San Bernardino Public Library

March 3, 2003

Spittler: Good Morning. It is March 3, 2003. This interview is being conducted at California State University San Bernardino in the Upper Commons with Mr. Fred Cordova. My name is Mark Spittler.

Spittler: Why don't you go ahead and start and tell me a little bit about your past history here at Cal State?

CORDOVA: In November of 1965 I saw an article in the Sun Telegram, there used to be an evening newspaper- where they were going to build a California State University in San Bernardino and they gave the location of the campus to be built in what used to be known as the Cooley Ranch area in Colton. There was a great big cattle ranch that used to be down there and that was before the freeways went all the way through. And to me that was interesting so I waited until they opened up a office in downtown San Bernardino known as the Skinner Building, on the corner of 5th and Arrowhead. I mean, 5th and D Street, rather, and that was where they opened up the offices to start the process of the university. Later on I found out that politics got involved and they transferred the site of the campus from Colton to San Bernardino where some land deals that were made where they- Dr. Wong who used to own half of the land that the campus is now on, and he donated that land to the campus, with the city understanding that they would put in the exterior roads all the way around the campus if the campus moved up here. They started building the campus in '64. After I put in an application with the business manager, Mr. Leonard Fardowell, he told me that sometime in '65 they would be calling me. In April of '65 I got a call that they wanted to interview me so I went up and they interviewed me and a gentleman by the name of Kernel Herbert Brown who was a retired army engineer, was the director of physical plant, they hired and at the same time they hired a retired navy commander by the name of Andy Morral, who was an electrical engineer. And I was hired and Andy and I spent every day. Monday through Friday, here on the side of the campus where they were building the campus, because we wanted to get familiar with where everything mechanical shut off switches and valves and everything else would be located and I took the job with the understanding that eventually I would be the plumber on the campus. I was a plumber where I worked before at Colton High School. It was interesting working up here because I got to learn where every water line was laid out, where all the shut off valves were, where all the back flow prevention devices were located and at the same time, Andy got familiar with where all the underground high voltage switches were located, where the main switches to the campus were located, where the switches in every building were located. In August of '65, we moved the offices from San Bernardino to the campus with the initial three buildings that were built out of cement block. They were supposed to be temporary buildings and we moved them into the offices. The one building was the library building, and also the faculty office. The other building was the science building and the cafeteria and the other building was the administration building. And those were the original three buildings on this campus. When we moved them up here, the doors on the buildings were still not available, so Andy and I used to have to put up plywood on the doorways every evening before we went home to keep the coyotes and the rabbits out of the buildings. Which was rather interesting. In the morning, we'd get here early and we'd take all the plywood down so the secretary and clerks could come in to work, and we'd go through the building and make sure there were no rattlesnakes and also, in the floors. That was the beginning of Cal State. It started classes in the- and the classrooms were in the faculty offices. They had some classrooms and then, at the same time they started building what was now known as the Pfau Library, and it was interesting watching that building being built, since it built up with all tilt-up wall prefabricated walls and concrete. They never had any kind of accidents in this building until later on when they started digging the utility tunnel that comes out of the central heating and air conditioning plant, was this other building that they built at the same time, that was the plant that was supposed to furnish all of the cooling and heating for the existing buildings, and new buildings they were to be built. There's a tunnel that comes from that plant down, going towards the south and right about where the old administration building, it makes a left hand turn and goes straight across the grounds and to pretty close to where the street goes in front of what it is and was the health center, that was built. And the tunnel ended there. The heat into the other building that was brought in on big piping, but that tunnel was about, I'm going to say, 9 square foot, big enough to drive electric utility vehicles in it. And it carries all of the real high voltage, hot water and chilled water for heating and cooling of the buildings and from that tunnel as they built the buildings, they would build a sub tunnel to that building to carry the heating- for example, the bio-science and the physical science have an existing branch of that tunnel, you can walk from that tunnel right into the buildings, and so does the library. It was interesting watching that because a gentleman got electrocuted. One of the workers that was working here got electrocuted on that- they had a big huge crane that would lift up the buckets of fresh cement to pour the floor of the tunnel and this gentleman was guiding the bucket and he would not- he was not aware, he didn't pay attention to the high voltage lines that were overhead and as the crane operator swung the bucket towards the floor of the tunnel, the guy was holding on to the bucket to keep it steady, they hit the electrical wires and electrocuted him. I saw what was happening and I went over there real quick and by the time they was able to move the bucket away from the wires, why, the gentleman was dead. He'd turned purple, and he died. But, that was the only accident that happened for quite a while. They started then also building the first gymnasium, basketball gymnasium and the physical fields, tennis courts and baseball courts, and swimming pool. And the swimming pool was interesting because they were supposed to have built an Olympic size swimming pool where they could have Olympic trials here but it turned out that it was finished and the Olympic committee came out to measure it and they found out that the swimming pool was five inches too short, and that kind of ruined the Olympic trials in San Bernardino. But it was a nice swimming pool. We used it a lot. We used to have a great time up here because all of the employees knew each other very well. We'd have an annual staff picnic every six months just to get the- to have more fun, and I built three Bar-B-Q pits on the north side of the tennis courts of the gymnasium, and me and the guy that was in charge of physical education, named Michael O Hara, the professor, we used to put in bar-B-Q sessions over there for the staff and we'd have Bar-B-Q sessions for the- hoping people- inviting people to come up and see the campus. And we used to have some great times. The significant things that happened after that was when they got through building the library- this campus is known for it's high winds- and I mean high winds. Fifty, sixty mile an hour winds up here are nothing. And, they got through building the library. The north side of the library had some big, huge glass windows, about 12 square foot windows, and they were also building the bio- science at the same time and one night the contractor, getting ready to pour the second floor on the building, after all the forms were put in, the contractor didn't take heed of what we told him. We told him that they had better brace those forms that they were putting in because if the wind came up, it would blow them away. He didn't believe us. Well, on a Friday night they left and Saturday the wind came up and it blew off- all the plywood off the tops of the building and the rod iron bar that was sticking up twisted it like pretzels and plywood was scattered all over there and it also blew the windows on the north side of the library. It just blew them into the building and, I mean there were books and papers and everything scattered all over the fifth floor and it took about three months to be able to straighten that all up. It was really a high wind. It took the contractors another six months to clean up all the glass and sort all the glass from the books. And, then they decided they would replace the windows, but they were going to replace them in 6 foot sections with aluminum standards in between them to support them, they were a lot more strength, and that kind of solved that problem. In the mean time the commons building opened as the cafeteria for feeding students- they had built three residence halls, co-educational residence halls, just south of the south side of the commons building for students. It was a nice commons building, a nice cafeteria and restaurant, and a lot of events were held downstairs in the big rooms and anyway, in 1973, I was sitting at home getting ready to have a Thanksgiving dinner and I get a call says I was the only person they would call because they knew I would come any time they called me. I answered the phone and they told me that I better get up here because the windows in the commons on the north side had all been blown in and the students were getting ready to have a Thanksgiving dinner, and it just blew everything off of the tables and it really created havoc. I'm talking about these windows right here-

Spittler: The windows that are on the second floor as you look out- you'd probably look towards the health center.

CORDOVA: Yes, and they were, they were, no braces like that are on there now and just blew the windows in. And they didn't blow them clear down. It blew down to about a 45 degree angles, and so I came up here and saw what the problem was and I knew that I had to have some help so I called the then Dr. Pfau at home and told him what was going on and I told him that I needed the authority to be able to get a contractor up here immediately and he said, 'well, you do what you have to do and don't worry about it.' So, I knew the a gentleman that was in the glass business and I called him and I also called the guy that was in charge of the carpenters, Bob Tesley, and I told him that I needed him to get a couple of his carpenters with him and get up here as soon as possible. Well, it took about an hour and a half to get up here and what we did is we took some hydraulic jacks and some big four by fours and we hydraulic the windows back up to where they were supposed to be and then we took some two by fours and we braced them and we shot the two by fours into the floor with high powered guns to keep them up there. And they were able to stay that way until the contractor could get up here and replace the windows. In the meantime, they'd re-embrace all of them now so the windows are only like about four feet by seven or eight feet in size. But it was interesting to see that because when they got through finishing the library there was no railing around the outside of the deck. One day the wind was blowing very, very hard and it blew two ladies off of the- the side of the- the south side of the deck of the- and blew them down and one of them ended up with a broken back and the other one ended up with some broken legs. Well that convinced them that they ought to do something and they put some railing all the way around the outside of that decking. It seemed like the administration never would really understand some of the things that we the employees saw what could happen, would happen until after it happened. And then it would get a hustle and try to do things the right way. But, the '66 when we had the first graduating class we set up chairs on the- between the- used to be the cafeteria building and the administration building and they had two reflection pools in there with some beautiful sprays, that sprayed water up like fountains. And they had a guy come in, a contractor come in and set up three hundred chairs to hold the audience, and they put up a platform right underneath the stairs of the building when it used to be the library building. And I came up here real early because I wanted to make sure that everything was okay, because I was told that it better be okay. As I parked my car and I started walking towards the administration building I saw this great big, huge white cloud, white- it was like snow. It turned out to be foam. A couple of students decided to play a joke and they put two gallons of liquid dish soap into the fountains, so it turned into one great big mess of foam which had already covered half of the chairs. So, this is like six o'clock in the morning and ceremonies are to start at nine and I'm in a panic. In the meantime, my boss Andy came up and we gathered some students that were walking around and got some hoses and started spaying all the foam off of the fountains but we couldn't spray it off, there was just too much liquid soap in there. So we drained the fountains and as we drained all the fountains completely we were able to wash the foam off and they would have- they ran over to the gym and got every towel that was over there and started wiping, cleaning chairs and making sure the chairs were at least clean, but there was still water. The floor was still all wet, the concrete was wet, so- that was kind of an interesting graduation. The crowd of professors that we had, since it was the first inaugural graduation of Cal State San Bernardino, and the Chancellor from Long Beach was here and the Vice Chancellors were here, and a couple of other dignitaries from other campuses were here and they thought it was a big joke and it was funny. Well it was funny except that it was an awful lot of work to get that graduation done.

Spittler: Speaking with the professors and I was reading in a book where it talks about the history of Cal State, I guess during the sixties and seventies, well, the late sixties and early seventies, as well as what was going on in the nation at the time- that poli- that racial tensions were high and it mentions the Latino faculty backing the administration on some things and the black- the African American or black faculty at the time walking out. What do you remember about that?

CORDOVA: Well, I remember that I was not involved in that too much except that I do remember that was also during the sixties was also flower children that were fighting against the Vietnam War and we'd have some demonstrations. And one day I heard that we were going to have a big demonstration- and that they were going to try to take the flagpole down. And me being a veteran of two wars, I decided that nobody was going to touch that flag so I got myself an ax handle and hard hat and I went and stood by the bottom of the flag-pole. There were some students out there and they wouldn't get near me or anything else but they were marching and chanting, you know down with the United States against the war, and President Pfau got wind that I was standing out there again, to protect the flag, and he came out and talked to me and he told me that it would be better if I didn't stay here because he didn't want me to get hurt. In the meantime, the two campus officers that we had all showed up, but the students were peaceful. They didn't disturb anything, but there was some problems in the faculty because we didn't have any black faculty and staff. We had two Latino faculty administrators, it pretty well straightened itself out but that was kind of interesting also because it was the first struggle between the minorities and then the strong white faction. It, it wasn't very long. It was only for about a week. We had some demonstrations, like I said, of the Vietnam issue, probably for the entire balance of '66. We had a lot of marchers in from other campuses that would come in here and they would march around the building because this was a small campus and they thought they could shut it down, but it never happened. There was just too much support otherwise. The CHP would come up in the morning and circle the campus and make sure everything was okay.

Spittler: Okay, originally I was led to believe that this was supposed to be a liberal arts school, what they called a really small community style school in the back. Was that ever the case when you were- for the master plan and the envisionment of when it started going through or did it always have a different purpose?

CORDOVA: No, it had a different purpose because President Pfau had visions of this becoming the Harvard of the west. It was going to be a high degree university with requiring certain high level of the students to be able- the high level of education. Like I said, originally, it was also intended that the campus would not be much bigger than ten thousand, but it would all be a high level education campus, not a, not like a small college. Those were originally President Pfau's dream world and most of the faculty that he hired all had the same attitude. They all were striving for very higher education and originally this was a California Sate College, not a university. The law at that time specified that you had to have a certain number of credits in certain fields and a certain number of students before you could become a university and at that particular time there was 19 campuses in the state of California and there was only six of them were universities. The rest of them were all state colleges and little by little some of them became universities, as the student body grew and then Sacramento, some of the legislatures had a vision that all of the colleges would be better off if they were all universities so they passed a legislative law that said that all California State Colleges would become California State Universities but would still not be able to award the PhD's. They could award all the rest of the classes and stuff. As the campus grew, so did the staff, and we always tried to figure out a way that we could have some sort of representation with the staff and to the administration, so I had belonged to the California State Employees Association when I worked for the state in another chapter and went back to the chapter to try and get support and since they were working for civil service, they didn't want to get involved with the university, so I formed then what is now known as the California State Employees, Chapter 184, for Cal State San Bernardino. To do that, I had to recruit 50 people to sign a card to say that they were willing to become members. So that- here this organization- this campus, and I recruited all 50 people within a week. We petitioned then the headquarters office CSEA in Sacramento to form our own CSEA chapter, and the petition was granted, it became Chapter- Badger Hill, Chapter 184. And if you look to the north side of the campus and you see a hill that's right north of the campus there, and that was originally known as Badger Hill way back when and that became our symbol for our chapter as Badger Hill Chapter 184, CSCA, before that though we formed a staff council where we got a chair person and a representative from each one of the departments to sit on the staff council so we could talk to the president about problems with staff and the administrators, kind of like a grievances situation. President Pfau was very compatible to doing that. He allowed us to go ahead and establish our staff council. I became the chairman of it, the very first one, and I had a secretary and three members became the executive committee and as we grew we had for almost all the members of the staff became members of the staff council. I decided that, in talking to other campuses that it would be great if we could establish a statewide staff council. So we started talking to other campuses and we were able to arrange a meeting. The chancellor's office at that time was located on Wilshire Blvd in Hollywood...California Bank and they had the 24th and 25th floors, so we had a meeting up there and tried to request from the chancellor the authority to be able to establish a state wide staff council to be able to represent the universities and the colleges state wide, and it took about three months to get that done, but they finally approved it. In the meantime the universities chancellor's office was moved from Hollywood to Long Beach. Where they're at, located at now, it's- they bought an island out there and they built a beautiful chancellor's office down there. But we continued working with the staff council until we got a statewide staff council, and we had a representative from each campus to settle the staff councils. We would have a meeting once a month in Long Beach and we would meet the day before that the board of trustees would meet so we could sit in the audience and listen to what the board of trustees was doing. We were able to submit resolutions to the board of trustees about problems in the colleges and also demand for increased benefits such as increased salaries or health benefits. We were able to make proposals to that and I think it was in 1969 we petitioned the universities to allow for a person from the staff council to sit on the board of trustees; to sit- that as a member of the board of trustees, but not to have a vote. And they approved that so we had a very good working organization. It was kind of like what was known then a long time ago as the campus unions. We could vote and we could talk and make demands on the local administration and also the statewide administration, and it worked very well. I was always involved in the labor movement of the university and very interested in making sure that all of the staff grievances were heard, and settled. In 1974, the staff council took a vote at an annual meeting as to whether we wanted to become a union; become unionized or not and we decided not to at that time. It was kind of tabled to future reference, but, getting back to the campus in San Bernardino, to the north side of the campus, up towards the hill, there's a huge olive grove which was there then but was a lot of weeds and everything so we took a crew up there and we cleaned it all out and planted a lawn and put some benches up there so that they could be used for picnics and at the same time the biological building, the tech that was on duty then, for weeds and rats and whatever they use in biology, they wanted a lake out there so myself and two other crew members took equipment up there and we built a lake about fifty feet in diameter and we put a huge vinyl bottom on it and we filled it full of water so that they could plant all different kinds of plants out there to study in biology. The benches on the picnic area for the- we used to call it the olive grove- was used quite extensively by students. The students, they'd have picnics up there and they'd have fire Bar-B-Q's at night and a lot of other things happened up there. But, then one of the professors decided he wanted, because there was a lot of coyotes in this area, that he wanted to study the life of the coyotes and tried to train coyotes so that they wouldn't eat chickens, so we built some pens up there and was able to capture five coyotes and he put them in these pens and he would get chickens and treat them with some kind of a chemical or something so that the coyotes wouldn't touch them; wouldn't eat them. The coyotes would get awful hungry and they would eat one of these chickens and they'd get sicker than heck. What was interesting was that I would go up and watch the coyotes and the professor. I can't remember his name, but...he was training these coyotes to turn them loose in the wild, the coyotes could then teach his offspring that chickens were not good to eat. Well, we watched three coyotes up there. They wouldn't touch the chickens at all, wouldn't even get near them. But, when they turned the coyotes loose, being as there was quite a few families that lived north of the campus in the foothills; they had chickens over there. The chickens begin to get eaten by the coyotes so the coyotes didn't learn nothing or the professor didn't learn nothing. I don't know what it was. At the same time we had another professor, Professor Socoloff, that was studying the different cockroaches throughout the entire world. So, I helped him build some small pens and he had a collection of cockroaches like I'd never seen before. Cockroaches from a quarter of an inch up to three inches in length. Great big suckers. I learned a lot from this campus myself...I never knew existed in the world. But, it was really, the professors begin to grow we get to where we went from 300 students to 700, and it kept growing and kept growing and more buildings were put on the diagrams. The next building that was built, of any size, was the bookstore. Then they built what is called the- the building where all the performances are-

Spittler: The creative arts building.

CORDOVA: The creative arts building- they built that and I had since been promoted to plumber and I had the responsibility of reviewing all of the mechanical blue prints to make sure that they all pass code. When they built the creative arts building, the people that designed the building left what is known as a post indicator valve off the blue prints. Function of that post indicator valve is to be able to determine the water to the sprinkler system for fire hazards is always open, so just as the building was getting ready to open, we discovered that that was not there so they had to shut the building down, and go back in a retie it into all the sprinkler systems that had been built. Also discovered that, myself and the chief electrician then, who was Bill Mark, were going to add some electrical equipment in the creative arts building for sound. So we got up in the attic above the stage and found out that the entire area up there in the lumber they had used old cement foam lumber and it was full of termites and so we went and talked to President Pfau about it and he wouldn't let them use the building until the contractor came in and took the entire ceiling of that building, which is made out of created beautiful redwood, down and replace it with good, new lumber.

Spittler: There we go. Side two. You had mentioned about the orange grove up at the - or the olive grove up at the north side of the building, when did they discover that used to be a school site?

CORDOVA: Well, right after we opened the campus since I kind of, I was then, still am, a rock hound, like to go out and look for different kinds of good rock around the area. And I used to walk up there and I discovered that there were some old foundations there and I couldn't figure out what the foundations were. They were foundations made out of rock and there was three different foundations like three small rooms were there, and I began to excavate around there and I did find just outside the building some arrowheads indicating that that could've been an Indian site at some time or the other and then in talking to other people that were from around the area, they told me that that used to be a school and I think they said that if I can remember correct, the name of the school was Serrano, because the Indian tribes that were in the area were the Serrano Indians, but I didn't go any further into that but the foundations were still there. And I know there was an attempt at one time to make that whole olive grove in there a historical site because they began to find people that were interested in artifacts began to find some tomahawk heads and stuff like that, but I don't know really what ever happened after that. I know that, but I did know that that had been a pre-historical site, that was one of the first historic schools that was supposed to have been in this area when the Mormon's first came down through here, through the pass. That's another, another story that I know very little about. The issue with the employee representation, we became members of the California State Employee's Association with 150 members of the two hundred faculty staff that was working here at the time. Faculty and staff, because at that particular time the professors were able to join the same organizations that- since they represented both faculty and staff. And, we used to be have a very cohesive group, very- we all got along well with each other. We didn't have any fights or any problems. Since it was a small campus and we have not very many people working- you have close camaraderie in the organizations. As we went along I can remember that there were other buildings planned after the faculty and their creative arts building was built they decided they were going to build some more buildings so they built the union, the student union building. That was all built with private money and they can't build buildings on the campus for- like the student union, and any residence halls and bookstores and use state money, that all has to be with private funds. So they had some big donations to build all these buildings with. The campus is so big now that to me it is something- I never dreamed that it would be this big. It's a beautiful campus, I am very interested in the different designs of the buildings instead of trying to build all the buildings the so they kind of look alike, every building has it's own identity, it's own outside structure that makes it look separate from all the other buildings, and that to me is very interesting. They finally I guess built the west wing of the Pfau library, that building originally supposed to be above shaped of an 'H' and they still had the building, the east wing of the building which will complete the 'H', touching of it. And the building of this tunnel underneath here the heating and air conditioning system, the piping that goes to the buildings is probably piping that is about 12" in diameter that carries the cold water, the chilled water to the condensers and the hot water to the condensers and it's all switched by computer and the thermostats on the walls are all computerized so that you set the building at a certain temperature and the computer changes the location and entrance of the water into the buildings. The small building, which used to be in the faculty building, there was only room for about thirty- thirty faculty people, probably never- they ended up having to cut places to make additional faculty offices and I think it was in 1974 when we moved in three huge trailers, what they call modular classrooms to the west side of the building and we made all of two of those faculty offices and one of them classrooms. I was also very instrumental in making the creative arts building for the class where they were teaching glass blowing and carpentry and all of that. I made all the kilns in that were used to treat ceramics, to cook ceramics. They had a young man in here his name was Bill "Warehaul" that was a very talented artist in blowing glass and doing ceramics. He and I became pretty close friends and I have some memories of him as he made me a couple of vases out of glass that are really beautiful and my wife really likes them and also some pottery- a couple of vases of pottery. He was a great person. The guy in charge of the carpentry shop, his name was Doyle and he was also a great artist in woodwork and I understand that he's still working here. He hasn't retired yet, but, he is a great person. Memories on this campus, I have a lot of them. I have memories of going to picnics with the staff. The guy that interviewed me here first before I was hired, like I said, his name was Mr. Leonard. He was the business manager of the campus and he was kind of an interesting individual. He- I never saw him smile, but he was all business all the time. When we finally voted- the maintenance shop was in back of the cafeteria building, we had a big room over there, and that was where I worked out of, and then the design for the new physical plant, which is where all our shops are now, was reviewed it myself and Mr. ______ viewed it very closely and we changed a lot of things. We couldn't convince him to change the entrances into the shops from the north side to the east or west side because of the high winds, so they went ahead and built it to their judgment, felt that was the best way to build it. The backside of the building was all one great big huge wall, which was the back of the buildings. But they had no outdoors for the shops for the trucks to be able to back in. The first big wind that came along and the doors were shut, the wind blew all the doors off of the shops and blew them in so then they decided to build a different kind of walls. But, like I said, experience and working in the area and arguing with the administration and staff from Long Beach just don't work because they don't understand the ramifications of building the buildings in this location. Now, it's not quite so bad because some buildings cover another building and some of the winds cut down but I saw some very traumatic experiences with the wind up here. I saw trees uprooted that were fairly newly planted; you couldn't find them. They were somewhere down the road. But, it's a beautiful campus now. I'm really proud of it.

Spittler: Did you work with Dr. Evans when he took over after Dr. Pfau?

CORDOVA: Yes I did, for a very short time though because I retired in 1980. He was not the same kind of president as Dr. Pfau. Dr. Evans was the kind of person that he believed strictly in the faculty and made very little to do with the administration and with the staff. As a representative of the California State Employees on this campus, I was always trying to meet the people that were the people that had the say so and I could never get a meeting with him. I used to see him every once and a while, but he never had time to meet with the staff to talk about problems on the campus or anything like that. I retired on June the 28th of 1980, with a two-year golden handshake and I did real well. I'm not sorry that I did it. I retired at age 57. I'm age 80 now, and I'm still enjoying life and this campus. In the summertime they had bands over here in the lower commons and people come out here to listen to the bands and dance. I'm one of those that does that. We come to some of the performances up here. I live thirteen miles from here. It would have to be something good for me and my wife to drive all the way up here.

Spittler: It's good to see that, that the campus has grown and that as far you can see, it has grown in a positive way. I want to appreciate-

CORDOVA: One more thing that was very critical to this campus and it still could be later on is when it rains like big, big heavy rains, there were no flood dikes in the north side of the campus, and when they got through building the library and the physical and the biological science building, they built basements in them. But when they built those buildings, the treatment of the exterior walls underground were not treated accordingly to what they were supposed to be treated so every time that they had a big rain here I would have to some up with it and also get another person with me and we would spend all night vacuuming water out of the library, and especially because the entire north walls under ground leaked water into the building. We finally got the people to understand there could be no books at least twelve inches close to the ground because if real heavy rains came in they would lose all the books. But then some contractors came in and the dug all of the dirt away from all the buildings and it turned out the buildings were never coated with tar when they were built like they were supposed to be so they put some tar and some tar paper on the outside of the walls and recovered them so most of the leaks were stopped but I was up there about a month ago and one of the staff people that work in there that I've known for years and years, still working there told me that in sections of that wall they still get leaks so I guess they'll never stop that but there was some families that lived just straight north of the campus in 19, it think is was '74 or '75, there were some real heavy rains I here and I came up and spent the night here because I was afraid of another building where a lot of water would leak into and so I had some pumps and set up to pump the water out of the buildings. Me and another guy, we spent all night here doing that. We had a guy that was lived up there and he was trying to get home and the road had about two feet of water in it and we heard some horns blowing so we went out there and we saw this truck laying on it's side and the guy inside the truck couldn't get out because the water was flowing so we got him out of there and were able _____ took him in the building. Turned out that he was one of the ones that lived up in the foothills over there. He called his wife from the building and she answered the phone and her- there was nothing wrong with the house except the street had been washed out completely and it was like a big gully. But he stayed in the building with us until the next morning when it kind of slowed down so he could go up there. But, it's been, like I said, nature has some- the main things that happens on this campus every once and a while and God help us if we're not protecting our north if we ever get another hundred year rain over here, why a lot of these buildings will be completely flooded. And, I've seen that happen. So, you know that's part of the history of this campus and it's great, still a great campus. I don't think a better-looking campus than this, except maybe the one at Humbolt. That's' a beautiful campus, so is this one.

Spittler: Like I said, I appreciate you taking the time to come out and speak with us. This will be used, like I said, for the public history project that Dr. Hanson is working on for Cal State San Bernardino, and I appreciate your time.

CORDOVA: My pleasure. Thank you very much for being here.

Spittler: Thank you. The interview will end at 9:50 in the morning.