Intro (Dyer): this tape recorded interview is a part of the ongoing History of Columbia Community College.  My name is Richard L. Dyer.  I am a history instructor at Columbia College.  The Interview is with Jim Kindle.  Jim, the former director of the Columbia College Learning Skills Center retired last year in May of 1990.  We’re at the Columbia College library and reminiscing about those years during his directorship of the learning skills center.

DYER: We sort of started a logical beginning and why don’t you reminisce with us a little bit about your upbringing?  

KINDLE:   Well, I was a badger from Wisconsin and received my bachelors degree at Wisconsin State University at OshKosh Wisconsin and that was in elementary education.  I have taught just about every level from the first grade through a university class. And my wife and I taught in a two-room school.  I had the upper grades and she had the lower grades.  In fact, I was the janitor, the principle, the superintendent and everything.  And at that time, which was 1949, I received $2000 per year and she received $1900 because I was the superintendent of school which was $100 more. 

DYER: Was that in Wisconsin?

KINDLE: That was in Wisconsin, yes.  And I went back and took more classes in the evenings and at summer schools and received my maters in earth science at Colorado College.  And I also received a master of education with a major in counseling and reading disabilities at Rockford College in Illinois and completed my certificate in counseling in northern Illinois University at DeKalb.  I taught science for quite a few years at the junior-high level and received five fellowships to go to institutes in science—three at Colorado College where I received my masters, one at the University of Colorado in physics and chemistry, and one at New Mexico State University where I worked on physics.  And so I had a background in working with science. Tried to spend more time in working with skills centers because of the education I had had in reading disabilities and also in counseling.

DYER: I always thought in terms of your social sciences being as intellectually developed as the natural sciences. 

KINDLE: I have a minor in the social sciences.  But much of the education that I had for elementary education required a lot of the social sciences’ aspects so I think that it was very helpful in geography, and history , and sociology and counseling has a lot of social sciences involved such as in the development sort of behavior and things of that sort. 

DYER: Well as a youngster did you see yourself moving in this direction?  Was it predictable before you got into college?

KINDLE: In a way, no. there’s a… I came from a very large family…exceptionally large family—twelve children. And education was not a big factor in our family.  I was a good basketball player in high school, so I was encouraged to go out and get a good education and probably go to college, but I did not finish my senior year.  I didn’t even start my senior year in high school because it was during World War II and I joined the army.  I came back and I was asked again if I’d like to play basketball, and I said, ‘I’m sorry I do not have a high school education.” Well I went over to the superintendant of the high school and he said, ‘well, you’re only short two units,” so he said, ‘I’ll give you a unit in geography and a unit in PE and you’ll get your high school diploma,’ after I got out of the army.  So I really hadn’t thought so much about teaching either and it wasn’t just for basketball until I worked in a hospital when I was in the service.  Backstregeno Hospital Spokane Washington. And there were a lot of children in this hospital—it was veteran’s children.  And so I was given a job to sort of watch over the children too and one of the officers said, ‘say, you would make a good teacher.  You have so much patience with these people.  You work with them and everything else.  Would you every think about teaching?” I said, ‘maybe a little, but not a lot.  So I think of it as a combination of things: of liking people, having a person say, ‘hey, it looks like you’d do a good job at that,’ and then the basketball and the GI Bill together they combined a little bit to give me a little financial gain to …the other one. 

DYER: So you were hooked?

KINDLE: I had a lot of education classes, but I felt that the thing that helped me the most as far as human relation with my own family.  My father and mother both lived on one big rule: “Though do on to others you’d have them do onto you.”   So we had this kind of a standard, and you always liked people.  We always liked people and so I think that was a big help in education too. Oh, that was it.

DYER: Well, we’ve talked so often about the interdisciplinary approach at Columbia College and certainly you represent that with the different segments of your training in the classroom as well as military and all that.

KINDLE: Well I think they all have helped too.

DYER: Let’s take a look then at Columbia College now.  Why do you think you were hired by the committee for the job as the Skills Center Director?

KINDLE: Well, I had a good background as far as setting up learning skills centers.  The last school I was at was Central Wyoming College and I was the second instructor hired for that college just while it was being built and one thing that happened after five years there, there was a poor organization name WICHE—Western Inamount Council of Higher Education (note: it’s actually called Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education) and we was checking on learning skills center because there was push to have them in a community colleges and we had the rating as the best of learning center in the Rocky Mountain states. And so we were funded to go out and put on workshops for other schools on how to start a learning skills center.  So I think that that was a big plus on my side.  The president of the college that I had worked for back in Wyoming, when his letter of recommendation said that he didn’t know how to really evaluate me because I didn’t know when to quit working and I was always coming up with new ideas and that I was the best community college instructor he had ever had work for him.  So I think that a few of the recommendations were helpful and my background was helpful and I wasn’t sure that I wanted to move out here.  I came out here for kind of a strange reason.  Was that my son, Tom, was in a serious car accident and we had to commute back and forth from Wyoming to San Jose for treatment and so I did make more money by moving out here, and it was also a lot easier commute from Columbia to San Jose than it was form Riverton, Wyoming to San Jose.  So that was another reason that lead to it. 

DYER: Well you background has been or living in rural America.  And certainly it was rural Tuolumne County that you came to.  What were those first impressions like when you moved into this community? 

KINDLE: It was interesting of having…coming from a school where the main sport was rodeo and you had every student in your class wore a big…well ever boy just about wore a great big cowboy hat to class and usually kept it on all the time because there wasn’t a place to park it too well.  And the discussion wasn’t about movie starts or anything like that. It was…discussion was always about rodeo in your class. And if you joked with another person they say, ‘okay, we’re going to put you in with the goat tying with girls,’ you know and things like that, so it was an altogether different approach on that. 

DYER: You wouldn’t use that here?

KINDLE: No.  They wouldn’t know what I’m talking about here. I noticed right away they were talking who was in what movie and movie stars like that—all-together different.  The rural area…everything seemed to be moving so much faster than it did in Wyoming.

DYER: Even in Tuolumne County?

KINDLE: Oh, that’s much faster.  And there’s a different style of life: If I were driving up the road, and I saw a guy working on his roof in Wyoming I would probably stop and just go on top of the roof and help him shingle for awhile.  Here they’d say, ‘what are you doing up here.  Mind your own business.’ But it’s still the frontier style of life when I lived in Wyoming and it was to help the other person.  So that was one of the big changes I noticed.  I did find that the students are just as nice here as they were back there—I didn’t see a big difference in that.  I have a little trouble adjusting to the way that instructors were getting student when I first came in here. I remember in the learning-skills center that first day that a student came in and said, ‘hey, can I borrow about three of your student?’ and I said, ‘sure.’  The music class was next door, and I thought that they would go and move the piano, and all they did was get them in there to sign them up to take a class in music so they would have enough students to keep the ADA up. ADA is a big factor here and at that time…so that to me seemed a little odd that they would do something like that. And not too honest either. 

DYER: You are being polite. 

KINDLE: I felt, not at the beginning, but as the years went by here that we became much more structured in this school.  In Wyoming I think that they were just a little bit more flexibility in courses than they are here right now.  I think vocational education in Wyoming…I felt that they had were more advanced in which they were behind in. A lot of those things…vocational education they worked on a program… let’s say you were auto tech.  If a student wasn’t real real sharp in class work he would get up work as far as changing oil, changing tires, and things like that—he’d get a certificate.  And if he wanted to go farther he’d go to the next category.  And you have a series of certificates that you can drop off at any time. Any time you could get a certificate of the person wanted to go up and try to get five certificates he could.  And so it was individualized to meet the student. 

DYER: and so the employer would know then whether this person is to change oil or to…

KINDLE:   Yeah, that’s right. If he wanted a job in the filing station he goes, ‘okay, I have a certificate here that shows that I can change their oil, I can do minor maintenances and so forth, but if there was another student that wanted to do that as well as go through as go through an alternator or a generator or anything like that, he could keep going up.  So it was more on  a block situation type of teaching. 

DYER: As opposed to the artificial quarters…

KINDLE: Well, I’ll take for example, here, there artificial, yes, like the semester and the quarter.  Like you can have a student drop off after he’s only been there for six weeks because he had received his certificate and…could go out and get the job.  And where when I came here I noticed that everybody had the same book, they all went the same speed, and they took the whole semester doing the same thing. 

DYER: well, for the benefit of those people who do not know the learning skills center, when you came with ideas as to what the Jim Kindle Learning Skills Center was going to be. Could you maybe in a capsule give us an idea of some of those objectives that you had and that the school has had too?

KINDLE: Well, when I came there was three classes being taught in the learning skills center.  There was a reading class, a study skills class, and a math class and it was a combination lecture and lab where they had to go on a lecture on reading, a lecture on math...it was not open entry.  They had to go into that class just like they did any other time.  So I wanted an open entry program where a student, if he went into a chemistry class or a history class where they were having problems could enroll in this class at any time and also the IP was there so they could continue on into the next semester. 

DYER: In progress…?

KINDLE: In progress so that they could keep going at any time and it also would allow the student to say, well, he went into a…or she went into a history class and found out after five weeks that they couldn’t make the grade.  There was no way they could do it. They didn’t want to take the failing grade and they could not drop out, that they learning skills center was a place that they could go still after five weeks and start. I wanted to have an open-entry program. I wanted to run it like a drug store where we had a series of medicine that would fit the situation.  That was the big thing and I would try to make each student feel that they are the most important person in the world.  That was one of my objectives and another objective that I had to my aids is that you must talk to every student in this class at least twice during the time that they are in here.—more if they need it; but at least twice. You know, either a pat on the shoulder, or saying, ‘how are you doing? You’re doing great.’  We try to develop a very positive approach in the learning skills center—individualization, positive approach, open-entry, and cooperative learning. 

DYER: did you see yourself as the doctor of the pharmacist in getting…

KINDLE: Yes, defiantly.  Yes, and I think that there was… I happened to know the person that had the learning skills center before I came here.  I met him in meeting conferences and we had two different philosophies.  He was, as far as I know, a really good teacher and everything else.  I have no negative although we were two different people.  I knew that.

DYER: Well could you take us through, as the doctor, how you would set up the program for an individual who would express an interest in your expertise?

KINDLE: Okay, if you were coming in there for the first time and I haven’t seen you before I would have asked you first what class in school gives you the most trouble? Is it reading, or is it writing, or is it math? And you would probably say ‘math.’ I’d say, ‘well when you say math, where is it?  Do you know your basics? Do you know if I said 9 times 7, could you tell me what that is?’  I’d have to think a little bit and say, ‘well, maybe we better review multiplication tables a little bit.’  The next person you might just find a series of questions and then in some cases you actually would give a little survey test.  They depend on the individual because sometimes you get a person that’s been out of school for fifteen years and they had a child they wanted to help with on their math and they say, ‘well we don’t know math and we feel very embarrassed, and we want to ... in math.’ Well I do not want to give that person a test in the beginning either because I have seen too many students, the older student especially, come back and you gave them a test and within…you never saw them again.  The test itself was too intimidating. And so sometimes you try to mix a counseling approach with a diagnostic approach. And I felt that was very important in the learning skills center. 

DYER: So that’s why your judgment had to intercede. 

KINDLE: Right. Yes. So not everyone was given a test.  Some people could take the test and it would give us pretty good picture. 

DYER: Now, a test is intimidating to many of the students?

KINDLE: All the students—especially in math.  I think the standardized testing in math are wrong. ….fight back on this.  I’ll tell you why it’s wrong. If I would take the twenty people that have been out of school for ten years, and I don’t care if they’d had algebra, calculus, and everything else,  I take them in there and give them a math test…about eighty percent of them will fail that test. And it’s a general math test. Because they don’t remember certain little things, but on the other hand if I had those same people for two week or one week and say, ‘now don’t you remember this is the one that you had to invert when you were doing division, or this is how you counted off in the decimals, and so forth, they could improve their grade, I would say, almost double of what they’ve got.  I have seen it happen in there. 

DYER: I don’t disagree with that.  I think it’s nothing to do with the intellect, it’s more the failure to apply it day-in and day-out.

KINDLE: testing has to be done…they are giving a lot of tests–and I think we’re basing too much on tests, especially in the math area.  People do read all of the time, we hope they read anyway, but I would be satisfied with tests when they come up with the only test that I really believe in and that is the test that measures motivation, attitude, determination and things like that because some of these older people after two weeks, they become the best student in your class and at the beginning they were the weakest.  I’d seen that in the learning skills center many times.  It’s not an oddity to have that happen.  It’s just…if you’re out of school for a few years it’s not easy to step in there and do the work.

DYER: but you are talking about very very subjective things, you know, n\motivation itself…and how can you scientifically assess…you look at the eyes and get a feeling.

KINDLE: I said it’s a subjective thing, but I also said that I will believe in tests when they can come up with these.

DYER: So you’re not very optimistic then about having the unlimited test. 

KINDLE:   You can measure, sometimes, attitudes, but it’s pretty hard as you say. But you have people in there they will never miss a day, just plain old guts.  You know what I’m talking…

DYER: ‘Tough it out.’

KINDLE: ‘Tough it out’ and they have not ever experienced failure, and they do not want ot experience it now so they’ll work three time as hard.  And even though that is very difficult for them in the beginning. So…

DYER: Let’s put you a little bit on the spot too then.  You have to, through the course of your years, had a sense of being able to determine success or failure on the part of the program. How do you determine when the learning skills center is succeeding?

KINDLE: When the students seem to be successful in other classes—that’s one thing. 

DYER: After they leave you?

KINDLE: Yes after they leave me or even while they are doing another class at the same time. Or of a student is taking a class and saying, ‘I’m having trouble doing history or writing a paper,’ and you say, ‘okay, here, let’s work on that and see what have you done here and what have you done there.’ And then the paper in handed in and they seem to get a little better grade, and you say that isn’t enough because I helped you.  Then maybe a month later they come in and say hey, I followed the same pattern you were telling me and that worked out fine.  So, you have to judge…and I think you judge attitude again then.  The student feels not as frustrated is another way that you can tell whether you are being successful.  We don’t win them all, that’s for sure.  And you wish you could, but you don’t. 

DYER: What about the different courses or programs that are offered through the learning skills center.  Could you just sort of go through a shopping list to give us an idea?

KINDLE: Well one thing I…another thing I wanted to do at the beginning was to make the learning skills center like it was not a place for just the remedial people. So courses I developed right away was that I thought could help all students, after I got here, were test taking techniques, speed reading, which can be useful to any type of student, a developmental reading course.  The difference between a developmental reading course and a regular reading course is a developmental reading course would be a student about average intelligence or better, but he just like to work on his reading or technical type of reading where the remedial would be a person who is having problems in reading and you want to bring it up.  We upgraded the math where we would hit algebra. Instead of just basic math we had…we’d review algebra for people who had had algebra years ago and could still come back.  One area that I felt that the school really suffered, and still suffers in learning skills center, was not having a general science course to a skills center, or somewhere in the curriculum because we had so many trouble…so many people came in to the skills center that had trouble in say chemistry, and biology, and any of the other physics and so on, is because in high school they were required to only take one science class.  And this once science class ninety percent of the tie was biology. And so these people are going into chemistry class because they needed it for nursing or they needed it for something else and no background in science.  Now I’ve talked to patria about that and she says maybe we’ll get one going next year.  And it’s always been in my report.  So, the courses…vocabulary was another one that we developed for all students. We had vocabulary that was by disciplines, like if a person was going into medical terminology; we had a set program that would work with the people that were going to work for Blue Cross or were going to a nursing program and things like that.  We had another one that was straight for science because the vocabulary is different for different disciplines.  Now, most people did want a general vocabulary type of thing where you hit the whole scope, which I think is the best way. But by having a vocabulary for different disciplines, like fire-science, you ended up not having a stigma saying this was only for remedial students. And that’s why one of my goals in the learning center was that as well. 

DYER: seems to make sense.  What about the English-as-a-second-language type students? You’ve worked with a lot of these in other countries.  How well have they done being able to adapt to the different environments?

KINDLE: When I first came here and for many years they did not have anything to offer to the foreign students that had English, or problems speaking…speaking problems. But most of the students that were foreign student are well disciplined.  They know how to study and they do work hard at it.  So in many cases I would take, sys, I had a couple of Japanese students.  I had a girl from Turkey and I had another one from Korea that all became math tutors.  And they has some English speaking problems, but they could explain math.  It helped them, and the students seemed to enjoy these people.  It was not a barrier at all, working back and forth.  It helped both sides of it.  So that was one way.  I think that the biggest thing that the foreign students needed was to be recognized that they were somebody and that they had to…it’s a reentry program for them.  The learning skills center was a reentry for them because it was individual attention and no one was better than anyone else.  They could talk to this person they could talk to that person and get help or help in the learning skills center if they could help that person in math…I remember one student saying to me one day when I came over to help a person in math, and Fong said, ‘you stay away from here.  You just mix me up and I’ll help this student.” And she did.  She understood that she could show techniques at teaching that math better than I could to the student. And it was very interesting.  Now, the humanity, that’s a different world. They have to get back on that.  I was quite surprised at how many foreign students actually have better knowledge of structured formal grammar than our own students.  You know, this is a noun and this is a verb, and these two work together; they have had that. 

DYER: I think that their training has been more formal.  They haven’t been diluted by the streets.

KINDLE: they can do the structure…

DYER: Well, when we think of Columbia College everyone like to feel that there is something special.  Do you see any hallmarks or specialties that we can look at with pride?

KINDLE: Yes, I think when I first came here, one thing that frightened me a little bit was the small number of full-time faculty members.  But after I got here for awhile I realized that they used aids to a big extent at this school so that made up for it—that made the small number of faculty member. But, every teacher here seemed to have a real strong interest for the students.  I thought that was our biggest asset.  They would really go out of their way to help students.  The door was always open for every student and I know some people though it may be a little Mickey Mouse like that what Dusty had on his door, that the door is always open to students.

DYER: Dr. Rhodes was the first president.  The door was always open for the students.

KINDLE: I think that’s a good philosophy really. It may have been, let’s not get the feather in the wrong place, I had it there, but I agreed with that. If too many times we say that we’re for the students and that really hasn’t worked.  That has really stood out—the individual help that a student can have. The interchanging of teachers ideas was another things.  I was close to the math department, but I could see a student go into algebra—college algebra—and now could say, ‘hey, that’s just not right, let’s take him over here to Bob McDonald who had beginning algebra.’  And they didn’t need that test to tell that.  The test has taken away from the closeness.  Actually where the faculty members could make the change, they discussed and became closer to that.  I though the registration that we had at the beginning was a great way.  I felt that we went backwards on registration.  I felt down there you had a counseling where the student knew who the teacher was.  In the cafeteria you could talk to that student and tell him what they were having.  And I thought theses was, indirectly, there was a counseling session going on all the time with the student s that you had.  And I think it was one day mass chaos, but it had a purpose.  I think that it was real good. 

DYER: Well, this is the day and age of computers. 

KINDLE: Ye, but that bothers me a little bit—the day and age of computers.  I think we have to…the computers can do anything just about when you program them, but sometimes the programming isn’t up to the situation.  And so instead of the student’s convenience coming first, it becomes computers convenience. 

DYER: Yes I tend to agree. 

KINDLE: and as we go on down, and so the way I look at it right now, I don’t mean to sound negative, but I think that the student is down to about third of fourth.  They say it is for the benefit of the students but… I was a student this year.  I was a student taking a course in computers.  And I was scared t death because I didn’t know anything about computers.  I knew how to turn them on and that was it.  So I immediately signed up for a computer course and signed up for credit-no-credit because I just didn’t want F even though it didn’t mean anything. I wasn’t looking for a job or anything like that.   Well, I took my first two tests.  I had received a B+ on the first one; I received an A on the second one and an A- on the third one…three tests.  And said, ‘hey, I’m not doing that bad in here really, I still don’t think I know computers.’ So I went over and said I don’t want credit-no-credit.  I want a grade now. And they said, sorry, you memo was up last week. And you see, for me it didn’t make any difference, credit-no-credit, buy I think with the student there has to be enough flexibility that if the student goes through the same thing that I did, and he wants to get that B or A, let him get that B or A.  I can’t see any harm, but that would mess up the computers, see?

DYER: It’s not the way it’s done.

KINDLE: so I think that sometimes…

DYER: Let me take you off the hook.  Your wife has been an important part of your activities here on the campus as well as in your home-related activities that have affected the learning skills center.  Why don’t you say something about Joan and what she has done.

KINDLE: well, Joan, when I first came here, I started a learning skills center, but I also started a GED program for student that did not have their high school diploma.  Well, Joan had worked in GED back in Central Wyoming College and so had I.  So when we started the GED program I felt, not just because she’s my wife, but because she was the best person with the background in knowing how to work with students of all ages that have had problems.  Because she had worked with non-readers and so on and so she was brought in to work on the GED program and we really helped a lot of students.  And I think where Joan helps the most is sometimes not here at the school.  But there every week, a couple of days a week, we have two or three students out to our house and sometimes four or five working on the GED.  Even since she isn’t teaching GED here, that has not stopped.  She has worked on the GED at home all this year and so she’s…she’d take some classes here and found the school very personal and her background is working with people who have has problems and sometimes we can sit down and discuss certain things—the grading and the learning-skills center.  She makes me see it in a different way, and sometimes she understands it my way, and so I think with the student that has problems and does not have faith in themselves, Joan is a master in it. There is always something good to be said about any type of paper that is handed in to her.  Like when they are writing their essays for the GED, it’s always, ‘hey this is really great. Boy, hey, you are really creative on this and that,’ and sometimes I didn’t see that good stuff.  It’s hard to see, but she always found good and then tries to work the r\problems into it.  She was a master at that. 

DYER: Well, the two of you have given a lot of time, not only on the campus but also at your home that you’ve mentioned, and I think that most of us on this campus realize that your teaching didn’t stop at the end of the college day, and that it continued on weekends and holidays and late in the evenings too.  Many a student had benefited from that personal approach. 

KINDLE: Well, I’d like to mirror that a little bit to you because you have adjusted to some of these ballplayers and really have steered them in ways that made them think of thing that they had never thought before, and when they came out to our place it made it easier for us too, and some of the books that you gave them or suggested and things like that, and the understanding that you have for them.  I think you have been very good there.

DYER: Well those of us who have been through sports as an important part of our education have a lot of compassion for students who need help and are only in school because of a basketball program or some other sport. 

KINDLE: Yes, and it’s too bad that we do not have a wider sense of knowledge than just basketball for some of these kids—basketball and girls, and eating probably.  There’s a few more things, I guess I shouldn’t say it that way, but I think we really have to motivate them that there are some great people out there that were basketball players too that have done other things as well. I know I was really excited in one of your classes one time when, I think, Kevin Lathan, was writing on Martin Luther King and he came out to my place and he said that he didn’t know much about him, but his grandma and grandpa knew a lot because his grandpa was a minister and his grandma…and they had marched with Martin Luther King.  And I said, ‘is your grandma still living?’ And he says, ‘yes’ that, ‘she lives in our place.’ And I said, ‘well, why don’t you talk to her?’ and he says, ‘talk to her?’ and I say, ‘yeah, call her up.’ So he called his grandma right from our house at night and asked her a few questions. She told him what kind of a man he was and so on, and he asked about four or five questions, and then he said, ‘here Mr. Kindle asked some questions.’ You know, he didn’t know what else to ask.  So here I am talking to this lady and then after that he said, you know, I didn’t realize how important it was to have people of my relation know this man. And it was, with another musician one time, the one that played the sting…I’m trying to think…SCOTT JOPLIN.  And we wrote a report in music about Scot Joplin and he didn’t know who Scott Joplin was and, you know, they start appreciating that we do have some great people like us.

DYER: Yeah, that’s when you begin to see the importance of people in history and what they are doing in the classroom. Well, Jim you are going to be retiring—you are retired right now a year ago.  We are a little bit tardy in getting around to you.  What retirement plans do you have in Tuolumne County?

KINDLE: Well, I taught one class this semester—geology of the national parks, which parks ins a hobby of mine and I’ve been to all of them.  And so we spend most of the time on geology, but we talk about the natural history of the area, the animal, and plants, and so forth, and I like to teach one course a year every semester, but next semester I’m going to teaching a course—interpretation  of our national park—the second semester too.  So it keeps me in contact with students, because I miss students.  But it also gives me a feeling of retirement that I don’t have to attend meeting or work in session groups and things like that.

DYER: Flow charts. Articulations.

KINDLE: Yes, so that part.  We have a…I will be leaving this Wednesday for Wyoming and Friday I’ll be in Yellowstone National Park and there I have grandchildren back in Wyoming so we try to get back there and spend some time at our cabin, which is eighty miles away from their home.  So that keeps us occupied in the summer.  Sometime there’s a workshop at Yellowstone that I can teach or participate in. 

DYER: So you see yourself back and forth between Tuolumne County…

KINDLE: Yes, for a while.  Yes.  I think eventually we will have to… I think we will probably move back.  Not to where our cabin is in Dubois Wyoming, but maintain the cabin as something our kids can have in the future, and we can use it if we want to, but we’d have to get closer to a larger town because our nearest doctor in Dubois is eighty miles away.  And so, as you get older, you have to think of those things.

DYER: It’s a factor.

KINDLE: It is a factor.  I don’t believe that we’ll be out of here for a year or two

DYER: So you don’t see yourself permanently moving to the cabin in Wyoming.

KINDLE: No. I don’t see that.

DYER: What about your interest in the national parks? We’ve talked about this and you told me that you’d been to almost all of the national parks –

KINDLE: Yes. Um, I think one that I have missed is Great Smokies, and but I think I’ve been to almost all the rest of them, also in Alaska and Canada, I mean Alaska and Hawaii, Hawaii Volcano and ??? in Hawaii, and in – uh, Benali in Alaska and Glacier Bay in Alaska, ???NAME OF HAWAIIAN NATIONAL PARK???, so we – that has really been a hobby of ours, as well as something I like to teach about, but we get the old National Geographic book many years ago, it’s like a birdwatching book, every time we go to a park, any time we check it off what we have seen there and what is interesting and so forth, and we have great feelings toward our national parks.

DYER: Well, that’s great, I’m sure you’ll be going back to some a third, fourth time.

KINDLE: Oh yeah, oh yeah. Some of them, many many many times. Some of them are like home, like Yellowstone, Teutons – I’ll probably see about five parks this summer.

DYER: That’s good. Sounds exciting. I’m looking forward to my retirement in a few weeks also, and we want to wish you well, and Joan and the family, and ask that you come back and reminisce with us from time to time – we always enjoyed you, Jim.

KINDLE: Well, I enjoyed being here too.

DYER: Thank you.

KINDLE: Thank you.

END OF TAPE

General Information:

Interviewer: Dyer, Richard L.

Interviewee: Kindle, Jim (Former Director of the Columbia College Learning Skills Center)

Name of Tape: Faculty Interviews in the History of Columbia Junior College (CC_hist_15_0)

When: ?

Transcriber: Ariella and Alden (September 2008)

Transcriber’s Note: n/a