>> This is James Newberry,
and I was here with Hillard Pouncy on Monday,
July 7th, 2014,
and we're at the Sturgis Library
at Kennesaw State University.
And Dr. Pouncy,
do you agree to this interview?
>> Yes, I do.
>> So could you state your full name?
>> Hillard Warren Pouncy, Jr.
>> And when and where were you born?
>> I was born in Prichard Alabama,
February 8th, 1922.
>> And Dr. Pouncy could you
describe your childhood and your early family life?
>> I had one brother and two sisters.
I lived with them for about three or maybe eight years.
And then it was decided
that I should live with my grandparents.
You must remember in the early days,
Social Security wasn't invented.
And when people got old,
they get a grand niece, grandchild,
or grandsomething, they come and live with them.
So I lived with my grandparents
all the way through high school.
>> And where did your grandparents live?
>> They lived in a little town
on the Chattahoochee River,
not too far from here.
A new town called Eufaula Alabama and Barbara County.
>> Well, tell me about Eufaula.
>> Well, Eufaula is on
the bluff of the Chattahoochee River,
and it's called the Bluff City.
It was a small town when I was there,
about 6,000 people, and it
was about 50% black and 50% white.
My grandfather was a janitor
at the first Methodist church.
And as he got older,
I had to pick up that job.
So I was probably one of the youngest
janitors you ever heard of.
>> So in Eufaula did you experience discrimination?
>> I can best answer that by asking you,
when you were young, did the sun shine?
You become accustomed to things.
You may not like it, but that's the way it is.
And you were taught or
you began to believe that you have an activity to do,
and it's your job to do that activity and do it well.
Go to school, do your best in school.
And we were led to
believe that if you did a good job sooner or later,
one way or the other, it would pay off.
>> So you worked as a janitor
then when you were very young in that Methodist Church.
And did you attend high school in Eufaula?
>> Yes. We didn't have
a high school. We had a 10th grade.
And when you finished the 10th grade,
that was the end of the line.
Now, the other school system
across town where I couldn't go,
of course, they had high school.
So at the end of 10th grade,
I was out of school.
I dropped out for a whole year.
Fortunately, the Board of Education
saw fit to give us one more grade.
And after staying out one year,
I went back and I finished 11th grade.
So at my school, I never really finished
high school there I finished 11th grade.
Where did I finish high school?
Well, we went to the next county.
And in that county, they had high school.
So I went there and I got my high school training.
I finished in Henry County in Abbyville Alabama.
>> And what kind of student were you?
>> What kind of student was I?
Not bad. Actually,
I was the valedictorian of the class.
>> And what were your best subjects?
>> I can tell you my worst subjects.
I didn't like history.
I didn't like sociology.
I like the statistics.
I like mathematics.
But I could pass them.
I could pass all the courses.
I really don't remember when I could not read.
>> So who was the driving force when
you were young and encouraging you to get
an education or was it more just inside of you?
>> I think a lot of it was inside.
My grandfather, I
never heard him mention going to school at all,
but he could read and he could write his name.
My grandmother could not read, could not write.
And I didn't think reading was a big deal,
so I said, Grandma,
Big Ma I called her.
I said, I can show you how to read.
She said, "Ain't no little boy is
going to show me how to read".
And of course, I didn't.
Later on, very much later on,
she wished she had learned to read,
but she never learned to read.
We talk about not having plumbing,
but our house never had a newspaper.
A Newspaper never came to our house.
But that was not a big deal
because when I went to school,
I went through a nice neighborhood and
they would throw a newspaper
on the sidewalk to each of the houses.
And by the time I got to the end of the street,
I would have read the newspaper.
I just walked along.
>> So that was the way that you kept
up with the news and what was going on as well?
>> Yes. That's the way.
Also, I had some very good friends who
would subscribe to all the new magazines,
wonderful magazines, and they would keep them for
a month or so and they wouldn't throw
them out and they would give them away.
So when I got them, I would have a feast reading them.
>> So what big events,
what headlines do you remember from those days?
>> I think the headline that really caught
my attention was when World War II came.
And we were worried about the
Germans have taken this town,
the Germans have taken that town.
And people would turn the radios
up loud and we would hear that and hear that.
And I would talk to some of the older people who
veterans of World War I
and I would ask them about World War I.
Because somehow I knew that in
a few years or maybe a few months,
I just felt that we were going to be in the War II.
And I wonder how would I react in the war.
And I would ask them, Did you ever kill anybody?
And they would shy away
from it and no one likes to talk about that.
So I never got any good answers there.
>> So when you finished that I guess it
was the 11th grade in Henry County, avevill.
>> I finished 11th grade in
Eufaula after staying out of year,
they added the 11th grade.
Then I left Eufaula and I went to Henry County.
Now, there was a president in those days.
I think his name was Mr. Rodvil and he had alphabets,
NRA, the NYA, and CCC.
Well, I became a part of NYA National Youth Association.
And somehow they had some money.
And by going to that school
and working like cutting firewood,
or sweeping the floor,
I made enough money to pay my way
at the school in Henry County,
paid my room and board there.
>> So you had to pay for
housing in order to go to this final grade of school?
>> Yes, I did.
>> And you did that through the NYA?
>> NYA.
>> So when did you enroll in the Tuskegee Institute?
>> I could go back and figure out
the year if I could think that far back.
But after high school, the Henry County.
I learned that Tuskegee would offer people jobs.
They would give them work scholarships.
And if you would come to Tuskegee
and you were willing to work,
you could just about work your way through school.
So the summer before I was supposed to go to college,
I went to Tuskegee and they gave me a job.
The first job they gave me, I really liked it was in
the farm shop and
there was machinery there. So that was wonderful.
It was inside out of the sun,
air-conditioned, but I didn't have to go in the sun.
And later on, the professor
who sponsored me came in and said,
"We got to take you away from this job,
and we're going to send you to the farm
because we got to gather the hay.
Well, after all, you got to
make hay while the sun shines.
So I went out and I got a pretty good job there.
All I had to do was drive the wagon.
Somebody else would load the hay.
And most of the other people were older guys.
And they couldn't have this young buck sitting on
that wagon driving these horses,
doing nothing while they were loading hay.
So they had a meeting.
I was not a member of that meeting.
And they decided I should load the hay. So I did.
Now, loading hay, there's a technique to it.
They pile the hay up and it
stays out for four or five days or maybe a week or so,
and it dry then you take
a pitchfork and you throw it up on the wagon.
So I was doing that and I was getting pretty good at it.
I was a little taller than most of the people,
so I could throw it way up.
But one day I did that.
And as I was throwing it up, all of a sudden,
these guys had their pitchforks and shovels and whatever,
just beating at my feet.
I wonder what they were doing.
I thought they were attacking me.
Some guys said, don't move,
don't move, and I didn't move,
then they stopped and I looked down,
two snakes were at my feet.
Now, I looked at the snake.
One was fat and big and one was skinny and big.
So they were different snakes.
And there was a great discussion about snakes.
Some said they were Highland moccasins.
They were not rattlesnakes.
But there was an old gentleman there who was not excited.
And I was really scared.
I was very scared.
And that old guy just wasn't concerned.
And his name was Mr. Good.
I said, Mr. Good. Why didn't you care about me?
He said, Look, son this is mating season,
and other snakes got better things to do than bite you.
[LAUGHTER] Well,
I lived through that with two dead snakes.
>> So can you describe the city of
Tuskegee and Tuskegee the Institute
when you first came there,
what place it was?
>> When I first went there,
the director who's sponsored me
he took me to a small house,
and there were four or five carts in the house.
And he showed me the bathroom,
and he said, Maybe you can cook something here.
And he says the facilities are not very good,
but the price is right.
It won't cost you anything.
So I had free rent.
Then I got a job at
the local restaurant as a short order cook.
I got pretty good at it.
So I got my meals at
this restaurant and I had a place to sleep.
So my food and my room didn't cost anything.
And he said, we will if you want to,
we will let your wife,
let his wife save your money for you.
So every pay day,
I would take out what I thought I'd need to live on,
which wasn't much and I would give it to his wife.
And she took the same money and put
an envelope and said, when September come,
maybe you have enough for tuition,
and they gave it all back to me,
and I did have enough for
tuition when September came around.
>> So how big of a town was it?
What was the environment like?
Was it exciting?
A lot of people excited
to start school, that sort of thing?
>> Well, there is a town called Tuskegee.
But the institute was a place to itself.
It had its own heating system.
It had his own big cafeteria.
So the institute was really a small town all by itself.
I think the enrollment at Tuskegee somehow
get the idea was between one and two thousand.
It was a small school,
and we didn't go to town too
much because there was much more at
the school than it was at town.
So most of us didn't associate with
the town at all. Okay.
>> And what sort of professors did you have?
Were there big personalities on campus,
people that you remember well?
>> I think the man that I remember
best was the guy who ran
the horse barn and he was a folksy guy.
And he would tell us about
life much more than he would tell us about the subject,
and we used to asked him
how are we going to work when we get out of here?
Are we going to get a job?
And he would say, Well, there isn't
too much to worry about.
And we said, we may not be qualified for these jobs.
You don't worry about that either.
If you get a job,
that's too big for you and you're a good man,
you'll grow to the job
and you'll get bigger and the job will get bigger.
Sounds pretty good. Then we said,
What if the job is so big, we can't grow to it?
He says, Still no problem.
If the job is too big for
you and you can't grow to the job,
just cut the job down to your size.
And we laughed at that and we'd keep on.
Mr. Woods was his name.
I liked him very much.
>> Was that useful advice for you in your career?
>> Yes. It was real advice because some time I worked
for a lot of people and
sometimes the job is too big for
the boss and he'll fix it.
This is why a person takes
over a department and the department grows.
Some people take over the department
and the department shrinks.
So it always works out.
>> So you said the biggest headline
you remember was the war in Europe?
>> Yes.
>> So you would have become aware of
that probably before you went to Tuskegee.
But were you expecting war?
Were you expecting to serve as a soldier in the war?
>> I just about knew it was going to happen.
I was right aged.
I was about to 18,
19 at that time,
and I felt I was going to go.
I did learn, however,
that if you volunteer,
sometimes you can pick the service that you want.
And when I got to Tuskegee,
It had just been decided that they were going to let
black people fly and I
would see these black cadets
marching on Tuskegee campus, flying these aeroplanes.
I got to fly.
But the Air Force had very high requirements.
Initially, you had to have two years of
college just to get into the Air Force.
Later, that was changed.
All you had to do was pass an examination.
So at the end of my sophomore year,
I decided to try for
the air Corp and I took
the exam and I passed, and I was accepted.
>> And so you said you
saw the cadets walking around on campus,
and what was it about them
that particularly appealed you?
Did they have advantages on campus?
>> Well, they really didn't walk. They marched about.
They had a job to do,
and they were always very busy.
But I liked the uniform.
But I think most of all,
I like the fact that the girls liked them.
I learned that most of them
were college graduates and they went to big schools
bigger than Tuskegee and we
would wish that we
could have gone to those kind of schools.
>> So you were accepted into the program
and when did you enter,
and when did the training begin?
>> Because they need a lot of flyers.
The educational requirements were changed.
They will give you an exam to be accepted,
and then they will send you to college for a few weeks to
learn what they thought was
needed for you to be able to go to the flying school,
and they call it college training program
or something of that nature.
So when I was accepted,
I came back to Tuskegee and
I stayed in the same dormitory.
I lived in as a student.
So we stayed there a few weeks,
maybe five or six weeks,
and then we went to
the actual army base to
begin training to become flying people.
>> And that was in Tuskegee.
>> That was in Tuskegee.
This big base was built to train black people to fly.
It's called the Tuskegee Army Flying School.
That was the name of it.
It was a great effort
to get as many black people involved as possible.
So they got a black contractor to build the base.
I think it was called
McKissack and McKissack out of Tennessee.
I didn't know them,
but they built the base.
>> So can you describe the training process?
>> The air core has very high standards.
As I pointed out a minute ago that originally,
you had to have a college education or or
two years of college just to be accepted for training.
And the training was very
rigorous physically and mentally.
You must be well disciplined
to be an Air Force personnel.
So at the training,
we went there and we had ground school.
We had physical training.
We had to take push-ups, sit-ups,
getting very good physical condition.
I was able to meet a lot of
youngsters from other parts
of the nation, California, New York.
One boy left Alabama.
We were about the same age, of course.
We looked alike. They called us twins.
He finished he was able
to go ahead and he went to combat.
He got shot down. He lived through it.
And after combat, I came back to
school and he came back one time to visit
me and he's telling me how he got shot down,
why he got shot down.
And we had a long talk.
He's no longer here. He's going on now.
>> So this training process,
people would have to obviously some would become pilots,
some would serve in other capacities on the plane.
Could you tell me a little bit about that?
Well, when the program first got started.
The pilots were going to be fighter pilots.
One person, one engine.
And for every plane or every person that's in the sky,
there are dozens of
people on the ground to keep those planes flying.
So people had to go to school
to learn to be radio mechanics,
engine mechanics, propeller mechanics,
and they went to different schools to get their training.
And of course, they came to Tuskegee and
they put together a combat unit.
And these guys was one Squadron.
I don't know how many people did it.
But they were called in 99 Squadron.
Eventually, they got enough of them
together to send them to combat and they did.
And they went to combat.
I don't remember the unit that they joined,
but the guy who ran that unit didn't want them.
And they stayed there about three or
four days or three or four weeks.
And the commander said we don't want them.
We don't need them. They're no good.
But one member of
that group was Benjamin O Davis.
He was a West Pointer and he
had quite a story
to tell just getting to West Point,
but that's another story.
And when it was decided that these guys had to go back,
they weren't going to keep them.
I think he's a Captain Davis then.
He went back to Washington.
And he had to go to
the top general to
explain why these Tuskegee [inaudible] would stay there.
Now, let me go over a little bit on a tangent.
If I ask you, who was the greatest of
the number one general in
the American Army during World War II you would say who?
>> Patton.
>> Patton was pretty good. But that one guy
who really was in charge of everything.
He became president.
>> Eisenhower.
>> Eisenhower. That's right.
But Eisenhower was not supposed to be in charge.
There was a gentleman named Marshall.
He was the one that was slated for that job.
So this guy Roosevelt, real sneaky.
He called Marshall and said,
I think Marshall name was George. I'm not really sure.
He said, You are qualified.
You pay your due.
You're the guy who's supposed to
go to Europe and run this thing.
But I need you here with me in Washington.
And it said that Roosevelt said to General Marshall,
what do you think about it, General Marshall?
And General Marshall said, Mr.
President, that's your call.
Of course, Marshall didn't go.
Marshall stayed.
And Marshall was the guy that Captain Davis had to talk
to and convince that these are good people,
good slyers, good soldiers.
They have a right, and they can do the job.
And of course, I guess,
Captain Davis convinced them and the 99 stayed,
but they were sent to another group.
And they did very well in that group.
They did very well. History. The movies
that you see can tell you much more about it than I can.
>> And Davis became
the second African American general after his father.
>> After his father. Yeah.
>> So all of these young trainees,
these guys coming down to
Tuskegee from all over the United States.
What was the experience for the ones
coming from the Northeast,
in the West, coming to Alabama for training?
>> Well, first of all,
they never quite pronounced Alabama right.
I don't know how they said, but
they wouldn't say it right. How can I best say that?
Their base is a little city unto itself.
So it was a different place there,
and you just don't compare
an army setting with a city setting.
So it was all new to us and new to them.
Most of the flying instructors were white.
The tactical officer, the one who ran the outfit,
most of them were black.
But in the air corps or
any highly technical training program
you don't have time to clear around.
So we didn't have time to clear around.
We were so busy doing what we had to do.
We just didn't have time to
worry too much about anything else, in my opinion.
>> Were there any people in
the surrounding area that found
it troublesome that there were
these young African Americans
coming to get this training to be pilots,
and maybe they resisted it in some way,
or did you just not notice that at all?
>> I didn't notice it and I don't remember it happening.
Again, I point out to you
that a college setting and there's a college setting.
So you here at this college and you
have your own little community and
you come to work here and
you're not too concerned about what
happened maybe two or three miles from here.
Well, at Tuskegee, on the campus,
it was the same way and when you went to
the base, it was almost the same way.
The base was run in
its own way and it was a different setting.
And what the neighbors thought or what
the community thought it
was never a problem as far as I know.
>> So in the training, were there dangers?
Did people get injured just in the training process?
>> Were there dangers? Flying is risky.
It's always risky.
We had to say that there were
old pilots and there were bold pilots.
So you have to be careful,
they said there were never any old bowl pilots,
if you're too bold, you never get old.
>> Was anybody injured?
>> We lost people. Flying is risky.
I think the Air Force will tell you that they
lost a lot of people in
training who never went to combat.
See when you are running an airplane,
there are many things have to go right all the time.
And you don't need one or two of them to go
wrong and you pay a big price for any mistakes you make.
Flying is not easy job.
>> Now, did you train all along to become a pilot?
>> I studied hard, I wanted to be
a pilot and I did pretty good.
They have primary training,
then you have basic training
and you have advanced training.
I got through the first two and in advanced training,
I was about 10 days from
graduation and I wasn't quite good enough.
And I think I was the last one in
my class to get washed out,
so I didn't quite make it.
So after that, I went to Bombadier school.
But it was a lot of fun. I learned a lot.
>> And when did you complete training?
>> My pilot class was a class called 44B.
That mean in 1944,
I think it was the second class would have been my class.
So it would have been if things had gone right,
I would have graduated in February of 1944, but I didn't.
So I went to School and I graduated in
December as a Bombadier from Midland Texas.
>> In 44.
>> In December of 44.
>> And when did your overseas service?
>> I didn't go to overseas.
Now, one of the reasons people talk about
Tusky Garman it's because they had two battles.
They had to fight a military battle,
and they had to fight a social battle
and you are probably too young to even know that.
But in the Bomber group,
the social battle became a real big battle.
We never went to combat, we didn't make it.
>> Who was holding you back?
>> I think tradition.
I think the social climate.
It is very hard for you youngsters who are talking to me
now to really comprehend
how different things were 50 years ago.
There's no way for you to know that.
I think I can best
explain this by pointing out that after the war was over,
I had a job and I went to
a company in Alabama that was run by
a father and two sons
and I went to visit them to sell our product.
And the older son and the father were
very interested in their business.
So I told them what they had to do and the business over.
Then they had this young son,
reminds me of a little bit.
He was very nosy.
So he said to me, Where did you go to school?
I pointed out that I went to school at Tuskegee
and I went to school at Syracuse.
So he looked at me, why did you go way up to Syracuse?
I said, well, at that time,
I wanted to get a doctor's degree
and I couldn't go to the University of Alabama.
He was seem to be surprised
that I wouldn't just go into the University of Alabama.
People forget so quickly, I think that's good.
And it just blew
his mind that I couldn't go to
my school and go to
the University of Alabama and get my doctor's degree.
He just couldn't quite understand it.
But I guess he eventually
someone maybe told him how
things were different in those days.
>> So your training then ended in December of 2044.
So did you expect to be able
to fly missions in Europe at that time,
or was it already apparent that
that was not going to be
possible for your Bond deer group?
>> The best that we knew.
Our group, the B25 were supposed to go in the Pacific,
we're supposed to fly a mission from some island near
Japan on to Japan to the Japan mainland,
that's what we're supposed to do.
And this thing plane got so bad,
so very bad that
the commander was removed from his command.
It got so bad that many of the officers
who were being trained to go to fight were court martial.
The officers felt that the commander was breaking
the rules of the army so they were arrested.
They were court martial
and it got so bad until that commander was
removed and then they went to Europe and got
Commander Davis and he came over and he took over.
And then we were still
training and we were
no longer going to be just plane bombardiers
or plane navigators.
One man was going to do
both be a navigator and a Bombadier.
So the Bombadiers were sent to navigation school,
and the navigator was sent to
Bombadier school so one man
could do that job on the plane.
My class was in navigation school when the war
started when the bomb was dropped. We were in Louisiana.
>> So when you say it got so bad,
what exactly are you talking about?
>> You're so young, so much you don't know.
Well, how can I best put this?
Most of the personnel were black.
Some of the commanders were not black.
Some of the trainers were not black so in the military,
we have officers club off duty,
you go to the officers club and you have
a sandwich play pool.
It's a relaxing place.
I imagine you have faculty clubs here.
I imagine you. I imagine
you have student clubs. I don't know.
But this commander ended up with two clubs,
club Number 1 and club Number 2,
or club Number 2 and club Number 1, whatever.
And those people who looked like me,
were expected to go to
one club and those
who looked like someone else
supposed to go to another club.
And that's not the way it's supposed to be,
officers are supposed to go to officer club.
And when some of
the officers would go to the club that
the commander thought they shouldn't go to,
they were arrested for going there.
And that precipitated the whole thing.
>> So there were individuals or groups of officers
who challenged the situation, segregated it?
>> Who did what to it? Who challenged it?
>> Who challenged it.
>> You put it very nicely.
They challenged it. They did challenge it.
And the commander replied to the challenge.
I can't go there. Arrest you.
Eventually, the court martial
or I think expunged
from the record or something like that.
I think that happened. It's an area
that is still painful for me to talk about.
And I really don't like to talk about it.
>> So do you regret not being able
to fly any of those missions in the Pacific?
>> [inaudible].
>> Do you regret not having the opportunity to
fly as a bombardier in the Pacific?
>> Do I regret that? Actually, I
think the answer you have mixed feelings.
If you don't go in harm's way,
you probably won't get harmed.
And when you go to combat,
you get it in harm's way.
So the fact that I did not go to combat,
well, I never was exposed to combat conditions.
So I'm still around.
So I don't regret that.
But what can I say?
I have regrets, yeah.
Now, after the war was over,
and wars have a way ending,
I came back to school.
I went to graduate school at Syracuse University.
And I flew with
the New York Air National Guard as a radar observers.
And that was a completely different situation.
There, I felt that I was a soldier, airman,
an officer, like all the other officers,
and I felt much better about it.
>> And do you think that that had to do
with the change in location?
>> That had to do with what now?
>> The change in location.
>> [LAUGHTER] Well, this is several years later now.
A lot of things have changed.
The whole social order of this nation was changing.
Now, we sometimes get unhappy at the military situation,
but must remember that
most military people were civilians,
and whatever cultures,
whatever habits we have as civilian,
we bring them into the military.
So there isn't much different between the way
military people think and civilian think.
They have on different uniform.
But our nation was changing,
so things are quite different now.
I would guess that 50 years ago,
no one would have thought of you and I
sitting down having an interview like this.
So that kind of thing is changing in our nation,
and I think changing for the better.
>> So could you tell me how many total pilots,
crewmen and women in the Tuskegee air squadron overall?
>> Zelli is our historian,
and she can do that better than I can.
However, I think the total number of
Tuskegee airmen on the order of 16,000 of that number,
about 926, I think were pilots.
Today, the number of
Tuskegee Airmen that are still alive is on order of 200.
>> So how do you think that your efforts
and your success as a Tuskegee airman,
how do you think that contributed to
the Civil Rights struggle that
was already taking place and would
reach its height in the 1960s?
>> In my opinion,
I think it was a great contribution.
I think it was the greatest contribution
that really started this.
You must remember that as I said before,
that Air Force had very high standards.
So the Air Force took these Black people,
these Black young men and women,
and gave them the most demanding jobs
in the whole military and they did well.
So I think when the Civil Rights Movement got started,
the Air Force and the young men in
the Air Force had proven to the world that
these people are qualified to do
any job that any other citizen in America can do.
So I think it did help a whole lot, a tremendous amount.
>> And how have the Tuskegee Airmen
been recognized for their service since?
>> I think the greatest recognition is
this congressional gold medal.
Have you ever seen it? Have I ever showed it to you?
I think when the nation
gave that to the Tuskegee Airmen,
it was said that was
the greatest recognition that they
could make in my own opinion.
>> And what year was that?
>> I don't know. Zelli can tell you these numbers.
>> 2007, I believe.
>> What did you say?
>> 2007.
>> I think you're right. But you asked me some time ago,
what course did I like and dislike
and I told you I didn't like
sociology and stuff like that.
So I don't remember history.
[LAUGHTER]
>> Did you receive the gold medal personally?
>> No. Actually, when the gold medal was given out,
I was not very active in the chapter.
And when I joined the chapter,
a few years later, they gave it to me.
They took a picture of me receiving the metal.
So I got mine a few years after the initial.
>> So tell me about pursuing
your PhD at Syracuse University.
Why did you choose Syracuse?
And what was different
about going to Syracuse than going to Tuskegee?
>> Good.
[LAUGHTER]
I had to choose a school that would choose me.
And I applied to Syracuse and they accepted me.
It's just that simple.
I don't think I had
the choice of looking at several schools.
I had to try to find a school that would accept me.
And Syracuse had a little money available.
I applied and they accepted me.
>> In what year was that?
>> I graduated in '58,
so took four years.
I must have go there in 1954.
>> And what was it like living in
Syracuse considering you've grown up in Alabama.
So how was the social atmosphere
different in Syracuse, New York?
>> Going to graduate school,
you don't have much social life.
So the social atmosphere was mainly going to school.
I went there.
I had a teaching assistantship,
and I ended up being
a laboratory instructor for
all of these kids from New Jersey,
New York, and there was not
a single Black kid in my class.
There were no Black graduate students in the department.
So I was a loner there.
You think there are
a lot of differences between races, but there are not.
When you really get to know people,
they're all about the same.
They love, they hate.
They do mean things to each other.
So there's no great difference.
So I didn't have a real social problem.
I remember once, though,
I was getting ready to fly for
the New York Air National Guard and I had
to buy a uniform.
So I went to a store downtown in
Syracuse to buy some khaki pants.
And the clerk said the khakis are right here.
So I went over to look at
the khakis and I didn't quite see what I want.
What I wanted was
khaki that had a little slap on the pocket.
And so I got the [inaudible]
and I said, This is what I want.
He said, Those are officers pants.
I said, I am an officer.
And that seemed to have surprised him.
But I went back
to that store and he and I had become very good friends.
He was glad to sell me pants or anything else I wanted.
To tell you that even in those days or
these days that we
only have prejudice people in the South.
That's not true. Prejudice is universal.
After a while, you find
that it becomes the individual who
is prejudiced and not the whole society and you
find people who see you as an individual,
and they have that respect for you.
On other hand, they see you as
an individual and have disrespect for you.
>> The PhD program at Syracuse,
was it very rigorous?
Did you excel or was it difficult?
What was your experience?
>> Graduate programs, especially for
the PhD is very rigorous.
It seemed that many schools would make exceptions for
the bachelor and we have this kid
in college and he's okay,
well, let's help him out or well, let's get him out.
When I went to Syracuse,
I had a roommate who had gone to a very good school
and he didn't do
well and he told me they had to vote him a degree.
So they did. They voted him
a bachelor's degree from this very good school.
Then he came to Syracuse and he was working on
his graduate degree and no one was there to vote for him,
and he had to really study like I did.
>> I can see. So after you completed that degree,
tell me about your career path.
>> I went to work for a company called Union Carbide.
This company had a division called
the Viskin Division and
this division would make skins for skinless wieners.
There was a man who noticed
that Americans were buying more and more hot dogs.
By the way, do you know how they make hot dogs?
They stuff meats into a casein,
something to hold it and originally,
they were used animal intestine for that.
So that just weren't enough animal intestine
to make all the hot dogs that American are going to buy.
So this man found a way to make
skins out of skinless wieners.
They made it out of a cotton lens.
>> That were edible.
>> Skin. The cotton is cellulose.
Cellulose is indigestible.
When they made these nice wieners
you can't eat the cellulose.
So these guys were very good marketers.
They said, look, we have
skinless wieners not because you're
getting something better,
but because you couldn't eat it and so they use
the skin to make
the wieners then they will take the skin off,
and you probably don't remember anything about
skinless wieners that's how the skinless wieners came.
I went to work for those people.
They were very good people.
The man who ran that company,
took very good care of the people who worked for him.
He never fired a single person in
that business and in
off the season when they were not selling many hot dogs,
they would come to work anyway and I've been told that
you would come to work and you'd be
a skillful machine operator,
but you are doing anything and they was to take
this broom and you sweep this room,
but don't sweep it too
fast because if you
get through before quitting
time, you have to do it again.
I don't remember his name.
I never met him, but he's a very considerate person.
>> And is it true that your job took
you to many postings around the world?
>> Later on, my company was bought out by Union Carbide,
and we were transferred from the original location in
Chicago to New Jersey and then when I went to New Jersey,
I began to travel all over
the states and all over the world.
Selling our product, not really selling it,
but showing people how good our product
was or how to use it and they took me
to a lot of places, Europe, America, Japan.
>> And the Middle East?
>> Actually, the Middle East came to
us and in the Middle East,
they came to our laboratory,
and we talked to them and tell them what we were
doing and someone in
the Middle East bought a license from
Union Carbide and they found out that they
really didn't know how to do these things
that they weren't learning as
fast as they wanted to and they asked me one day,
they said, when you retire,
would you come and work for us?
I said, yes. I retired and three weeks later,
I went to work for them in Saudi Arabia
and I stayed there six years.
>> And what was that time life?
>> Hard. It's very different.
The culture is different.
The people are different.
There is a strong separation of the men and women.
In our plant or in our business,
there was not a single woman.
No women secretaries, no women cooks, nothing but men.
It's quite different. The religion is different.
Christianity is not the religion of choice.
The people are the same.
They're very nice people.
I got to know them.
I got to like them and I stayed there six years.
>> Can you tell me about your family?
>> I had a wife. Her name was Marry.
I met her in college and we stayed married a long time.
She passed away about four or five years ago.
She was a teacher. She taught elementary school.
She also taught special education.
Now, if you have any educators around,
you know what special education means.
She taught special education for several years.
She was an excellent teacher.
My son teaches in Prison
and my daughter in law writes books.
My grandson is the market in Prison.
>> And can you tell me about
attending his commencement ceremony?
>> Can I tell you about what now?
>> Attending his graduation
ceremony a couple of years ago.
>> I don't quite understand you.
>> When he graduated from college.
>> My son?
>> Your grandson.
>> My grandson. Yes. I went
there and he did
graduate and I was there.
My wife wasn't there. She had passed away,
but I sat there during that graduation.
I think I was transfixed because
my grandson was graduated
from one of the best schools in the world.
I felt very good about that,
but he didn't think it was anything very special.
He went to school and he graduated.
Things are different now for the better.
>> Thank you, Dr. Bouncy.