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- Mr. Bob Grindey
College of Education Faculty Oral Histories
Mr. Bob Grindey
LB: Today is December 6, 2005. My name is Lou Bowers, and I’m interviewing Bob Grindey, a retired faculty member from the Department of Physical Education, Wellness and Sports Studies and who was formerly in the Athletic Department of USF. Thank you, Bob, for coming in to share some of your thoughts and memories about the early days at USF. I remember you arrived at USF in 1964. Perhaps you could share with us some of your education and personal experiences prior to coming to USF.
BG: I graduated from Grinnel College in Iowa in 1959. I went to the University of New Mexico as a graduate assistant and got my master’s degree in education with a minor in physical education.
LB: How did you hear about USF? And subsequently, what attracted you to accept a position here as a coach and teacher in physical education?
BG: Well, I had a very good friend who was a swimming coach, a very successful swimming coach in the suburbs of Chicago. He had been here and interviewed with Gil Hertz and had all the information about USF. He had decided that with the situation he had in a pretty well-to-do suburban high school he was better off staying in Chicago. He said he couldn’t really take a chance making a move like that with the money situation, the way it was. It would have been about half of what he was making at the program in Chicago. He asked me if I would be interested and I said I don’t know, but I sure would like to look at it and he gave me Dr. Hertz’s information. I called him and he said certainly they would be interested and I came down here and interviewed. I liked what I saw.
LB: What was it that you saw on campus in terms of building and so forth?
BG: Oh, my heavens! I remember Fowler Avenue. There wasn’t anything there except for the University Restaurant and a little place called the Campus View Hotel where they kept people who were interviewing at what is now the corner of 30th Street and Fowler Avenue. It was a sand pit with a few trees, a few palm trees, and that was about it. I want to say seven buildings. It was just one big huge untamed area, but I liked the people very much. Everyone that I met here were pioneers. I mean that was the philosophy. I think that was the philosophy of people coming here. What can we make of this opportunity? USF was the first university in the 20th century that was going to be formed from nothing. There was quite a feeling of getting in on the ground floor on something, and I think that’s what attracted me more than anything else.
LB: Now, you were hired as a coach but also as a teacher of physical education. Dr. John Allen, the first president, had a somewhat different philosophy about sports than most presidents at the time. You were of course informed about the philosophy as part of accepting the position?
BG: Yes, well, actually when I came there were no athletics, it was all physical education, and the athletic program was intramural athletics. The actual intercollegiate athletic program started probably the following year, and it started at a very minor level. The level was acceptable to Dr. Allen. There were not a tremendous number of students, and the students were not allowed to miss any classes for athletic competition. This made scheduling almost impossible. But we tried to stay as close as we could to Dr. Allen’s rules. Sometimes it involved scheduling students so they could all be together for practice, which meant they had to take classes in the morning and early afternoon. So they were all actually out of class by 3 o’clock. With Dr. Allen’s rules, even though students were finished with classes, they couldn’t leave campus until 5 o’clock because he considered that’s when classes ended. So sometimes we would be dressed to go somewhere on a road trip, sitting in the lobby of the dorm waiting two hours for 5 o’clock, so we could leave. It made traveling a little difficult. LB: Now somewhere along the way you had a Marine Corps experience. I was wondering how that influenced, if that did influence your coaching and teaching philosophy?
BG: Yes, tremendously. My first year at Grinnel I had come from Chicago, and my roommate had come from Kansas City. Grinnel College is in an Iowa farm town that had a population of 5,800 at that time. It was a culture shock. I had decided by that spring that this wasn’t going to be right for me and of course my roommate had decided the same. We were just two big city boys in a little town that we thought just wasn’t big enough, and so we went and joined the Marine Corps. The Korean War was still on, and it was in the ending stages, and we both joined. We went into the Marine Corps. Surprisingly enough, both chose to come back to Grinnel College and both graduated in the same year. The experience changed my approach to life tremendously.
LB: I remember I met most of the original members of your swim team, and among those were a number of individuals who went on to be outstanding professionals, business men and educators in the area, could you name a few of those?
BG: Well of course Joe Lewkowitz is an extremely successful realtor in this area. I know two years in a row he was voted top salesperson in the area for homes sales. Dave Nafzinger went on to be a teacher in the Hillsborough County School District for a long time and a very successful high school coach. Bill Kelley, I recruited Bill and Dave both out of Illinois, which was my home state. I knew them from competition there. Bill became also a high school teacher and swimming coach and just recently retired. Pete Kenning, who was one of the first swimmers to come to USF, went into the financial field. He’s from the Jacksonville area and he’s been very successful. We had quite a few young people that went ahead and did really well. I am very proud of that.