This recorded interview is a part of the History of Columbia Junior College being conducted by Richard L. Dyer, History Instructor at Columbia College. This interview is with Jerry Lyon, Business Instructor emeritus. It is being taped March 6, 1987 at the library at Columbia College. Jerry Lyon, Instructor of Business at Columbia College personal friend, colleague.

Richard: Jerry it’s a real joy for me to talk with. Why don’t we start at the beginning and tell us where you were brought up first, Jerry.

Jerry: I was born and brought up in south Texas. Actually, the country where I was brought up is predominantly Latin America and, although, my colleagues at Sonora High School still call me Tex.

Richard: Is that right?

Jerry: I don’t think that I have ever had the southern accent and some of the expressions that a real southerner has. I think that I was brought up in south Texas where really there were was many northern people that settled down there as there were southerners, and so…

Richard: They call them “Yankees” or something like that?

Jerry: Oh definitely.

Richard: Ok.

Jerry: And in our own house, we have almost…we had almost a life size picture of the last meeting of Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson.

Richard: (___)

Jerry: And my parents…I used to embarrass them when people came to see us by asking if they were for the south or for the north. I got over that as I grew up, but in fact, my brother’s name and my father’s name was Robert E. Lyons, so…

Richard: Oh my gosh.

Jerry: So I have a big southern background and yet where I was reared was much more cosmopolitan then what you think of central Texas or anything like that. I was close to Mexico.

Richard: Is the word, when we speak of it of the dialect, is that called Texanese or what do they refer to it? Is there any terminal…?

Jerry: I’ve never heard of it. I would say that most Texans, expect for east Texans, have a south-western accent that you’ll find also in parts of New Mexico. Now east Texas people sound like southerners. Like people from Mississippi and Alabama.

Richard: Because you don’t have that deep-south dialect.

Jerry: I never have and the people from the pan handle are more it goes up north of Oklahoma, even, they’re more like the mid-west, so we have a divergent…virgin accents in Texas, and I never heard of Texas…I’ve heard of Tex-Mex but that’s food.

Richard: Tex-Mex yeah, but I’ve heard of Texi-can talking about the people.

Jerry: Oh Texi-can.

Richard: And Texanese.

Jerry: Mmhmm I’ve never heard of Texanese, but they call it Texi-can in this book I was mentioning by James Missoner, they call them Texi-cans. Although, we’ve always called them Texans.

Richard: Yeah. Because there’s a new dictionary out on the Texanese of the Texas language. What prompted you to go into teaching as a career? Was there something else that you were thinking of or…?

Jerry: Yeah (___) my first degree is in Business, Bachelor of Business Administration, University of Texas, Austin and I planned to be in the business world actually. Immediately after World War II, my father was still in the service and so he asked me to go home to be with my mother and younger brother and sister until he got back. So I went down there and they were crying for teachers, and so I really backed into the door and had to end up going back to school and taking all kinds of education courses. Then I got my masters letter wrong and as I said, I backed into teaching; even though, both my parents were involved in teaching.

Richard: High school level?

Jerry: No my father was a Superintendent…I mean a Principal of an elementary school and then for many years he was County Superintendent before he became Tax Accessor Collector but my mother always taught in the elementary schools.

Richard: And you went to the University of Texas?

Jerry: In Austin.

Richard: In Austin. Have you been back to see if there’s been any changes?

Jerry: Well there have been a few changes like all of my nieces and nephews have gone to at least one campus or another there at the University of Texas and it’s very, very large now. It has 45,000 students. It has its own zip code, just the university itself in Austin.

Richard: Forty-five thousand? Of course it’s one of the richest of all the university’s isn’t it? It’s ahead of Yale and Harvard and Stanford?

Jerry: Yeah and Texas A&L which are enemies except when you dig down into the financial background, they get their money out of the same pot.

Richard: How about your professional career? Where did you start teaching?

Jerry: I started teaching right then in 1946 in Ember Texas, my hometown, and I taught in the 5^th and 6^th grades for three years, and then I decided that I really wasn’t trained for a teacher and I finally got away what you call “got away from home” and I worked for a couple years in Fort Worth Texas as an Executive Secretary for Williamson-Dickie Manufactory Company. That’s the manufactory company that puts out Dickie work clothes and so forth. And I worked directly for Mr. Williamson and had a very good position there, and after doing that a few years, I decided maybe teaching was for me and so I went back to college and got my masters and since that time, I’ve been into teaching.

Richard: Now did you go back to the classroom in Texas after you got your masters?

Jerry: I taught for five years at Avalon Christian University. That’s where I got my masters and they asked me to stay there when I was there and so I just stayed there for five years.

Richard: And then you came to California?

Jerry: Now I came to Sonora California from there in 1958.

Richard: How did you find Sonora or how did Sonora find you?

Jerry: Well I came to California; I have a close cousin out here who’s a doctor in San Jose, so I decided to make a move and I went to the University of California, Berkley. All state universities have the reciprocal agreement that they will place people from other state universities, and so I went there and it cost me five big dollars to put my name on the list and have 25 positions dumped on me practically at that time in 1958 which was in August believe it or not.

Richard: Which means you could almost choose your…

Jerry: …choose. In those days, you could pick and choose and I…they showed me all the jobs and I said I want a place close to the mountains, where it’s close to skiing, and has trees. I spent some time in Europe and I knew that that’s what I wanted. Most of Texas does not have that, and they picked up the telephone and they said, “We got the very spot for you, and call the superintendent at Sonora California,” who came in a car and got me.

Richard: You think they were anxious?

Jerry: Yeah and I chose to stay that very day when I looked at the little town, and they made some calls back to Texas about me and I just chose it at that moment to stay and I’ve never been sorry for it.

Richard: Yeah it’s really easy to be taken by the little town. I talked to many people and that regularly comes out of people who live in California and people who lived elsewhere and it just gives you a very good initial impression. So you taught in at Sonora High School?

Jerry: For 11 years.

Richard: For 11 years and what was your position there?

Jerry: I was a business teacher and also I was (___) girls at one time and I was head counselor there. The last six years I was there, I was spent in counseling and then started teaching here at Columbia at night while I was a counselor at Sonora High School. I started in the fall of ’69 I believe teaching at night. And I was teaching business courses.

Richard: Now was that along with another business teacher or where the department?

Jerry: Oh no, Dick Rogers was definitely here before I came.

Richard: That’s true.

Jerry: He was down at the wishing well campus and met Dick by teaching here at night. In fact, at that time had to do everything and he came out and kind of interviewed me; helped me get my equipment and all that sort of thing.

Richard: Ok while you were here then at Columbia, you taught regularly you taught evening courses?

Jerry: …courses…I taught typing and shorthand for the most part at night.

Richard: What kind of a difference have you seen through the years of those who had attended the evening course as opposed to those in the day? Is there a difference at all?

Jerry: Well yes, the first few years I was out here, I would have like 35 people in shorthand, now that’s a very specialized type of course, and they would hang on…I mean they were adults. And we don’t have that type of thing going on now; haven’t had for ten years or so that kind of night school. We still have a very healthy night school but in those days I thought our enrollments were outstanding. That was like in ’70-’71.

Richard: I remember that.

Jerry: Mmmhmm

Richard: Not unusual to have place the enrollment we have now…

Jerry: …we have now at night, and I really have not been able to analyze that completely.

Richard: What about the dropout rate? Was it a problem then?

Jerry: Oh yes. I considered the dropout rate…it’s a little better now since we have this new law about having to pay to drop out of a class and I think that has improved it some and having make a minimal payment of tuition. To me, that has helped.

Richard: So then you share…initially you shared the teaching with Dick Rogers?

Jerry: Dick Rogers. I came on in 1971 full-time here and it was Dick and I that were here.

Richard: And what about the summer schedule? Did you do the same thing in the summer?

Jerry: I did not usually teach here in the summer. Dick, I think, did all of that. I started teaching here in the summer soon after I taught full-time.

Richard: What about other people? Did they have other part-timers that they were using then?

Jerry: Soon after I came here, believe it or not, we started using Candice Williamson part-time.

Richard: She had to be rather fresh out of school?

Jerry: No. Well she…she had her masters and she had taught at a very small high school in northern California and then taught at a junior high school in southern California. Then they…her husband was transferred here and she just walked in one day and said, “I’d like to teach part-time for you. I have a bachelor and master in business,” and told us and so we started using her soon after I came. She was here on part-time bases for about three years.

Richard: And she’s the senior member of…

Jerry: Yeah of the staff, mmmhmm.

Richard: Quite something. And Jerry, were you involved in any short courses or specialty courses for a member of the community?

Jerry: I don’t believe we were. Our courses were more the usual type of offering where we would be offering a typing class or bookkeeping class or business math class, and we usually don’t offer those on a very short term.

Richard: What about the open lab? What prompted that?

Jerry: Well we soon realized…I realized the first year I got here that when you have a say an intermediate typing class on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at ten o’ clock for college students there’s going to be many, many reasons why they can’t get there on a certain day, especially since we have so many returning mothers and so Dick and I talked about it. In other words, you couldn’t stand up in front of a class and teach a typing class the way you do in high school. Where you present a lesson on centering on one day because a third of them would be gone that day and you’d have to do it all over again and so just at that time there was one high school…one junior college, More Park, down south that was involved in open lab type things, so we looked at that. Dick went down there I think and I looked at some others and we opened ours here in the fall of ’73. We were one of the…

Richard: That’s early.

Jerry: We were one of the first ones to open on and we still use it and it’s…for certain courses its very successful.

Richard: For those of us who have given done that, it almost seems like it could be described as a zoo at times. Is that…

Jerry: Not really.

Richards: It’s not?

Jerry: It would…we tried that and I taught one year at Lincoln High School in Stockton. In my Sonora High School career, I went down to Lincoln one year and we made…we had an open…that’s where I learned about it. They were the first school out of Stanford to try that. They were under a Stanford program, and I saw its possibilities then, but for many high school students, it didn’t work at all. They have to have something more with a little more laid out. But the…when you’re with adults, they really want to learn something. They have their own motivation. That’s its one problem, open lab, motivation.

Richard: And if you don’t have, you’re probably going to have that student drop out.

Jerry: …drop out, mmmhmm.

Richard: When you think back in the many courses you taught, can you list some of the ones you consider your favorite courses here at Columbia?

Jerry: Well I’ve always…my favorite used to be shorthand, but about seven or eight years ago I gave that away to Candice and she has now given it away to Janet who will probably give it away to somebody else if we had somebody else, but the importance of shorthand has changed and I had changed my system of teaching shorthand four times in my teaching career and I said, “I have made my last change. I’m not learning a new…I’m not changing all the things I know in my head.”

Richard: Because that’s a new…

Jerry: They put out a new addition and changed some of the shorthand theme. It was for the most part the same but then about four or five years they would change it and you would have to teach it a little bit differently. It’s like…that’s like changing the English language.

Richard: I know. I know it’s not like just revising a little later.

Jerry: And so that was my favorite actually when I first started teaching here, but I really…I’m known as the expert, although, I don’t consider myself that for office machines they still come to me and ask me certain questions about office machines and enjoy…I think I enjoy teaching Business Math and Office Machines better than any other courses.

Richard: And you mentioned…

Jerry: I do want to mention though that when I first came here it was only Dick Rogers and Jerry Lyon here, that I was teaching, the first couple of years, 18 preparations because of the open lab situation. You got seven or eight things going on in the same…and that was very hard on me at that time. We would go home…I would go home in the evening completely exhausted. We had so many preparations, so much grading.

Richard: That’s why I referred to it as a “zoo.”

Jerry: Yeah.

Richard: Because it’s not as if you walk in a presenting your lecture and you pick up the next day but…

Jerry: You have to be able to balance five or six things going on at one time.

Richard: Yeah and you have to balance that in your head while you’re thinking of something else and that takes a special type person. I guess you’re that person, Jerry.

Jerry: Well I think we’ve all adjusted to it rather well. Our Dick, who of course, retired before I did, was an interesting teacher. He is so loving to his students that he would walk up and down the aisles and he has a loud voice, and he would actually scare them as he was coming, you know, in an open lab situation where some of them were working on shorthand, not shorthand, unless they were in there typing up their notes. They weren’t working shorthand; typing or they were working on machines or transcription. Dick would actually change their pattern of thought.

Richard: I know what you mean. He must be 6’3 or so and maybe 220 pounds with a voice that sounds like a volcano. Well you mentioned you were considered to be the shorthand expert. Have you been hired on as a consultant?

Jerry: No not shorthand.

Richard: Or Business Machines?

Jerry: Business Machines. Not really and if you go down to MJC or Delta College or something, I’m sure there are people much more expert than I, but I just happen to like mathematical things and so that’s why I like business math and then the machine comes naturally with that because you’re dealing with math all the time.

Richard: Have you worked with people in the county or other schools in setting up their programs?

Jerry: NO but I set up the program at Sonora High School a very similar program where we were about doing different machines. In other words, you might have five or six different tax machines in a classroom and you have to fix a schedule so the students are rotating through them, and that’s really an open lab when you get down to it.

Richard: Well since 1971, you’ve seen quite a few things happen at Columbia. Are there students that you remember or would like to forget that you could reminisce about?

Jerry: I hadn’t thought through that about students. I tend to think of some in high school more than junior college. A lot of things have happened since I came here. For instance, the first couple of years I taught here at night or the first year the lights were not even complete coming into the parking lot, and very many people were afraid to come in and out and Dick and I were very careful to provide flashlights in every classroom that we worked in, so when the lights went out for some reason we were having a lot of electrical problems. I think maybe all of this area Columbia was…and it was scary to be there at a classroom at night with no…absolutely dark suddenly and so we kept lights like flashlights and I always was careful to have one with me when I came in so I’d have it to go back out to the car and since then, I’ve heard of many people who are fearful to come out here at night and I always say, “Well, maybe someday that’ll be a problem, but I never had an incident that scared me.” And even though the first year until our lighting out there was complete, I was carrying a flashlight.

Richard: I’ve heard the same thing, Jerry, that even now it’s dark, but it is lighted, but some people have been concerned, especially older people about that long walk , but it’s amazing though we’ve had so few, if any, real serious incidents.

Jerry: Speaking of that long walk, we used to have a joke. Maybe they still have it here, that there wasn’t any reason to take P.E. just walking in and out took care of that.

Richard: That’s true.

Jerry: You could walk in and out while you were very healthy.

Richard: Well I know you have some memorable events you and I can both describe a deer story. Why don’t you describe some of these memorable events or especially your deer story and I’ll save mine.

Jerry: Well at times, we have a…of course our buildings are air conditioned here but I’ve always said about…we’re on our own air conditioner for the business building. We have a separate one, and I’ve always said it was too cold in the summer and you had to bring a sweater in the summer and it was too hot in the winter and you had to have something you had to take off, so at times, it has been so warm (___) or some late spring night we kept our doors open to the classrooms and I had looked up in my typing class and seen a little deer going down the road of typewriters. He walked in and I kept saying to him, “Now you cannot take typing you’ve got to leave.” Course all the students were all interested in that, but I don’t think you’d see that anymore. I think either they fed them to death or something; they’re not like that. They’re not as close.

Richard: The current catalog shows one in the, I think, one of the typing rooms.

Jerry: Does it?

Richard: It shows under a desk. It looks like…I don’t know whether it’s a deer or a fawn but it’s just about that age but I was walking with a student just yesterday and she got all excited about a squirrel. To me the squirrels are all around, but we have had that got to enjoy the scenery and the wildlife around here. How about other events that you can think of other than the lights going out or…?

Jerry: Well some of these are still going on, but I have not been a part of it the last few years but I’ve always felt that our May Day celebration was an interesting thing, especially in its early days. I felt like maybe it’s lost some of its enthusiasm or something, but we used to have all kinds of races on the lake and the faculty would be in one boat which would go under usually and the students and I…you ought to bring that up, that there’s always been a close relationship between students and faculty here at this campus and I think even though the more recent things in the newspaper showing students that are going here now, they’re saying the same thing.

Richard: Right.

Jerry: But there’s a very close relationship between student…

END OF TAPE

General Information:

· Interviewer:  Dyer, Richard

· Interviewee: Lyons, Jerry

· Name of Tape: ?

· When: March 6, 1987

· Transcriber: Dee-Ann Horn

· Transcribed: 07/09/2017