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- Mr. Bob Grindey
College of Education Faculty Oral Histories
Mr. Bob Grindey
BG: Ed Stanton. They were talking in generalizations. “Well, we want to do this. We want to get involved in sports.” Knowing well of Dr. Allen’s position on it. I remember Ed Stanton saying, “We want to go first class.” I remember one of the coaches leaning over to me and he said, “He doesn’t know what he’s talking about.” Those are the kind of things that I think were humorous; getting started was a chore.
LB: I know you know Grace Allen, Dr. Allen’s wife, from USF and from activities in the community and remain friends with her today. How did that friendship come about?
BG: One of the finest ladies I’ve ever known. Mrs. Allen is a queen. I believe she’s 93. She continues to be so sharp mentally and just right on top of things, I marvel at it. But I actually got to meet Mrs. Allen at our first athletic banquet. Incidentally, our athletic banquets were pretty humorous to begin with. I remember the first one we had in the college cafeteria. Everyone went through the line with their tray and came back to their table. But I remember meeting her at one of the athletic banquets and speaking with her, and she asked about my family, and I was surprised that she knew what I was doing. The only time that I would see her then was at the athletic banquets. She would walk right up and remember everything from our conservation the year before. She would ask how my children were doing, “I know you have a program going in this” or “you did very well in this.” I thought boy, here’s a lady who keeps up with everybody and everything. I think she was a great help to Dr. Allen and contributed greatly to his success. She was just on top, right on the ball about everything that was happening on campus. They didn’t have any children. As Grace told me many times, the University was their child because they saw it come out of the ground. They treated the University and its students as their children. LB: What sentiments would you want to pass on to future students, particularly those entering the University or the College of Education to become a teacher, in terms of what to expect or what to strive for?
BG: Well, I think teaching is a lot different now than it was when I was a student. I think young people are different now. I think that had I known what I know now, I probably would have been a lot more serious student right from the beginning, because all of that would of course have been in my treasure trove to deal with things. But as so many young people, you’re thinking “this is a class I’ll never use,” and listen with one ear instead of two just to get through it. All of those things would have been so much more meaningful, and I would have been able to use so much of that rather than having to learn the hard way later. I would say to young people now, be serious about your college education, this is not to say you can’t have fun, because there is plenty of time to have fun. Don’t take your college education lightly, because it’s such a tremendous opportunity for you to learn things and get to know other people and how they operate. I think that I would probably tell students the most important thing I learned was you should pay better attention.
LB: Are there any questions that I didn’t ask you that you thought you might want to talk about?
BG: There were a lot of interesting things that happened. One of the things I think is interesting, and I recounted this last night, is that I served under nine presidents. They were nine different people with different personalities and different attitudes. Anytime I think about being the president of USF, I can’t even imagine what a burden that must be. As a new president comes in, everybody is not prepared because that last president was completely different, so they spend a whole year trying to figure each other out. I had young people that I had recruited from California and Pennsylvania that I think were excellent students and excellent swimmers who were wondering if we were even going to have a swimming team. They were looking at other schools, and asking would you be willing to write me a letter if I decide to go another school because the situation here is really pretty shaky. Well, as it worked out, we got right to the brink of losing our competitive swim team, and luckily some of the pressure from the community prompted the administration to decide not to discontinue the swim program at that time. Of course, a few years down the line they finally succeeded in dropping the whole competitive swimming program.
One of the things that was most prominent in my mind is that even though people work for years on something and develop it into something that the University and the community could be proud of, it was easy for someone to come in and decide that we don’t need the program anymore. They think that taking a program that isn’t succeeding and pouring all of this money into it will make it succeed. Well, the answer is, that didn’t happen. And I was a little surprised, and I think a little wounded inside, when people started making these decisions without any real reason other than the money they thought they could save. I can’t see how a student in one sport can get any more value from athletics than a student in another sport. I mean the values are the same and the people are the same. You are striving for the same thing. You are striving for excellence. But other than that experience, I really enjoyed my time here.
LB: Not only enjoyed it, but you made many contributions that are with us today, and you laid that foundation for the athletic program and for a very strong elective physical education program that continues to thrive today with over 50 sections of classes every semester being taught in a variety of areas, as you indicated earlier. I thank you for your time and willingness to share with us these experiences, your thoughts, and memories.
BG: My pleasure.
End of Interview