Spencer Garrard Interview

Morgan Carraway: This is an interview by Morgan Carraway with Spencer Garrard, secondary education advisor at Columbus State University in Jordan Hall 118 on the twenty-fourth of October 2007. Okay, to start out with tell me where you were born, when you were born, and a little bit about your family.

Spencer Garrard: Okay, my name is Spencer Garrard. I was born in Columbus, Georgia at City Hospital, now known as the Medical Center on September 23, 1947. My parents were natives of Columbus. My family’s been here for about 150 plus years. I have pictures of my relatives here in 1865. Both of my great-great-grandfathers were in the photograph. They never knew their great-grandchildren would end up being married to each other, but– my father was in the construction business; my mother was a homemaker and volunteer. I went to public school. I went to St. Elmo School from kindergarten through eighth grade, you could do that then. I went off to school in Virginia, to Woodberry Forest School, thirty miles from Charlottesville, for four years. Then I went to Georgia Tech after that; did not like it, it did not like me. Came to Columbus College. I enrolled for January of 1967 and did not have a very good first quarter, but after that I started doing very well, because my option was going to Vietnam. In July of ’68 my parents were killed in a fire. Remained in Columbus, finished my Associate’s Degree in June of ’68 and finished my Bachelor’s in June of ’70. I was in the first four year class that Columbus College ever had. ’70 was the first time we had four year graduates. After that I went in the Navy for three years, a food service officer on USS San Diego, which is an AFS, AFS-6, a fleet storage ship. After the Navy I came back to Columbus and started a business with a friend of mine. We still actually have the business. Did not like it, did not like retail, did not like business. I tried to go to graduate business school, despised it. Then stayed in that business for a couple of years then decided I wanted to go back to graduate school, because I really wanted to teach and did practicum all over town in different levels; everything from AP English at Hardaway to training mentally retarded students at Rosemont. I did all sorts of practicum. Finished my Master’s in ’79 and started teaching in the fall of ’79, fifth and sixth grade language arts at Brookstone. Eventually I added eight grade Georgia history and world history, stayed there until ’91, tried to retire, ended up going back to graduate school for a few months, didn’t enjoy it at all, was being a house husband. And I was called by the person who was head of curriculum instruction at the time, Dr. Carolyn Cartledge, she asked me to come to work, come teach for her. So that’s how I got the job, and I’ve been here for sixteen years. So, does that–?

MC: It gives me a good overview. Did you– just to establish, did you have brothers or sisters?

SG: I have a brother who is six years older than I am, and a sister who is three years older than I am. I am sixty, my sister is sixty-three, my brother is sixty-six. My sister lives in Madison, Georgia, my brother lives here in Columbus.

MC: And now do you have children?

SG: I have two children. Sara is a freshman at Emory University, went to see the Dalai Lama yesterday, and Elizabeth is a sophomore at Columbus High School. I am married to Cindy Garrard, who is Minister of Programs at St. Luke United Methodist Church. She has been there for about twenty-five years, on staff at St. Luke.

MC: Well, you mentioned also that you’ve had family here in Columbus for a long time and can you tell me a little about their involvement in the city of Columbus–?

SG: Gracious. If you’ll look at Eta Worsley Blanchard’s Columbus on the Chattahoochee or Clayson Kyle’s Images or any of those other reference books my family goes back on the Garrard side to the Leonards, Van deVan Leonard, on the Spencer side back to Richard P. Spencer. Going back, family was here around 1828/29 around when Columbus was founded. Been involved in insurance, been involved in law, grandfather was a judge, my uncle was a judge, I’ve had cousins that have been involved in what became Fieldcrest, at the time it was Muscogee Manufacturing, that was on my mother’s side, that was on the Kyle end of it. My grandmother was Elizabeth Kyle Spencer, and her mother was Adelaide Swift Kyle whose father was George Parker Swift, the original one. So that tracks it back fairly far, but we have pictures of my great-great-grandfathers here in 1865, but they were second generation or third generation of the family here in Columbus.

MC: Oh, wow.

SG: The Spencers, most of them came from Easton, E-A-S-T-O-N, Maryland, came through Easton, Maryland because there are still Spencers buried up there that we know are related, back into the 18th Century. And some of my family probably had to come across Georgia, don’t know when they first got here, but they were in Georgia at least by the turn of the 19th Century.

MC: So you’ve got in your family the Garrards, the Swifts, the Kyles. Are you related to any other well-known local families here?

SG: Yeah. On the Garrard side, my grandmother was Sarah Gardiner, and her sister had a child named Abbott Turner, she married a Turner. So my daddy and the original Abbott Turner who married William Clark Bradley’s daughter was my daddy’s first cousin. So there’s a little bit of– it wasn’t intermarriage. The funniest one is my father’s niece married my mother’s brother.

MC: Gotta work that out in my head.

SG: That actually happened. My father’s niece was– my father’s sister was Louise Garrard Davis. She had one daughter, Sally. So Sally was my first cousin. She married my mother’s brother, who’s James Kyle Spencer. So Sally Garrard Davis marries James Kyle Spencer. So she was my first cousin, then became my aunt by marriage. He was my uncle, and they’ve been very involved in Columbus State, actually ended up giving them a house in Oxford, England.

MC: Oh, so that’s where that connection is.

SG: Oh. Okay. My uncle and my first cousin. It’s a little convoluted.

MC: You said you went to Georgia Tech. That was your first college experience (overlap).

SG: First college. Lasted five quarters. Did not like it. Not a good match. And Dean James Dull was kind to me and said, ‘Spencer, do you like this up here?’ I said, ‘No, sir.’ He said, ‘Fine. Find a place you want to go to school, and I will do anything in my power to get you into any school you desire to go to.’ And I said, ‘Thank you very much.’ But he was very kind, and we stayed in touch, we actually stayed in touch. And Dean Dull is actually one– I think he’s retired since then, but he was exactly the kind of person I needed at that point. I started Tech when I was seventeen, turning eighteen, and I had no business being in college, much less in Atlanta at that age. I just did typical freshman things and had a good time, fabulous time in Atlanta. I did not go to class very often.

MC: So what made you choose Columbus College?

SG: My family’s from here. I needed to be in school because of Vietnam. Vietnam was going well at that time. So this was Christmas of ’66. When I left Tech and I came over here and I asked Major Allen Twitchell, who was Director of Admissions, I said, ‘Please let me in.’ He said I had passed all the deadlines. I missed ‘em. And I said, ‘What’s necessary?’ and he told me and I said, ‘Fine. You will have those today.’ And I did everything from having a physical to having Dean Dull call him and send him my transcripts and it was done in less than an hour. So, he said, ‘You are serious aren’t you,’ and I said, ‘Absolutely. Yes, sir. I am serious.’ I wanted to be in school.

MC: So in reference to Vietnam, what effect– what did you see going on while you attended college?

SG: I was not active in an anti-war movement by any means. I had grown up in Columbus. My father was in the construction business. He had built a lot of buildings on Fort Benning, so I was out on post all the time. I was just out at Building 4, the Infantry Center, the hospital, a lot of the housing. My father was involved in Battle Park homes, that was all the stuff that he was involved with. So I was not anti-military at all. So as soon as I got a degree I went to OCS and got a commission, but in the Navy, because I had grown up in an Army town. You know, it’s like kids who grow up in a Navy town want to do something else, they don’t want to go into the Navy. Grew up in an Army town all my life, and did not want to go into the Army. So I went in the Navy.

MC: So while you were attending school did you see many pulled out to go overseas?

SG: Not while we were in school, but people who weren’t in school did go, were either drafted or chose to join the military. Only one of my really close friends was killed. His name was Bill Ross, and I had gone to St. Elmo with him. Very nice guy. His momma was our Cub Scout Troop leader, and I remember her very well, and I remember him very well. His name was up there on the Maya Lin sculpture up there in Washington, on the mall.

MC: Did you see the other side of it? Did you see much protesting?

SG: In Columbus, Georgia we didn’t see a lot of protesting, because we’re a military town. A lot of these kids were military dependents, a lot of the students were either military spouses or dependents, and you just don’t see a whole lot of– I mean, we’ve never seen a lot of homegrown opposition to the war. We did feel a lot of sympathy. There was a lot of community support when troops from Fort Benning were killed. Always a tremendous outpouring of community support for those families.

MC: Did you see much while you were in Atlanta?

SG: No, no. This was in ’65. It was going, but it wasn’t– I mean, in Atlanta you saw nothing.

MC: Alright, well, when you first arrived at Columbus College describe a little bit the student demographic. What kind of person–?

SG: Woah. We had two colleges. We had Columbus College day and we had Columbus College night. And basically the people who came to night school were a separate group; they were people who were already in business, and they came for those business courses that were at night primarily. Then we had the day students. I knew almost all of the day students. We had seven or eight hundred students that all knew each other. And we used to sit outside the Woodruff Gym on the deck. There’s a concrete deck out there. The student center was the basement of the Woodruff Gym. That was the student center, and we would go get lunch and sit out there at the picnic tables on that deck with our teachers, but we all knew each other, because it was very small, almost a community college.

MC: Now from interviewing other people they’ve mentioned the relationship between the students and the faculty–

SG: Oh, yeah, because it was so small. But I can remember with English, or Spanish, or History, or any of these people I’m talking about Nam Yearl Chai, Billy McGee, Phillip Battle, Carol Warton, Dot– I lost my– any of these teachers would come down there and eat with us. And on Friday nights Vander Gheynst would have– we would go down and buy coffee on Friday nights and down in the basement of the Student Center we’d have jam sessions. He and some of the students would play jazz and we’d have a little coffee house.

MC: Oh, neat.

SG: sometimes on Friday or Saturday nights. It was really fun. It was a very small school. There was the Howard building, and there were the science buildings up there, Tucker– I’m missing one– Tucker, Howard, there was the Administration Building, there was the– what’s the tall– I’m missing–

MC: Arnold, Illges.

SG: Arnold is the one I was– Arnold, we had Tucker, we had Howard, we had the Administration Building, and the gym. That was basically– oh, and the library. The library was where the Writing Center is now in Woodall Hall. That was it. That was the school.

MC: Okay, this is kind of a tough question. How were interracial relationships affected by desegregation in the south?

SG: Go ask Ray Lakes, go ask these guys, ‘cause we all got along. Most of us just got along famously because we were all– this is so funny– because we were all on students publications, we were on student government. There was a group of us, we were involved in just about everything, and we just made a point of getting along because we thought ‘this is important.’ We made a real effort to bridge those gaps. That’s why the mascot had to be changed.

MC: Okay, so what can you tell me about that? The mascot change.

SG: The mascot had been the Wee Rebel; the little, bitty, grey-suited Rebel that most people found very stereotypical and obnoxious, typical of an age long, long, long gone by. And it was a decision made with discussion of student government that the mascot should be changed, and as a result of that I, as chairman of the elections committee, put out a call to student artists and others to propose possible new mascots, and they drew paintings or pictures of their proposals, and these were all placed in the lobby of the new Student Center which had been built, and after a week or so the students were asked to vote on which ones they wanted. The one that was selected by the student ballot was the Cougar. So it became the Columbus College Cougars. And eventually, it took quite a while; it took a year or so for all vestiges of the Rebel to be gone, because it had been the Columbus College Rebels forever. Then it became the Columbus College Cougars.

MC: How do you think the student body reacted when it was initially proposed to change the mascot?

SG: Some objected, but no matter what happens somebody’s gonna object to it. Most students were in favor of it.