Eugene Armstead
Media, PA native Eugene Armstead recounts the importance of athletics as he describes his high school and college basketball career, as well as his academic pursuits at Rutgers. Eugene has held various careers, and now spends time working at the Afro-American Historical and Genealogical Society and on the Lost Souls Public Memorial Project.
ANNOTATIONS
Transcript: “It was ’66. There were a lot of schools were desegregating and bussing students in.”
Learn More: “History - Brown v. Board of Education Re-Enactment,” United States Courts, accessed December 15, 2021.
Learn More [2]: Matt Barnum, “Did Busing for School Integration Succeed? Here’s What Research Says.,” Chalkbeat, July 1, 2019.
Learn More [2]: Jovelle Tamayo, “U. Community Reflects on Past, Current Activism,” The Daily Targum, April 19, 2012.
Learn More: “Scarlet and Black Project,” Rutgers.edu, accessed December 15, 2021.
Learn More [2]: “Scarlet and Black Research Center - Rutgers University,” Rutgers Scarlet and Black Research Center, accessed December 15, 2021.
Learn More [2]: Robert Groves, “How Good Was the 2010 Census? A View from the Post-Enumeration Survey,” The United States Census Bureau, May 30, 2012.
Learn More [2]: Jordyn Imhoff, “Study Explores Why Prostate Cancer Mortality Is Higher in Black Men,” University of Michigan, May 23, 2019.
TRANSCRIPT
Interview conducted by Dan Swern
New Brunswick, New Jersey
July 1, 2021
Transcription by Allison Baldwin
Annotations by Hannah M’Lynn
[00:00]
Today is Thursday, July 1st, we are here at coLAB Arts in New Brunswick. This is Dan Swern and I am here with
Eugene E. Armstead Jr.
Thank you again for taking the time with us today.
My pleasure.
Whenever you’re ready, please feel free to start from the beginning.
Okay. I was born in Chester, Pennsylvania. 1951. Raised in Media, Pennsylvania. Media is the county seat of Delaware County and Media meaning– is Latin for “middle.” And the county seat was established in the middle of the county. I lived a block and a half from the courthouse, which was an interesting area. Over time neighbors moved, lawyers and doctors moved into the area, so it became less of a residential neighborhood then [unclear].. My parents Eugene Armstead and Encie Armstead, E-N-C-I-E– um, obviously they had been there before me. One thing I found interesting as I grew up was that my mother was raised two doors down. I lived at 206 and she was raised at 202. Um, we were relatively a close family group with my father, my mother, my older sister, Eleanor, who was a little over a year older than I was, and myself. A few years later came my brother Earnest. And another six years after that came my youngest brother, Evan. One of the characteristics about our family is that all of our initials are either EEA or EVA. I’m not sure if that was the intent, but that’s how we ended up. Um, as I grew, I attended Second Baptist Church. My father was an officer there and head of the trustee board and my mother was in every auxiliary that they had, and she probably even created a couple. It was a very interesting slice of America as I look back on it. We had people who were trying to establish themselves in a lot of ways, um, regardless of what their shortcomings were.
One of the people there, Gladys Austin (?), was one of the Sunday School teachers there and she was also the advisor for the junior ushers, uh, which I was one. I think I was the only male amongst the ten of us, so there were a lot of days that I got a lot of (phew), grief. Because someone was either mad at their friend, their boyfriend, their brother and they sort of took it out on me. I wasn’t ever hit, but some of the things that were said were hurtful. Our advisor, Gladys Austin, caught that after a while and that calmed down, and she and I would have discussion about the why, the where, and she gave me some insight into how young ladies behaved. Not sure it helped, but at least I got it.
My father, in addition to being the chair of the trustee board, was also the custodian, which meant that there were a lot of summer days I was over there cutting grass or helping him with a project. I was always fascinated by the way he would prepare to do whatever it was. He’d make sure that he had all his equipment and materials and stuff that he needed and it was all– it was staged in such a way that, if he needed something, if he was going back for supplies, it would be the first thing he could get to. So he thought about his projects a lot, which was good. In the counting room, after services, where I improved my counting– I got to count the pennies– took me a while before I could get them into the paper roll. But it was something I went through and I learned and it did help when I got to school. English and all that other stuff, that was a different challenge.
[6:00]
Um– so, my childhood friends, Bobby Oy, lived up the street on the other side. Um– he and his two brothers and his parents lived there. They were from Japan. They had just– his father had just been in the country, I want to say, five years, and he was– Bobby had, was forced to have, a good study routine. Their homework had to be finished before they came out to play. I don’t think Bobby got anything lower than a B on an exam. It was something that his father pushed, and Bobby now is a pediatrician in California. His brother is a chief engineer for a company in, um, in New England. I can’t remember the exact area and his brother is an attorney, so they did not generate any slouches in that household.
I attended Media High School. At the time it was the Media Borough School District. All of our public classes were in one building. Large building that looked like a castle and then an addition, and I attended there from kindergarten through ninth grade. By ninth grade, the Media School District and the Rose Tree Media School District merged and all of our high school level students attended Penncrest High School. It was an interesting time. It was ’66. There were a lot of schools were desegregating and bussing students in. I’m not sure if that was part of the program or process that was in place, but we did merge over there.
Prior to going to school for the first day, there were– discussions about how we should react to mistreatment. And we had code words that we could holler as we were going down the hall and the objective was sort of to have all the Medians ban together and protect each other. It was nowhere near that bad. Media was about nine or ten percent African American. And Penncrest was a smaller quantity, was smaller than that, but there was some concern about the two student bodies meshing. One of the things that helped that was, um, athletics. Penncrest had a lot of people who were able to throw the football X number of yards and higher and different skill sets.
[10:00]
Where Media had a tradition of competing and competing to win. I remember seeing articles on the Median/Chester football game, and it wasalways at least a quarter page, because it was one of those rivalries that started and kept growing. Um, and again, at Penncrest you had people who had mastered all these skills– and those obvious skills. You had one guy who was an excellent punter and in talking to him I found out, during our days off in the summer he would practice punting the ball and once he got the discus down, he would put the ball inside of hula-hoops that he would leave on the ground. I was impressed.
But what happened was, the football season, we started out, we won I think all but two games. There was a lot of school spirit that was generated. The soccer team, improved on their season before. I think we only had one or two Media guys on there, but it was obvious, the chatter encouraged the guys to play a little harder.
Taking a step back, I got interested in basketball in, um, the fifth grade. Back then the scouts went to the boys club and played against another scout pack. It was interesting because I didn’t know how to dribble the ball, didn’t know how to shoot the ball, but it incorporated one of the things I loved to do more than anything else which was run. And I enjoyed running and chasing after the ball and whoever had it. And as my scout master reminded me a couple times—he was my first coach—um, which was true, not sure how much of an impact he had on my game, but he was there.
As I was going into junior high school, I had the opportunity to play for a school team. My father had said that when we were– when I was in fifth grade– he made an announcement in fifth grade at the dinner room table and my father had said, “All of my kids are going to go to college and they’re all going to graduate.” Being that there were– well, there were three of us at the time, I had sort of looked around and when dinner was over I tugged at my sister’s shirtsleeves and was like, “What’s a college?” I didn’t know, but it was something my father aspired us to. And fast forward and all four of us graduated from college. And one of the reasons I think my father said that is he had to leave school at the end of fifth grade to help take care of his family. So, he worked on a farm from I think twelve to twenty-one.
But getting back to junior high school, it took a lot for me to encourage my father to let me go out for school sports. I had the permission slip and everything, and I was trying to convince him of all the things I wanted and could do. And what convinced him was, to continue to play I had to have a B+ average. So, he said, “If you have to keep your grades up to play, I’ll sign the permission slip.” As a seventh grader, I think we had three games that were seventh grade games and then we played with the eighth-grade team.
[15:00]
I think I got into two– of the three, three games. Two of them, they played me at tight end. Which was interesting because, to my thinking, I was tall for my age. I think I was over six foot at that point, but they only threw me the ball once, and you could chalk that up to, eh, I wasn’t open. He didn’t see me at the time. When it came time for basketball season to roll around, my grades had not suffered during the football season, so my father said, “Yes, you can play basketball.” At the end of the first day of tryouts I was told that I made the team and the coach said, “Eugene, you’re not going to be playing anymore football. You are going to focus on basketball, okay?” And my thing I loved to do when I was younger was run and throw so I said okay. I liked basketball, but it would be nice to run and tackle people, but I said okay. And it was solidified when I called my mother and told her that’s what he thought the plan should be.
A challenge I had growing up was, um, I was slightly dyslexic. So, there were a lot of words that, as I was trying to read them, they would change. I say they change. I would see something different. It made it hard for me to read and spell. And I had a first grade teacher, who was– she was a saint. She realized early on that I had an issue and after a series of questions she started giving me, um, little tricks to do to make sure I was reading the word correctly. Even to the point of look at it and spell it backwards and spell it forwards, um, and it helped considerably. As a matter of fact, at one point I told my mom I wanted to marry her [the teacher] because she takes such great care of me. The disappointing thing was that I told my mom it was a secret and ten or fifteen minutes later she was on the phone telling all of her girlfriends that I wanted to marry my first grade teacher.
Hopefully I’m not bouncing around too much. But we– in– basketball wise, in junior high school, the seventh grade team was undefeated. The eighth grade team was ten and one. The ninth graders had a mixed record. I think their wins outweighed their losses by maybe two games. The next year, um, we went ten and one. I’m sorry, ten and 0, and then nine and one and the newspapers picked it up and there was a little article in there. And we were getting ready to play another team that was undefeated up to that point. The really interesting thing was that some of the older guys that I had played basketball with on the outdoor courts and different places that I knew from pick up games and church– when the games started, they formed a line and came marching in with a chant. First time that had ever happened. I don’t know about my other teammates, but at first I was concerned, because now there’s all this noise in this place and only four doors to get out of here. I wasn’t sure exactly what was up, but they came in with some very big cheers for us. And we ended up winning the game, by a relatively large margin.
[20:00]
The center on the opposing team was also about six foot, um, so there were some clashes under the boards, but it was fun. And some of that mentality and energy we took to Penncrest. The following year we were also undefeated and, when we got to Penncrest, the senior on the basketball team was the only starter from the previous year to be back. And he had the impression that, because he was a senior, he should run everything. The challenge with that was he wasn’t that good of a player and he didn’t understand the nuances that– I mean I had picked up in junior high school. The first two games we lost and it was primarily because of things that he did, um, they were tough situations and looking back at them there were things that he was trying to do to prove that he was better than average. And he wasn’t. He did a couple of turnovers and we lost the games. In practice one day he was goofing around with another senior and the coach kicked them both off the team. The one senior came back—the guy who thought he should be running everything stayed away—and we were undefeated from that point on.
Relations with the students was good and a good portion of that was because of what I said before, the spirit that was generated around athletics. In my opinion. Probably some sociologist out there has a different opinion, but they’re not here right now. Let’s see where else– Sorry, so much of this is about basketball, but that was my life for a while. One of the things I did in eighth grade– I was about 6’1”, the coach was concerned I was tall, I didn’t jump that high, and what he had me do was, he had me jump and touch a spot on the wall. He got a ladder and put a band-aide where I was supposed to touch it and I was required to touch that band-aide fifty times with each hand. So, as the other guys were doing running laps and stuff I was jumping and touching this mark and as I was able to touch the wall higher, the band-aide would move higher and higher. And at the end of eighth grade I was able to dunk a basketball. He had told me all of this was gonna pay off. And it was clear, to me, that it had paid off. Two years we won the district championship. Senior year we went to the semi-finals. The quarter finals are the semi-finals in the states. We lost the semi-finals by nine points. One of the things that frustrated me was that their tallest player was 6’4”. By then I was at least 6’7”. All during the season, when they passed me the ball, you usually had to jump and catch it. Which wasn’t a bad thing because that meant that I usually got the ball, and I think it was halfway through the first quarter before I actually touched the ball.
[25:00]
Because they were throwing chest passes. And a couple times I asked them, “Why did you guys change how you want to pass it to me?” It didn’t register. Um, my father was still the custodian at the church. They were going to put an addition on the back of the church, and one of the things that always surprised me was my father did not have a high school education. He didn’t have a diploma, but he had a Ph.D in common sense. And it was a day I had off– there wasn’t any practice anywhere. And he took me over to where the addition was being put on and the contractor’s there and he is having a fit because he ordered some 2x10s, twenty foot in length, and they had sent him twice as many boards. They were 2x10s, but they were eleven feet in length. And the contractor was claiming that he didn’t get what he ordered, he couldn’t do what he wanted to do. My dad looks at him and says, “Overlay them, so they are twenty-feet in length and put a nail pad in between one and two, and it will be at least as good as what you were going to do. And the contractor called the architect to complain and asked the architect to stop by and he’s looking at the wood and he says this guy, he says to go along with what my dad had suggested. The architect pulled out a slide rule to do the calculations and says, “He’s right.”
I knew my father only had a fifth grade education and he didn’t talk a lot. When he usually said something it was significant. But I had trouble keeping my shirt on that day. My chest just swelled up with pride. I said my dad is a smart guy. I also noticed that some of the attorneys with offices near our house would stop by in the evening to ask him about something with a case. And it became evident when he gave them a good suggestion because they couldn’t pay him, but we would get a turkey or a ham, something dropped off. And it happened quite a bit.
One of the challenges of going to Penncrest is that we had to be bussed out there. And, uh, I spent a lot of days running for busses trying to catch them because I’d be running late. And the worst thing was, twice I missed the last bus from school and I walked home. It was about three miles. But I had been a scout so I was accustomed to walking five or ten miles. The walk was not as much as not having a canteen of water and all the other things, other stuff I would have had with us when I went out hiking.
In high school, I developed an interest in computers. Back then you had the punch cards and you had to write your program out by hand and punch them on the IBM cards and then you would have to run it through a system and see how they came out and then you usually had to go back and make some adjustments somewhere. It was still a lot of fun. And I really wish that I had changed my–
[30:00]
I wish I had made that my concentration and focus because, even though the technology is way ahead of me, I still like playing on my computer. During our senior year at Penncrest, my coach started putting together a binder of letters that were being sent asking if I would be interested in attending various schools. I don’t know what the exact number was, but I know there were over 120. I want to say 153 but that was a couple of years ago, so the numbers might be off, but it was a lot. Then we started– a teammate of mine [name unintelligible], we were both 6’9” and had schools express interest in the both of us, so some of the trips we went on together.
The first trip we went on was to the University of Maryland, and the interesting thing about that trip was, we decided we wanted to fly, so we’re flying from Philadelphia into Washington DC, getting a ride from one of the coaches back to campus and reversing the process. The question was, why did we want to do that and both of us looked at each other and said, “Have you flown?” “No.” Let’s let them pay for it. And the flight wasn’t too bad, except they really weren’t built for 6’9”. They still aren’t built for 6’9”. But it was fun, had a good time, came back. it wasn’t too bad. My teammate ended up going to Penn State. I came to Rutgers. Bill Foster was the head coach. Dick Lloyd was the assistant coach. Most of my time was spent with Dick Lloyd. And I was treated like a person that they respected.
University of Penn and Syracuse were the– two of the last three schools I had used to select from and, um– Syracuse offered me a car, and my dad a job, and I knew that was a NCAA [National Collegiate Athletic Association] violation, and I didn’t want to go anywhere near that. And the reason for that was because my father had said I was going to go to college and graduate. If I had done that, there was no guarantee that I was going to graduate. And University of Penn took me out to dinner, they took me and my mother out to dinner, and after dinner was over they proceeded to holler and scream at me because, um, they didn’t want me to go to Rutgers. Which I didn’t understand at the time, but then I looked at the basketball schedule and I realized that Rutgers played Penn almost every year so it was– they didn’t want to have to play against me. Sort of pampered my ego, but the school wouldn’t treat me–
The other thing is, I had visited Syracuse, visited the University of Penn. I made the decision about Rutgers because of the coaches. I had no idea what their facilities looked like, never visited the campus, had no idea it was a place where I could get a good education. Rolled the dice on the coach.
[35:00]
Then it was not like it is now. If you transferred from one college to another, you had to sit out a year before you could try out for the team. Now people are transferring and they’re playing the very next season. But it was a commitment. Um, school was good. Several excellent professors. I had one or two professors who I got the impression wanted to try to prove– I want to say embarrass me with some of the assignments they gave me or the questions I was asked. And it wasn’t a case of I was, you know, super studious or super smart, but, uh, class was over and I went up to talk to them. I wanted to know why. Why are you throwing this stuff at me? You don’t ask anyone else any questions like this. And then how did I do on the questions and they said, “You were close enough.” That died off, but it was a concern early on, because my class, the class of ’73, was up until that time, was the largest incoming class at Rutgers. I think we had 1100 students.
Um, went through school. My freshman year there were a lot of protests. And the end result was, uh, finals for the first semester were cancelled because of student unrest, which was interesting. But that still meant that I still had to come back the second semester and do Calculus II. Which was not a lot of fun. We had some interesting professors at Rutgers. One was a Dr. Hart. I had him for Calculus, and the first day he identified who he was, wrote his name on the board, had us open our books to a certain page, started talking to us about a certain problem on the page, started writing it on the board. He got about halfway through, he stopped, walked over to a board on a different wall and started writing feverishly. We’re looking around going. “Are we supposed to write that down?” One of the guys said, “I don’t know, but I’m going to anyway.” Come to find out he was working on a project for NASA and he had a thought while he was working on our homework problem, went over to the side board to see if he had the solution. At the end of what he was writing, he looked at it and said, “Oh no, that’s not going to work,” and he came back and just picked up where he left off and everybody in the class was like, “What are we supposed to do?”
So, we stopped, we asked him what had happened, what should we write down and he had explained that that was a project that he was working on, and if he does that again he would tell us before we started scribbling stuff down. But there were a lot of smart guys that were teaching us.
Umm, what else? Never made it to the NCAAs.
[40:00]
Um, my senior year we made it to the NIT [National Invitation Tournament]. Um, we played a team called the, um, Minnesota Gophers. Their starting lineup– their forwards and center were 6’8”, 6’8”, and 6’9”. The guards were 6’5” and 6’7”. At the second string was 6’10”, 7 foot, 6’10”. It was like playing in a forest. I had played a lot of basketball up until that time, but I had never played with so many big guys. Inside in my life. It was an interesting experience. It felt like I was playing in a forest. I’m not going to tell you who won our game, but I will tell you that Minnesota won the NIT. They had a– one of their starting forwards was a, uh, ended up playing for the New York Yankees and I can’t remember his name, but they had some talented people on their team. After the season was over, one day I was going up to the basketball office to check on some paperwork and the coach started asking questions about France and I was thinking, and I finally asked, “Why all the questions about France?” And a gentleman who they had contacted– come to find out there were schools that were interested in knowing if I wanted to play basketball in France. So I spent about twenty minutes trying to find out from the coach, what that would entail, would I be living there? You know, would I have to commute? Got the details and decided that at least I would go over there and see what their conferences were like and the attitude of the people over there, as far as basketball was concerned. I went and found out there were a lot of differences in basketball between here and there. Their attitude was more of a basic play, simple plays. Some of them were just passing the ball around and somebody takes a shot. But I ended up getting to know a couple of guys and liked it so I said, “Yeah. I’ll go back.”
I played in France for two years. The first year we were Division Three, we won the Division Three championship. Which moved the team up into Division Two. My papers said I was an employee of Peugeot. And in the two years that I was there, I saw the facility three times, and one of them was to have a meeting with the Executive Director, and he wanted to know why we weren’t winning more games. I said my peace. He said his peace. Did things pick up as far as the game was concerned? Well, some of the things I saw as a problem were the mentality of the team officials. They wanted to treat us more like soccer players than basketball players, and we got a good portion of that straightened out, but we did not win the second division championship. But we did win the Industrial League because me and the other Americans on the team, we played against guys that had a good series of games.
[45:00]
I think they had a sixteen-game season. We had two Americans and one naturalized French man. Who joined the team in the last four games, which sort of helped make sure that they won, which they did. During that year, I hurt my knee, my right knee. I was sitting on a train and my ankle– my knees crossed. And when it came time to stand up, I couldn’t straighten my right knee. Come to find out there was a piece of cartilage that was frayed and was sticking in a joint, stopping it from moving. Went through several things including an operation over there and I came back and, um, the answer to whether I would go back again was basically, no, I think I’ve seen enough of the world for the time being. But it was a lot of fun.
Remembering that my dad said that I would go to college and graduate. Sitting around with some friends, I was home in Media, I had a couple of guys imply that I got my degree because I played basketball. And that I wouldn’t have earned it if I had not been playing basketball. And that sort of– became a major concern of mine so I went and I got my Master’s degree in Business Administration. Just to sort of prove that my degree was not given to me. I earned it.
Upon the last trimester we had a dinner and Sunny Warbley, who at the time was the President of Madison Square Garden came in. I knew him from the Meadowlands, I knew him from Rutgers. I’m sorry, it was actually before that, before I knew him from the Meadowlands, but I knew him from Rutgers. I asked him about a position, if he had a position that someone from the NBA could help in and I became the assistant to the executive director of the New Jersey Sports and Exposition Authority. There was no structure to the job at the time, which was interesting. There were some things that I stuck my nose in because I was interested and some things that my nose got stuck in because somebody wanted an answer of some kind. It was interesting. It was a lot of fun.
There were– there weren’t that many memorable events that occurred. There were two. I’ll tell you about one of them.
[49:00]
There was a horse, a filly, [name unintelligible], was an undefeated horse. She went off at two to one. It was a lot. They got to a point where she was under a bid of two. We bid two dollars or $1.96 back then and she won.
Um, this one night I went on the floor with the security teaching me how to spot somebody who is pickpocketing people and, in the process, I think it was the second race of the night, [the horse] dies, falls down dead. In the first turn. And that happens, and at the other end of the seating area you hear, “Oh, no!” This guy starting to fuss, and kick stuff, and act crazy. So I go over to him with security. And we find out that what he had done was that he had taken a second mortgage out on his house. And bet it on [horse’s name]. I think it was $20,000. He was thinking that he’d get paid– even if he had spent $1.50 on each ticket, he would have still made $150,000, or some number, but all of it got lost when the horse died. So it taught to me, only pay what you can lose at the races.
[51:14]
After some time, I got bored of doing that. I went to work for Johnson and Johnson as an accountant. I was there for four years. One of the years was when they had the poison Tylenol scandal. Someone poisoned all the Tylenol capsules and they pulled all the capsules off the shelves, they closed McNeil labs. And then it seemed like they got back to business as usual. The problem with getting back to normal was that they restructured the company, to use fewer people. So a lot us that were, um– let’s say I wasn’t tenured, but I had been around for a while, and I was expecting to be promoted sometime in the near future. I got laid off. And, being mad, I went down to human resources to find out why. Why did it happen? And, I was talking with someone with whom I had struck up a decent relationship over time, and they pointed out that there were two people being let go from every Johnson and Johnson facility worldwide at that time. And it was being done in such a way that, unless you started in such a way [unintelligible] that you got moved around and disappeared, so they subtly got rid of a couple thousand employees over ten to twelve weeks and it really didn’t register on anybody’s radar what was going on. I thought I was clever. I also thought it was foolish because I was out of a job.
After applying, for jobs on my hands and feet, and getting down to the end of the paragraph, there was often a question, you know, “Tell me about your family.” So i I told them about my family, how many of us there were. [unclear]
I left there and I went to work for Franklin State Bank. I started out as an assistant vice president. I was a work out officer, which basically meant that if you were behind on your rent, your payments, I would come in and help you restructure your money and help you figure out how to deal with the overflow. [unclear]
[55:00]
Because the church wanted the cash. No, wrong spot. The bank wanted the cash. I would go in and help people figure out where their cash flow was messed up. And that was back when it was Franklin State bank, but when it became United Jersey Bank, it was a case of if they can’t pay their loan, take legal action against them right away. If they have a mortgage, put a freeze on it, start taking control of any assets that they have because their objective was to get this person, who was having trouble paying their loan, out of the bank.
Unfortunately for me, um, I was often– I still am a people person. I wanted to give the person the benefit of the doubt. And there were a couple of moments where I held up on following the bank policy, having explained in detail to the customer what was going to happen if they didn’t find somebody else to lend them the money. Because my thinking is if I’m coming to you for a loan and I’m having a hard time getting a loan at my bank, you may give me the loan, but the rate would be higher or there’s some other stipulation that would make it harder for me to do business.
There was an award that was started– there were two. The person who collects the most from one loan and the person who collects the most from one payment period would get a cashier’s check. And the person who collected the highest dollar amount of principle from last quarter got the bonus. And I got the bonus two years because I had a couple, they were bankrupt, and they paid us the little bit that they owed us, but somehow I got an extra little tweak out of them. So our numbers were usually the better. That was that.
Coming to Rutgers, still there were a lot of things I didn’t know and a lot of things that, now that I know some things, I’m pretty sure there’s more out there. I didn’t know that it was constructed by slaves. Didn’t know the slave involvement in its creation. I know that some of the laws of the school came about because they saw themselves as being a different configuration of people. Which they weren’t. But some of the members of the Rutgers families who were Quakers. They were Quaker and that impacted some things. But all along, it was a great school. I had some trouble adjusting to the increase of classes. You spend a lot of time in line. And that was not the internet, you were standing in line trying to get something time. Major change my senior year and that moved me. Rutgers was an all men’s school at that point, that was the year ’72-73 and then Rutgers became co-ed. But the biggest thing that bothered me that year was that freshmen could now play varsity sports. Which meant that if they played an NA game, they got additional points added to their total and the old guys didn’t have that opportunity.
And yeah, some of them beat the old guys, but then you start doing the math and you pull out one year’s worth of their scoring, and you find out that, eh, a good amount of those folks were the old people were a few baskets ahead. But it was fun. I guess a question I have now is, what else do you want to talk about?
I’ve got a wife and three kids, a grandson, who was just promoted from sixth to seventh grade. Which is scary. Young man is all legs. My kids are relatively tall. My daughter is 6 feet. My sons is 6’3”, and 6’4”. My wife is the runt at 5’10. You know.
[1:02:30] End of first recording
[00:00] Beginning of second recording
When I returned to Rutgers as an employee, um, I was the Director of Alumni Relations for the New Brunswick campuses. I had taken over the position from Bob Marguccio, who then became my boss, so I was working for the person who was me before then. Loved the john. Got to meet a lot of alums. One of my challenges is my ability to memorize names, so there were a lot of people I would go, “Hey, how you doing?” and look for a name tag somewhere. But I tried to keep the regular positions that the RAA [Rutgers Alumni Association] had, that some of the other associations had, we tried to keep them intact.
I know how to ask a lot of questions, because I know often the person, if they had been sitting and doing something for a long time, they get in the habit and they don’t always pick up on minor nuances that could help them improve. I did that for eleven years. Then I started working for dining services. Their Knight Express Meal Plan Office was where I was working, and it was interesting that they were more interested in keeping people pushing paper than improving the service. Every semester when students were coming in with their meal plans or their Knight Express, the thing that they wanted to do was reduce their meal plan so they had some money to put on their Knight Express.
Mom and Dad would pay for a full meal plan. They wouldn’t give them a thousand dollars to spend on miscellaneous stuff. And inevitably there would be an argument of some kind because I think it was freshmen were required to have one meal plan if you were in the dorm, and upperclassmen had to have a different meal plan if they lived in the dorm. And then there would be a range of things from there. You always got somebody that wanted to go lower than they were supposed to because they wanted the extra money back in their account.
And, you know, those transactions would take about ten to fifteen minutes, sometimes longer, depending on– self importance the student had. And one year after doing that, and knowing I was going to be short one person for at least the first day of the term– I took the policy that the university had– I put it on the wall behind my table, and I put two or three of them on the wall where the queue had formed. And we finished that day, I want to say, at like 4:30. There weren’t any more people in line. And we shut down and the head of dining services said, “Hey, you guys had a light day today, there wasn’t that many people.” And we looked down and said, “Actually, we’ve served a hundred more than we did last year at this time.” “That doesn’t make sense, there wasn’t anybody in the hall.” And, in part, I started getting the feeling that they wanted their contribution to the student’s life experience to be having to wait to be serviced.
[5:04]
But I thought people had more important things to do than that. And I was told that at the end of that– of that cycle, their comment was, don’t do that again. I didn’t last there that long. I mean, there was things I did off the top of my head. There was a letter that would get mailed to all the parents encouraging them to put money on their student’s Knight Express card for Christmas, for the Christmas holiday. And the letters went out, and we got responses back, and I was in the alumni office, you know, we mailed everything, sat down with a couple of my people said, “What do we want to be in this letter, what do we want to be effective?” And the responses, found that out, and somebody that filled in a spreadsheet as the stuff came in, and then it was time to inform the kids on campus that they had gotten something, and that we had sent the letter back home and we had mailed all that stuff in a day, where in the past it would have taken them two days to do it. Again, it was “don’t do that again,” so I sort of got mixed up in what the– What was the objective? Just to keep people busy? Or try to improve people’s experiences?
After I left there, I worked for the Edison Job Corp Academy. I started out as their Finance Manager and then, I forget my next title, but I had four or five departments report to me. One of my big takeaways from there was I knew I was going to come in and if there was money being moved around, I was going to have an idea of how to do it, how to procure things. And once all the hubbub died down that first day, I addressed my staff and said, “Listen, you guys don’t know me. I have a vague idea of what goes on here. I am going to have a lot of ideas. And I will share them with you, and I will be sharing them with you because I want you to tell me if you think I might be headed for a ditch. Or a hole or a problem or somebody tried it before and it doesn’t work. I need you to tell me.”
One of the young ladies that was working for me was Indian and as I am saying this, I can see her, she’s not really shaking her head, but I can sort of see her going, “No, I can’t do that. I can’t do that.” Just shaking her head a bit. And there was a couple times, there was a situation where it was clear to her something bad was going to happen and it was like someone had flipped a switch. She came in– she wasn’t ranting, but was talking about all the problems, so I had to calm her down. She explained what the problems were. I asked why there were problems and she identified them. And there were some things we decided to put on hold so we could see if we could figure out what it was. At that time, after that, I wish I hadn’t told her, because every time she saw a problem she came in and let me know. It did get tedious, but it got to the point where she was comfortable talking to me and I got comfortable implementing things that she was suggesting. And it helped our office run smoother.
[10:10]
Some of it was just making sure that my people got the respect that they needed. We worked together and it was very rewarding. But I was in the director’s position and there were some practices in place and I questioned them, um, I didn’t question them anticipating an immediate change, but it was more a case of putting the thought in someone’s ear and pointing out the adjustments that would have to be made over time. I was also– I had five people reporting to me, we had a staff meeting once every two weeks and I would ask the question: “What can we do to help? What’s going on? Are there any problems that you foresee?” The first time I asked it, it was a case of I wanted to know if they were having problems so I could start writing something up and having or putting a plan in place. And what ended up happening is, this guy identified his problem, this person had the solution. And they started working like that and started talking to each other, which was great. I also worked with the 2010 Census. I was a crew chief. That was a very interesting experience, in that I was in Somerset County and it was a portion of Somerset County I had never been in before. I was in facilities that I didn't know existed. We had some equipment that the government had for the people with the boots on the ground. That they were supposed to use to identify, “Is this a single family residence.” and all this stuff and it did not work for nothing. We are sitting at 9 Bayard and if you were standing out front it might say that you were on Nelson. And it was definitely a case of they got the product from the lowest bidder. But it was a lot of fun. I met a lot of folks, identified a lot of issues. One of the things I had done before then– I do genealogies. Working on my family’s genealogy, one of the things I had told my staff one day we are going out– actually it was a question I raised. I said, “If people are going to give you a name, ask them to spell the last name. Even if you know how to spell it, ask them.” And I had one woman get very indignant, letting me know that she knew how to spell and she did not think that was appropriate.
I had the attendance sheet in front of me and I said, ‘Well, how do you spell Sarah?” And she spelled it with an H. I said, “Anybody know of a different spelling?” Another lady said, “I know a lady named Sara.” And she didn’t spell it with an H. So, I said “Ask, so that in addition, you want to count the people, but another thing that will happen is, years from now family members will come back looking at this information and we want to make it easier for them.” And that’s after going in and finding–doing my genealogy, finding the same person and their name being spelled four or five different ways over the years.
And the interesting thing was, the woman who was indignant when asked to do that, when we got back together, she was bubbly all over the place because she found someone who spelled their name differently than she would have spelled it and she got it right. She was excited about that.
[15:13]
It was a lot of fun. I worked the Census from April of 2009 to October 2010. It was a very very interesting experience. Again, I met a lot of interesting people. I question a lot of things that government does now. Whether some of it makes sense. And I think the day that sticks out in my mind the most was when we were sending all the information back to the regional office. We had binders that had everything in them and we had to combine the binders to make sure that the sheets were in there. All the sheets were in there and that they were in order. And that was interesting because you would have– you put the information in the binders, then I would check to make sure that it was properly sequenced, then someone else would check that it was properly sequenced. Then they would make sure it was with the right binders and that the right binders were in the right boxes. It was a full project.
One of the things that I did want to mention is that in 2011, I was diagnosed with having prostate cancer. And that’s after having doctors other than my primary doctor asking questions about test results. Once it was confirmed– the feeling was, yes, I did have it, because my PSH had changed significantly. Went to see a doctor, did a lot more tests over weeks, eventually did the biopsy, found out I had eight [tumors], six of them are cancerous. It was a scale of eight. I could have told you exactly what that meant back then. Now I just remember that that was what the number was. I chose as a method of treatment was radiation. Cyberknife was not something that was available. But I could have had seeds implanted, radioactive seeds. I could have had it removed. Radiation. And there was something else, I don’t remember. Watch and wait. I definitely wasn’t going to do that one.
One of the things with the– having the seeds implanted, was that I couldn’t come into contact with any pets or young children. Because I would be radioactive. They didn’t care about my wife,but– but it was a case of not wanting to negatively impact anybody. Went for the treatments. But before they started the treatment, they made a mold of my legs so that they– when they were in this mold they were positioned exactly the way they were supposed to be. I told my son I got tattoos, I got five tattoos. There are five little dots tattooed on the outside of each knee, on the outside of my hips, and one in my groin, so that when they’d turn on the laser and line me up and again, make sure I was in the right position that they needed to be radiated. And it would take them longer to get me ready on the chair, I mean, on the table, than it would be for me to have the radiation.
[20:17]
The radiation would take about 52 seconds, 1:10 going around, and, inevitably, I would be on the table and they would have to move the lasers, move this, move that. They would move something and that would be too far. One of the interesting things was that I started seeing the same people on a frequent basis, so we started to develop some friendships. I wouldn’t say friendships, but there were situations where you would see somebody and speak to them and ask them how their day was. Inevitably, it’s shitty. Hopefully I can say that. But they would express themselves.
Early on, I ran into a classmate of mine from Rutgers who had prostate cancer. And he was telling me about a men’s support group that met in Somerville. And we, um, I started going even before I had the full diagnosis. Because when the doctor said it, I believed it, felt it. Totally. And, again, that was in 2011. I still attend. It is a place where, if you have cancer, you can go and, as you talk about your feelings, you’re talking about someone who has had some of them. And, if nothing else, you have a doctor who has spent– I was going to say looked you into the face, but you have some doctors who tell you by phone. But you had a doctor tell you, “You’ve got cancer.” And that’s, uh, that phrase is not something that– it’s not like “You have a beard.” That’s a life altering phrase. And we try to help each other out where we can. If somebody’s got something they gotta do and they can’t. If somebody’s transportation is messed up, you have guys that will jump in and give people rides. I delivered somebody’s taxes to their tax accountant so that would get done. We rake people’s leaves. And, just anything to help people get through a greatly difficult time. We’ve had to attend way too many funerals, but most of those were just a case of they were expedited because none of us are going to get out of here alive. But it’s tough when the word “cancer'' is still floating around. And I think we do a pretty good job.
I tell guys, “Hey, if you walk in here and you’ve got a problem and you walk out with it, it’s your fault. And you’re not here complaining. You’re just getting stuff out so that you’re emotionally sound again.” It matters, very important.
Oh, I mentioned my genealogy earlier. And I started working on genealogy, I want to say, about 2000.
[25:00]
And it was a case of my mother-in-law talking about filling out her family tree and, at the time, there were about one or two computer fairs I would attend every year. And I went to this computer fair and I’m looking around and I see a program called Family Tree Maker. You know, designed to help facilitate populating your tree, your family tree. So, I got it for her and gave it to her for Christmas. [Unintelligible] but during the year, I didn’t see anything that she had been doing with it. Uh, the next year, I went back to the same computer fair, saw the same program, just an updated version of the program so I said, “Oh, let me get this for Mom.” Forgetting that I had gotten it for her the year before. Got it home and my wife says, “You got it for her last year, dummy,” so I said, “Okay.” So I got home, sat down at my computer, put the disc in, downloaded the program, and started putting the information in.
Now, my mother had been visiting with us for Christmas and she walks in, and asks me what I’m doing and I tell her and she proceeds to give me the names, birthdates, and relationships to of seventy-two people. She included their birthdates, phone numbers, all kinds of information and I said, “Thanks, mom.” And I mentioned to my wife that I am going to have to verify this because it’s– if I don’t it’s just family lore. And, over time, as I go to verify it, she had two birth dates wrong. And it was by a day. It was the 28th instead of the 29th. And I think the 13th instead of the 14th. I was impressed with her memory.
Right now I have 1,400 people on the tree and I refer to it as my grandson’s tree. Because I always had my family, and my wife’s family on the same tree. But now my grandson every once in a while expresses an interest, so I try to keep him in tune. An offshoot of that is, one of the things that I spend a lot of time on now is the Afro-American Historical and Genealogical Society. It’s a nationwide organization, thirty-seven chapters, and history and genealogy is their primary function. Um, we have a chapter here in Jersey, which meets up in Jersey City. And I’ve been a member, treasurer, vice president, president. And now I’m a member of the National Board. We make sure the information at each chapter has is correct. And that they meet their filing requirements because each one is their own separate 501c3. But if the federal government has an issue, they’ll probably come to the national organization first. So we ask for copies of their various filings and documents.
Last year we had a virtual conference. It was the first conference that was not in person.
[30:00]
In forty-two years. This year is also going to be virtual. We are trying to add some more events that people could do outside, as a body outside of the computers. It will be interesting. It will be interesting. And one of my other activities now is Lost Souls where a judge in Middlesex County, whose house is currently in East Brunswick, well, his property is in East Brunswick, his house has been replaced with something else. I don’t remember exactly know where that is. But he and his notorious gang basically captured 137 African Americans from the Northeast, most of them out of New Jersey, sentenced them to some time.
And I’ve been trying to find out, was it a labor situation or– were they sentenced to jail someplace. But what they did was, they took these people, put them on boats, and they shipped them to Louisiana, Mississippi and most of them were auctioned off as slaves and some of them were sent to his brother-in-law’s plantation, to work on the plantation. So, basically, these people had whatever lifestyle they had stolen from them and immersed into slavery.
[32:24]
And that is horrendous. One of the things I started thinking about, after the fact was: you have families who were expecting someone home for dinner and that person never came back.
That’s– that’s gotta tear a hole in your soul. If you sent one of your kids or a family member over to a neighbor to get a cup of sugar. A cup of flour. And they don’t come back. It’s gotta be– it’s gotta be very trying. And significantly impact your soul.
And the objective of the Lost Souls. It’s the Lost Souls Public Memorial Project– the township of East Brunswick has given us a plot of land and the objective is to raise funds to build a memorial there to remember these people who were taken and not hide the event. Because our desire is to have people talk about it. If you don’t talk about something, it may or may not have happened. But we have proof that it has and we are expanding on that, including a curriculum for New Jersey schools. So that it can be taught and shared.
With that I have a group of friends that from Rutgers that are doing various genealogy projects, that we, particularly during the pandemic, we got together via Zoom or Skype, just trying to keep in touch with each other with the understanding that at some point in time we are going to come out of this. And, not that we are planning to be in a place where we can become wealthy, but we want to have something on the schedule so that we don’t run ourselves ragged now that things are open again. I gotta go here, I gotta go there. We are trying to plan it so we can do whatever we want and not hurt ourselves.
I think that’s about it. How did I do?
I have a couple questions.
Wow. A couple questions. What’s your question?
Might you be willing to share the story about your great-great grandparents?
Yes. I can do that. It’s actually my wife’s great-great grandparents. But one of the things that when I started working on the genealogy, and my mother-in-law shared with me her great great grams– that might be my wife–
Downstairs?
Possibly
Oh, pause.
[37:33] End of second recording