<Begin Segment 21>

TI: So you had this rich family life, you had young children, you were teaching at Renton in a really exciting time.

RM: Yeah.

TI: Plus, you were still working on your dissertation.

RM: Yeah. I had the doctorate, the dissertation, on top of the piano. And the kids got so noisy that I took over one of the bathrooms to work in, and then, then I would lay down, Lorraine would go to sleep, and then I would get up and work on the dissertation and work two or three hours.

TI: You have to explain this story about, about being with Lorraine, so she can go to sleep. So every night, how would this work?

RM: Well, she had a, we had the four kids, it was really a trying experience. And she's not hard to get to go to sleep, but she couldn't go to sleep if I stayed working. She could not, she was a pattern, her pattern was for me to come to bed, and I would wait until she went to sleep and then I would get up to go to work. She knew I was doing this, but the, the idea was that she got to go to sleep. And she slept deeply, and it would take probably a lightning storm to wake her up or something. But anyway, that's how I finished my dissertation.

TI: And so how many hours at night would you work on your --

RM: Two or three every night. I did a, my dissertation on Russia, and American attitudes towards Russia. Comparing the attitude towards Communist Russia with Czarist Russia by major thinkers in America.

TI: Now, how'd you pick that topic? Why, why...

RM: Oh, that's interesting. I, I really wanted to do it in ancient Greek history, but one of the professors there said, "Ron, you can't get through there. Nobody has gotten their doctorate in ancient history in years and years." Said, "The guy who's really moving people through is the American historian Stol Holt." "Oh," and I thought, "Oh, okay." So I went and I saw Stol Holt, he was the head of the history department, and I said, I mentioned writing my dissertation in American history. Said, "Well, here are the topics that are available. There's labor and attitudes towards Russia..." he was doing a series. And he said, "There's religious attitudes towards Russia." American religious attitudes. "Oh," I said, "I'll take that one." He was nice, said, "Go ahead." And so I did, and I studied, and it took me three or four years to write the dissertation on these ideas. And it was, it was well-accepted, and I was really surprised at the reception of the dissertation by the academic community. And that, that's how I... and it was sort of interesting at another point.

I, you're not supposed, we were not supposed to work full-time if you're a graduate student. You were supposed to work maybe part-time. Well, I didn't tell the university that I was teaching full-time at Renton. And I didn't tell Renton that I was going to the University of Washington on my dissertation, or doctorate. Mainly because I thought they would object to that. They both had policy statements on it. And so it came out one day that in collective bargaining, I was representing the Renton teachers for, to the administration, and there was something in the P-I about it, I can't remember exactly what it was. And my major professor, Holt read this, and he says, "Now, what are you doing?" [Laughs] He said, "You're supposed to be finishing your dissertation, not getting into arguments on collective bargaining." And I said, "Well, it just happened that way." And then the superintendent read that I was receiving my doctorate, and he said, "What did you do?" I said, "I got my doctorate." He said, "How?" I said, "Well, I went up there after school and took a couple seminars, they started at, I think, at 4 o'clock, and we, I got out of Renton at 3:00, so I would go up to the U." And so he, they decided to have a party for me. I was the first Ph.D. at, in the Renton faculty, and he liked the idea of the teachers going out -- the superintendent did -- and expanding, developing their school, their academic work. So he was very much in favor of it, and they took the policy out.

<End Segment 21> - Copyright © 2004 Densho. All Rights Reserved.