Snyder, Harvey: Oral History, May 26, 2006

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The following oral history of Harvey Snyder was done May 26, 2006 by G. David Anderson for The George Washington Oral History Program:

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ANDERSON: This interview is with Harvey Snyder. The interview is conducted at the Special Collections, University Archives, in the Gelman Library, at the George Washington University. It is May 26th, 2006. It is 2 p.m. or approximately thereof. I really want to thank you for agreeing to be interviewed, because of your long experience at the university as well as all of your other experiences. Could we begin by, just by stating, will you just state your full name and your present address.

SNYDER: Sure. It’s Harvey Douglas Deal Snyder, 1402 North Greenbriar Street, Arlington, Virginia.

ANDERSON: Would you tell us a little bit about where you were born, and also, to follow up on some of the years before college, activities, remembrances.

SNYDER: Sure. I was born in East Orange, New Jersey, and the family lived in Summit, New Jersey, some 1939 on. That means I was actually, lived in Summit, New Jersey, for, two different locations in Summit for about, I have to think about that, thirty-five years or so. We moved from Summit to Murray Hill, right next to Bell Labs, while I was in the Navy, and I guess for the entire history of the Snyder family, we lived right in New Jersey. My father and mother actually retired at a retirement home there too, so we have a complete history in New Jersey.

ANDERSON: Do you like to recall anything about your family home or your neighborhood that was of special note or special interest that affected future decisions?

SNYDER: Sure. We had, there were six of us in the family, and the first home that we lived in was too small, so Dad was looking for a house somewhere in Summit, and came across a rather large piece of property, about three acres on the outskirts of town, sort of. And it was owned by a gentleman who was chairman of the board of Wheatena Corporation. His name was Wendell. And Mr. Wendell looked at the picture of the family, and Dad only had a certain amount of money that he could pay, so the realtor told Mr. Wendell that that was what Dad could pay, and Mr. Wendell looked at the picture and said, “Well, family is more important than money.” So, we moved into 36 Beacon Terrace in Summit and lived there, and had a great upbringing, because we had all sorts of animals in there, the rabbits and the deer, and we could bring up our own cats and dogs and things, and be very comfortable with that.

And we had a large garden down at the bottom of the hill. It was about a good half acre, if not more, and we ended up as kids growing up, with, growing vegetables of all types and trying to actually raise some money for college, which was sort of a fiasco unto itself, because the garden became a nursery, and I became the sole proprietor of the nursery. It was called Snyder Brother’s Nursery. One day, one evening, one of our neighbors actually stole about thirty Arbovitae out of the garden, and they ended up in his lawn, or on his property. Dad counted the holes in the garden, and the number of plants that had been planted in the neighbor’s yard, and he gave him thirty-six hours to return them. [laughs] It was a rather ridiculous thing for somebody to do. But that was going to be our money for college, which never did materialize. We had a couple of dollars profit on the entire operation, about seven hundred or eight hundred plants. It was a very dry summer, to say the least. So we had a great upbringing at this wonderful house. It’s undergone some series of renovations since then. Every one of the people that has lived there since we left there has invited us back to see what they’ve done. This exists today as well. We just got a recent invitation from the current owners. “Please come back and see what we’ve done,” because they knew that we loved the house. That was where, our hearts really are there.

ANDERSON: What high school did you go?

SNYDER: Summit High School.

ANDERSON: I understand that G.W. is, even though lengthy, is basically a second career. Would you discuss your first career, and how it was chosen?

SNYDER: Yes. I was a senior at Colgate. I was never an outstanding student. As a matter of fact, I was pretty lucky to graduate. That’s not quite right, but, I got one offer from St. Paul’s Insurance Company in Minneapolis, and I thought, I just don’t want to be an insurance salesman, and then it was the beginning of the Vietnam conflict, and I thought, well, I’d like to have some place to sleep every night. As a Boy Scout, you’d dig enough holes and sleep out in enough tents, so I wanted some place where I knew I was going to be okay. So, I decided that I’d apply for Officer Candidate School in the Navy.

So, that September, I ended up at Newport, with a long line of people very anxious to know what was going to happen to them, and went through Officer Candidate School in Newport. So, I was in the Navy for, and had a wonderful experience with the Navy which I, to this day, don’t regret or forget. We sailed around South America in operations with South American Navies in virtually every South American country, and it gave the opportunity, too, to play soccer throughout South America, as I had been a soccer player both at Colgate and Summit High School. At Colgate, I participated in a, on an undefeated team in Division 1. In high school, I was in a Division 3, but we won a state championship there, too. So, we’re talking about a love of soccer, too, coming from two coaches, Mark Randall at Colgate and Elmer Homelang(??) at Summit High School.

Well, the admiral found out that I’d played, Admiral Growa(??), and he says “you’re going to play with these teams throughout South America, so get yourself a team together.” And I said “fine.” So, we had a ball. We were 18 and 0, rather 0 and 18 over two years, as we’d played in all the stadiums. I guess one of the fun things was, actually, playing in Ecuador, in the rain, I mean, it was pouring, and the score was 8 nothing, as I recall, but we never quit. We were not in the best of shape, and of course we couldn’t compete with them, but toward the end of the game, the whole stadium started to applaud our endeavors, because we just kept going and going and going. We certainly did. We scored one goal, but we had fun the entire time. I have pictures of playing in Brazil, Chile, Argentina, and actually got to go to a game in Argentina, too, in Buenos Aires. So, that’s good fun. But, my career then extended beyond the sailing and operations with UNITAS. I’ll tell you a story that connects beautifully with this, but sort of obliquely. You might recall that Nendo(??), let’s see, the president of Peru, became a lecturer here, a visiting professor here at G.W., and I’m forgetting his name right off the top of my head, but it’s actually important to this.

ANDERSON: We can look that up easily.

SNYDER: Yes, but I shouldn’t forget it, because I just wrote the story for somebody else. There was a priest, who is Cardinal Cushing’s nephew, who was in Lima, and he saw us come in, and we had a little band aboard ship, and Father John said, “why don’t you come out to our little place in Comas, and bring your little band with you.” We had a bunch of medical supplies on board, too, about a hundred, two hundred thousand dollars worth of stuff that Squibb and others had donated to, Johnson & Johnson and others, that my aunt, who worked for the American Red Cross for sixty years, had arranged, that we could bring them to South America. And just donate them to anybody that needed it. So we took some supplies out on the back of a truck, and loaded the band on the truck, too, and Comas, where the little town was, was a bleak, bleak countryside. There was no electricity, no running water within miles, and yet these were where the peasants lived, and the priest had his little school, and a little church way up on the hillside. No trees anywhere. We took the medical supplies off and delivered them to the school, and then started to play on the back of this flatbed truck. Pretty soon, the little kerosene lights in these little mud huts lit up and we had about a hundred people around, ultimately around the base of this truck. It was getting very dark, so we didn’t play too long. But at least the fact is that here they had some enjoyment come out of this.

So, a couple of years later, I’m back in Washington. There’s a terrible earthquake in Lima, and as a result of that, the Peace Corps that worked there, and some others with Father John, I don’t know, I guess I sent them a check, a small check of some kind, and then, in the paper came an article, and it says, “Father William,” I said Father John, I meant Father William Francis, “Father William Francis leads one hundred thousand people into Lima,” the capitol of Peru, “in a quest for water.” What he was trying to do was get water delivered to the base of the mountain, not everybody’s house, certainly, but, so they didn’t have to go five or six miles to get fresh water. So I didn’t think too much of it until I came upon Belaunde Terry, President Belaunde Terry here, at G.W. He was sitting having lunch by himself one day in the University Club. And so I thought, I’ll ask him whether I can have lunch with him. So, it was a big table, and he said “certainly, sit down.” And we chatted a little bit about urban planning, as he was here as a professor of urban planning. I said “I think I know a friend of yours. My friend’s name is Father William Francis.” Now, you’ve got to realize, Father William Francis had marched with a hundred thousand people threatening the government at the time for which Belaunde Terry was president. Belaunde Terry looked down at his plate, and he looked up, and he said “Yes, Father William Francis, um hum, very very good person. But not a very good urban planner.” [laughter] So there’s the connection between the Navy and, you never know where you’re going to meet people that you know, others . . . It really is remarkable.

ANDERSON: It’s been my experience since I’ve been here. What was your major at Colgate?

SNYDER: My major was German, and that actually led to my second tour of duty for the Navy. I was in the Boston Naval Ship Yard in the reconstruction, and I’d been to school at Boston University, among other places. And Boston College, while I was at the Naval Ship Yard. I took FORTRAN, when you used to plug in little things. And also got involved in a course in Boston College, writing the history of schools in East Boston. That was rather, I thought it was enjoyable doing research. But, one day the phone rang in the Naval ship yard, and the chief petty officer comes out and says “They’re looking for you.” I say, “Whoa, for what?” He said, “They want to know whether you want to go to Germany, to Munich, for three years.” And I thought, I’m not sure I want to go anywhere overseas at this point.” And the chief petty officer was a wonderful person, and he said “you know, I told them that you, that you’d get back to them tomorrow, because somebody else is going to want that. That’s the best billet in the Navy, in Munich, Germany, with the consulate there.” So I told him, yes, I would go. That was great, because I’ve had continuing wonderful relationships with the commanding officer there. I was executive officer of a small detachment in Munich. But it gave me an opportunity also, to go to school. So I went and got my master’s degree from Boston University. It had a program in Munich. And when I graduated from there, my Mom and Dad came over to Munich. But, lo and behold, guess who is there in Munich?

ANDERSON: Who?

SNYDER: Stephen Joel Trachtenberg.

ANDERSON: Oh really?

SNYDER: And Robert Chernak. Because they had . . .

ANDERSON: When they were at Boston University.

SNYDER: When they were at Boston. So, Arland Christ-Janer was president of Boston at the time, and we got our degrees, of course, awarded by him. Well that sort of, I decided then, because one of the questions I see is, how did you choose that career? Well, it was primarily because of a, my activities with the Navy. I was one of the certified USAFI, United States Armed Forces Institute Scholars, not scholars, but counselors, and I’d done a bunch of correspondence courses with them, and was education officer for a ship, and I really enjoyed working with the students there, and I had an opportunity at that point, that works into George Washington in this way, to work with a new program of identification of ships. It was a program that I ultimately found out was done by a group called HUMRRO. HUMRRO is here in Virginia, and the vice president of the university was none other than its vice-president, Dr. Karl(??) Lang. And the provost, who was, who was the provost under him, was also, anyway, the provost was also an official of the HUMRRO organization.

ANDERSON: Was it Williams, was it?

SNYDER: No. It was, well, that escapes me. But, anyway, Dr. Elliott had hired Dr. Lang to come here, and Dr. Lang and I really hit it off, because his professors at Pittsburgh were the same ones that I had studied. I’d gotten curious why this was so effective, why the educational materials were so effective. And it was because of that that I entered into education of adults as a full-time permanent occupation. The Occupational Outlook Quarterly, I remember distinctly walking out of a class from Boston, thinking to myself, twenty years, here’s the Occupational Outlook Quarterly data, that’s what I want to do. I want to be in adult education, in a college environment. So that was the beginning of my thoughts for a second career, which became, well, there’s actually another funny little story that goes along with that. When I got out of the service, which was 1971, I came back to Washington. And I didn’t have a job at the time, and went to Thomas Stone High School to take a class which George Washington University just started in this; I think it was the first of June or thereabouts.

So, in Waldorf, there was a new high school at the time, but it was a place that G.W. had an off-campus program, and it just looked like something to do. Why didn’t I go try that? And I had met Virginia Kirkbride, who was dean of students at G.W., months before that, because she lived across the hall from my aunt, who is still in Tilden Street, Northwest, where she still lives. And, Dr. Kirkbride invited me down to the university to see what was going on. Did I want to become part of the program? I said, “I’m not sure what I want to do.” But, that ended up, “here, why don’t you look at the schedule.” Well, there was a nice course over at Waldorf, so I decided I’d go over and take the course at Waldorf just; well, it ended up that I hated the traffic on the beltway, so at two o’clock in the afternoon, I would leave for a four thirty class or so, five o’clock, and I’d take my golf clubs with me [laughs], so I could play a little, pitch a little golf at Thomas Stone High School.

Well, here I am, a veteran, recently discharged. My hair is down to my shoulders. And I’m sitting in this class of thirty or thirty-five people. I’m in the back. I’m in my jeans, and associate dean Al Jensen comes to class to replace our current instructor for a couple of lectures. And he says to this young lieutenant in the front row, with his bright stripes on his uniform, very clean cut, “I have a job down at the college of general studies at George Washington University as an education specialist. Do you think that you’d like to come?” He’s not looking at me, now. He’s looking at this guy in the front. And I’m thinking, that’s the job I want. Don’t you give that to him. So the next week, or course, I ended up getting a haircut, buying a suit, getting my resume in order, and I couldn’t wait until the next class. So at the next class, Dean Jenson, who became a very good friend, Al Jenson, looked at my resume, and he said, “Can you come in tomorrow to meet the dean?” I said, “Well, of course I can.” Dean Magruder was the dean at the time. Dean Magruder, I might be stretching a couple of these facts, but he’s about six-six, 280 pounds, and smoked cigars about two feet long. Of course that’s not right, but, he smoked large cigars. I think there are three people on campus who smoked cigars like that. One was Elmer Louis Kayser, Dean Kayser, Sy Alpert, and Dean Magruder.

I met with Magruder, and started on September first, here at G.W., so that was my initiation into G.W., through Al Jensen, and because of my military experience and because of working with adults in programs that I did, and the educational aspects of things that I always enjoyed with my both, the enlisted and officer corps, just trying to work with them for what suited them, it was great, because it was a great connection. And I knew exactly that that’s just what I would do. And then, oddly enough, that led to other programs here at the university that I was able to work with, something called the Associate Degree Completion Program, and others that I’ll get into later. My Navy career there stretched, continues to this day, with trying to work with people in the NROTC, and other places, and actually up in Annapolis, too, some of the things up there that I have great fun with. Just then I feel like in my volunteer services to the Navy are appreciated, and I became a great advocate of Naval sailing, and became a skipper of large boats. I didn’t say this, but I actually raced against, in Buenos Aires, down below Buenos Aires, raced against the Argentine Olympic team.

ANDERSON: Really?

SNYDER: Another guy whose name is Snyder, he was out of New York, and sailed a lot more than I did, but he certainly got me going and the bug for this, we came up to the last, oh, fifteen yards, and we were beating the Argentine Olympic team in their boats in their territory by probably thirty seconds or so. That would have been very embarrassing. We came too close to the pier, and the wind went whistling right over the top of our sail and made us back down, and the Argentine boat fortunately came up and passed us, of course. It would have been very embarrassing had we won, but that was again, an introduction I had to Navy sailing, knowing you could do that around the world with different people in different places, and so on. I was the only, as far as I know, oh, I’m positive of this, I actually taught sailing for the Army at Garmish, down at the, at [sounds like Kingzay], sorry, not Garmish, at [sounds like Kingzay]. I taught on a forty-five, forty-two, forty-three foot boat on the [sounds like Kingzay] for the Army, as a Naval officer. They had a lot of fun with that. “Do you know how to sail?” “Sure.” “Show me.” “Okay.” “Okay, do you want to see each other . . . (??) Sure. So . . . .

ANDERSON: This was September ’71, then, when you started at G.W.

SNYDER: Now we’re down, now we’re into ’71. Thanks for bringing me back. I have a way of going all over the place.

ANDERSON: No. That’s quite alright. It’s very interesting.

SNYDER: Yes. ’71. My first assignments had to do with, I had a great boss, who was an Army colonel, Ralph [sounds like Dibellus]. Doug Carter’s still around here. Ralph was a retired Air Force major, or colonel, I guess he was. We hit it off right away, because he knew that I could see how to put new programs together, and work with different people, different clientele. So, some of the things he had me working with still exist today in different ways. I just, I was telling you earlier, I just mailed off a flyer that I had found in my collection of things, to the graduate school of political management, Joe Bondi, who is now over there, and I thought Joe might have some fun with the flyer, that had some names on it about some of the early lecturers from the 1970s, early professors who are adjunct staff to the program that is now called Master in Legislative Affairs. That’s what it was called. Now it’s called Master of Arts in Special Studies in Legislative Affairs. But I had a great time with all of the people on the Hill, a lot of them lobbyists, that I became good friends with. And so over the years, and to this day, I still get in touch with a couple of them. That’s a long time to keep in touch with some lobbyists, and know what’s going on with their families, and stuff. So we had some fun with that. But I was always pretty close to the students, because most of them are my age, anyway.

So, among the other ones, was, by far, my favorite, was the Associate Degree Completion Program. This became part of a thing that I wrote up for the Chronicle of Higher Education which was a pretty startling story. I noticed in the Chronicle an article from a young woman who was a very disgruntled staff member in Montana, as I recall. She had been a librarian and then moved to a staff position and didn’t like it at all. I wrote back, certainly in rebuttal to the article, saying, “You need to take advantage of where you are, because there are things there that can be of great value, not just to you but to other people.” And then I told her about my experiences with here, I told the Chronicle, my experience with this particular program, the Associate Degree Completion Program, and other people who would call me, David, twenty years later, twenty years later.

So I’ll relate that little story for you. Our office on Eye Street, at the time, and now I’m going from the College of General Studies, where this program was, and I became training manager for the university in 1978 or ’79, somewhere in there. And we had various offices, but we had just moved to Eye Street, and it was a long way from where the phones were connected, down to my office. And the secretary answered the phone, he came, ran down the hall, and he says “Harvey, Harvey, somebody’s on the phone, and her name is Donna West, and she wants to talk to you. She says she’s in California, and she knows you from the Navy.” Donna West, hum, that sounds familiar. I bet she was one of my students. I was administrator for the program. “Yes, this is Donna West.” Well, I had met Donna at the Bureau of Naval Personnel when I was delivering brochures to describe this new program that we had called the Associate Degree Completion Program that I had put together from scratch with the Columbian College. And I always had a great relationship with the deans and the associate deans, and they saw that this was a market that hadn’t really been touched, within Bolling Air Force Base, and the Washington Navy Yard, and could we put together a program there.

So, we did, and this young lady became part of that group down at the Washington Navy Yard, building 172. She called, and I get goose bumps thinking about this. She called to say thank you. And I said, “Well, Donna, what are you doing now?” She said, “Well, I finished my bachelor’s degree.” I said, “Well, that’s nice.” She said, “Well, it’s not only nice. Nobody in my family, I’m from a blue collar family in Chicago, and nobody in my family finished high school, much less finished, thought of finishing college. I was the first one in my family to go to college.” “Well, that’s really nice. What are you doing now.” “Well, I finished my bachelor’s degree,” in I think it’s Saint Louis, as I recall. “What are you doing now, Donna? You’re calling from California.” “Well, I finished my master’s degree at Golden Gate.” I’m pretty sure these are right. “That’s nice, Donna, what are you doing now?” She said “I work for Hewlett Packard.” I said “that’s nice, Donna, what are you doing for Hewlett Packard?” She said “I’m an international lecturer.” So, here’s a young lady who is very smart, of course. As a yeoman, a second class yeoman, taking advantage of the opportunity, and after twenty years, coming back to the university and saying to somebody that she didn’t even know was there. She said “I made you my new year’s resolution to get ahold of you, and so I’m following through with that.” Well, we’ve corresponded on a few occasions. I sent her, our families exchange Christmas cards and stuff like that. I sort of lost touch with her recently. Those little incidents make it all worthwhile.

So, I described this program to the Chronicle, and I don’t know how this entered into it, but I’ll tell you this part of it too. That in that article, it mentions, I mention the fact that I thought administration of higher education was important and it’s important because of the relationships that you can, as an administrator, form with the students, even if they’re four years, you can still do that, or less. And it does lead to retention. There’s no question about that. Some of the people that would not have finished a program will finish, and our off campus programs have a much higher retention rate than other off campus programs in the area, which I thought was rather interesting. You know, I think the way the college was organized, it allowed that.

So, back to Dean Magruder now, as I’d been here at the university for about three months, and Dean Magruder, as I told you, is a very large person. I was scared to death of him, because he was an Air Force colonel, and carried himself that way, too. Well, he called me over one morning. I’d been here for a couple of months. And I didn’t know what he wanted. And I thought, my gosh, what have I done now? So, I’m standing in the doorway. He’s on the second floor of what used to be Building E, and that’s where the law school dean’s office is, and overlooks the intersection of Twentieth and G. And he’s watching all of the people go by down on G and Twentieth, and he rather enjoyed that. And, there’s a curl of smoke off the back of his highback chair, and he must have seen my reflection in the window, and he whirls around, and he says “Snyder, come here.” I thought, oh my lord. I thought, oh my lord. I said, “Yes sir?” “Have you signed up for the retirement plan yet?” I said, “No sir, I’m not planning on staying that long.” He laughed. That was thirty-five years ago. He actually gave me twenty-five minutes to go down to personnel and sign up.

So that was a funny connection to all those little stories that got in the Chronicle. Actually, when I was doing, I used to do orientation for new employees. And I told that story to virtually every class when I got it down to two minutes instead of ten, and I got stopped right outside of Marvin Center by somebody whose name I can’t recall, but who was in the School of Business. He said “that was you, wasn’t it?” I said, “What do you mean?” He said, “That article was you.” I said, “Yes, how’d you figure that out?” Because I had written that under a pseudonym. It was Shriver, I think it was H. Shriver, or something like that. And he said “you told that story at orientation, and I just read that in the Chronicle.” I said, yeah, that’s right. That was me.” So right, being an administrator, even, I’m not a high level administrator, but I have had a great great career here, and if you’re interested in students, if you’re interested in academics, you’re interested in education, you’re interested in people, and helping people, that’s why people are here, I think. I think that virtually everyone that comes to the university has some kind of sense of wanting to help people, and contributing to people’s lives. I think you see that every day.

ANDERSON: I do. I’ve been here for twenty years, not quite as long as yourself. What were your general impressions of the campus, because it’s changed so much since ’71?

SNYDER: It’s very interesting. Dr. Elliott became a very good friend, just because I continued to involve myself in the School of Education stuff, just because it was something I enjoyed doing. When I first came, Funger Hall, which is in Building C, was a new cement structure, and the Smith Center was just going up, or it was just completed. That presents some other interesting things about Sy Alpert, and how he raised money for that. Because Richard Haskins was the associate director, and told me about how, walking around the campus, Charles E. Smith was with Sy Alpert, and wondered about the students, and gave him, when he got back, just wrote a check for fifty-thousand dollars. It was a very interesting discussion about how to raise money. So, that’s how the Smith Center was . . . . Of course, there’s other stuff in that. So, there were, certainly a growing inadequate facility. The library was amazing. There was no air conditioning. The books were on shelves that, I guess, and I’m only five ten, and I could barely just stand up where some of the inter, they had built shelving, just so you had to walk in there. Some silly elevator that always got stuck. But it’s interesting too, about Lisner Hall, Lisner Library, at the time. It was described, I believe, in the National Geographic. I’ve searched for this since I saw it, but I cannot find this. It was described either in an archive here, or in the, as “an architectural marvel at the time, stretching, lines stretching to the sky.” And I thought, what are they talking about? But that was in 1941, as I recall.

ANDERSON: 1939 was when it was dedicated.

SNYDER: ’39. Yes. So I did see a review of that from an architect’s standpoint, and I thought, oh, okay. But that was where the original quad, of course, it was the center focus of that original quad that President Marvin had wanted to have. But that was all, as I recall, in this area. Now, at the time, David, I lived in, I lived at 800 Twenty-fifth Street, and I lived there for eight years. So I could actually, as a bachelor, I could play until two in the morning and still get six hours sleep, and go to work. So, it’s sort of interesting, though, to watch the developments of the campus and Foggy Bottom. I attribute the good things in Foggy Bottom to the university. I know that there are neighbors that do not. But, for sure, the university has been nothing but good. They don’t know the history that I do of Foggy Bottom, or can’t keep it in mind.

I was just talking to one of the firemen today about, they’ve been here for twenty or so years, Mrs. James, who is 103, 104 years old. I used to grow vegetables in my little garden plot on Twenty-fifth and Eye, and she’d walk up to the corner on Saturday morning and say hello, and she’d walk back to her house. I’d give her some lettuce or whatever was growing at the time, tomatoes, lettuce, carrots, and her son would come from Baltimore to take care of her. Her son was 86 years old [laughs], and he’d come in once a week to take care of her. So, she was pretty self-sustaining, and he only lived about three doors down. But the area there was interesting, and another friend, and a friend of the university, as well, Dotty Cassioni(??), Dotty purchased her little house there. It’s about eleven feet wide and about thirty feet long, for five hundred dollars. When they were just knocking the houses down for the Watergate facility in 1964 or ’65, when they built that, Dotty got that house, so she told me she did, with no indoor plumbing, and she built the house up and had a lovely time. She worked at the “State Department.” I use that in quotes [laughs]. I’m pretty sure she worked for the CIA. But she and I became good friends, and she always enjoyed the university’s activities in Foggy Bottom, which I know some of the neighbors do as well.

I don’t see the anti-GW factions being large. I see them as being, as not understanding as much about what the university has done. After all, 26th Street and part of 25th Street were red light districts in the sixties, and even into the early seventies. Now, that changed when the apartments, where St. Mary’s is on 24th, got knocked down. There were apartments there with no doors, I mean, no external doors. Internal doors, I’m sure they had. So, and, my mother-in-law, actually, my family, lived in Foggy Bottom since 1964, so, we are, and I purchased a small house in the Mews, in 1976. And so I rented one place and I owned the other place. So, I had my own interest in seeing things in Foggy Bottom operated the way they should. One day I was tending my huge beautiful Iris in the front yard of my small place, and a neighbor from across the street, who still lives there, came across, and he said, “Harvey, how would you like to be secretary of the Foggy Bottom Association?” And I said, “well, I’ll consider it,” because I was active in the association, just to have fun. Next day, he comes across the street, and he says “Harvey, where do you work?” I said, “I’m at George Washington University.” He said, “Yeh, somebody told me that last night. Maybe you need to reconsider.” So, the offer to be the secretary of the association was withdrawn. [laughs]

ANDERSON: Wow.

SNYDER: So, I arrived here in that kind of a climate, but Dr. Elliott, I believe, put, and I’ll have to go back and check, but I believe that he purchased small properties, roughly twenty-six small properties in Foggy Bottom, and began the Academic Center, of course, and things like that, and created all sorts of issues within Foggy Bottom. There’s a silly story about the lady that lived in the, Schenley, is that the one next to . . . .

ANDERSON: Yes, Schenley, yes, Schenley Hall.

SNYDER: Perry Botwin(??), Professor of Special Education, considered himself the construction supervisor. He used to, he was just like a kid, watched all the trucks go in and out, building the Academic Center. Well, they got so attached to him there, they gave him a green hat. So the construction people gave him a green hat, and a lady came running out of Schenley, not running, but came out of Schenley, to tell them that they couldn’t build there. “Why can’t we build there.” Because there’s a spring.

ANDERSON: Really?

SNYDER: Yeh. And, lo and behold, to this day, they have trouble with water coming into the Academic Center and they, especially when it rains, yeh, they have a sump pump that goes down, there are two of them, down to the basement of the Academic Center, that have to go on and off. Of course, they have concrete seals and things like that. But that was funny, that the lady would come by and tell them that she remembered because, even before G.W. had gotten there, that there was a spring, and it was a marshy area, and sure, that was part of the foggy, that’s why it was called the Foggy Bottom. You’ve heard a lot of reasons why it’s Foggy Bottom. I’m not sure which one’s true, but I hear that . . .

ANDERSON: What have you heard, I mean?

SNYDER: I heard that Adams wrote in his memoirs about . . .

ANDERSON: I heard that one, yes.

SNYDER: Having to go from his residence to the incomplete White House, and having to gallop daily “through that awful Foggy Bottom.” And, I’m sure there are other . . . .

ANDERSON: In the industrial period, in the1900s, obviously contributed to that as well.

SNYDER: Yes. Well, it’s interesting see, the Heurich Brewery, that’s where the little houses that, one of which I bought, they used to be brewery houses. I walked, I actually, talking of building indoor plumbing and things, one day, my back patio in the house that I rent, actually fell into the old sistern there. It was sort of funny. I called the landlady. She sort of laughed, and said “I can handle all this. Don’t worry about it. I just wanted you to know.”

ANDERSON: Let me take at this particular time, since we are running low on this side of the tape, this is G. David Anderson, the University Archivist, Historian, interviewing Harvey Snyder, with two other middle names, that I won’t go through at the moment.

SNYDER: Dutch! [laughs].

ANDERSON: And we’re coming up on the conclusion of side A, tape 1, of the interview, what may look like a series, from what I’m hearing so far.

SNYDER: Uh Oh.

ANDERSON: Thank you. May be the way to go. [laughs] I’m always nervous about . . .

SNYDER: It depends on how long you’re going to be here.

ANDERSON: Let me tell you, uh, Good, things to be working now. This is G. David Anderson interviewing Harvey Snyder. This is actually Tape 2, side A, since we were having difficulties with side B of Tape 1. Could we maybe retrogress a little bit and go and speak a little bit more about Dr. Elliott, so that we can get that on tape, and get it recorded.

SNYDER: We’ll give it a try.

ANDERSON: Please, yeah.

SNYDER: Dr. Elliott was a gracious, is a gracious, gracious person, and I thought that he was a wonderful president. He and I actually had a very nice relationship over the years, beginning with a, I guess, the group called PDK and the alumni association. I became president of Phi Delta Kappa, the honorary education fraternity. And the educational alumni group as well. In my capacity as president of the alumni group, I also became chair, it may not have been as, because of that, though, I became chair of the annual fund raising, national fund raising group for the School of Education. And Rick Haskins was the assistant director here, and Sy Alpert was the director, vice-president. Rick, I guess, was assistant vice-president, something like that. He went to Florida somewhere. But, I always had a good time putting together the telethons for that.

At the beginning of that, just to kick off the fund drive, Dr. Elliott and Grosvenor, his friend at the National Geographic, Dr. Elliott’s colleague there, and I guess, Dr. Elliott actually served on the Board of Trustees, invited everybody that was in, all the chairs for the schools, to a kickoff luncheon, and Dr. Elliott and I were walking back from National Geographic to the university, and I got curious about the name of the George Washington University. Where did the The come from, and I just, I guess, certainly, had been involved with a class with a professor whose name was Dr. Grover Angel, who was the university’s school of education, history of higher education professor, who had great lectures on the history of the school of education, and even though the pages were yellow, he was still a pretty good lecturer. I enjoyed him a lot. Well, he mentioned the Morrill Act, and things like that, and I thought, well, I wonder what, how this fits into George Washington University. Where does the The come from? And Dr. Elliott simply said, “Well, it’s a very easy answer, Harvey. It’s in the charter.” I thought, okay, it makes me feel odd knowing a very simple answer like that. But, you have to reflect on other institutions around the country, like The Ohio State University, The Ohio University, and then insisting on the The in it, and why, I know it’s connected to getting money from the federal government, as they are the land grant institution to receive money for that. Of course, we are never the land grant institution to receive money. Howard is one that receives that kind of financing from the federal government. We don’t.

But Dr. Elliott was, is a wonderful person, and I have to relate a funny story to you about a letter then he knew eventually that I had written. It has to do with the legislative affairs program on the Hill. I innocently wrote a letter to all the staff members on the Hill. This is 1971 or ’72, I can’t remember. But it said “Dear Sir. This is a program at George Washington University. We invite you to a session, a briefing session at the Page School up in the Library of Congress, and won’t you come, seven o’clock to eight o’clock.” I forget exactly what the details were. I didn’t think much of it. It was just part of promotional activity, right? Wrong. About a year later, I get a call from Dean Magruder, who I already explained to you was a pretty awesome person. And he called me and he said “Harvey, did you write this letter?” He had gotten, Dr. Elliott, had gotten a letter from Smith College, that simply said, it has a copy of the letter itself, “Dr. Elliott, are there are any women working on the Hill?” So, Smith College had taken offense at “Dear Sir,” which they should have, the salutation to the letter. And I thought that was pretty interesting. It was certainly a lesson for me. I said, “Yes sir, I did.” He said, “Well, I guess we can put “Dear Colleague,” can’t we?” I said, “Yes, I think we can put Dear Colleague in the rest of the letters.” The course of the year it took to get from the Hill to Smith College to the . . . .

ANDERSON: That’s interesting.

SNYDER: And that was 1971, so we were at the beginning of a learning period for Harvey Snyder, in that, in promotions, I guess. Dr. Elliott was a great president. I was sorry to see him leave, but, of course, he’s been around ever since, and is still part of the university, and Betty is also. He’s a very humble person, and a very smart person. I remember him talking about, I won’t get into the history of him, but talking about going through the snows in Maine, and making that, and spending the night in the back of a car with his wife driving, and it’s just awful, some of the things that he had to go through as, being the chancellor up in Maine.

ANDERSON: We’re fortunate that we have probably twenty taped sessions on him. I did not do the actual interview. I’d just arrived at the university, but I did proof the interview, because that was one of the first jobs they handed me, was to proof and deal with that, so.

SNYDER: I enjoyed him as president.

ANDERSON: You may want to look at that sometimes.

SNYDER: Yes.

ANDERSON: Let me, we can basically take it from the seventies and eighties and the nineties, and on from there, but did you pursue your doctorate work here at G.W.?

SNYDER: Yes. When I found that I really liked the education courses, I applied to two places. I applied to Boston University and to George Washington University for the doctoral program. And when I found Len Nadler here at G.W., an HRD Adult Ed. Program, and I knew he was a real force in Adult Ed., and I thought that’s what I wanted to do. Joe Greenberg actually ended up, he interviewed me up in Boston when I was there, and he was there as an assistant to Malcolm Knowles, who was professor of Adult Ed. there, too, so both people, Malcolm Knowles and Len Nadler are both topnotch people. Len is still around, or course, here, in the Washington area, but Malcolm died a few years ago. But I saw Joe the other day, and invited him to my retirement party. Joe was part of my dissertation committee. Garwig(??), Joe Greenberg and Len Nadler. And the programs at the time had four supporting fields and one main field. That’s a huge requirement, of course, because you need four hours of written exams at one sitting, for some of those things is pretty tedious. But I got to meet some really wonderful people. Harry Grubb Detwiler, Grover Angel I already mentioned. Dan Sinick was another one. Dan Sinick was a counselor, counseling. I had a wonderful summer with, I met some really nice people, and we got to know Dan Sinick in a class of, oh, I guess fifteen or twenty people. I can’t remember exactly how many. He’s a kind gentleman, and was editor of a counseling magazine.

You could never get away with what I’m going to tell you know, these days. But a friend of mine, Bonnie and I decided, Dan was, had a lot to do with conditioned response, and watching people what they always, and seeing what they always did. Well, he always had orange juice, out of a little container, in the mornings on his lecture. This is when we had summer programs. And Bonnie and I thought it would be a good idea to put a little vodka in along with his orange juice. So, one day, one day at lecture, we did it. We put a little shot of vodka in his orange juice. And he came back, and sure enough, he took a sip of orange juice, and he recognized the difference, of course, and he just simply said, “Hmm,” and that was his response to the whole thing [laughed]. We sort of looked at each other, and he just went on with his lecture. So we went after the class, and he said, “That was a real treat.” You try to do that now, you get thrown out of school, I think.

ANDERSON: Yes, times have definitely changed.

SNYDER: For sure.

ANDERSON: I know you have a great interest in sports here. Were you actively involved with basketball, some of the other things, back in the seventies?

SNYDER: I have to figure out this. Stay with me a second here.

ANDERSON: Sure.

SNYDER: Because George Edelin(??), and I, George was the soccer coach. George had a remarkable history himself.

ANDERSON: I know George, yes.

SNYDER: Because he was from Haiti, and he was on the Haitian national team, and one day, that’s the Olympic soccer team, one day he was called, he was pulled into the bushes in Haiti and, if you can imagine this, his brother, who’s now the general counsel up in Baltimore, and sister, and I guess one other brother, sister, were pulled into the bushes by friends, by friends, because Poppa Doc had killed his parents. So, you go to school one day, say goodbye to your parents, and you never see them again. So he had a rough time. George had a rough time. George then came to George Washington as a player, and then as a coach for the men’s team, in ’74 or ’75. I’ll look very quickly for that, because I still have the brochure that, George and I sat, well, it goes back a little. Sorry, we’re up to ’78 at this point, but in ’75 or ’76, I can’t remember when, I was walking into the Marvin Center, in the little ramp that they had, that went up to the main entrance, and George and a couple of the soccer team kids were standing there raising money to go to, on their trip. George threw a soccer ball at me, and I handed it back to him, and we’ve been friends ever since. In 1978, as I was working in non-credit programs at the time, I was director of non-credit programs after working through some of the credit programs at G.W., we designed a summer soccer camp for boys and girls, ages 7 to 16, and that was in 1978. That was G.W.’s first soccer camp, first summer camps of any kinds for sports, and he was just telling me the other day that he really liked the logo that we have for the Colonials. He’d like see somebody give him credit for making that logo there.

ANDERSON: Really? That’s interesting.

SNYDER: But we’ve been friends ever since, and he’s down in Georgia right now, and I know that he was up in the area. He was just up on Wednesday. And I hope he’s coming back for, in June, for sure, we’ll see him in September. Because what’s happened with soccer. It’s interesting, I got to play, as I told you earlier, I played on an undefeated team at Colgate and also around South America. I got my first soccer referee’s license in Germany when I was there. And I played in a couple of little ragtag games there, but nothing much. I never did referee. I think they gave me my license if I would guarantee them that I would never referee in Germany. But I really enjoyed that there anyway. You know, of course, it’s conducted in German, in Bavarian. It’s a little tough to understand some of the things. But I did pretty well. I got by with it, anyway. So when I got here in the United States, I went and took the course here too. And so I had both the German license and the U.S. license for soccer refereeing.

Well, George knew that I had played, and invited me to play on the summer teams, called the Colonials. And so I played on the summer Colonials here, and then it came down more recently into trying to put those groups together. A woman named Robby(??) Goldberg has been the person that has kept that team from 1974, ‘5, ‘6, ‘7, ‘8 together. She’s still an amazing proponent of the university. She’s now got the university listserv that Ed McKee has for sports, and on September, I think it’s the 16th, the alumni are coming back here to, not only play an alumni game, but also to watch the men on one night and the women on another night. We now, this is our forth or fifth year of well organized, but we’ve invited the women to play with us as well, so Tanya Vogel has been really instrumental in keeping those things together, and we set those programs up through the alumni association. I wrote and received a little last year from the alumni association to help defray some of the costs. Well, we don’t need to defray too many of those costs now, because some of the people that are involved with that, well two of them have huge boats. You know, it’s like they’re millionaires, Dave. I hope that they see fit to contribute. I know they do, because I’ve seen some of the contributions that they’ve made to G.W. So it comes back. You now, five hundred dollars invested by the alumni association gets paid back in kind. But it’s been great fun having the women and the men playing together, too, so, it’s something I’d done at Colgate, and I thought, well, this would work here. Let’s do this. Put that together too.

ANDERSON: What, I know that today we have a soccer field over at the Mt. Vernon campus.

SNYDER: Beautiful.

ANDERSON: It is, and I’ve heard Tanya, in fact, talk about it, or rave about it. But where did you play, where did they play back at the sixties?

SNYDER: They played at Francis Field.

ANDERSON: Oh really?

SNYDER: Yes, over by the school on 26th Street. You remember, the HMO used to be over there on 26th. But, one day, they had to dig out the Francis pool, I guess, and Long was the contractor for that. I forget Long’s name. But the associate, or the administrative assistant for Long, was my neighbor. And I, George said to me “we can’t use Francis Field for this game.” “Why can’t we use it?” Well, they had put all this dirt on the Francis Field. I said “George, that’s a huge pile of dirt. Where’d that . . .” “I don’t know. There’s coordination between D.C. government, and how they do that, all their, something . . .” “Hey, George, that’s Long and Company, right?” “Yeh.” “Well, you know, I know the administrative aide to Long. If we can get him to move the field, move the dirt by ten feet, would that work as a school field?” He says “heck, yes. It would be just regulation size, and we could . . . ” so I went up to my neighbor and I said “hey, you know, George,” he happened to be a soccer player, too, and his daughter was also a soccer player, and his wife. “If you can get your company to move that ten feet, we can have a field up there.” He says “you’re kidding me. Ten feet, heck, yes.” So, the next day, that pile was moved by ten feet. It became the field over at Francis Field, that we played on, that G.W. played on for that season. Of course, that’s rough field, but one of the best games I ever saw was played over there by North Carolina and G.W., and I think it’s 1 to 1 in the NCA playoffs. Howard had played there with G.W. too, but nothing like Francis Field. I mean, like the new field up at Mt. Vernon. It’s absolutely gorgeous, and it was certainly stunning to see how quickly President Trachtenberg could move to acquire that property up there, and help Mt. Vernon overcome some of their problems. I actually consulted up at Mt. Vernon. One of the reasons that Mt. Vernon was having problems, because they had secretaries up there that were getting paid more than the vice-presidents. Well, maybe not quite, but certainly close to it. They had no personnel system involved at all. So, they asked me to come up and do some, found out why, type stuff. And I said, well, one of the reasons you need to have a system in here, so that your secretaries don’t continue to get 14 percent raises per year, or 7 percent raises. You have to have a grading system, and it works.

ANDERSON: Because I know that they’ve done so much with personnel here, over the, just in my tenure. Just watching the changes and the reevaluations and things. Is that something you’ve been involved with?

SNYDER: Not directly, but one of the things, one of the joys of working with Jim Clifford in Human Resources was sitting around a table on a weekly basis listening to the issues, and developing programs and training to help staff do their jobs better. And if you’re involved with the communication process on compensation, on employment, on benefits, on employee relations areas, then you can be, as a training person, you can be of immense value to the HR group. If there’s no communication, then you are really losing out.

So, that period when we were all part of HR, or personnel at the time, led to a development of a whole series of programs. I assumed the position of training manager in 1978, as I recall. I think we had three programs at the time. I actually have something here, that has Supervisory Delegation Skills, Time Management, well, five of them, Effective Writing, and Telephone Techniques. And we developed them, maybe fifteen additional programs, that over the years, we gave in Problem Solving, Delegation Skills, well, that’s one of them there, Customer Service, Communicating in Difficult Situations. A whole series of things I think have been helpful to people. But, a lot of them have been because, sitting around the table with Compensation, some very talented people in Compensation, Employee Relations and Benefits, and other areas. If we can educate our managers in these areas, then the university is better off. Because they can answer some of the questions, and they know the critical parts of not only their jobs, but the human resource . . . . So, we proposed that when President Trachtenberg came. Walter Bortz, who also is a great person to work for, asked for a proposal for a mandatory program, supervisory program, so we put together a little group of ten or eleven courses, which we knew over time would change, but they were the essentials of what we could do to help supervisors do their jobs better. And the vice-president just went through and culled out a couple of things in there, and said, “Yes, this is what we’d like to have.” So, since, now, I don’t know any other group in Washington, by the say, that has this kind of thing that’s worked this well over this period of time. This is almost, how long has Trachtenberg been here now?

ANDERSON: Oh, he’s been here . . .

SNYDER: Twenty?

ANDERSON: No. No. Not quite. He came about a year after I did. I came in 1987. ’88 was when he started.

SNYDER: Well, that’s twenty-six years, twenty-seven years, for the last twenty-six or twenty-seven years, the university, while modifying some of the curriculum within those areas, has been very successful in the philosophy under which the programs were developed. And in conducting workshops, no other group in Washington that I know of has had the consistency, for twenty-seven years, of the same things within the supervisory areas, just focusing on, the essential thing is helping people do their jobs better. How do you do that? Then in the non-supervisory areas, we added probably more courses than in the supervisor’s area ultimately. But certainly, staff development has gone into the supply and into the procurement area, and trying to give people the kinds of information they need to function well.

The challenge now is how do you get it to them faster? So we, how can you do it with all of the new electronic tools? How can you bring in E-learning and make that successful as well? Unfortunately, the blackboard system, I had some experience with the blackboard system, because I adjuncted in the Department of Exercise Science as a soccer referee instructor, actually not national, the United States Soccer Federation Soccer Referee Instructor, and I put that course, a significant portion of that online, so that the students here at G.W. who want to be referees could take that as part of the course in the department. So, I had done that maybe four or five years ago, and as we now get into more E-learning, knowing that as a background has been very very helpful, and G.W. is the first one in the country to have any of that stuff, from the Soccer Federation, anyway, online, and it’s available to students at, whenever they needed to have it. And that’s led to another nice thing that I think G.W.’s going to benefit from, and that’s a program that I’m going to work on in retirement, so we’ll see what happens with that. Yes, soccer has been a big part of my life, both as a coach and as a player, and as a referee, and now as a referee instructor as well.

ANDERSON: Could you tell us a little about, I mean, what effect, what did you see as far as effects on the campus of the whole Watergate period? I know it affected the entire country, but since it’s across the street, literally, from us, now we almost own it.

SNYDER: I’ll tell you a funny story, two or three funny stories about that. Actually, the guy that discovered the break-in was a detective who actually knocked on my door one day when I lived at 800 25th Street, and we had a brief discussion, and he happened to turn out to be the detective that went, at least worked on the Watergate scandal. Well, I don’t know whether you realize this, but the statue that is at the Watergate, right in front of Potomac Plaza, as you go down toward the Kennedy Center, well, the funniest thing is that statue points from the Watergate the White House. A guy sitting there is pointing at it. And I thought there’d be a great thing to have a title underneath that, at the time, the Watergate, “He Did It.” [laughs]

ANDERSON: He did it. Yes, probably so.

SNYDER: But there’s been, you know, in spite of all the activities there, the local neighborhood, there wasn’t much going on within the neighborhood at the time. I need to tell you about, there are some metro stories, but Watergate was some of the, now what influence did it have, there’s certainly a lot of talk, and made G.W. a focus of the legislative and judicial areas in politics. And, where can you get better politics and legislation and experience in those areas than here? You can’t. I was asked, when I got out of the Navy, I had a pretty high security clearance, and somebody found out about it, and asked me whether I wanted to work in the Carter campaign. “Sure, I’ll work in the Carter campaign.” So, I was responsible for procuring fifty-six hundred parking places up at the Hilton, and that meant I had to talk to the PMI people and the Colonial Parking, and sure enough, they were so cooperative. They were going to stay open so that people could park. Then they wanted me to work with the Treasury Department and make sure that the president was secure, going through different lines and stuff, and would I do that? Sure. I was about ten minutes late getting up to the Hilton. I was supposed to have a little radio transmitter, and run around with these little earphones and stuff. And they didn’t have any more. And I thought, damn, I’ll fix them. I went down the Peoples Drug Store and bought one of those little radios, the little pocket radios that have a little earpiece in it, so that night, I had my little radio, and here I had my little earpiece, but I was listening to music with all this stuff going on. Yeh, they had it all organized so that President Carter would, but that’s another G.W. story, because I lived nearby.

ANDERSON: Were you, how much of the turmoil were you witness to? I know that it was mainly ’69, ’70, ’71, for the three years that took place. And G.W. was a mecca, actually, for students coming in.

SNYDER: I wasn’t actually too involved. I lived out on Poplar out in Northwest, 1700 Poplar, and my brother did, though. My brother actually got involved much earlier than that. He’s a photographer, and actually, his picture is on the front page of the Baltimore Sun of the burning of Washington. And that’s a little earlier, and I wasn’t here for that. Yeh, I actually marched with a group, a veteran’s group, going from Lincoln Memorial over to the Arlington Cemetery. And as I was going over, you know, I didn’t look like I was disabled or anything. I happen to be a disabled vet, but who’s going to find out what, they never could figure out what was wrong, so, I’m going across, and I’m in my jeans and long hair, at the time, and this woman comes running up to me with this jar, “contributions, contributions.” And now, I’m broke, right. I don’t have much as a, no job at the time, but just before, I was employed. I said “I’m sorry,” and she cursed at me, because I wouldn’t give her any contribution, that I didn’t have anyway. And I thought, “Lady if you knew who you were talking to, you wouldn’t do that.” But, how obscene can you get with some kind of a, that may not be the right word to use. But I thought, if that’s the kind of people that are doing this, would I want to be associated with that? I said, I don’t think so. Yes, I drove down from Northwest and parked my little Volkswagen and got involved with some of those things, not nearly like my wife did in the sixties. She was here at G.W. as a student, when tear gas and all that stuff . . . She could add some stories, I’m sure. I did not know her at the time. As a matter of fact, I was dating a friend of hers in ’67, ’68, ’66.

ANDERSON: When did you get married? Was she a student here?

SNYDER: She was a student here. She’s a trustee scholar, and a very bright lady. She went onto Catholic University to get her Master’s degree, and she works in the Fairfax County system with people who are the most difficult of difficult. They have been eliminated from the various high schools, and now they are at Pimmit High School. It’s an accredited high school, but it’s for the most difficult people that you can imagine. So, yes, she was here in that era, and really loved her time. But when she came down to see the transition on the campus that Steve Trachtenberg has done here, and that Dr. Elliott had started, she was amazed. And I know you hear that all the time, from people who come in and say “This is amazing. This is really a true campus. It’s not just a little, growing institution somewhere.” So, I’m very proud to have been part of that.

ANDERSON: I had the same impressions, even in the mid-eighties, that it was a little bit on the sterile side. Just building, building, building, rather than, no gates, and no little parks, hardly at all, and you couldn’t tell that you were on the campus unless you just . . . .

SNYDER: David, it’s funny to listen to all the discussions. You’ve tried to put a little park down by, say, on F Street, and the community objects. Why would they want to object? “Well, they must have an ulterior motive.” They try to put a new streetlight in, or something like that. And they say, “No.” They try to have a café sitting out in front of the Ivory Tower, and they say “You can’t do that.” You know, that’s a, that’s a, and I know these people that are doing that. Ellie Becker, a friend of my family’s, and I thought, Ellie, are you just mean-spirited? No, I don’t know what it is. But they forget what Foggy Bottom used to be like. I know what it was like. Some of them don’t even know what it was like. Foggy Bottom is much better for the university being here. You know, there’s a building that the university now owns. It used to be called “The Pink Panther.” It was, a bunch of dentists got together and bought out parcels of land between New Hampshire and 25th Street, and just tore out all the buildings and built up another series of buildings, the Guest Quarters, now, Doubletree, I guess it’s called. One day I walked by on the way to work, literally smelling the roses on these beautiful English town homes that were there. I came back that afternoon, they were gone. They were gone. The town homes, three beautiful three-story houses. What did the community do then? Nothing. It’s owned by one of the car dealers, I guess at the time. The same person, or a different person, or another one of the car dealers, I forget which one it was, built what’s now called the Foggy Bottom. I think the mayor lives there. Is that right?

ANDERSON: Yes.

SNYDER: Well, they went broke after they built that building. And for a long time, I’m not sure if you can still see it, they had the sign in the sun, saying “closeout,” and you could buy those condos for thirty, forty, fifty thousand dollars. Now of course they run into millions. And they condemned the, there were some little Dutch houses on 25th, a series of them with little small houses in between. Those houses were condemned, and selling for twenty-thousand dollars apiece. And of course you can’t get them now.

ANDERSON: What, myself having worked with Foggy Bottom groups for twenty years now, where does all this heavy antagonism come from? Because it certainly is not pertinent to everyone who lives in this area.

SNYDER: No. I think, I honestly don’t know, except in very general terms. Some of the undergraduates, not all, I’d say primarily undergraduates, and it has to be a very very small number, would be disruptive in the neighborhood. But that’s all attributed to G.W., when in fact it’s not all G.W. It’s visitors to the campus, it’s visitors . . .

ANDERSON: Or Georgetown.

SNYDER: Exactly, yes, because wandering through the neighborhood on the way back, or something, you know. I’m sure. The easy place to take it out on is G.W. So I think that some, I wouldn’t give up my relationships. Even there, when I lived and owned there, I could not see why the antagonism . . . and as a matter of fact, I had some really great friends there. Natalie Ballou owned a little house that looked like the ones from New Orleans. Then on the corner of 20th . . . Natalie and I used to sit on her rooftop, believe it or not, drinking Dranbuie. She’s, I don’t know, she’s, at the time, she was in her sixties, and I’m in my twenties, enjoying her company, and just talking about everything in the world. We just, now, how can this, I’m a G.W. student, I’m a G.W. person. Do you want to hear a funny story about that, most of which is true, part of which may be hearsay?

ANDERSON: Sure, sure.

SNYDER: When the metro went in, when they built the school of medicine, right in front of the school of medicine, is where the metro stopped it’s cut-and-cover, and went to tunneling. So, one day, they actually opened up the tunnel, so that you could go down a ladder and walk in the area down where the tracks now are, and it was not covered over at the time. So, I have a picture somewhere in my journals about looking, and being down in that tunnel. Well, you may remember that Eye Street was full of one-by-one, that’s one foot by one foot by eight feet logs, or I guess, timbers, part of that cut-and-cover. Well, that included the trucks, that had to go daily, to take all of the dirt wherever they were taking the dirt. They used to come down Eye Street, and they could do it legally until ten o’clock at night. First, they made them, well Foggy Bottom didn’t like the fact that there was so much activity, and so they limited it until ten o’clock. Well, the trouble is, that trucks would come down after ten o’clock. So one day, I’m at the corner of 25th and Eye, and this woman, this older woman who used to go around the neighborhood with her tumbler of Scotch and her dog, Cocoa, in the summer evenings like today, and just yack with people in the neighborhood, and so, here’s, I’m sitting in my house, and I hear a screech. And I go outside, and it’s about ten after ten or ten-fifteen, and this truck had gone down Eye Street at its normal course of thirty miles an hour or whatever. There was no stop sign at the time. Dorothy had laid down in front of the truck, drunker than a skunk, of course. And the truck stopped short. There was not ever a violation after that that I know of.

ANDERSON: She made a point, huh?

SNYDER: Yes. Unfortunately, Dorothy fell down the stairs of her town home. Somebody saw her about six, eight months later or so. She died, and the dog died right next to her. She’d fallen down. I’m sure she was alcoholic, and just had had difficulty with alcohol. But, Foggy Bottom is, continues to be an interesting place and vibrant because of the students. I’m sorry that there are people that don’t see that. There was an ambassador, too. His name was Pennymaker. Does that sound familiar to you?

ANDERSON: Not right offhand, no.

SNYDER: [sounds like] Margadugoo(??) was one of his stays. Anyway, the

ANDERSON: You could be thinking of [sounds like] Mombasa (??)

SNYDER: Maybe. Maybe so.

ANDERSON: Yeh, [sounds like] Wokoduboo(??)

SNYDER: Well, he was ambassador, and then came back to the United States. Now, he’d travel around on his bicycle in Foggy Bottom in a white tee shirt and, torn white tee shirt, I might add, and on his bicycle, waving to everybody and just enjoying himself, tan shorts and. It’s Mr. Ambassador, right? Well, we got to talking one day. It turns out that his secretary, this is true, his secretary is my girlfriend. When he was here, he was, he took over the Energy Department, Department of Energy, for a slight bit of time. And she worked in Energy, and she was his secretary.

ANDERSON: That’s wild.

SNYDER: And, I never, you know, I didn’t say anything to him about it. She says. “God, you can’t get good help anywhere.” I thought uh oh. Wait ‘til she hears. That was pretty funny though.

ANDERSON: It’s interesting that not only your experience with the university but experience with Foggy Bottom, because it’s been a topic for a very long time, and something I’ve gone over quite a bit as well.

SNYDER: This is sort of a rumor, truth, okay?

ANDERSON: Oh sure.

SNYDER: This has to do with Foggy Bottom. A friend of mine is currently the architect of the World Bank. I was taking him home one day, because we live pretty close to each other, and he says “Harvey, you know, we had to pay off the Foggy Bottom Association so that they wouldn’t complain about our building or anything like that.” I said “You’re kidding.” I said “that’s bribery,” what’s it called, it’s probably not bribery, I think. “You paid that association?” He said “Yep, we paid them,” and he gave me a huge number, close to one million bucks, to not complain about, and now what are they using that fund for? You tell me.

ANDERSON: To fight G.W.

SNYDER: That’s right. I don’t know how much they got for that. I really don’t. I don’t want to.

ANDERSON: Right. Well, I told some friends that the sad part about all that money is that they’ll end up spending it all in legal fees

SNYDER: Which they won’t win.

ANDERSON: Which they won’t win, when they could take that money and do so much good with it.

SNYDER: I used to attend the associations, and they were looking for pro bono from everyone, trying to get funds to fight St. Mary’s Court, to fight this, to do this, that, and the other thing. They’re just misguided. It’s unfortunate. I guess Steve, President Trachtenberg had the right idea. He said, “You know, it’s just people who don’t like to change, and you just can’t operate that way. You have to realize that G.W. should have the same rights as any other building in here to do 14 stories, 110 feet, and we don’t. Why? It’s because it’s concessions to Foggy Bottom, on a continuing basis. I just don’t see it. They want to have students here on campus in an enclave. Is that constitutionally viable? Is it legal to tell people that they have, tell a graduate student over 21?

ANDERSON: No.

SNYDER: No, I don’t believe it is either. But I’d like to see some other universities plus G.W. get altogether and take it to the Supreme Court. I know there was some discussion about that, but I just, I don’t see that.

ANDERSON: Well, when I do a number of lectures on the history of Foggy Bottom, in fact I’m putting together a PowerPoint on that now, finishing it out, we may be showing it at the Friends of Foggy Bottom, which I work with, with and Lackey(??) and Bernard, showing the business section, I think it’s on the 12th or 13th they’re going to have that. A lot of people are very surprised to see that evolution. They’re also very surprised at the number of factors that have changed this neighborhood, not just G.W, So, going back to 1922, things of this nature.

SNYDER: Yes, the gas factories and the . . . .

ANDERSON: Oh yes. Whitehurst Freeway, and just the whole thing. And the big government buildings, a wide range of things. We have a few more minutes on this side. Is there anything that you; this is obviously going to be a continued expression

SNYDER: I’d love that. I enjoy it.

ANDERSON: I have very much enjoyed it, and I’ve learned even more than I knew before. That’s part of the joy of the job.

SNYDER: You’ve written down something about Elmer Louis Kayser.

ANDERSON: Yes. I definitely want to cover him, because he died, of course, you know, in 1986, literally one year before I came in. I feel like the continuance to some extent.

SNYDER: Yes, Sy Alpert and Dr. Kayser had a great relationship. Dr. Kayser would sit at the University Club at lunchtime and have a Manhattan. That’s when smoking was permitted here. Even if it wasn’t permitted, he’d smoke a cigar. So, he had this great big long Windsor cigar. I think I mentioned those earlier. And Sy Alpert would go over to him, almost as a ceremony, and present him with his latest cigar, which would be in a little encapsule, and Dean Kayser would graciously say “thank you so much, that’s wonderful”.

You probably know Dean Kayser was a wonderful lecturer. I didn’t have the pleasure of listening to him, but as you know, I found a picture out at the National Institute of Health that has the first picture of any George Washington building, and it shows it with the, two doors down from Fords Theatre, but the road is not paved. So it has to be in the 40s, 1840s. And I asked Dean Kayser, because it’s not in his book, I went to his office one day, planned a whole series of questions for him about his growing up in Georgetown, and how, the canal. I got so interested in the canal. I ran the canal as a bicentennial project, from Washington to Cumberland, and Cumberland to Washington. Not in the same day, thank you, but over a period of time. And so I got to know some of the people, and certainly some of the canal stories. And Dean Kayser told me that he used to, as a boy, take his milk pail down to the canal boats on a daily basis, and get his milk, and take it back to his home. So as the canal boats would come in, he’d do that. Well, I asked him if he would recognize this picture, and did he see on that, for instance, on that picture you can see the Yale Laundry, which became a national chain, right next to Ford’s Theatre. It’s on the left hand side. And I forget, there was one other characteristic of that picture beside the fact that the school, the department of medicine, that moved down in 1826, owned that building there, from that period on. And that picture shows the building without its addition. So, it’s one of the earliest pictures. It certainly is the earliest picture.

ANDERSON: I’m not sure I’ve seen that one.

SNYDER: Ah yes.

ANDERSON: Have I seen that one?

SNYDER: I hope so, because I wrote it to you and I . . . .

ANDERSON: Oh yes, You mean the one that shows Ford’s Theatre, and down the street is the old medical, yes, in fact, I’ve used that about twenty times now.

SNYDER: And you can see the bobby, right, there’s a hat . . . .

(End of Tape)

Document Information

Images: 0
Photographic Credit: n/a
Author or Source: MS0371/Oral History Collection
Document Location: University Archives
Date Added to Encyclopedia: May 1, 2007
Prepared by: Lyle Slovick, Assistant University Archivist

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