Paul E. Gill

Paul E. Gill: Have you done this (interviewing) before?

Monica Wilson: Yes, it is the first time so. [chuckles]

PG: It's different, yeah. Are these going to be archived then?

MW: Um, yes at the Cumberland County Historical Society.

PG: Okay, yeah.

MW: Um, so what is your full name?

PG: Paul Eugene Gill.

MW: And were you, or what is your date of birth?

PG: Well, October the 14th, 1937.

MW: And, where were you born and where did you grow up?

PG: Hmm, a little place called ... actually I was born in the Huntingdon Hospital in Huntingdon County, but I grew up in a little place called, well outsiders call it Spruce Creek. But if you lived there you called it Spruce Crick.

MW: Oh, okay.

PG: In fact, I found that's true with most places that have a creek, the locals pronounce it differently.

MW: That's true.

PG: I guess that's how they can tell whether you're a foreigner or whether you're one of them or not. So... I, lived there until, well, in November of 1954 after I graduated from high school and just turned 17, I enlisted in the Marine Corps for four years and left Spruce Creek for the first extensive time. I came back four years later and went to college, Juniata College in Huntingdon, Pennsylvania, and from there I went to Penn State where I got my Masters and Ph. D. so I have some fond memories of this little village. Most people have never heard of it unless they happen to take one of the routes to ...

Random Person: Hey, Paul!

PG: That won't matter will it?

MW: No [chuckles].

PG: Oh, okay. One of the routes to Penn State. They go through this little town. And it's one of those towns where if you blink you miss it, you know? But it was a nice little community, although going back is bittersweet. I mean, on the one hand there's this sort of the pull of your youth but at the same time nobody knows me up there.

MW: Yeah [chuckles].

PG: Actually, it doesn't feel real comfortable to go there. Interestingly, Spruce Creek is only 8 miles from where the new president came from, Tyrone.

MW: Oh.

PG: I, I didn't know that Jody came here as a student, and I didn't know him then but I met him after he came back here and he's been a, a friend of mine for quite a few years.

MW: Oh that's cool.

PG: He knows, he knows all about Spruce Crick because he's been there. [pauses]

MW: Yeah. Um, I'm sorry were you all done?

PG: Go ahead.

MW: I'm sorry [chuckles]. What was your childhood like?

PG: Well, [chuckles] it was probably different than what most people would think. I didn't go to a one room schoolhouse although it resembled one in many ways. Actually, it was a three room schoolhouse, built back in 1876.

MW: Oh wow.

PG: One room had grades one through three, a woman teacher, four five, were in another room, another woman teacher, and then sixth seventh, and eighth had a man teacher who was also the principal, and also the janitor. Although we boys just did the janitorial work.

MW: Oh.

PG: It was a uh, quite a experience. I my, my--the teacher I had, for sixth seventh and eighth, he was a good teacher, but he wouldn't've lasted ten minutes in today's schools because--

MW: Oh.

PG: -- he was, he was a very rigid disciplinarian [chuckles]. So when I went to boot camp I was prepared for somebody who was a little rough with me.

MW: Yeah. [chuckles]

PG: You know, because he also had a, a knack of knowing how far to go with you before you’re going to drop off the bitter end. But I, I have no bad feelings about it. I have a few physical scars but no bad feelings. It was a good childhood I think.

MW: Well that's good. That's good. Um, who were your parents?

PG: Well, my father’s name was also Paul. It was Paul Irvin. My mother was Alta Viola she was a Graffius and I was their baby. I mean, I had five other siblings but I was, I was the last of them, and when my mother had to sign for me because I was just seventeen, to go into the Marine Corps, it was a very hard experience for her. Very hard experience because she'd had four sons come back from the service intact, and she wasn't sure that her luck was going to hold out. But it did. As it turned out, I'm not sure how intact I was.

MW: Aww. [chuckles]

PG: --when I came back but they said you'd come back bawling anyhow.

MW: My stepdad had a very similar experience.

PG: What's that?

MW: My stepdad had a very similar experience.

PG: Really?

MW: He was the baby and all his brothers went off to war and then he wanted to and his mom didn't want him to, so. [chuckles]

PG: Ah that, that.

MW: I know what you mean.

PG: That happens, yeah.

MW: What were they like?

PG: Uh, well, my father was well, he had difficulty expressing his emotions. Was a little gruff, and for some reason, I talked with some other people from around there at that time, and they feel the same way as my father thought that going through life was pretty serious business you know? There wasn't too much time for you know, frivolities and all that. We, we learned the work ethic from him and he was pretty strict too. He didn't spare the rod on us but I never resented that. But my mother was a very gentle soul. In fact I, I suspect that many of my personality traits were from her. I suppose I was a little bit favored because I was the last, but nonetheless I have very fond memories of both of them. My wife didn't live too far from where I did although she's three years younger, she got to know my mother and you know she recognized some of her qualities too. I was greatly affected by her. I mean, for one thing, I can't hold a grudge. I’ve had people do some pretty dastardly things to me, and if they asked for forgiveness I gave it to them.

MW: Well that's very kind of you.

PG: While I can forgive, biologically [chuckles], I can't forget. You, you just can't.

MW: That's true.

PG: You put it behind you and say if I run into this person, they need help, despite what they said or did to me, I’ll help them. On the other hand, I'll never forget that at one time they treated me pretty shabbily. So, I suppose everybody hangs on to that a little bit.

MW: I'm sure everybody, I do too so it's okay.

MW: Um, is there anyone that you admire more than anyone else?

PG: Well, when I looked that question over I’d be hard pressed to specify any particular individual. I, I suppose I'm more of a composites, a lot of people. I admire my mother because of her forgiving qualities. Her kindness. I admire my father because he taught me the value of work and some of my teachers, as I say, that teacher for sixth seventh and eighth grades, he was pretty rough on me but it worked for me. Unfortunately, not everybody responds the same way.

MW: Right.

PG: Now there were some people that just didn't take to him at all and they just kept failing until they could quit school and unfortunately, he drove some people off that might have been more successful but in my case he knew I had potential and he was going to get the best out of me. If he had to kill me to do it. So he was influential, and one other professor that I had at Juniata College, just my second term there in 1959. I'll, I'll be revealing my politics here but...

MW: That's okay [laughter].

PG: I'm not trying to proselytize or anything like that, but let's put it this way. I grew up in a very small community, people were either Republicans or Democrats; the Republicans were all Presbyterians and the Democrats were all Methodists. The Methodists were a little more broad minded when it came to you know, drinking and things like that and Presbyterians were very closed minded about that. I was exposed to a very conservative philosophy. Now the Marine Corps of course, that's about as far right as you can get you know, and, and that's okay because their job is not to make people happy it's to help defend the country.

MW: That's right.

PG: So this is what they have to do. I had a professor who was very influential in forming my character also. I was taking this professor, Ken Crosby, in a summer course. I didn't get discharged in time for the fall semester so I had to start in February and in order to get through in four years I had to take a summer program. And this course was in American government, and one day he looked around and he said “You know probably a lot of people in here won't agree with what I have to say." And he said "I'm sure some of your parents wouldn't be too happy if they knew what I was going to say." Well, we're all waiting, what? He said, "I'm going to tell you that not right away, but in time, in time, Harry Truman will come to be regarded as one of our greatest Presidents.” Well, whoa! [chuckles] I almost fell out of my seat! You know, and I said “How, how can you say that?” Now he spent the rest of the period explaining why he said that. Things I didn't know.

MW: Right

PG: You know because, if you’re a rabid Republican, or, or a Democrat you only hear your side of the story.

MW: That's true

PG: The Marine Corps didn't have too much time for Harry Truman either because he tried to disband it.

MW: Yeah [chuckles].

PG: You know, but then he went on to talk about the things that he did do. And one of his policies I had witnessed firsthand. In 1947 he issued an Executive Order which called for the desegregation of the armed forces. Because up until then, you know, blacks were the only ones that were excluded because of their race. There were Hispanics, and there were Native Americans who had served alongside whites.

MW: Right

PG: Whites and blacks had never, and yet they had served in all of the nation's wars. That was an earth shaking thing Truman did and I saw the effect of it when I went in the service. When I went to North Carolina in 1954 there were African Americans in my platoon, all the platoons. I didn't think anything about it because I came from a place where, when I grew up, I saw people were somewhat racist but not really in the worst sense.

MW: Right.

PG: In the sense that they, they lived right among us. They went to the same schools that we did, we had them as friends, we played football with them. But well, people still did use the “n” word.

MW: Right.

PG: In fact you could go into a candy store and they had these little black candies, made of licorice and shaped like babies. [held fingers out on table to measure]

MW: Mm Hm.

PG: And you know what they called 'em.

MW: I do know what they called them, yes.

PG: You know what they called them. But, but that wasn't so unusual, in fact I'm sure some of my black friends probably asked for them that way too [chuckles].

MW: Right.

PG: Because that's the name everybody knew, you know. And, and so I, I was guilty probably, of listening to some racist jokes and things like this but, but I never really had any dislike of them.

MW: Right.

PG: You know, I never expected a black person to get off the street to make way for me. Nothing like that.

MW: Yeah.

PG: But I got down in the South after I got out of boot camp and in North Carolina you know there were separate colored waiting rooms, colored fountains and I couldn't believe it! And of course imagine how hard it was for the black guys you know that came from the North and --.

MW: Yeah.

PG: --pretty hard to adjust to that sort of thing. But that was the law.

MW: Right.

PG: Well, I didn't know that Harry Truman had been the one that called for the end of segregation in the armed forces. And so that was one thing, but then he went on to a number of other things and by the time he was finished [pause] I was converted. I became a Democrat that day [chuckles] and I've been one ever since because I, I saw things in there I just didn't know about.

MW: Yeah.

PG: And they meant a lot to me so he was very influential. [voice wavers]

MW: Yeah.

PG: And I was very fond of him.

MW: Well, he sounds like a great person.

PG: He was, he was a World War II veteran. Of course he was a chaplain but he still was in the armed services, as most of my high school teachers had been.

MW: Yeah. Um, how do you feel about Shippensburg now that you're here?

PG: Well, this marks my fifty first year here. Uh [pauses] I had been here once before I went in the service. My high school teacher was a graduate of Shippensburg, and he got a group of us seniors together and he brought us down here to, to show us the campus. That was my first exposure and it was interesting you know. He was hoping that we'd be influenced and go here and I might've but it didn't work out that way as it developed. So, I got, I got a view of the campus, and some of the people there, but I pretty much just locked that away. So if someone would have said to me, in 1964, “Do you know where Shippensburg is?” I'd say, "Well, I went there once but I'm not quite sure how you get there though.” You know. Well, this was in, in 1964, January of 1964. It was on a Saturday morning in the library at Penn State and one of the librarians came up and said, “There's a guy on the phone from Shippensburg who wants to talk to you. He said you knew where.” I said “Yeah,” but I said “What, does somebody from Shippensburg want to talk to me about?” Well it turned out it was a man who was in the History Department, at the, well actually then it was called the Social Sciences Department because it wasn't just history. It was history, economics, sociology, political science, and philosophy. They were all together.

MW: Yeah.

PG: They were looking for someone in Medieval History and they called my advisor and he said “Well, he's working on his Ph. D. He should be done in a couple of years and I would highly recommend him.” So he called and I talked to him about it. Since then of course we have become very good friends. He's 95 now but he’s the man who brought me here. And I came down and I liked what I saw. Actually, to tell the truth, in January of 1964 I wasn't looking for a job, in fact I didn't know what I was going to do.

MW: Yeah.

PG: I went to college right out of the service and my major was Pre Law. Now, generally speaking, a History major is very good for someone that wants to go into law.

MW: Right.

PG: Political Science is also another good one but....

MW: Yes.

PG: So I took, I took a lot of a history, political science and philosophy and so on. And, [pauses] now losing my train of thought here. [chuckles] , when I was in my senior year, of course that's the time you start trying to plan on what you're going to do and I had an offer from U.S. Steel as a management trainee. Not that I was in business but I had twelve hours of accounting and they thought that was good. Plus the fact that I had a very high GPA. And they said “Yeah.” They offered me a job, and I had an offer from the Internal Revenue Service [chuckles].

MW: Oh wow!

PG: But, I, I'm not sure I wanted to do that. Now by that time I was married and had a child. And things were a little tight.

MW: Right.

PG: So, I wasn't quite sure what I was going to do. But they, my advisors at Juniata thought, “Well give History a shot. You know, I mean you've done well here in your education. See if you like it.”

MW: Yeah.

PG: Okay well, I applied and I, I got accepted at various places with assistantships. And assistantship, are you familiar with them?

MW: Mm hm. Yeah.

PG: But in any event, you get your tuition free and you know you can take classes at the same time and you get a stipend.

MW: Right.

PG: Not very much then but it was a little bit of money, enough to keep me going anyhow. So, that, that was where I was, and coming up here on my third year at Penn State and I'm thinking well I'm not sure what I'm going to do. My one thought was that I might go back in the Marine Corps, this time and get a commission. Go back as an officer. Well, I had stayed in a reserve unit, I mean I was in a reserve unit, active reserve from the time I got off active duty in '58 until '66. In fact, I was almost certain when I first came here for the first couple of years that I would be activated for Vietnam. Turned out they didn't activate the Reserves. For whatever reason they didn't. Otherwise I probably, [chuckles] well I would've had my job if I came back alive.

MW: Right.

PG: There's no assurance of that.

MW: Yeah.

PG: Uh, so when he brought me here and I met people and all that I sort of liked it and then I had to go in for the meeting with the President you know about salary. And I hadn't given too much thought to that. Now I, I didn't know anyone who taught on a college level. Uh, mostly I knew public school teachers, and at that time, the typical beginning public school teacher made about $3,600 a year. If you could imagine that.

MW: [chuckles] That's a big change from today.

PG: Yes. Yes. So just before going to the president's office, a couple of other people from the Math Department got to talking to me, and they knew where I was going. They said, “You got to watch it when you go in there or Ralph, he'll get you cheaply as he can.” I said, “Don't worry, I've already got that figured out. I've already decided I won't come here for less than five thousand dollars a year.” And they started to laugh. I'm thinking you know, is that too much? They told me that the least he can give you is fifty eight.

MW: Oh.

PG: I got sixty two. [chuckles]

MW: Well then you made out.

PG: Yeah, so that, that's how I came here. There was a whole generation of us in fact, we, we talked about being the golden boys and girls because we were. We had the best years here. We really did. From the sixties up through the nineties. Most of us were first generation college. My parents had never gone to college. None of my brothers or sisters went to college. So we had that in common when we came here. A lot of the older faculty here were former public school teachers. Most of them didn't have their doctorates.

MW: Oh, okay.

PG: They'd, they'd taught for twenty or twenty five years in high school and then they, they came here and finished out their careers here .But those of us who had our Ph. D.s or were working on them were sort of a different group you know, in a way. And so most of us at the time thought well this is a nice place and all that but in three or four years we’ll move on. That's what we thought.

MW: Right.

PG: And a few of them did. For a number of reasons I decided not to and it turns out that I made the right decision because I don't know any of that group that I knew back then that went somewhere and did better.

MW: Right.

PG: You know? Because all of a sudden the legislature started to put money into the state-owned schools. Well back then they were state colleges. Now, you're probably familiar with the evolution, in1873 when the first class began it was called the Cumberland Valley State Normal School.

MW: Mm hm.

PG: And then about 1930 it became Shippensburg State Teachers College. And then in the '60s it became Shippensburg State College and then of course in, I believe it was 1981 it became Shippensburg University of Pennsylvania.

MW: Yeah.

PG: So at the time we were the young Turks you know and a lot of the administrators were afraid of us [chuckles]. You know, nothing like Jody.

MW: Yeah.

PG: Jody, I can't even imagine him as President then. I served under three different Presidents and they were all different. But the, the first two were quite different-- they were good in their own way but nothing like, well they couldn't be that way today.

MW: Right.

PG: You know it was just a different world I think.

MW: Yeah.

PG: And yeah. It got to the point that I thought you know, this is a very good school, I'm, I'm glad I made this decision. Up until about 1970 I was getting unsolicited job offers from other schools.

MW: Oh.

PG: If you can believe that. Well, none of them really matched up to what I already had so I didn't take them, but within a couple of years all of that stopped. All of a sudden, it seemed like everybody was going in to graduate school to get a Ph. D. To teach in a college or a university.

MW: Yeah.

PG: And all of a sudden the field was flooded with them. And from about '75 onward there were always many more Ph. D.s than there were positions.

MW: Yeah.

PG: And it's still that way.

MW: Right.

PG: It's still that way. I finished my doctorate in ‘68, and two years later I made full professor which would be unheard of now, that quickly, but that's the way things worked then [mumbles]. So, you know I, I liked the environment, I fell in with the college community pretty easily. There were some peculiarities. I mean there had always been a little bit of town -gown rivalry. Not rivalry but animosity.

MW: Yeah.

PG: Let's put it that way, you know. And, and for a number of reasons. I mean, first of all here were a lot of young people out from their home environment, their growing up environment, and you know they, they started doing things that they wouldn't do at home and so on.

MW: Right.

PG: And of course town's people don't particularly care for that. You know, and then there'd be things like the students taking up all the parking places.

MW: Yeah.

PG: The people think that they ought to have the parking place in front of their house, but it doesn't belong to them.

MW: That's true

PG: If the student gets in there before you do he's there to stay [chuckles]. So, things like that. And something else more personal. When I came here I’d been a runner all my life. Uh, I, I didn't start doing marathons until in the '70s but I'd been a runner all my life because I knew it had to be good for you.

MW: Right

PG: But when I started running around the community here, that was the talk of the town.

MW: Oh really?

PG In addition to that, I rode a bicycle.

MW: Oh.

PG: Oh! In fact I remember going into one of these small little stores up here, and this couple of nice little old ladies were eyeing me up you know and I'm thinking what, what's going on here? And they turned the corner, and they didn't realize that I could still hear them. And the one said to the other, “Yeah, that's that old man that rides through town on a bicycle. I've seen him running on the road too sometimes. We'll have to watch him."

MW: That's so funny because I'm a runner.

PG: Yeah?

MW: And I never have heard anyone say that nowadays.

PG: Oh no, of course not.

MW: So that's really interesting.

PG: I was the only one and then another guy came in and we ran together and soon we had about a half dozen or so and by that time it was taking off. Now I'm not saying I started a trend by any means. It just so happens--

MW: It sounds like you did.

PG: Well, but you see when I started I, I never anticipated that I'd be able to do marathons. This never occurred to me.

MW: Yeah.

PG: But when I got into it I thought, "Well now that's you know you can, I started going to 10Ks then you do a half marathon and why not? So I field tested myself. I drove around the countryside, clocked my distance on my speedometer, put out bottles of water, and had a twenty six mile course.

MW: Wow.

PG: And so I went out, I went out one Friday morning, and I did it in less than four hours. And o.k., I had done it, I could do it again. You know, so I proceeded to do it again and again. And with the running thing is that during the sixties I had all the cartilage removed from my knees.

MW: Oh, okay.

PG: So, it was all bone on bone.

MW: Yeah.

PG: And it didn't bother me when I ran.

MW: Oh wow.

PG: The last marathon I did was the New York and that's when arthritis first showed up. I realized I wouldn't be able to run anymore. I did have my knee replaced then. But again they thought that was--

MW: Yeah.

PG: --odd that this old man, well I think I was about 28 or something but you know. People would say a grown man oughtn't to be running around the street like that you know in shorts and all this story. Oh it was it was very provincial.

MW: Yeah.

PG: But that, that changed and eventually their sons and daughters came along, and they got into it too. Now it’s okay.

MW: Yeah, yeah.

PG: Yeah, it's alright.

MW: What was it like running the New York Marathon?

PG: What's that?

MW: What was it like running the New York Marathon?

PG: You know that's interesting. I had spent a full summer up in New York City a couple of years before, and I had my you know, notions about what the people were like. So they weren't very friendly.

MW: Oh. [chuckles]

PG: It didn't seem that way. Mind their own business, and all this sort of thing but when I did the marathon up there, there were thousands and thousands of people up and they, they were cheering us on.

MW: Yeah.

PG: Now I was in the middle of the pack, you know, and never expected to win or anything like that.

MW: Right. [chuckles]

PG: But these people were out there cheering us on. A friend and I got on the subway and a couple of girls, of course they'd been drinking a little bit, but they came up and they started flirting with us you know. "You guys ran the marathon that's crazy!" [chuckles] So yeah. So it, was a little different. Then one of my friends remembers going up into a restaurant which isn't there anymore but he got a sandwich and a coke and he asked the waitress if he could have a straw, and she said men don't use straws. [chuckles]

MW: Oh, well that's also very interesting. [chuckles]

PG: So it’s, it's all together different now.

MW: Yeah.

PG: But you know we got, we got used to it. You know, and then there were some peculiar--peculiarities in the language. For instance, one of them in particular stands out that local people used that we didn't. You'd be talking to somebody, go into a grocery store and you say well I need a loaf of bread. And the clerk would say, “The bread's all,” and my response was "All what?" “We don't have any bread.”

MW: Ye--oh!

PG: Have you ever heard that expression?

MW: I have actually.

PG: Yeah, yeah. It's, it's, I think it comes from the Pennsylvania Dutch.

MW: Yeah.

PG: Quite frankly. Yeah, because a lot of their expressions worked that way. So it, it was different but you didn't have any problems with the local police or anything like that. And so you know it, it took some getting used to but of course now that's all changed.

MW: Yeah.

PG: Of course you still have a little bit of that town gown friction, but part of that's solved by the fact that Richard Avenue belongs to the students. [chuckles]

MW: Yeah.

PG: [laughing] Sort of like they got a fence around there you know, and they don't come over and mingle with the natives.

MW: Right.

PG: Sometimes the natives go in there, and then there's trouble but it's nothing like it once was.

MW: Yeah, um how do you feel that Shippensburg as a town has changed since you first came here 'til now?

PG: Well, I think there's a, a greater acceptance of the faculty and the students and so on. There's little issues that are, that are different. For instance, when we came here in ‘64 the only fast food place was, it’s out here now it's the same building. It went through different names. First it was the Tropical Treat, then it became The Treat, and then some Egyptians bought it and they went back to Tropical Treat. And that didn't make it so now it's the Greyhound you know because of the high school.

MW: Yeah.

PG: The mascot the greyhound. That was the only fast food place. They wouldn't-

MW: Oh, okay.

PG: --they wouldn't let McDonald's, Wendy’s or anything like that in town.

MW: Oh.

PG: So, and eventually well the, the first breakthrough with a national chain was up here on Prince St. There's a church--

MW: Mm, hm.

PG: --on the one side, the Church of God and on the other side there's just a little, well it's called the Church Annex. That was the first Burger King.

MW: Oh.

PG: The people wouldn't patronize it.

MW: Oh, why not? Do you know?

PG: I don't know.

MW: Oh, huh. That's interesting.

PG: Well at one time there, there was a grocery store down here on the end of town. It's not there anymore. In fact it was bought, then moved out further on Route 11. There's Cressler's and that was the local supermarket. And when we had a tour of the town, the tour guide was saying that well, “Here's where you'll get your groceries, that's Cressler's you know.” Now there was a little A & P but they didn't have much of a hold, and a little Acme. I think there was certain amount of municipal uh loyalty you know.

MW: Right.

PG: Well these are local people so we'll patronize them.

PG: Yeah and then you still have a little bit of that, for instance up here, you have this Pague and Fagen hardware store. It's the oldest continuously owned operated hardware store in Pennsylvania.

MW: Oh.

PG: And it just recently changed hands, but it's still called Pague and Fagan.

MW: Yeah.

PG: And of course it has to compete with you know, like Lowe's out here, and then there's another hardware store across the street but they still keep the loyalty of the town because everybody in there knows what you’re talking about. They're very helpful, and they know where everything is.

MW: Yeah.

PG: You've probably never been in there.

MW: No I have not.

PG: But if, if you walk down past the side of it, it just keeps going back until l it reaches the other street. They just kept building on to it you see.

MW: Yeah.

PG: And when you go in you can go all the way back, but you move over one kind of floor down to another. If you go in there and you ask them, "Well I, I just need a, a little screw for you know, my lawn mower," they'll go get it.

MW: Oh, wow.

PG: Well Lowe's is pretty good at that too.

MW: Yeah.

PG: But not quite as good as they are. So, those are changes you know.

MW: Yeah.

PG: Like I say, we've got, we've got lots of lots of fast food places now and lots of pizza shops and so on.

MW: Yeah.

PG: And lots of national chains and so on. We've got actually about five auto parts companies here in town you know. There's a market for them all I guess.

MW: Yeah.

PG: It’s changed quite a bit.

MW: Um, how did you get involved with the Historical Society here?

PG: Well, actually since my specialty was the Middle Ages, I didn't really see too much relevance of local history.

MW: Right.

PG: When I first came here we had a series of introductory courses in history. I mean we had a History of Western Civ I, History of Western Civ II. We had some sort of gimmicky courses. I had one called Religion and Culture and then there was one called Historical Foundations of the Twentieth Century and things like that and the students had to take at least one or maybe two courses. But then, then most of us decided that the best route to go would be to World History because it was catching on in the profession and so we instituted it in about 1983, '84, two courses ,World History I, World History II which were required of every student. Now we were the only department that had two required courses, and the only one with specific courses. Like you could take an introductory course in English or something, but you had a range of three or four. For us, World History I, World History II. Pass 'em or you don't graduate.

MW: Oh. [chuckles]

PG: And that really built up the department although I don't think that's required anymore. I think you just have to take one.

MW: Yeah.

MW: I'm not well, for undergraduate I'm not sure because I went to a school in Indiana actually.

PG: Oh, I see. Oh I see. Then you wouldn't know.

MW: Yeah. Um, I'm not sure but I did not have to do that in the undergraduate school that I went to.

PG: Yeah, I think it's changed now but we had it then, and I keep telling the new faculty here that if we hadn't done that most of you wouldn't be here.

MW: Yeah.

PG: Because you know, if students didn't have to take two history courses, then they wouldn't need so many faculty.

Mw: Right.

PG: Every student had to take both courses. And everybody had to teach them. So I had a full range of courses in my own field. I taught introductory courses in ancient history, three courses on the middle ages, both graduate and undergraduate. I also taught, usually taught one section of philosophy along with my history courses but never really got too much involved with local history.

MW: Right.

PG: What got me started was that my wife and I belonged to Middle Spring Presbyterian Church which is a couple miles out the road --the oldest church around. It was founded in 1738.

MW: Mm, hm.

PG: So in 1988, the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary was coming up and they started looking at me because they knew I was a historian. They said "Well you ought to do this history of the church." Well I had a lot of background in religion, but I wasn't sure of what I could do particularly with the local aspect and so on.

MW: Right.

PG: But they worked on me, and I had applied for a sabbatical to do something else, and this came up and I said, " Well the only way I'm going to do it in time for the two hundred fiftieth is, if I spend full time on it. So I was able to get my sabbatical changed so that I could spend all my time working on that.

MW: Yeah.

PG: In the summer of 1988 I published the history. It was a hardback, two hundred and fiftieth anniversary history. I recently updated it because 2013 was the two hundred and seventy fifth anniversary.

MW: Oh, okay.

PG: So, I provided a twenty five year update to it.

Mw: Yeah.

PG: I'm, I'm reasonably sure I won't be here for the three hundredth so--

MW: Aww.

PG: --somebody else is going to have to--

MW: You don't know that.

PG: Pretty sure. Anyhow that’s the process of how I got involved with local history. Had to.

MW: Yeah.

PG: Well the local historical association knew about this book because they covered it in the newspapers and so on.

MW: Right.

PG: And so, I've forgotten who it was gave me a call and says you know we'd like you to come an talk about your book. And well fine you know, and I came and they had a fifty dollar speaker fee but I didn't take that, but they said we also give you a year free membership.

MW: Oh.

PG: So I became a member and then it wasn't very long before I got drawn into things here.

MW: Yeah.

PG: And doing publishing here and so on.

MW: Right.

PG: That's how I got involved with local history.

MW: If you could say one thing to people who aren't interested in history at all to make them interested in it, do you have any like thing you would say to them to make your case for why history's so awesome? [chuckles]

PG: First of all, I--if I were a purist I might respond with the illustration that if you go into a restaurant and there are no prices on the menu, and a snooty waiter comes over and you say "we're sorry sir, but you don't have any prices on the menu." You know what he says?

MW: What?

PG: If you have to ask what the price is, you can't afford to eat here. Right?

MW: Right, I have heard that before.

PG: Yeah o.k. Someone once asked Louie Armstrong what was great about jazz? Do you know what his response was?

MW: No, what?

PG: If you have to ask you will never know. So I, I can’t understand how one could not be interested in history.

MW: Right.

PG: I can't! But on the other hand I realize that not everybody is.

MW: Right.

PG: But there is a somewhat practical application of history. I once heard that the definition of insanity is to keep doing the same thing time after time and expecting a different result.

MW: Right.

PG: Okay, well I think that's what a purpose of history should serve, you know. I mean, you should be able to look back and say, “Well these people a hundred years ago, whenever they were in the same predicament as we are, this is what they did, and this is what happened."

MW: Right.

PG: You know, you're always getting these analogies for instance from well, World War II or Korea. Whenever it looked like we might get involved in a war again a lot of people in Congress or among the general population, they would say you cannot appease a dictator because if you give in to him on this he won't be satisfied. They'll want this also you know They look at Hitler in 1938. He said, "Well fellas all I want is this part of Czechoslovakia. I don't want the whole country, I just want this part called the Sudetenland because everybody who lives there is a German. And I think that they have the right to live under a German government." We weaseled around and thought, and said "Well I, I guess that's right, okay." So, they handed it to him and gave him the green light. And Chamberlain, who was the Prime Minister of Britain came back waving a document saying, "I brought you peace in our time." Well it wasn't long before that we found out that Hitler wasn't satisfied with the Sudetenland. He wanted the whole country and he took it. In fact, he did want peace. A piece of this, a piece of that, a piece of everything. You know?

MW: [chuckles] That is true.

PG: And so the argument was that the appetite of a dictator is insatiable. You might as well say no before he goes any further because eventually he'll become too strong and then you won't be able to do anything about it, you know? Now, you're hearing a little bit about that today with this situation in the Middle, Middle East with Isis you know. Two years ago nobody had ever heard of it. All of a sudden, it's growing like wildfire and there are people, are saying we've got to do something about that you know?

MW: Yeah.

PG: Because they’re not going to quit you know. These are people who are not afraid to die for what they believe in.

MW: That's right.

PG: You know so, right now we're trying with bombing and so on but eventually whether we'll be drawn in with boots on the ground, I don't know. But the thing is that a lot of times a statesman will say you know, there’s no sense trying to appease somebody who is aggressive because they won't be satisfied with it. But then we used the same logic in Vietnam in 1964. We had gone into Korea in 1950, the Korean War, because the South Koreans had been invaded by the North Koreans and they asked for our help and we had agreements with them so we committed ourselves to the Korean War, a three year war; 38,000 Americans died, hundreds of thousands of Koreans died. But it had accomplished something. If anybody ever tells you that the Korean War shouldn’t have happened, go to South Korea, go find people my age, and ask them what they think about the Americans because they know what was going on up North.

MW: Mm hm.

PG: If it weren't for us, that's what they'd be doing too. They'd be slaves to this, this crazed man up there.

MW: Yeah.

PG: So in that case we responded to aggression with force. In 1964 it turned out that the situation was kind of distorted from what had actually happened in Korea but in any event in the summer of 1964 President Johnson was given the o.k.to use whatever means necessary to stop the Communists from taking over South Vietnam. It’s a much, much more complicated situation than that but people in my generation responded to that with approval. I mean, we'd been taught that Communism was wrong you know and we fought it in Korea and we stabilized it. We didn't conquer all of Korea but we did keep the South free, and they're eternally grateful for that. So we thought we're going to do the same thing with the Vietnamese situation. We didn't.

MW: Yeah.

PG: We didn't. Is there a time limit on what you're supposed to do?

MW: No, you can go as long as you want.

PG: Okay the thing is, that in, Vietnam we thought, well this is like Korea. And interestingly, even though we stationed troops in South Korea and we still do, there's still about fifty eight thousand Americans there. But during the Vietnam War the South Koreans sent fifty thousand troops to us.

MW: Yeah.

PG: They fought in the war and the South Vietnamese were scared of them. Because their discipline was much, much worse than ours. You know I mean they could shoot a man for disobedience of orders in the right circumstances. And people are afraid of them.

MW: Yeah.

PG: So in any event, they came but it, it eventually developed that we didn't know what our strategy in Vietnam should be. How are we, how are we going to know when we've won? You see in Korea, at least we established the 38th parallel. And everybody who lived below that was free of Communist domination. We thought we could do that in Vietnam at the 17th parallel but we couldn't.

MW: Yeah.

PG: Because you know there were a lot of the people in the South, you know the Vietcong, and of course the NVA in the North who opposed us. They were all over. And there were no borders that you could say okay we'll drive them all up here and then the war's over. Huh, uh, didn't happen that way. What the strategy in Vietnam became was the policy of search and destroy. And so what we did, we would go in, and of course we, by that time we had helicopters which brought our troops into the battle. Did you see the movie “We Were Soldiers"?

MW: I have not actually.

PG: Okay, you should. You should.

MW: Okay, I will.

PG: You should, Mel Gibson.

MW: Oh okay.

PG: Good, but that's about the first major battles. But there were no front lines. So what we would do, we would just go in and, and establish what's called a fire base, and then we'd have troops go out on patrols. Every night, every day patrols. And what were they doing? Trying to find Vietcong or North Vietnamese and killing them.

MW: Mm hm.

PG: The whole strategy became from the time we had a half million men and, and some women nurses and so on, and in Vietnam the whole strategy was to get the biggest body count.

MW: Yeah.

PG: Some of these officers were so anxious to make themselves look better if they didn't have enough dead Viet Cong VC or, or North Vietnamese they'd tell their men to dig up the ones they'd already killed and put them on display.

MW: Oh.

PG: The body count you know.

MW: Yeah.

PG: General Westmoreland's strategy, that’s what it was. But the irony of that is in 1954 before we ever got involved in South Vietnam, in 1954 Ho Chi Minh who was the head of North Vietnam had said in talking to the French before they kicked the French out, "You may kill 10 of my people for every 1 that you lose. We can accept that, you cannot." I think one of the things that really brought it to the forefront for us was when Life magazine began publishing the picture of every American service person who was killed in Vietnam in the past week.

MW: Oh, okay.

PG: 500, 600 pictures of people who look like your next door neighbor.

MW: Yeah.

PG: Dead, you know? And what have we accomplished? Well we have killed 10 for every 1. But they keep coming back.

MW: Yeah.

PG: The, the supply was inexhaustible.

MW: Yeah.

PG: And we should have known that. But we didn't. And then in ‘68 the Tet Offensive happened. The ironic thing is that the Americans won every battle they fought in the 1968 Tet Offensive. But all the Americans knew from the television and other media was that the NVA and Vietcong had infiltrated every city in Vietnam. They'd even gone in to the American Embassy.

MW: Mm Hm.

PG: And it looked like we lost.

MW: Yeah.

PG: And Walter Cronkite who was one of the most respected newsmen of the day went over there with an open mind and said he wanted to see what's going on. And he came back and he said, “Well I have seen what's going on,” he said, "and it is not good.” He said, “There's no way out of this.”

MW: Yeah.

PG: And General Westmoreland was always saying, “Well, now we can see light at the end of the tunnel.” Turned out the light at the end of the tunnel was another engine coming.

MW: Yeah.

PG: Unfortunately. So eventually then President Johnson gave up on the war. Johnson was a great president in terms of what he did for civil rights and so on, but Vietnam was the albatross around his neck. He just didn't know what to do, and finally in 1968 he refused to run for another term.

MW: Yeah.

PG: And dropped out and Nixon came in and promised that he would bring an end to the war. He would Vietnameze the war--hand the war over to the Vietnamese… Well he did eventually, but it took a couple years.

MW: Yeah.

PG: Then in '73 we signed an agreement and pulled out with just a handful of military personnel left in Vietnam. And then in '75 Saigon fell to the North Vietnamese and so there it was. What, what would have happened if we never set a foot in Vietnam? Same thing that happened anyhow after--

MW: Yeah.

PG: --ten years and 58,000 American deaths and hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese deaths. So after that the rallying cry was no more Vietnams.

MW: Yeah.

PG: Before it was no more Munichs. [tapping the table as he says each syllable] Now it was no more Vietnams. And so then Desert Storm occurred in 1990, and at this point it became kind of personal to me, because my daughter was a nurse in the Army Reserves.

MW: Oh, okay.

PG: She was, she was sent over. She was a student at York College at the time. But they sent her over and she came back all right but then in Congress you were hearing two things. Some people were saying, “Well we've got to stop Saddam Hussein you know, like we had to stop Hitler. And they made pictures of Saddam Hussein to look like Hitler and so on.

MW: Yeah.

PG: But then there were other people on the side saying no more Vietnams. You know?

MW: Yeah.

PG: And so, well, did we learn anything? I'm afraid not. I'm afraid not. Would things be better in the Middle East if we never gotten involved? I’m inclined to think they would've been.

MW: Yeah.

PG: So that's a use for history to help statesmen develop policies based on what happened in the past.

MW: Right.

PG: But every person will cite history to prove his point.

MW: Yeah.

PG: On the individual level, even families do that you know. I'm sure your mother or father has said, “Don't do that.” You say, “Well why not?” They say, “Well because I did that once when I was your age and I really paid for it.”

MW: Yes.

PG: So you should learn. Of course you don't. Except, you're different right? You're different. But anyhow history has that role. They say for a purist there doesn't need to be an explanation.

MW: Yeah.

PG: I mean I, I couldn't stop reading history if I wanted to.

MW: Right.

PG: In fact, I don't know what I would do if I didn't read history, and of course other fields too.

MW: Yeah.

PG: I have known people who've retired and say, "I don't know what to do with myself.” Well I spend about eight hours a day reading.

MW: Yeah.

PG: So, for me it’s, it’s a way of life and it will never change. You know?

MW: Right.

PG: So that's long, to make a long story short.

MW: That's okay.

MW: It was a good story. How has the study of history changed from when you first became a professor, until whenever you stopped being a professor?

PG: Okay, well in my Ph.D. program, and when I first came here to teach, it was sort of traditional history you know. Emperors, and kings, and popes, and history from the top down you know? And then you talk about war, and you talked about Napoleon, and all this sort of thing. And you're, you're really focusing on the big events in history. Well sometime in about the '60s and '70s attitudes towards history changed, a movement that really started in France. And it spread then to the rest of the world where they decided that what we should do is pay more attention what's going on among the common people. Let's look at history from the ground up, not from the top down but from the ground up. And of course this tied in with the fact that computer technology was emerging, and so it was possible to do statistical studies, studies with millions of pieces of data. And to analyze it which we hadn't been able to do easily before.

MW: Right.

PG: You see that all became possible. And now we start getting these histories that deal with economic conditions, cultural conditions, religious conditions and all this. And sometimes books are written without mentioning a big name at all.

MW: Yeah.

PG: Because really you know in the final analysis, big people can't be big people unless they have a lot of people, little people supporting them and so on.

MW: Right.

PG: So we moved into that and again computerized studies made things quite a bit different. Initially what we had to do, we, we had a mainframe on campus and, and we had to use IBM cards. .

MW: Mm, hm.

PG: Like almost a piece of currency.

MW: Yeah.

PG: And, and you punch holes in them.

MW: Mm, hm.

PG: Well, you'd, you'd mark them, and then the people in the computer center would put holes in them. And you know the light shines through and you'd be able to segregate your data and come up with some very interesting things that, that you wouldn't have known without having that kind of statistical background. Of course then the pc came along and now it's possible to--

MW: Yeah.

PG: --to do all this yourself. When in my generation, when I proposed my doctoral dissertation, I went to my advisor and told him what I had in mind, we worked it out and I gave him a bibliography and, and he looked at it and he said, “Now Paul," he said” Are you sure that you've uncovered everything that pertains to this subject?" And I said, “As far as I can tell.” He said, “Well I'm afraid I’m going to have to trust you on that because I can't possibly know all the sources you know that, that you've consulted or whatever. So, I'm putting you on your honor to make sure that it's a complete list." Well today you go in and you tell your advisor that you want to work on the Homestead Strike. He goes and types into Google " Homestead Strike" and

within minutes he has an exhaustive list of sources that you should consult.

MW: Yeah.

PG: Yeah, okay, that's changed.

MW: It's a little different.

PG: Of course in those days before computers when I was doing my dissertation I had one copy.

MW: Mm, hm.

PG: One typed copy.

MW: Yeah.

PG: And if I lost that I was in big trouble.

MW: Right.

PG: I mean I had my note cards and stuff like that, but basically I had one copy and I carried it around with me in my briefcase, and you'd hear horror stories about somebody who got on the train--

MW: Oh.

PG: with his briefcase, and left it there and never found it again you know.

MW: Yeah.

PG: And all this sort of thing. Or there was one in California where a professor was doing extensive research on something and, I think it was at Berkley, and the students came in and they just tore up his office and threw everything in the fire, and all that research was gone. Well today he'd have all that on--

MW: Yeah.

PG: --on flash drives and so forth.

MW: Right.

PG: Yeah so but that, that was different. Then another trend developed in the late '70's early '80s toward world history. Because up until that point, at least in the United States, in Europe history was largely eurocentric. And by that time there were people who were working in African American studies and things like that. And we found that you just can't teach history from the viewpoint of the people living in the United States or living in Europe.

MW: Right.

PG: The whole world has to be brought into this. So we got into world history and we stayed with that for quite some time. Now, I understand that they sort of backed off from that, okay.

MW: Yeah.

PG: I don't think they're doing that the way we did then. But again we had a free hand to develop it and a lot of students didn't like all the reading they had to do, but they didn't have any choice.

MW: That's what they're there for right?

PG: I had my own webpage when I was here. Not too many did at that time, but I see most of them do now. I've gone in I've looked at some of the syllabi of professors in my department.

Mw: Mm hm.

PG: We had to take into our classrooms different audio visual devices and so on to show movies and the like.

MW: Yeah.

PG: Now you know you just bring your laptop in.

MW: Right.

PG: You go online and for instance in Florence in the 15th century there was a huge tax base established. Every--everybody who lived in Florence, 100,000 or so, were listed. And they had them all in their census and how much they owned and what they owed, and all this sort of thing. And it was almost unmanageable.

MW: Yeah.

PG: Now you can get that online and go in and--

MW: Right.

PG: --and project it and show students what you're talking about. You know?

MW: Yeah, that's true.

PG: Yeah, a lot, lot has changed. It's made some things easier and made other things more difficult.

MW: Right.

PG: But hopefully we're, we're getting a more rounded picture then we did before too.

MW: Yeah.

PG:, I used to hear people and I was one of them bragging about how specialized they were. I remember when I first came to Shippensburg and I was talking to some woman in one of the stores. She knew I was a professor and all that. She asked “Well what's your field?” And I told her, and she says, “Well what’s that?” I told her and she says, “What's the point of that?” I said [chuckles] again, “If you have to ask you'll never know!”

MW: That's true.

PG: That's supposed to be what I had to say because I really couldn't defend it because well everything’s become so specialized. Particularly the hard sciences you know what I mean.

MW: Right.

PG: We had a physics professor and I was curious and wanted to go in and listen to some of his lectures because he learned his physics in the '50s and he was still teaching it in the '90's.

MW: Oh, okay.

PG: And I was tempted to go in and see. I have a layman's appreciation of what's going on in physics.

MW: Right.

PG: Enough to know whether this is the cutting edge of modern physics.

MW: Yeah.

PG: I wondered if he rehashed the things he learned in graduate school and didn't keep up with recent developments. You can do that in history to a certain extent.

MW: Right.

PG: But you can't do it in the hard sciences. No way you can.

MW: Yeah, that would be difficult.

PG: Yeah.

MW: Um, what is the most important lesson that your career has taught you?

PG: [pauses] Well that's a difficult one. I saw that on your list and I wasn't quite sure what I was going to say. And I will have to say that, that, I've been very fortunate in having good personal relationships with my students. They've taught me lots of things. I've learned a lot from my students. Sometimes they saw the chinks in my armor, and they didn't hesitate to tell me about it.

MW: Yeah.

PG: And that's good. That’s good.

MW: That is good.

PG: That's good yeah, because these evaluations that they pass out, I'm sure they still do it don't they?

MW: Yeah.

PG: I don't know how much they use them when considering promotion, or tenure, or something like that, and I don't know how much attention people really pay to them. I used to go over them. And I, I'll say after I received the printouts I’d be in a funk for a couple of days.

MW: Aww.

PG: Because there's some things on there that you learn as you go along. If you get nine compliments and one insult which are you going to remember?

MW: The insult.

PG: The insult. Exactly. Exactly. That's the one that burns a hole in you.

MW: Yeah.

PG: But that's good. That's good. It's made me a better person I think.

MW: Right.

PG: But again, I had a number of valuable lessons that I just hadn't looked at from the students' perspective. And they said they weren't afraid to tell me what they thought, and it’s helped me you know?

MW: Yeah.

PG: I benefitted from that criticism. I really don't have much contact with the faculty now but I somehow don't think that there's that camaraderie between students and faculty that we enjoyed. I don't--

MW: Right.

PG: --I don't think it's there.

MW: Yeah.

PG: And I, I think one of the reasons is that so many of these people are—and, and they're fine you know. But, but they're so career oriented.

MW: Right.

PG: That I guess they just don’t want to waste time drinking beer with some undergraduates.

MW: Yeah.

PG: I learned a lot from that you know.

MW: Right.

PG: Uh, you don't have anything like that, now down here is called Arooga’s. You ever been in there?

MW: Not to this one but to other ones I have been yes.

PG: You probably know what they're like. But that place has gone through several vintages dating back to the 1850s. But for much of the time that I was here it was called Fort Morris.

MW: Mm hm.

PG: And that was, that was a hangout for students and faculty.

MW: Yeah.

PG: And when I first came as I said most of the faculty were former public school teachers and so on. And, and they wouldn't dare be seen in a place like that.

MW: Right.

PG: With students you know. And, the administrators weren't too happy about it but they just didn't say anything.

MW: Right.

PG: You know so we went and, and I had a lot of good relationships that way. Learned a lot you know? I rescued a few people. One guy for whatever reason decided he wasn't going to take my final. And when I showed up for the final he wasn't there, I said, “Anybody know where Gary is?” "He at the Fort Morris." At ten o'clock in the morning he at the Fort Morris?

MW: Oh.

PG: And I went down and he's in there. I grabbed him by the collar and I said, “Get back up there and take the final.” “I'm not prepared for that.” “You're prepared, now go up there and take it.” “No I don't want to. I, I don't want to graduate. I don't I don't even want to bother. I don't know what I'm going to do with my life and everything. I don't know what I'm gonna--.” “Well you're going to take my final for one thing.” [mumbles]

MW: Yeah.

PG: So I got him up there, and he took it. Course he graduated in a couple years and he got a nice job and now he's retired. He remembers that.

MW: Yeah. Well that's good that you cared that much to do that.

PG: Well I wouldn't have been able to do it if I didn't have that kind of rapport with a student.

MW: Right.

PG: --with students. They knew that uh. [pauses] Well I was a friend as well as a faculty member.

MW: Yeah.

PG: And did that bias play in their favor? Maybe.

MW: But it was in your favor too.

PG: Hm?

MW: But it was in your favor too.

PG: Yeah but, but maybe if I had some student that I didn't know socially that was in the same kind of a predicament, and since I didn't know it, I didn't say anything.

MW: Yeah.

PG: It didn't always work that way.

MW: Right.

PG: I had one student come in once, and he was doing very well for me, a sophomore. And he said “Uh, Dr. Gill I, I don't really want to go to college.” He says, “My parents made me go here.”

MW: Aww.

PG: I said, “Well okay, but you're doing very well at least you are for me.” He said, “Oh my GPA's fine, I just, it's just not for me.” Now at this point was I supposed to give him a lecture on how you can use a degree in history to do this and do that because at that particular time there weren't any teaching jobs in history?

MW: Yeah.

PG: I mean, about the only way you could get a job teaching history in a local high school was if you coached a sport.

MW: Right.

PG: Because then they got a coach for free and then he'd teach history.

MW: Mm hm.

PG: You can't do that with physics or math.

MW: Right.

PG: But in history, you can just stay a couple days ahead in the book.

MW: Yeah.

PG: That's not true but that, that's the way the administration sometimes look at it.

MW: Right.

PG: I didn't give him that spiel. I said, “What do you want to do?” He said, “I want to be a Plumber.” “Okay, you think you have the aptitude for it?” “I think so, I've gone out and I've helped and everything.” And I said, “Well, it seems like the only problem that you're going to encounter is convincing your parents that this is what you want to do.” And he says, “Well aren't you going to tell me why I should stay in college?” I said, “I'd love for you to stay, be a history major but if this is what you want, go for it.”

MW: Yeah.

PG: And I said, “I'll tell you what; in five years you'll be making more money than I do.”

MW: Yeah. [chuckles]

PG: I never heard back from him. I did with a couple of students that I advised to pursue something else.

MW: Mm hm.

PG: Rather than what they studied in college and they did very well for themselves. One became a very wealthy contractor and so on.

MW: Oh wow.

PG: And I'd like to think that I shared part of the credit. Because when he came to me he just thought I don't know what I'm gonna do. I mean I'm graduating tomorrow and I don't have any prospect of a job, and get married, and all this. And I said, “Well what have you been doing for your summers?” He said, “Well my friend and I, we, we put roofs on people's houses.” I said, “Well then you have a job.”

MW: Yeah.

PG: And at first he said, “Well why, why do you say that?” I said, “Well people are always going to need roofs.”

MW: That's true.

PG: Well he, he took my advice I guess, and a year or so later I saw him. He had a crew of about six people. Ten years later he had a building in Carlisle, he had one in Hagerstown, he had one in Chamberburg.

MW: Oh wow.

PG: You know and, and he recently retired I guess because the stress was a little bit too much for him.

MW: Yeah.

PG: But he's very successful.

MW: Yeah, sounds like it.

PG: He always remembered that. You know so yeah these are some of the highlights that I've experienced.

MW: Yeah, um now you wrote a book about Shippensburg is that right? Or you helped to write a book?

PG Actually as, as I mentioned, there was the the Middle Spring history.

MW: Right.

PG: Which I did in 1988, and then for the Cumberland County Historical Society I did another. I was on the board then, and we had a publication committee. And the year 2000 was coming up. It was the 250th anniversary of the founding of Cumberland County.

MW: Mm hm.

PG: And so we talked about a comprehensive history, but the more we looked at it the more we realized it was just too big.

MW: Yeah.

PG: You know all these municipalities and these townships and so on. Just too big.

MW: Right.

PG: And so I proposed that what we do is a series of books spread over a number of years focusing on some aspect of the county’s history. And the one I had familiarity with was the county bridges, particularly those built during the 19^th century, mostly covered bridges.

MW: Mm hm.

PG: And so I proposed to do a history of the county bridges and I did that in 1992. And then the next year a woman who worked at the historical society wrote a book on the Indian School at Carlisle.

MW: Mm hm.

PG: The Carlisle Indian School. Followed by taverns in Cumberland County, and there were other topics, and there’s a new one coming out this year on the mills.

MW: Oh okay.

PG: I guess that's a big one but that's the role I played here. Now '95 was the 50th anniversary of the Shippensburg Historical Society and I put together a book of articles that other people had written for the 50th anniversary retrospective. I submitted an original article myself, and also did the editing and so on. So we, we did that. Then in 2000, I edited two books. One was a pictorial history of the Shippensburg School District.

MW: Mm hm.

PG: And the other was a collection of histories of the churches in Cumberland County. And then in 2012 I published a book which we're still selling, a pictorial history of Shippensburg.

MW: Mm hm.

PG: And I had people on the committee who helped me with that. Did some digging and so on.

MW: Oh okay.

PG: But I took a couple of the chapters myself. Now of course I, I happened to be the one who had to go through the filtering process to get it into the press and so on.

MW: Right.

PG: And I never would have been able to do what we did if we hadn't had the collections that Bill Burkhart made. He was a World War II veteran, and a local historian. We've got all kinds of books over there in the library that he put together with pictures and--

MW: Mm hm.

PG: --notes and things like that. That, that was a big help. So there was that. Then as I had mentioned, I did do a 25 year update on the Middle Spring history.

MW: Right, right.

PG: So.

MW: Do you enjoy doing that kind of work?

PG: It’s been said that when you begin a work for publication it begins as a labor of love. Okay, and eventually it becomes your mistress, and then it becomes a nagging wife. I guess that pretty much sums it up.

MW: That's a good explanation.

PG: You start out with a lot of enthusiasm, then you get into it, and oh I know I ‘oughta get back to it and so on. And at times you sometimes wish you could just throw it all away and forget about it. But, but you don't.

MW: Right.

PG: Yeah you don't.

MW: Well that's actually all I have.

PG: Okay.

MW: Um, do you have anything else that you wanted to talk about at all?

PG: [pause] Well now you didn't, I wasn't prepared for that one.

Mw: Sorry.

PG: No, that’s fine. You know, like I say the historical society has gone through a lot of changes since I've been here. And currently we're in the process of taking over this building and the one next door.

MW: Oh okay.

PG: This building is called the Stewart House but the building goes back to 1784. Dr Stewart bought the building in the 1920s and greatly remodeled it; after the death of his daughter the property was willed to the Historical Society.

MW: Mm hm.

PG: Dr. Stewart lived here, had his practice here and x-ray facility over next door. And for years now since about 1985 the society lived here with a sort of agreement that the society could use the building as long as it needed as long as they obey the rules and so on.

MW: Right.

PG: But now, now it’s going to be ours.

Mw: Well that's nice.

PG: And well it, it's going to bring with it some headaches though because--

MW: Oh.

PG: --we're going to have to have more volunteers because somebody's going to have to maintain the apartments because that's going to be our source of revenue.

MW: Oh okay, yeah.

PG: Prior to this the foundation handled that. Then they would send the profits to us to use to operate. Now that's not going to be; if we need money, we're going to have to raise it ourselves.

MW: Right.

PG: That, that will help but we're going to have to have somebody to look after it now, and being a landlord is uh.

MW: It's tough work.

PG: It can, it can be yes.

MW: Yeah.

PG: It can be and, and so that's, that's going to be a problem. And if we expand our facilities we're going to have to have more people serve as docents.

MW: Right.

PG:. Like they say you don't say you can't until you try and fail.

MW: That's right.

PG: So you pick up the pieces and try again. We'll come out of it alright, but it's not going to be easy.

MW: Right.

PG: But then there was the exaltation, and the enthusiasm. But then the next morning you got to go to work. [chuckles]

MW: Yeah.

PG: You know.

MW: That's true.

PG: You got to go to work, and that's what we're going to have to do here. We're going to have to get more people involved.

MW: Yeah.

PG: I think Steve Burg working with the society has brought a lot of graduate students down to help with the society's programs.

MW: Yeah.

PG: That's been a big benefit because now he has branched into a different kind of history, in public history you know because--

MW: Mm hm.

PG: as they say, if you tell students that if you have a degree in history you can teach history. Well yeah, you can but it may be difficult to find a teaching, job where you want and so on. But there are other jobs that you can do--

MW: Right.

PG: --with a history background. So we're hoping that that cooperation will continue.

MW: Yeah.

PG: And so we've had a good relationship. Actually it wasn't ‘til uh the 2000s that we really started to get the university involved.

MW: Right.

PG: I was brought in simply because I had done that book on Middle Spring.

MW: Yeah.

PG: And the year free membership got me in. And next thing you know they want me to be an officer and they said, “Well you know, we'd like for you to run for vice-president this year.” And I said, “Oh, well what, what responsibilities would I have?” “Well you just take over if the president isn't around.” At the first board meeting I was asked, “What programs do you have set up for this year?” Programs? “You know we have six dinner meetings a year, and you have to have a speaker for every one of them. Who are you going to have?” “Why are you asking me?”I said.

MW: Yeah.

PG: “That's your job!” “No, my job is to fill in when the President isn't around.” “Oh no, no you got to do that.” And next thing you know I was it.

MW: Yeah, that's how it goes sometimes.

PG: And then of course the other thing is that you're vice president then after the President has been in for four years, then you're supposed to move up and take the job so I did that.

MW: Oh, they didn't tell you that huh?

PG: No, they didn't tell me that at all. No, no. But I don't, I have no regrets about that.

MW: Yeah, well that's good. Well, if you don't have anything else, then it was very nice meeting you.

PG: Very nice Monica.

MW: I really appreciate your time--

PG: I hope I didn't bore you with all of my details.

MW: --and I had fun. You did not. Not at all.