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AI: So, really, these kids, who were recruited in their junior year of high school, then were really prepared as much as possible to be, as they were finishing their high school requirements in this college campus setting, they were really being prepared to go on to college.

EH: (Yes), that, the purpose of the program is to get them through college. I have a copy from Ricky Leonard, who, appreciating what Ralph did for him after, when he graduated, almost through tears. And he says, "When I first got into your class, I thought, I thought, 'Here's a black, power-hungry monster who's just (going to) pour it on us like there was no tomorrow.'" And, but he survived that first year, and then by the second year, he realizes that -- and Ralph says to the, to the whole class, "My job is to help you get through this institution called UW." And so from the second year, he really sticks to it. They have to, after their summer in junior year, they have to go back to their senior year at their high school. And then as soon as they graduate, they're back at the UW campus taking their first freshman classes. But for kids who, who had never been approached about going to college, 'cause they never thought that was going to be possible, it's a big adjustment to, to get on a campus like university.

Some of 'em do test. I mean, there were times when Ralph would come home to sleep, if the telephone rang and said, "So-and-so isn't in yet," he would go bounding back to the dorm and he'd sit there in front of the dorm door, and I remember one night he jumped out of bed and he was back at the dorm, and he sat there until this gal showed up and he said, "Pack your things, we're going back. We're going to Tacoma." And he ran 'em home to Tacoma, and... some of these kids didn't have telephones. That was a major problem. I mean, they were too poor, and they were in rural areas, and so you had no recourse but to run the kids home, transportation-wise. And then they would be permitted to come back after he had a conference with the parents and they, they committed themselves to continuing.

But for the kids, missing their summers and missing maybe an opportunity to work was a big sacrifice. But the kids who came from Eastern Washington who, particularly the migrant workers, I mean, they were astounding. We, in the process of this first or second year, we were moving to Ravenna, and Ralph hired a couple of Upward Bound kids to help move. And this one kid had been packing things for his migrant family every summer, maybe two or three times a summer, he was so fast at packing and loading, that we had trouble keeping up with him. But he said, "Hey, if you had to do this since you were ten, you'd be good at it, too."

But they, but they were, the university has what's called Pack Forest, up by Olympia -- not Olympia, Rainier, Mt. Rainier, at the foot of Rainier. It's a forestry department... it's a, it's a conference ground, kind of, but it has dormitories and big kitchen facilities. And because the majority of these kids would never have been to Mt. Rainier, that was one trip that was always, one weekend that was always planned. And we had a cabin up in La Conner on Skagit Bay, I guess. And, and so we made it a point to take the crowd up there, seventy-five or eighty-five people. [Laughs] I had to prepare, we kind of simmered ribs at home, and husked all the corn and wrap 'em in foil and that kind of thing, and then on the beach we made this big fire and we'd finish cooking the rest of the salmon.

There was a, Ralph did some recruiting up at the Swinomish Indian Reservation, and we got to know a Landie James who was a, just tremendous Native American guy who grew up there, but was, got a basketball scholarship to Washington State. And because football came, season comes before basketball, the football coach saw him horsing around or practicing, he recruited him first for football, and then the basketball scholarship came into play. But he was teaching up at La Conner by that time. He, after teaching in Spokane for seven years, he decided that he needed to come back to the reservation. So when Ralph went to recruit Native American kids up there, he lent a big hand, and we practically ordered poor five or six Indian kids up there, "Yes, you're going. Don't give me any lip, your parents want to go, you're going." And the other thing he always did was bring a lot of salmon to the barbeque.

So those were great trips for the kids that never have seen a waterfront. They did some wild things; they would get driftwood and hammer rickety floating apparatuses that too many would get on one, one floater and tip over -- [laughs] -- and everybody would get wet. So they, but it was, the university always provided the transportation, the buses, though Ralph had to be very strict about the rules of driving university property because -- and he, I think he was right. From the very beginning, he would hammer away that, "Hey, one break, one rule break... the university is itching to get rid of us." The university didn't want, this university's relatively conservative. They didn't want Head Start, and they didn't want this program. Both of these programs they were ordered that, "You're the biggest institution in the Northwest, yes you're (going to) take on these programs." And they take something like twenty percent of the grant money, even at that, we were using their dormitories, but the dormitory and the feeding kinds of, tuition, they come out of the, there's money granted. But the university is going to take twenty percent off the top, and then you've got your budget. But those were great experiments, and it hadn't been done before.

<End Segment 12> - Copyright © 2004 Densho. All Rights Reserved.