound up. It was helpful to know Spanish,
but I don't remember much about the instructor.
>> Do you remember any discussion of converting
Kennesaw from a junior college to senior college?
>> I don't. I wish I did.
>> That would've been started [OVERLAPPING]
>> Well, I guess it would have been in
the media and my dad was probably on top of that.
But for me, once a graduate,
I was all focused on
Georgia and it wouldn't have been available to me.
If it was available, I probably if it
was my timeframe, I
probably would have thought more about it.
>> At the time, did you have
any opinion on whether or not
it should convert or it was you at Kennesaw?
>> I think at the time.
Back then that's probably I was
thinking about was my next step.
And Kennesaws wouldn't have been an option for me.
And I think I was really ready at that point to
go off to college.
>> So did you go to
University of Georgia in the fall or semi fall?
>> I did. And all of my credits transferred,
it was easy to get in and that was another thing.
Some people around here
struggling to get into Georgia.
Well, even more recently and it was almost
guaranteed if you were at
Kennesaw that you were going to get into Georgia.
I had good enough credit and I don't have to worry about
that, but that was an issue for some people,
maybe then and later on, but I never had that problem.
And every single one of them transferred.
That's great because I had all these people
like things that transfer.
I was like, that's just a waste of time and money,
things aren't transferred. But they all
transferred and even that five hours
helped me, only overloaded once at Georgia so I
graduated on time there, June of '76.
Because some of these majors you needed a little
bit more extra and if you didn't do it the way I did it,
then you were there another semester or another.
At the time, it was a course system and
and I didn't have time messing with all that stuff.
>> So did you go from to living on campus?
>> I did finally at Georgia.
And quite frankly,
I paid for most of it for the money that
I earned at this little computer company.
Because of Kennesaw, I was able to get an education.
It was an efficient way to do it
but at that age, people aren't thinking efficient.
But I always did, I always thought,
to be honest with you that I got a great return on
my investment in my education.
So I had had earned money for
most of the University of Georgia years too.
>> So what did you end up doing?
>> Well, I majored in communications.
It was in the School of Journalism, mass communications.
>> And what did you do after that?
>> I went and I got in that field,
I actually got an interview on campus at Georgia and I
went to New York actually for
my first job in public relations.
This is really what it was and
then I worked in that whole career and then I
got my master's while
I was working at University of South Carolina.
So I got a great return on
my investment because my company paid for most of that.
But it all started here and it was a good foundation,
I was always glad that I came here.
I never regretted at
one minute because it was a real good education and
always had a good reputation and I tell you what,
I had moved away,
I said in between.
But then the name Kennesaw came up again.
My younger sister told
me that she was going back for her master's degree.
And lo and behold,
where was she going, and it was
Kennesaw and she worked at AT&T at the time and
they had a program where she came here on the weekends.
She came here on the weekends and got her MBA.
So I would have never dreamed when I was
here that you could wind up getting your MBA here.
>> When was that?
>> It was about 15 years ago.
>> So you had you kept up with the changes at Kennesaw?
>> Not a lot because I had moved out of the area.
I lived briefly in New York and then a lot of
time in South Carolina and [inaudible] .
So until she told me she was coming here, I was like,
well, then I really started to think about my mind,
is that things really changed.
And I knew it had
a wonderful reputation because that's what AT&T
was encouraging their people to
do and she was one of them and it helped.
So I can't beat it.
>> That's great.
>> It's really evolved.
>> What do you think
about what to become now when you hear about it?
>> I think it has had a good reputation from Day 1 and
it's still got a great reputation now.
I hate to say this,
if I should be [inaudible] to saying it,
but I remember a lot of my friends were
going to West Georgia when we graduated.
In fact, the majority of that's where
you have the most fun, I think.
West Georgia, University of Georgia or some of
these campuses up north and even then I was thinking,
well, that's just a party school,
I felt West Georgia and I think that Kennesaw has always
had a good reputation
as far as education goes.
And I think now there's a lot of
education research and whatnot.
And in my community,
all things but Kennesaw came up there for
this holocaust museum and done
some things there as you well know so you hear the name
Kennesaw all over the place.
S it's obviously not
just a local community college
anymore, it's come a long way.
But it's always had a great reputation.
>> Is there anything else that
you would like to tell us that we haven't
talked about about your life inside the
county or your time at Kennesaw?
>> Good education, having a good career, and
then wind up having an awesome retirement.
So I think I did it right.
And a lot of my friends that,
some of the didn't last.
How that freshman year is.
They were going out more interested in the party than
the school and anyway,
I thought I had the last last
where I thought they were laughing and making fun
of me because I was going to Kennesaw.
Isn't that weird to say that?
But it did, because for them it was all
about the partying and having a good time
and this was not as much of a good time.
It's all what you make of it,
so I had a good enough time,
but I wound up with education.
That's what I was here to get and I
moved back here after my career to be near him,
that's why I moved to Ken.
He lived in Jasper, he lived to the age of 90 and I was
here with this last year and he was
always just really proud
of me going to Kennesaw. That's what he wanted.
>> Thank you so much for
sharing all these memories for us today.
>> Thank you. I appreciate it.