Elmo Derico Oral History, 1 of 2

Dublin Core

Title

Elmo Derico Oral History, 1 of 2

Description

Elmo Derico Oral History, 1 of 2

Creator

Churchill County Museum Association

Publisher

Churchill County Museum Association

Date

November 17, 1995

Relation

Part 1 of a two-part interview. Second part is here.

Format

Analog Cassette Tape, Txt File, MP3 Audio

Language

English

Oral History Item Type Metadata

Original Format

Audio Casette

Duration

2:26:43

Transcription

Churchill County Oral History Project

an interview with

ELMO DERICCO

Fallon, Nevada

conducted by

Marion LaVoy

November 17, 1995

This interview was transcribed by Glenda Price; edited by Norine Arciniega; final by Pat Boden; index by Gracie Viera; supervised by Myrl Nygren, Director of Oral History Project, Churchill County Museum.

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this interview are those of the interviewer and interviewee and do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of Churchill County Museum or any of its employees.

PREFACE

Churchill County Superintendent of Schools, dedicated history teacher, inspirational coach, community leader, loving husband, doting father and grandfather .  Elmo Dericco is a man blessed with a delightful sense of humor, a contagious laugh and a heart filled with love for mankind.

His organizational abilities are legendary as Superintendent of Schools he was responsible for obtaining and maintaining excellent learning facilities for the youth of Churchill County; in his early years as a teacher he volunteered hours of overtime doing whatever was necessary as well as setting up "markers" for athletic field bases, etc. so the students could compete with local and visiting teams.

During his years with the school system he was so dedicated that he would awaken at three in the morning, ponder physical plant problems at a particular school, arise, drive or walk to that school and work on the problem until it was solved, so everything would be in readiness when faculty and students arrived! A grateful school board named the gymnasium facility in his honor, the University of Nevada, Reno has honored him and the local community college is presenting him with an honorary degree!

Now that he has "retired" --he is noted for the hours of volunteer time that he spends on advisory boards, helping paint, clean, cook, whatever is required at the Churchill County Museum, Senior Center, St. Patrick's Catholic Church, or at the home of anyone who is in need of help. He is the original "Mr. Do-Good."

This oral history gives an accurate account of the growth of the school system in Churchill County as well as an insight into the problems currently facing teachers and administrators.

Interview with Elmo Dericco

LaVOY:  This is Marian Hennen LaVoy of the Churchill County Museum Oral History Project interviewing Elmo Dericco at my home 4325 Schurz Highway, Fallon. The date is November 17, 1995. Good morning, Elmo.

DERICCO: Good morning.

LaVOY:  How are you?

DERICCO: Oh, very good.

LaVOY:  Great. Great. Elmo, will you tell me, please, where you were born and when?

DERICCO: I was born in Sparks, Nevada, on October 10, 1927.

LaVOY:  Now, I'd like to ask you something about your parents. What was your father's name?

DERICCO: My father's name was Aladino Dericco. He went by "John" over here, also.

LaVOY:  Where was his place of birth?

DERICCO: It was in Italy. I think in Lucca. I'm not sure of that.

LaVOY:  How did he happen to come to this country?

DERICCO: Oh, he just happened to come over here. He wanted to leave Italy and came over here when he was sixteen years of age.

LaVOY:  How did he come, do you know?

DERICCO: He came aboard the boat.

LaVOY:  Came to New York City?

DERICCO: Um-hum, and then went through Ellis Island and all that.

LaVOY:  Did he ever mention to you about his reaction when he first saw the Statue of Liberty?

DERICCO: No, he never did. Of course, my dad, spoke broken English, and, actually, he died when I was only about a teenager in high school, so we didn't get into any long conversations. He was forty-five years of age when he passed away.

LaVOY:  But he came to this country basically to improve his lot in life.

DERICCO: Yes, he did.

LaVOY:  Approximately, when was that when he came?

DERICCO: Gosh, I can't say. I don't have any record of it.

LaVOY:  All right. Well, then what was your mother's name?

DERICCO: My mother's name was Lena [Mary] Guisti. She was the Guisti family in Lovelock, and they're related to the Quilicis, and she came over here when she was a year old with her mother and father. She was born in Italy, also.

LaVOY:  What part?

DERICCO: In the Lucca area.

LaVOY:  Where did she live when they first came over here?

DERICCO: The first I knew about, they lived in Lovelock.

LaVOY:  The Guisti family?

DERICCO: The Guisti family, yes.

LaVOY:  But you don't why they came to Lovelock?

DERICCO: No. My grandfather was more or less a wine connoisseur in Italy. He had a vineyard in Italy, and I don't know exactly why they came over here, but he left everything there and came over to America, and then he was involved in, over in Lovelock, hauling gravel and manure and things of that nature, and, also, they would round up mustangs and sell them at that early time.

LaVOY:  Oh! Did he have horses of his own?

DERICCO: Yes, he had the horses that pulled the wagons that went to the gravel pits and to haul the fertilizer to the different areas that wanted it.

LaVOY:  Now, where were the gravel pits, approximately, in Lovelock?

DERICCO: They're about, oh, I'd say, about a mile and a half, two miles west of Lovelock.

LaVOY:  How long did he live?

DERICCO: He lived quite a few years. My grandfather did. I'd say he was around seventy-some years old before he died.

LaVOY: I see. Well, then how did your parents happen to meet?

DERICCO: Well, my dad met my mother through the families getting together, on different occasions, and they were married.

LaVOY: Where were they married?

 

DERICCO: I think they were married in Sparks, and they lived in Sparks for awhile and then later moved to Lovelock.

LaVOY: When were they married?

DERICCO: Oh, I think in the early 1920s they were married. 1921, 1922, something like that.

LaVOY: And they lived in Sparks.

DERICCO: They lived in Sparks for a few years, and then he moved to Lovelock.

LaVOY: Then he moved back to Lovelock. What was he doing in Sparks? Do you have any idea?

DERICCO: I don't know. He was with Mr. Benetti who was a bar man, and I assume that he worked in the bar as a bartender, stuff like that.

LaVOY: In other words he sort of had the same ability as a connoisseur as your grandfather did.

DERICCO: Right.

LaVOY: Good. What prompted them to move back to Lovelock?

DERICCO: I don't know. Whether the opportunity was there, or because my mother's family was there in Lovelock. I can't say exactly, but he moved to Lovelock later on and purchased a bar and restaurant.

LaVOY: And what was the name of the bar and restaurant?

DERICCO:The bar was called the State Tavern Bar, and then he added the restaurant to the rear of it later on in years.

LaVOY:  Where was the State Tavern Bar in Lovelock? Approximately.

DERICCO: It was right next to the railroad tracks, and they had a series of bars along there. I'd say it was about three buildings up from the Big Meadow Hotel which was one of the centerpieces of Lovelock at that time.

LaVOY:  Now, I assume that you were just a tiny, tiny little boy when they moved back to Lovelock.

DERICCO: Yes. I was about a year old when they moved.

LaVOY:  Tell me something about your growing up in Lovelock. What are some of your memories of Lovelock as a little boy?

DERICCO: (laughing) Well, I attended the local schools there. The Lovelock Elementary School and then went to Pershing County High School and graduated in 1946.

LaVOY:  All right now, regressing a little bit, what were the names of some of your first teachers at the Lovelock schools?

DERICCO: Oh, my first-grade teacher was Mrs. Ferguson, my second was Mrs. D'Alessandro, my third was Mrs. Myers, my fourth was Mrs. Norris, and my fifth was Mrs. Kerr. Sixth was Mrs. Battcher, and then in the seventh and eighth we had a combination of Mrs. Schooley and Mrs. Roseberry.

LaVOY:  Well, you have a wonderful memory!    (laughing)

DERICCO: (laughing)

LaVOY:  I think that is just great. What were some of the chores that you had as a little boy in Lovelock?

DERICCO: Well, naturally, we had the chores around the house.

LaVOY:  Like what?

DERICCO: Going out and getting the wood and coal and going uptown for my mother to get groceries, and then I'd help my father once in awhile at the State Tavern Bar. Especially when he was building the restaurant we used to go out into the Lone Mountain area and get the chalk. They had chalk pits out there, and we used to go out there and get loads of chalk to fill in between the walls for the freezer. Now that particular place is one of the big businesses in Lovelock that's making a lot of money. (laughing) If I'd of known back at that time it was that important, my dad could have taken over that type of business. But, anyway, I helped him at the State Tavern doing odds and ends and things.

LaVOY: Well, now, was it pumice stone or something like that?

 

DERICCO: It's not diatomaceous earth. Is it diatomaceous earth? I don't know.

LaVOY: Well, I don't know.

DERICCO: It's for insulation. I guess your wallboards are made of the same thing now.

LaVOY: Like Eagle Pitcher Mine.

DERICCO: Yeah, Eagle Pitcher. That's what they get it for now for these wallboards.

LaVOY: And you just went out and got it.

DERICCO: We went out in the pits and just helped my dad load the pickup up, and we'd bring it back and put it between the walls of the refrigeration area.

LaVOY: I'm amazed that you haven't developed some sort of a lung infection inhaling all of that without the masks like they have to use now.

DERICCO: (laughing) We never thought about that.

LaVOY: Well, now getting back to your helping your dad do that, is that when you got your interest in building things?

DERICCO: I was never much of a builder, but I enjoyed going out and helping him and working. Later on, of course, when I was still young, I took a job during the summer for Mr. and Mrs. Harry Olivi who had a motel. I used to work there every morning gathering the sheets, emptying the wastepaper baskets. I made fifty cents a week, and I would make enough money for my schooling to spend my money for school and things like that during the year. I did that for about two or three years.

LaVOY: This is probably when you were in high school.

DERICCO: No, that's when I was in the elementary school I did that.

LaVOY:Oh. Where was their motel in Lovelock?

DERICCO: It's where the jail is located at the present time. They also had a gas station, and I would help them at the gas station also. So, they had a combination gas station and motel which I kind of tinkered around.

LaVOY: Well, they had a good worker for fifty cents a week. (laughing) You told me a story one time that I still laugh when I think about it about your slapping your father and then running. Remember that?

DERICCO: Oh, yes. As far as discipline was concerned, of course, my mother did most of it. My dad was always working at the Tavern, but, anyway, one day I did get in trouble with my father. He was home at the time. I did something--I don't know--and he called me, and I knew of course he was going to either spank me or what, so I took out the front door. I ran around the front of this gate of this opposite house, and my dad came to the front door of the porch, and he told me to come back here or else I'd regret it. And, of course, at that time, I was about in the eighth grade and I was on a track team at the elementary school, and I considered myself a pretty fast runner. My dad told me, "Come on back here, or else you're going to regret if you don't obey me." Well, I didn't, and he took out after me. I ran around the back of the other house, down the alley, and by the time I got just about opposite our house in the alley, I looked around and here was my dad with his hand on my shoulder. He caught me and, to say the least, I wish I had never run away. (laughing) He corrected me, and that's the only time he really spanked me or corrected me. As I say, after that anytime he called I went over to him and talked to him. (laughing)

LaVOY: Well, what did your mother tell you about your father in Italy and his running?

DERICCO: Well, I was amazed at his speed, and I was telling my mother what had happened. She said, "Well,"--she called me Nan--, "he was a famous track runner in Italy. That's why he caught you." (laughing)

LaVOY: (laughing) You picked the wrong time to run. There was something that I'm just curious about. How did Prohibition affect your father's bar?

DERICCO: I wouldn't know because I think his bar and restaurant was after the Prohibition era because they served drinks and everything at that time in the bar.

 

LaVOY:  And there was no problem with the bar?

DERICCO: No, he didn't have any problem.

LaVOY:  Well, now tell me about your years in high school.

DERICCO: Oh, I was very small when I went into high school. I was only about four foot eleven and weighed about a hundred and five pounds. I loved sports, and, of course, I went out for football, basketball, and then track later on. I enjoyed my high school years. I was student body president for two semesters during my senior year. I really enjoyed it. I had a lot of fun in high school. Enjoyed the people. We were a small high school. We had no more than maybe seventy-five students at the time. Our class graduated with nineteen members. We did lose about four or five to the [Second World] War at that time. When the War broke out, about four or five of our members went into the service. Some of them came back later on and graduated from high school when the War was over.

LaVOY:  Well, now did you do any dating during high school?

DERICCO: Oh, yeah. I dated, and I dated Donna [R. McGowan] once in awhile and other girls, also. One thing we had at that time, every Saturday night these two adults, Mrs. Sullivan and Mrs. [Anita] Preston, would play for us at the Campfire Hut. They would play the piano, and we'd have a dance every Saturday night, and that was the thing we looked for each weekend to go to this type of a dance. That was one of the big things of our life at that time.

LaVOY:  Did you usually take a date, or did you go alone?

DERICCO: No, we usually went single, and maybe we'd end up going home with a date, but, at that time, we just more or less went single. But, when we had, like our junior prom and senior banquet at the high school and Sadie Hawkins dances, we'd get dates for that, and we'd take different girls to these functions.

LaVOY:  Well, now you mentioned Mrs. Preston. I surmise that's Anita Preston?

DERICCO: Right.                She's still alive.

LaVOY:  She's still playing the piano, too.

DERICCO: Yes, when we have our alumni reunion every year, she plays Good 07d School Days every year for us, and we do our march and our singing of Old School Days.

LaVOY:  She must be almost ninety years old now.

DERICCO: Yeah, she's up in years now.

LaVOY: Well, small-town life, I think, is wonderful.

DERICCO: Oh, I wouldn't trade it for anything.

LaVOY: Now, people that have not lived it just do not realize how great it was. What were some of the stores that were in Lovelock at that time?

DERICCO: We had the Safeway store which I remember quite well, and, of course, I used to remember our bakery where we would buy a loaf of round bread, French bread. Outstanding. I never have tasted bread like that since, but it was ten cents a loaf, and then, of course, we had the bars and things like that. We had a five-and-dime store. We had a clothing store which was Ayoob's at the time. We had two drugstores there. One which I worked at as a clerk. We had the Rexall Pharmacy, and we also had Marcusi's Drug which I worked for about a year during my high school days.

LaVOY: As a clerk in a drugstore, I imagine that you had people coming in asking you for cures.

DERICCO: Well, no, not so much. Behind the fountain is where I worked. I was a soda jerk.

LaVOY: Oh, I bet they lost money on you, Elmo.

DERICCO: (laughing) Well, I was told by the owners, they said, "Well, when you come in, now, get your fill of ice cream and cokes and stuff because after awhile you won't want to touch them." It's true when you first go in there, you start eating a lot of ice cream and drink a lot of cokes, but after awhile serving it every day you kind of lean away from it, and it's not as appetizing as it was before. But, once in awhile, I'd wait on people in the other section of the store for different items that they needed there.

LaVOY: Well, I hope you got more than fifty cents a week.

DERICCO: Yeah, I did. I think I made a dollar and a half an hour or something like that at that time. I'm not sure. I couldn't have made a dollar and a half 'cause they were working out in the hay field at that time for a dollar a day and two dollars a day, so maybe I was only making about fifty to seventy-five cents an hour. (laughing) I worked about three hours on the weekends.

LaVOY:  Well, that's wonderful. Now, when you graduated from high school, tell me about your graduation evening.

DERICCO: Of course, graduation in a small high school is something. Everyone goes at that time, of course, and they still do; I went back and gave a talk at the high school a few years back, and all the people came out to graduation. It's at that time that the different organizations make their presentation of scholarships. Of course, we had the people in our class who gave the oral history, and the prophecy was given at that time. What they said we were going to do in the future.

LaVOY:  What was your prophecy?

DERICCO: What was I going to be? I don't know. I'd have to look that one up again. I should have brought my yearbook. Then the different organizations would present the scholarships to the students, and they still do that in Lovelock, and I think it's a touch that is something for a graduation when each organization gets up there and reads the name of the individual and the scholarship that's presented to them. I remember when I graduated that night, I was really worried because I was wondering what the heck I was going to do after this. I thought, "Man, here is the end of my career," I felt. "What am I going to do now? How am I going to live?" All these thoughts ran through my mind as I sat there.

LaVOY:  What scholarships did you get?

DERICCO: Well, I was up for that Harold's Club scholarship. I was runner-up for that. This Marjorie Kelly was awarded the scholarship, and she took it. Then she dropped out of school about a month after she had started. They didn't give it to the alternate at that time. I was second in the line as far as the choice was concerned, so that scholarship fell by the wayside. I did get a scholarship to Adams State College in Alamosa, Colorado, to play football. About four or five of us did. I think it was mainly because of our coach who took a job over there as assistant coach.

LaVOY:  What was his name?

DERICCO: Kirk Herrick. So, we went to Alamosa for a quarter to Adams State College. Alamosa, believe it or not, is the same as Fallon. It's a farming community, and outside the town they have a big sand hill the same as the Fallon area and everything else, so we felt right at home at Alamosa and Adams State College.

LaVOY: Who were the fellows that went with you?

DERICCO: They were all people in my class. John Laca, John McEachern, Jerry Munk went and Al Rodrigues. They were all members of our class. Jerry Munk was in the class ahead of us, and so we all went to Alamosa.

LaVOY: And you lasted there for?

DERICCO: I went a quarter, and the reason I came back--we quit at Christmas time--because all my buddies quit. (laughing) They said they didn't want to stay there. They wanted to come home. I really liked it there because I'd made the basketball team, too, and I know I could have played basketball there for four years there as well as football. So we headed back to Lovelock.

LaVOY: I bet the coach could have killed you all.

DERICCO: Yes, he could have. He was really disappointed that we didn't stay. In fact, that year we won the state championship up there. 'Course not because of us, but because of the nucleus of players that we had that year we won that championship.

LaVOY: By that time you were taller than four feet eleven

DERICCO: Yeah. When I graduated from high school, I was about 175 pounds, and I'd say I was about five five, five six, somewhere in there.

LaVOY: That just sounds wonderful. Tell me, when you came back, how did your parents react to your coming home?

 

DERICCO: Well, my father was already passed away when I was a junior in high school.

LaVOY: Now, we'll regress a little bit. What did he pass away from?

DERICCO: He had a heart failure.

LaVOY: At the restaurant or in the home?

DERICCO: No. I was at football practice that afternoon after school, and he was home working in the yard, and he was lifting a tie. He was making a fence around the garden, and he had this--they called it a coronary thrombosis at that time. It was a real bad one, and the thing that amazed me, at that time, of course, we did have a hospital, but the doctor chose to let him stay in the house, and he told my mother, he said, "Just watch him." They said the critical point is ten days. On the tenth day about 5:30 in the morning, my mother gave him his pill and everything, and right after that he just took a couple of last gasps and had another attack and passed away.

LaVOY: Now, this was on November 2, wasn't it?

DERICCO: On All Soul's Day in 1944.

LaVOY: And you graduated from high school in 1946. Well, that was a terrible shock to you. Did your mother take over the restaurant and bar?

DERICCO: Yes. My uncle was working in there at the time.

LaVOY: What was his name?

DERICCO: Bruno Guisti, and together they kept the bar open. Of course, later on she did lease it to him, and then she went to work first at the five-and-dime called Ouiji's, and she worked there for awhile. Then they asked her to work at the Rexall pharmacy as a clerk, and she went to work there. She worked there until she remarried and left Lovelock.

LaVOY: Oh! About how long was that?

DERICCO: Oh, gosh, well, she probably moved up there late 1950's, 1960's.

LaVOY: Did she marry a gentleman that your family knew?

DERICCO: Well, he was from Dayton, Nevada, and he worked in a bar also and knew my uncle real well, and my mother got to know him, too.

LaVOY: What was his name?

DERICCO: Gilbert Martini.

LaVOY: So, then she married him in Lovelock?

DERICCO: They were married here in Fallon. In fact we were living here, and they came over here, and they were married in Fallon. Then they went back to Lovelock, and then they moved to Carson [City, Nevada]. He bought a bar in Carson City and operated that for many years.

LaVOY:  Oh. Well, now, that's very interesting. And you like him?

DERICCO: Oh, yeah. Uh-huh. Very nice.

LaVOY:  You very seldom hearing of a son being that fond of a stepfather. That's very, very nice. All right. Let's  get back to your coming home. Here you are. You've turned down your scholarship, and you're back home. What happened?

DERICCO: Well, I wanted to go to work, so I got a job on the dragline. I was an oiler on one of the draglines for the Pershing County Water District, and I did that for quite awhile.

LaVOY:  What's "quite awhile"?

DERICCO: Well, for a year. No, not quite a year, I guess. I came back at Christmas. I went to work for the

dragline. 'Course I was making two dollars an hour then. Gee, that was a lot of money to me.

LaVOY:  Explain a dragline to me.

DERICCO: Well, a dragline is one of these big pieces of equipment that digs ditches and cleans out ditches or makes new ditches.

LaVOY:  And you were driving that?

DERICCO: No, I was the oiler on it. You oil the machine and keep it clean.

LaVOY:  A dirty job.

DERICCO: Oh, it's a dirty job, and then you lay out the stakes for the dragline to follow if you're making a new ditch, and you lay out these stakes and measure everything so that it's straight and everything like that.

LaVOY:  Well, were you living at home at that time?

DERICCO: Yes, I was. I enjoyed that.

LaVOY:  Well, I imagine your mother enjoyed washing your clothes. (laughing)

DERICCO: Oh, yes. (laughing) I wanted to keep working there, and my mother said no. She said, "I want you to try school one more year." And I said, "Well, I'd just rather work. I have a good job now." She says, "No. I want you to try another year. Go one full year of schooling, and if you don't like it after that then you can quit and come home and work." So I said, "Okay."

LaVOY:  Now, did you have a girlfriend during this period?

DERICCO: Oh, no. I wasn't going with anyone steady at that time.

LaVOY:  You were just playing the field.

DERICCO: I was playing the field, I guess. (laughing)

LaVOY:  So, then where did you decide to go to school?

DERICCO: I decided to go to the University of Nevada at Reno. I still considered it the University of Nevada, not Reno, 'cause it's the mother school of our state. But anyway I enrolled there.

LaVOY:  In what year approximately?

DERICCO: It was the fall of 1947 that I started.

LaVOY:  And what were you aiming for? What classes were you taking?

DERICCO: Well, gosh, when I went up there I was thoroughly confused. 'Course I had to get my credits from Adams State and see what they would accept of those, and they did accept some of the courses that I took. They used an arena-type of registration, and 'course coming from a small school such as Lovelock where we were only seventy-five students and going into the arena-type of registration at the University of Nevada in the big gymnasium at that time, I was thoroughly confused and I didn't know where to go. We didn't have counselors at that time to tell us where to go. So, finally I figured out what I had to take and I went into this one line and the lines were real long with students signing up for different classes. Finally I got in this one line for English.   I knew I had to take English I, so I got in this line and I worked myself way up there after about fifteen, twenty minutes, and finally when I got just about to the head of the line, this senior behind me said, "What are you doing in this line?" I said, "Well, I'm signing up for English." He said, "Well, you're in the wrong line." I says, "Oh, okay." So I got out and, of course, everybody moved up. I found out I was in the right line, and I was so discouraged that I went to the top of the gymnasium and sat up there and just said, "The heck with it. I'm going to quit. I'm not going to register for school. I'm going back to Lovelock." And just then another senior came by, and he was a member of the ATO [Alpha Tau Omega] house, and he asked me what was wrong. I told him, I said, "I'm confused. I don't know how to register. I've never done this before." He says, "Come with me." So he took me to the head of everyone of those lines and registered me, and I was registered within twenty minutes. (laughing) So I stayed on in school.

LaVOY:  Well, did you join the ATO's?

DERICCO: No. I certainly would have joined the ATO's. When they had rush week, there were some of my buddies at school also. We went to the ATO house. In fact, I liked the ATO's because when I was a senior on the basketball team we stayed there during the State tournament, and we knew some of the members of that house. So when we came to go to school, we went to the housewarming and everything else, and they took one of my buddies up to the room. They asked him if we'd like to join the ATO house, and he said, "No. Not right now. We want to look around a little bit." Well, that wasn't my feelings 'cause I liked the house. So that blew our chances of joining at that time. They did ask me to join the Sigma Nu house, and I did become a Sigma Nu later on in the semester.

LaVOY:  I didn't realize that. My oldest son is a Sigma Nu.

DERICCO: Is that right?

LaVOY:  Yes. When you started classes did you feel overwhelmed?

DERICCO: Yes. In the larger classes, I was. I was in one class later on in physics that had a hundred and some students in it. It really overwhelmed me. Most of my classes weren't too bad. They were around thirty to forty students.

LaVOY:  And you settled down and really studied?

DERICCO: Well, during the first semester I got into a geology course. I don't know how I ever got into that course, but instructed me to take a science. You were supposed to have a prerequisite, and I didn't have it--another course. And I really struggled in that course. I finally ended up with a D. The irony of this whole thing is that (laughing), I went into this course and when I went into the Sigma Nu House, I went at midsemester. Well, at midsemester the grades come out, and they had a ruling that if you received an F in any course, [tape break] you received five swats for each credit. Well, it was a five-hour course so that meant I would receive twenty-five swats. So I just joined the fraternity about a week before, and, of course, that night after a meeting the grades came out and I had twenty-five swats coming.

LaVOY:  Well, now, from what course?

DERICCO: It was in my geology course.

LaVOY:  Oh. I thought you got a D in that. You got an F?

DERICCO: Well, at midsemester I did receive an F, and that's when I received the twenty-five swats that night in front of the whole crew. And I'll tell you, on the last three he was bringing it up from the bottom of the floor 'cause I was going down at each swat, but I did bring the grade up to a D finally at the end of the semester. (laughing) But it sure woke me up, let me tell you. (laughing)

LaVOY:  (laughing) Well, did you live at the Sigma Nu house?

DERICCO: When I went at the University they had such a concentration of students that year. That was the year that all the War veterans came back to school, and they didn't have enough room in the dormitories, so we lived in the old gym during the first semester. And I think that's one of the reason why I did join a fraternity then because they did have room at the fraternity.

LaVOY:  Now, how could you live in the old gym? Just on cots?

DERICCO: They had cots, and then we had lockers that were kind of squared off into little cubicles, and so we went there until just before the end of the first semester. Then I joined the fraternity. And then I had a wonderful room over there. It was fifteen dollars a month, and the room was down in the basement in the furnace room. In fact, you had to turn sideways to get by the furnace to get in this little room. Had dirt floor and it had two cots, and my buddy and I took the room for fifteen dollars a month. You know, I stop to think. If that furnace would of ever exploded, and it was an old building besides.

LaVOY:  This would be the Sigma Nu house that was where?

DERICCO: It was right on the street on the entrance of going into the main part of the college. Center Street. The Sigma Nu house used to be there; now the new Sigma Nu house is on Ralston Avenue.

LaVOY:  It's a lovely place. May I ask you? Just going back a little bit, saying where the Sigma Nu house was, was it built right next to where that tree that has soil from every state?

DERICCO: No, it was about three houses down from there.

LaVOY:  And Thiette [Henrietta] Osgood, the French teacher, lived next door to it, did she not?

DERICCO: I couldn't say. I don't know. But, it was about three houses down from the ASUN [Associated Students of the University of Nevada] building.

LaVOY:  And you lived in a room with a dirt floor. I can't believe it!

DERICCO: We did finally get a carpet from my mother, and we did put it on the floor. It was a lot better.

LaVOY:  You lived there all…

DERICCO: I was there for the rest of the year. Then I moved upstairs when they had the additional rooms. The seniors graduated.

LaVOY:  That is interesting. Tell me about life at the University. What were some of the things that you became involved with?

DERICCO: Well, naturally, I was interested in athletics, and I tried out for the basketball team. I made the frosh basketball team and then made the junior varsity basketball team along with Ed Arciniega. We were both on the junior varsity team.

LaVOY:  Now, Ed was from Battle Mountain?

DERICCO: Battle Mountain, uh-huh. And then I tried out for the varsity, and I made varsity during my junior and senior year at the University of Nevada. I worked, also, at the same time. They had a place called the Blue and Silver, and I worked there as a soda jerk and waiter along with Donna, my wife. She had started school at the University, and we both worked at the Blue and Silver at the University of Nevada.

LaVOY:  Was she behind you in school?

DERICCO: Yes. She graduated in 1949. She's a forty-niner. She was about three years behind me in school.

LaVOY:  Were you delighted to have a girl from your hometown?

DERICCO: Oh, yes. It was nice. We enjoyed it. We dated and all that good stuff, you know. (laughing)

LaVOY:  What made you decide to go into education?

DERICCO: Well, I was interested in sports, and I wanted to be a coach, and I knew if I wanted to be a coach I had to teach school. So, I went into education.

LaVOY: Was Dean Traner the head of the department at that time?

DERICCO: Dean Traner. No, I don't think Dean Traner was there at the time when I was there.

LaVOY: Tell me some of the people that had come back from the War that you became friends with.

DERICCO: Oh, Mr. George Vucanovich. We were great buddies. We were in the same fraternity. I remember he had a beautiful black Ford coupe that we used to run around in.

LaVOY: Where was he from?

DERICCO: He was from Tonopah originally. Then, Sinclair Melner was in the fraternity the same time. Of course, then I knew quite a few people on the basketball team. Joe Lipke, Scott Beasley, and Les Ray. Mert Baxter was another one that I was acquainted with. Quite a few people there that I was acquainted with at the time.

LaVOY: Now, two of the names that you have mentioned went on to become generals in the Army.

DERICCO: Right. Mert Baxter and Sinclair Melner did.

LaVOY: This is all very interesting that you decided that you wanted to become a teacher so you could be a coach. Now, what type of a coach were you interested in?

DERICCO:  Oh, I would coach anything. I was interested in baseball, basketball, and then football, too, if I had to, and that's what I ended up coaching was baseball, basketball, and football. (laughing)        

LaVOY:  Now, when did you and Donna decide that you were getting serious?   

DERICCO: Well, I guess it was in my senior year I pinned her,      

LaVOY:  and that was in 1951, I guess. I graduated in 1951. Right around there. Who was the sweetheart of Sigma Nu that year?    

DERICCO: Gee, I don't know. I'd have to look at our books and see.

LaVOY:  I know I always think about the White Rose.

DERICCO: Oh, the White Rose of Delta XI? Yeah. Right.

LaVOY:  My daughter-in-law [Carol Brown LaVoy] was the White Rose for Sigma Nu. I just wondered if Donna by any chance . . .

DERICCO: No, she wasn't ever the White Rose.

LaVOY: Tell me about some of your Sigma Nu activities, about your dances.

DERICCO:  Oh, our dances. We had different types of dances. We had the Delta Xi. The White Rose, which was the ultimate dance of the year, and we all dressed in tuxedos, and we usually held it at a big place such as a casino or up at the Lake [Tahoe]. I remember the last one we held was at the Cal Neva at the Lake. We went up there and spent the weekend at some friends, Donna's friends from Pi Phi--she was a Pi Phi, and we went to the dance, and then the next day we spent . . . that was in March. I'll never forget that. I decided to run out and take a swim in the Lake. It was the worst thing I ever did (laughing)

LaVOY: (laughing) What happened?

DERICCO: I turned blue. I came out of there quicker than I ran in.

LaVOY: (laughing) You walked on water.               (laughing)

DERICCO: Yeah. Oh, gee, it was cold. But, anyway, that was the big dance, and then we had costume dances and different dances throughout the year that were great.

LaVOY:  What were some of the philanthropic activities that you did with Sigma Nu?

DERICCO: Oh, I don't know. Have to think that one did. We used to go out I remember.

LaVOY: Usually they gathered food.       

 DERICCO:Yeah. I was trying to think. out. I can't remember what we and help on different projects       

LaVOY: Well, I know all of the fraternities were very good at helping at that time.

DERICCO: Right.

LaVOY: And I think they still are.

DERICCO: They still are. They still do a lot of things.

LaVOY: Now, tell me. I know the Sigma Nus every year have the Newt Crumley dinner. Do you ever attend that?

DERICCO: I haven't attended that dinner in the last maybe four or five years, but I have attended a few of them and it's quite a dinner that honors Newt Crumley. He was supposed to have given turkeys all these years for the big celebration at Christmas. That's when we held it, and the family carried that tradition on after his death. He was killed, I believe, in a plane accident, wasn't he?

LaVOY: He and Ed Questa.

DERICCO: Yeah, Questa from Reno. I don't know if they still do it or not. I don't receive any information on that. They probably do.

LaVOY: Here you are, you're about ready to graduate, and you're very much in love with your girlfriend and the whole thing. What made you pop the question to Donna?

DERICCO: Well, I didn't pop the question right away. I had to go in the service afterwards. I was deferred on the draft until I graduated from college.

LaVOY: For which war?

DERICCO: The Korean War. So after I graduated in June, I was called into the service in August of 1951.

LaVOY:  What branch of service did you choose?

DERICCO: Well, actually I was supposed to be drafted into the Army, and when I went to Oakland to the processing center there were about seventy or eighty of us there that were going through the processing. Everybody went through the door and was processed except me, and I was sitting out there. Finally this little Marine Corporal came out, and he says, "Elmo Dericco?" I said, "Yes." He says, "Is there any reason why you don't want to go into the Marine Corps?" I said, "No, I don't want to go into the Marine Corps." He says, "You're in!"

LaVOY: (laughing)

DERICCO: So, actually I was drafted. I'll never forget that when I went through the door--I went to the processing center with Dave Swenson who worked for the First National Bank at the time. I guess FIB, too, for a while. Anyway he was sitting right there, and I said, "Well, Swenson, where you going?" He said, "Well, I'm going in the Army." I says, "Well, why don't you join the Marines with me?" and I asked the Corporal if he could join. He says, "I don't care. He can come. We can put another one in there." So, I talked Dave Swenson into going into the Marine Corps with me.

LaVOY: He hated you forever. (laughing)

DERICCO: Well, he turned out all right. We both turned out all right. We enjoyed it. We went through boot camp together.

LaVOY: Now, you went to boot camp where?

DERICCO: At San Diego.

LaVOY: Tell me your reaction to boot camp.

DERICCO: I'll tell you that was the most harrowing experience I ever had when I first went into the Marine Corps. First we went on the train to San Diego and then when we got there they had one of these big trucks with a wagon. They called it a cattle wagon, and there were, gee, there must have about a hundred of us! and they put us in this cattle car which we called--they had benches on each side of it, and they pushed us around in there, and then finally this one kid said, "Well, I can't find a seat," and this little Corporal said, "You'll find a seat" and came over and just pounded on him till he got in between two people. Then we went into the receiving center at the base, and I'm telling you they really worked us over as far as mentally. They didn't hit us, but they were having us repeat things and do things and stand at attention, and, of course, it was quite a change from good old civilian life, and I thought, "My gosh, what have I gotten into?" After that we got into the routine of nine weeks of training, and I made it. (laughing) But I'll tell you it's an experience that I think every individual, especially our young people, should go through boot camp for about nine weeks. Without the guns or any part of that. Just that type of discipline training. I think it would make a difference in our young people today.

LaVOY:  Do you think that our young people of today should give at least one or two years of service to their country?

DERICCO: I firmly believe so--especially now that the family units are kind of broken down and everything else. I think discipline's a big problem with us, and that's what all our problems in the schools are nowadays. I think an individual, it'll make a better person out of them if they would go through the service. I think they do in Israel. Everyone goes through military training.

LaVOY:  Men and women.

DERICCO: Yeah. Both. I think it would be a great thing, and it would help the individual. It would certainly help our country, too.

LaVOY:  I think a lot of people share your belief in that.

DERICCO: There are some people that don't, probably, but I think the discipline, the training of it without the weapons or stuff like that, I think that's important. And I think they're using that type of program to rehabilitate our people in prison now. They have a project over there in Washoe County that's training these people that way, and it's working out quite successfully.

LaVOY:  Well, I think it would work very, very good providing the Civil Liberties Union doesn't get mixed in the middle of it.

DERICCO: Right.                'Cause it wouldn't hurt them one bit. You have to have discipline. If you don't, you've got problems.

LaVOY:  Now, you have survived boot camp, and what was your first assignment?

DERICCO: From boot camp I went to Camp Pendleton for advanced training, and I was there until January at San Clemente. I think the training lasted about eight weeks or so. One of the highlights of that training, of course, was when I went to Pickle Meadows. That's winter training up in the high Sierras. We went up there the week that it snowed quite heavily, and it trapped the group before us up there in the Pickle Meadows area. They had to get in there and get them out, and then they brought them to Fallon here at the air base to fly them back to Camp Pendleton. Well, we went in the week after, and I never did see so much snow in all my life, and, of course, we had to live in the snow. We had to pitch our pup tents in the snow, and the big thing is that our sleeping bags were summer sleeping bags. All the winter sleeping bags that we had were shipped to Korea, and so the Marines that were going up into training had to take the summer bags, and it did get quite cold during the night-- eighteen, twenty below. I remember waking up in the morning and having ice on the inside of your pup tent and you really got out gingerly from your sleeping bag so you wouldn't have that stuff fall down your neck. I did sleep well one night during that week, and that's when they brought in some C-ration, and I got the cardboard from the cartons and put them underneath my sleeping bag and it insulated my sleeping bag.

DERICCO:  It was quite an experience to see what effect it had on some people that had never been in the snow area. They did tell us before we went up to watch our buddies because they react different to the cold. The ones that amazed me were the Hawaiians. They were down in the creek at noontime with their shirts off taking a bath, and I could never understand that, but they loved it. They made us shave every day up there 'cause you had a tendency to want to get scroungey and everything else, and of course one of the things they made us do was shave.

DERICCO:  Another thing I remember we were on patrol duty at night and they had these, they call them "Korean attackers", who would attack our tents all times of the night and come in and knock our tents down and chase us all around and everything else, but training was real good up there. You got an inkling of what to expect if you ever got into the snow area. Then after that they shipped me to Hawaii. (laughing) I was assigned to Hawaii on Barber's Point which was a Naval air station, and they had a security guard there of Marines, a contingent of about 125 Marines, and we were MP's [Military Police]. We patrolled the base.

LaVOY:  I can't quite see you as an MP.

DERICCO: Well, I was an MP for awhile. Then I got into guard section. I was a guard of the jail there. The funny thing about that. That base had about five to six thousand sailors on it, and the Marines had about 125, and usually we had more Marines in the jail than we had Navy personnel, but times would differ. We had quite a few Marines though. We had a major that was really tough, and I'll tell you if you didn't follow the rules and regulations he'd slap you in that brig as fast as he could. Then I got into brig section and I was there for awhile. Then I got into supplies, and I became a sergeant in the supply section.

LaVOY: When you were an MP, what was your rate?

DERICCO: I was a corporal, and then when I got into supply, I went to sergeant, and that's what I ended up was a sergeant in the Marine Corps.

LaVOY: Were you and Donna married in Hawaii?

DERICCO: Yes, we were.

LaVOY: Tell me what prompted you to ask her to come over to marry you there? The fear of going to Korea?

DERICCO: Oh, no, no, no. What happened she called me. Well, she used to call me every once in awhile. Of course it was pretty expensive to call--about forty dollars at a time, but she called and she said she wanted to get married, and I said, "No, no. I don't want to get married now. I want to wait until I get back and all this," and of course she was crying and all that, and finally I gave in. I says, "Okay." (laughing)

LaVOY: And what year was this?

DERICCO: That was 1953.

LaVOY: Now she had not graduated from the University?

DERICCO: Oh, yes. She had graduated from the University already. Donna went to two-year normal school. In fact she was the last graduate of the two-year normal school. She went to school for two years at the University and became a teacher. They had that type of a program. She was teaching in Lovelock at the time, and then she came over and we were married in Barber's Point.

LaVOY:  Now, we have talked about Donna and you have never told me what her full name was.

DERICCO: Her name is Donna--and I like her middle name--Rae McGowan.

LaVOY:  Her father was the State Controller for many years, was he not?

DERICCO: Yes, he was the State Controller for about sixteen years or so, I think he was.

LaVOY:  Wilson McGowan.

DERICCO: Yeah. Wilson McGowan.

LaVOY:  Now, when you were living in the Sigma Nu house, and she was attending University, where was she living?

DERICCO: She was a Pi Phi.

LaVOY:  At the Pi Phi house?

DERICCO: Um-hum.

LaVOY:  Where were her parents at that time?

DERICCO: They were in Lovelock. He was a Senator from Lovelock at first, and then later on when they reapportioned the Legislature, he was reapportioned out. That's when Paul Laxalt asked him to run for Controller, and he was elected.

LaVOY:  And stayed for many years as Controller. Well, was she teaching in Lovelock living by herself or with friends in Lovelock?

DERICCO: She stayed at the ranch with her parents.

LaVOY:  In Lovelock?

DERICCO: Um-hum.

LaVOY:  What grade was she teaching?

DERICCO: I think she was teaching the first grade.

LaVOY:  But she decided that she had enough of Lovelock and she was missing you and she was afraid a Hawaiian girl might find you, so she flew to Honolulu.

DERICCO: Yup, she flew to Honolulu, and then we were married at Barber's Point on June 13, 1953.

LaVOY:  In the chapel?

DERICCO: In the chapel at Barber's Point.

LaVOY:  Do you remember who married you?

DERICCO: I don't know the name of the chaplain. I can't remember. All I know is that our buddies were all there.

LaVOY:  You're speaking of your Marine buddies?

DERICCO: Marine buddies, yeah, and then afterwards

LaVOY:  Who was your best man?

DERICCO: Frank De Marzo. He was from New Jersey, and he was my best man. And I remember afterwards we got in the car-

LaVOY:  Who was her matron of honor or maid of honor?

DERICCO: Betty Priest.   She was a sorority sister that was over there. She was married to a Navy lieutenant at that time and then ended up being a lieutenant commander over there.

LaVOY:  What was Betty Priest's married name?

DERICCO: Oh, gosh.

LaVOY:  You can't remember. It'll come to you. We can get it in here later. Did you have a reception after?

DERICCO: Yes. We had a small reception. Just the four of us afterwards along the Waikiki Beach in one of those hotel resorts.

LaVOY:  What did Donna wear?

DERICCO: She didn't have a full gown, but she wore a, I remember a white sort of off-white dress that came--'course dresses were long at that time--between her ankles and her knees and had beaded work on her shoulders and front, and also she had a hat with a little veil on it. She looked very nice.

LaVOY:  And you, of course, were in your dress blues.

DERICCO: No, I was in my khakis. (laughing)

LaVOY:  Your khakis!

DERICCO: Yes. Well, I should say, our summer dress. Not our dungarees, but our summer dress khakis.

LaVOY: Well, I imagine that you looked very elegant. And you were a sergeant at the time or a corporal?

DERICCO: I think I was a sergeant. I'm not sure.

LaVOY: You were in supply?

DERICCO:  I was in supply then.

LaVOY: At that time? Well, where did you honeymoon?

DERICCO: About a block up from Waikiki Beach.

LaVOY: Now there's a very interesting story about your marriage and some money. Would you please explain that to us?

DERICCO: (laughing) Well, here we were living on Waikiki Beach.

LaVOY: Right after you were married. You were on your honeymoon.

DERICCO:  Well, yeah, we were on our honeymoon about a block up in a motel we had there. I had saved all of my money over the months, and I had about seven hundred and some dollars and Donna had all her traveler checks and I had paid off the room that we had for three or four days. So we were living pretty high with all our money and everything, and we decided that we were going to take a trip around the island. Betty, her bridesmaid, had given us her car to use that week, so we took a tour of the island, and we went around by Blow Hole. We stopped at the Mormon temple which is a quite a thing to see. At that place, of course, she went into the rest room and when she went in there I guess she took her wallet out and things of that nature and laid it down to the side. Then she came back out and got in the car and took off again and we came all around the island. We got back to the motel and she looked for her wallet in her purse, and her wallet was gone. All the money and all of my furlough papers and everything else were gone. Well, we jumped back in the car and we took off. We stopped at Blow Hole. We went all around the island, all the places we stopped, and we never did find the money. Somebody had picked up that wallet when she was in the Mormon temple. So here we were on Waikiki Beach without any money. We were broke. So we went to the base and I borrowed twenty dollars to live on for that week. Then, of course, I had to put in for additional papers and things of that nature. We lost everything. The traveler's checks, of course, we did get back 'cause we called immediately to her mother in Lovelock and they called the company. We did get that money back in about a week and a half.

LaVOY: But you spent your honeymoon week on twenty dollars?

DERICCO: Right.

LaVOY: You must have eaten very slimly.

DERICCO: Very slimly. Everything went wrong that week. We had her father's movie camera that we were going to take all these movies and everything. That broke. Another thing, when I was driving that next day--'course I hadn't been driving for quite awhile--and I should have made a turn on a corner which I didn't. The arrows were going this way. I thought you could go straight but you could turn there. That's the way it was in Lovelock anyway, and anyway I didn't turn and they arrested me. I had to go to the precinct and pay a five-dollar fine for that.

LaVOY: (laughing) How'd you have the money for the fine?

DERICCO: Well, that was part of the twenty dollars. (laughing)

LaVOY: (laughing) I just can't imagine.    I think that would have just dissolved the marriage (laughing) right then and there. Were you angry with Donna for having taking the wallet out?

DERICCO: No. She was crying and everything, and of course I couldn't be angry. Just one of those things that happen, and, of course, we knew we'd get the traveler's checks back. We knew we had to be lean on things for awhile, but we finally did get the checks back.

LaVOY: I imagine you lived on papaya and pineapple. (laughing)

DERICCO: (laughing) Yeah.

LaVOY: Well, then where did you live in Hawaii as a married couple?

DERICCO:  We lived at Ewa Beach which is outside of Barber's Point. This gentleman had brought in some barracks, and he divided them into quarters or halves, whatever it was. Our quarters were so small that I think he could have put the whole apartment in our front room today. I could sit on the couch in the-- what we called the front room--and my feet would touch the opposite wall.

LaVOY:  (laughing)           

DERICCO: And the bed, you had to climb over to get to the other side, and the table, of course, in the kitchen, you had  to lower the leaf to get on the other side when you were eating. But it really was a cute little place, and we enjoyed that. No windows. They had screens instead of windows. You couldn't make too much noise. Everybody'd hear you.                                      

LaVOY: (laughing) And when it rained, does it rain the right way?

 

DERICCO: If it rained the right way, it rained into the room.

LaVOY: Oh, dear. Well, Hawaii was a wonderful place.

DERICCO: Oh, we really enjoyed it.

LaVOY: How long were you there?

DERICCO: I was married June 13, and I was shipped out about July 1. At that time the Third Marine Division came over to Hawaii to train, and while they were there, the peace talks over in Korea were going on, and something happened over there. One of the battalions was hit pretty hard [tape break] and they wanted replacements over there, I guess, to more or less put pressure on the peace talks in case they needed the additional troops in there. The Third Marine Division had quite a few eighteen-year-olds that couldn't go into combat, so what they did they stripped the island of all the older people and replaced our positions with the younger people, and then we went into the Third Marine Division and within three days I was gone to Japan.

LaVOY: Why didn't the eighteen-year olds, why couldn't they go into Korea? I've never heard of that.

DERICCO: Well, they had some ruling that they couldn't go into combat at eighteen years of age.

LaVOY: I've never heard of that before. That’s surprising.

DERICCO: Yeah, because of their age, they had to be a certain age to go into combat.

LaVOY: So, you were shipped with how many hours notice?

DERICCO: Two days. Well, in two or three days we were gone.

LaVOY: And Donna was left in Hawaii.

DERICCO: Yeah, and, of course, she called back to Lovelock, and she did get her job back. They hadn't filled her job yet, so she got her teaching job back. So she flew back to Lovelock, and I went to Japan.

LaVOY: Actually you were living there together for really not even a full month.

DERICCO: Not even a full month.

LaVOY: Well, that's typical Marine Corps for you.(laughing) All right, well now, you're shipped out to Japan. And where in Japan?

DERICCO: They have three camps at the base of Mount Fujiyama, so we were stationed at one of the camps there. They called them Camp one, two and three, I guess it was. So we were there, and we trained there until I was shipped back to the States at the end of my tour of duty

LaVOY: You had enlisted literally for what three years?

DERICCO: I was in for three years, uh-huh.

LaVOY: And the peace talks had taken place, so you were not really needed.

DERICCO: No. I guess things subsided so they started rotating us back. We were supposed to be overseas for two years and rotate back to the States.

LaVOY: You were actually over there how long?

DERICCO: I think I was seven months in Japan.

LaVOY: Tell me some of your activities in Japan.

DERICCO: Well, besides training, of course, we found it quite fascinating. We went into Tokyo. I was fascinated by the department stores that they had there. They were so modern and everything and all the nice things you could buy, and, of course, everybody over in Lovelock wanted Japanese dishes and the Japanese ware that they had over there and tea sets and china sets. I ended up sending one to my sister, one to Donna, one to her mother and my mother. I sent quite a few pieces back to the families back here. I enjoyed Tokyo very well. I went to the Ginza market. That was fascinating. The thing that fascinated me, of course, was riding the train. They were so small then, and, of course, the Japanese people aren't too large. I was fascinated the way they would eat. They would eat lunches out of the little tin cans that they had with their chopsticks and little pieces of meat. Also, the military service had places for recreation--they call it R and R--up in the mountains, and we went to a couple of those. They're quite cheap for the military people, and we went to those also. We really enjoyed it. I enjoyed my stay over there with the people.

LaVOY:  How often did you write to Donna while you were over there?

DERICCO: Oh, I'd write all the time. I'd write about three or four times a week. That's all we had to do other than when we were training and doing things. We'd write letters to our families.

LaVOY:  Something that we missed completely in the first part of this interview. There was just you and your sister in the family. Is that correct?

DERICCO: Right. Uh-huh.

LaVOY:  What was your sister's name?

DERICCO: Norma Jean Dericco. Her name's Norma Jean Metzger now. She lives in Mesa, Arizona.

LaVOY:  What kind of a tea set did you send to her?

DERICCO: I can't remember. I know I sent a rose one to one and a blue one--I don't know who. Of course, the plates I sent and the ones that we have are the ones in blue trimmed in silver that I like quite well. We still have those.

LaVOY:  That was a wonderful, wonderful episode in your life really. At the time it seemed terrible, but now you look back on it with pleasure.

DERICCO: Oh, sure, 'cause I know I'd never gotten over there unless I went over with the military service. It was interesting. They're interesting people.

LaVOY:  Now, your enlistment is up. Are you sent back to the States?

DERICCO: I had a few more months to put in. I was discharged in August.

LaVOY:  Of what year?

DERICCO: 1954, and I came back to San Diego, and I was stationed there until my retirement.

LaVOY:  And did Donna stay in Lovelock?

DERICCO: Yes. She stayed in Lovelock teaching until the end of the year in June. Then she came over to San Diego, and we were there from June to August, and then we headed back to Lovelock.

LaVOY:  Now, here you are out of service and no job. So, what did you do?

DERICCO: Well, I had to go back to school another year.

LaVOY:  Why?

DERICCO: Well, when I graduated I took my student teaching at the elementary level which is a fifth grade, and they told me that was sufficient for teaching at the elementary level or the secondary level. Well, when I got out, they had changed the rules, and they said if you're going to teach at the secondary level which I wanted to teach at the secondary level, you had to student teach in high school. So, I went back, and we stayed at Shangri-la, the barracks that they had got from the military, and we did rent an apartment.

LaVOY:  Now where's that in conjunction to the campus?

DERICCO: It's about where the education building is now. Just right in that area there.

LaVOY:  On Evans Avenue.

DERICCO: Yeah. We had Mackay Stadium, and then it was right on top there. Right in that area there which had athletic practice fields up there. So, we stayed there for a year, and I did my student teaching.

LaVOY:  While you were living there, that housing has always rather amused me because people that have lived there have become life-long friends. Who were some of your neighbors while you were living in that housing?

DERICCO: Well, I can't remember the name of the people there, but one of the people that stayed there was Rollan Melton. He stayed there, and, of course, I didn't know he was there at the time because I hadn't gone to Fallon yet or anything.

LaVOY: He and Marilyn.

DERICCO: He and Marilyn were there. We had a reunion one time not many years back in which all the people of the apartments came together, and we had a grand old time.

LaVOY: Well, it's interesting that they supplied those for the married couples.

DERICCO: They were quite unique. I remembered the electrical. They didn't have any plug-ins. Wilson [McGowan] came in and ran some electricity for us, and, of course, he had to do it without turning the electricity off, and he burned a lot of screwdrivers up trying to, (laughing) blew out the lights and everything. But we had one light--the old type of light from the top with a bulb and a chain, so he had to do some remodeling for us so we'd have some outlets for our hot plates and things of that nature. But, we survived. It was very comfortable. We enjoyed it.

LaVOY: Living room, bedroom and bath.

DERICCO:That was it. A little kitchen was part of the front room.

LaVOY:  Well, that's great. Where did you do your practice teaching?

DERICCO:At the elementary level I did it at McKinley Park in the fifth grade. Mrs. Petticord was my teacher there, and then I did my high school practice teaching at Reno High School, and Robert Whittemore was my supervising teacher. Outstanding history teacher. One of the best I ever had. Dr. Brown was my supervisor from the University of Nevada, and he would come and visit us once in awhile. I got along fine with him. He was pretty tough though. (laughing)

LaVOY:  Yes. I also had him as a teacher.

DERICCO: Oh, did you? (laughing)

LaVOY: Yes. Now, tell me, when you finished your year, where did you apply for jobs?

DERICCO: It's funny that during the basketball tournament that year I was up there, state tournament, Ed Arciniega came up to the state tournament with the Fallon basketball team. Of course, we were good friends from our college days, and he said, "Where you going to teach?" I said, "Well, I have to look for a job." He says, "Why don't you come to Fallon?" Chub Drakulich, who was the basketball coach at that time, was leaving, and he was also the baseball coach, so he says, "Why don't you come and apply in Fallon?" So I talked to Donna. Lenae was just born then. She was in the hospital in fact when I went for my interview. Lenae was just born on March 28, 1955; so I came up for an interview, and I got the job.

LaVOY:  What were you going to teach?

DERICCO: U.S. history, physical education, and coaching. I was going to be a football and basketball assistant and head baseball coach.

LaVOY:  Now, just a moment here. You're mentioning your daughter's name. Her name is so unusual. Is there a reason?

DERICCO: Yeah, we took Lena . .

LaVOY:  Now, Lena was your mother?

DERICCO: Yeah, so we added an "e" to it. We didn't want to have it Lena. We wanted it Lenae. Her middle name is Marie and we named her after Donna's mother, so her name's Lenae Marie Dericco.

LaVOY:  And she was born in Reno?

DERICCO: And born in Reno. [March 28, 1955]

LaVOY:  All right, so then when you moved to Fallon, you moved when?

DERICCO: We came in August, 1955.

LaVOY:  And where did you find a place to live?

DERICCO: We lived next to Norma Morgan [70 North Russell Street] right behind the hospital.

LaVOY:  Was it a large house, small house?

DERICCO: It was a three-bedroom house, and the principal at the Junior High School, er E.C. Best had just resigned and so it was open, and we were able to get

LaVOY:  Who was he?

DERICCO: Paul Arenaz. He was principle at the Oats Park School.               Rose Dodson had heard about it. I guess she was related to the Arenazes, and she called and got the house for us.

LaVOY: How much was your rent?

DERICCO: Gosh, I don't know. We were poor, I'll tell you. We didn't have anything when we started. Gosh, I can't remember what it was. It was a lot to us at that time.

LaVOY: Now, when you started teaching here in Fallon, who was the principal at the high school?

DERICCO: Mr. [Pat] Smith was the principal at the high school.

LaVOY: What was your reaction to him as a principal?

DERICCO: Well, I had a rude awakening when I walked into the high school. It was really wild in there. That first year those kids would start the waste paper cans on fire. They would throw cherry bombs against the wall, and I said to myself, "What did I get into?" And, of course, coming from the Marine Corps, you know, that infuriated me all the more. I know that I had a run-in with a couple of students. One student got smart with me in the hall when I was on duty, and I ended up grabbing him by the nape of the neck and the seat of the pants and running him into the principal's office. Pat was sitting there, and I chucked him in there, and, of course, he had a nice waxed floor. I'll never forget this. He fell down, slid across the floor, and hit the other wall. And if that would happen today, I would be fired. (laughing)

LaVOY: (laughing) Or you'd be sued.

DERICCO: I'd be sued, yeah.

LaVOY: It straightened him up, I'm sure.

DERICCO: Oh, I never had any more problems with him at all, but the discipline was lacking. He was a very nice man and his intentions were very good and he worked real hard and he did everything, but the discipline was left to Mr. [Darrell] Winters who was the vice principal and music teacher at that time. He did most of it.

LaVOY:  Your first day in class, explain that to me.

DERICCO: I was scared to death. (laughing) Here I was with all these students and, of course, one of the first things I did was go over the roster. Of course, through my teaching, I kind of patterned myself after the major that I had at Barber's Point. He was very firm and matter of fact in what he expected of us as Marines. So when I got in there I made up my rules beforehand and everything else, and I went in with the idea that I was going to be boss. So I went in there and I took the name of all the students and then I laid down the rules that I expected. Naturally I was challenged with different things and I had to carry out my threats.

LaVOY:  What were some of your threats?

DERICCO: Well, the thing is if they were late for class that they would be docked in grade. I didn't allow any gum chewing in my class. Talking during the time when we had our class discussions wasn't allowed. I also told them that I expected them to study and that I would put questions on the board. I would gear my instructions on the board to the assignment for the day with questions. I made them keep a notebook. So, it was just regular routine of things, and I wanted respect from them and I also would respect them. There was a few times that they got out of hand. I had to clamp down on them. But on the whole I had very good students. At that time if you had a problem you called the parents, and they would straighten things out.

LaVOY:  And the parents backed you up.

DERICCO: Oh, they did. Yes.

LaVOY:  One thing. Did you permit them to wear these horrible baseball caps in class?

DERICCO: They did not wear any hats in class.

LaVOY:  That is such a . . . that bothers me so.

DERICCO: Oh, I just hate that. I don't think I could last as a teacher today. I'd probably be (laughing) fired or put in jail or sued right off the bat.

LaVOY:  Who were some of your best students in that first class?

DERICCO: Oh, I remember Joan Arrizabalaga was an outstanding student. Her name really baffled me. I remembered when I went around asking the names of the students, and she gave me the name of Arrizabalaga. Of course, she wrote it down first, and when I looked at it, I said, "I'm not even going to attempt this one. Would you please give me your name?" Of course, it took me awhile to learn how to pronounce it, but the thing that fascinated me about her in writing her name, she'd write "A-r-r-i-z-etc." on her papers. Val York was one of my outstanding students. Phil Bailey. Phil Bailey became a lieutenant commander in the Navy. Val York became a colonel and had two tours in Vietnam.

 

LaVOY: In the Army?

DERICCO: In the Army. This Jacqueline Williams from the Williams family on the Schurz Highway was an outstanding student, and then I had another one. This Masa Kito which was the famous Kito family here that had the vegetable gardens in the valley. I had her. She was outstanding. Oh, there were a lot of students. The Pritchard students of Reverend Pritchard. Mackedon. I had Michele Mackedon [Dondero] who is the executive dean of the Western Community College here. I had her in school. She was a good student. I had quite a few.

LaVOY: That were outstanding?

DERICCO: Yeah. They were good, and, of course, I had the ones that were a little slower, but I even had Robert Zucca. I don't know if you know him, and he's a student that was a little slower but he tried real hard, and he was one of my favorite students because he tried so hard. At that time we didn't know what--maybe I shouldn't mention this--a special ed student was at that time. They were just a slower student, but he tried real hard, and that's all I asked that they tried and they would make it.

LaVOY: Oh, I imagine that you were a very good teacher.

DERICCO: Well, I don't know. (laughing)

LaVOY:  You tried.

DERICCO: I tried. I had Larry Wissbeck. I don't know if you know him. He's an announcer on Channel 8. He used to roam around the country doing what John Tyson's doing now. I had him as a student.

LaVOY:  Well, now was this your first year or in subsequent years?

DERICCO: Subsequent years, but Arrizabalaga, Masa Kito, and that bunch were not one of my first years.

LaVOY:  Well, Joan Arrizabalaga has become so renowned as an artist.

DERICCO: The thing about Larry Wissbeck, I ended up flunking him. He's the only student I flunked, and he was an A student.

LaVOY:  Why?

DERICCO: He wouldn't study. He wouldn't study, he wouldn't do his work. He just wouldn't do it, and, boy, it just tore my heart out to flunk him, but I did, and he came back the next year and took history two classes in a row and did outstanding.

LaVOY:  Well, I think that's probably what he needed.

DERICCO: Well, yeah. He was a good student. You know, history can be boring, and you try to make it as interesting as possible and you have to do a lot of research.

LaVOY:  Did you teach American, European, or what?

DERICCO: I taught U.S. history. I did get into another course. A course in which we studied all the governments of the world, and, boy! Was that ever a challenge, I'll tell you! When you get into the Russian and the French governments and stuff like that and history. I was glad to get out of that one later on in years. (laughing)

LaVOY:  Did you teach that to the advanced students?

DERICCO: Yeah, to the seniors. U.S. history was taught to the juniors.

LaVOY:  Usually, what time of day was your class?

DERICCO: I had them all periods of the day, except for maybe one or two p.e. classes.

LaVOY:  Now, did Mr. Smith remain as principal all the time that you were teaching there?

DERICCO: No, after the first year, the Legislature organized the counties into eighteen counties, and then we had eighteen school districts with eighteen superintendents. Before that, of course, you had your high school with a superintendent and your Oats Park with your superintendent or principal of the elementary school. Well, the Legislature coordinated into an intra-state system of eighteen counties, and Pat Smith didn't get the superintendent, but Herb Chiara did. He became the superintendent for the county.

LaVOY: He was from Battle Mountain?

DERICCO: He was from Battle Mountain, and he was the principal and superintendent at Oats Park on Con B, Consolidated B District. He took the job he got in March and he quit in June or July because he went into insurance business back in Battle Mountain. Of course, that threw everything into a kind of tizzy around here. Jack Davis was going to be the principal at the high school replacing Pat Smith.

LaVOY: Didn't Pat Smith go to Hawthorne?

DERICCO: When he left here, he went to Hawthorne as assistant superintendent there under Arlo Funk. So when Jack Davis became the superintendent, they hired Mark Lewis as the principal at the high school. He was a teacher at the junior high school, and he became the principal in 1956.

LaVOY: Did you feel that he ran a tighter ship?

DERICCO: Oh, he did. He was an ex-marine, also. (laughing)

 LaVOY: (laughing) You gotta watch those ex-marines.

DERICCO: And he was real tough when he came in. Of course, that caused some problems at first, you know, for him and his family, but they stuck with it, and, boy, we got things ironed out at the high school, I'll tell you. He was a good strong principal.

LaVOY: How long did he last as principal?

DERICCO: He lasted from 1956 to 1959, and then Jack Davis resigned to go to Stanford to get his doctorate, and Mark Lewis went with him, and that opened up the high school principalship. Also, they had an assistant superintendent, Mr. Frank Godwin, and he died in July of that year. So, here we had the assistant superintendent passed away, the principal going to Stanford, the superintendent going to Stanford, and we had three big openings around here (laughing) in the school district. That year they offered me either the high school principal if I wanted it or the assistant superintendency, and I had to make my mind up within two days which one I wanted.

LaVOY: Did they come to you in the hall or something and tell you this?

DERICCO: Yeah, they came over to the high school and talked to me and asked me. It was right at the end of school.

LaVOY: Didn't they call you out into the hall?

DERICCO: No, that was when I became superintendent.

LaVOY: Oh, I see.

DERICCO: But, Jack Davis came over and asked me. He said, "You can have either the principal of the high school or the assistant superintendency." So, I said, "Okay, I'll make up my mind." I loved the high school. I wasn't ready to leave the high school. I'd only been in there about four years, and I loved those kids, and I loved teaching, and it was a very hard decision for me. But, finally, you look at your opportunities. What lies ahead and your family and everything, so I took the assistant superintendency in 1959. Bill Wright who was the English teacher took the principalship at the high school.

LaVOY: Now, we have discussed your history teaching. Let's go back just a little bit and regress and go into your coaching. The four years. Tell me something about your coaching.

DERICCO: Well, as I said, I was assistant football coach. Ed Arciniega was the head football coach, and then I was assistant basketball .

LaVOY:  Did you have a good team?

DERICCO: Oh, yes, we had a good team. In those four years that we had, we played for the state. We won the zone, I think, a couple of times and we were runner-up in the state once. Basketball, I was assistant basketball to Ed who was the head basketball coach, and in 1957 he won the state basketball championship, and I was assistant there. In that same year of 1957, I was the head baseball coach, and we won the state baseball title that year also. So in 1957 we won the state baseball, state basketball, and runner-ups in the state football.

LaVOY:  Well, that a tremendous .

DERICCO: So, it was quite an accomplishment. We had a good group of kids that were good.

LaVOY:  Where did you win these state titles? What town?

DERICCO: We were runner-up in football in Henderson, Nevada. We lost to Henderson for the state football title. We won the state basketball title at the University of Nevada Reno, and the baseball we won here against Boulder City. The state basketball we beat Hawthorne. It was the year of the two small schools. First time in history that two small schools played for the championship, Fallon and Hawthorne.

LaVOY:  Tell me who some your outstanding players were on each team. The football team.

DERICCO: Usually about the same ones. We had Bob Cress, a quarterback. We had Frank Guisti who is an insurance man now in Reno. He was our halfback. Rich Lee is a construction man was a halfback. Merlyn Dixon who was the head of the Indian Tribal Council out here for a long time, was our fullback, and we had Gene Bailey who was a lineman and Val York was lineman.

LaVOY:  Who was quarterback?

DERICCO: Bob Cress was the quarterback. He was a little skinny thing but lots of guts. If you ever hit him you think you'd break him in half. They were great. In basketball it was more or less the same thing. We had Dave Lumos who was a teacher here, just resigned. We had Frankie Miller who is a manager of a Safeway in Hawthorne now. He was on the basketball team. Gene Bailey who became a lieutenant commander. Val York who became a colonel in the Army, and Lonnie Moore. He was on that team, and Frank Guisti was on that team. They had a good basketball . . . And then in baseball it was just more or less the same. We had Bailey, Val York, Frank Guisti, and John Brown who was an Indian boy. Outstanding student. Real sharp. He became an architect. He was our pitcher. Had Bub Weaver who's a forest service man in Utah now. We had quite a few people that were outstanding.

LaVOY:  Well, it sounds like it.

DERICCO: But, you know, that year there all those kids were talented in everything, and, also, in their school work. They were B and A students, and it seems to reflect in your teams when you have a lot of the type of students and the type of athletes they were.

LaVOY:  Well, it seems to me, too, with a firm coach and a very firm principal at the high school that this kind of filters down through the students, and they become very dedicated.

DERICCO: Dedicated and disciplined, too. And then we won the state baseball again in 1958. That year I was assistant. Really tore me up because the district came out with a policy that you could only head coach one sport. I wanted to coach basketball, also, so I had a choice, and I knew I was going to have a great baseball team, but I loved basketball, too, so I went and coached basketball. Ed gave up basketball after that year, so I took basketball and then I became the assistant baseball. We did win the state baseball that next year, too.

LaVOY:  Now, at this time, was Donna teaching, or was she staying home?

DERICCO: Donna was teaching.

LaVOY:  What was she teaching?

DERICCO: She taught fifth grade.

LaVOY:  At which school?

DERICCO: She was at West End when Tod was born. She taught at West End when Tim was born, too. [tape break] Tim was born in 1957, and she was also teaching at that time. I think when Tod was born, she came out of teaching, and then after that--although she might have been teaching--I can't remember, but there's a break when she went to teach private kindergarten for a period of time.

LaVOY:  What private kindergarten?

DERICCO: It was one they started. I don't know who sponsored it. Some people sponsored it. We didn't have a kindergarten in Churchill County at first, and it wasn't until in the early part of the 1960s, that they petitioned the school district to start the kindergartens. We did start, and then she came right over as a kindergarten teacher back into the school district system. But for a period of time during when we had the three kids right at the end when Tod was young, she taught at the private kindergarten then.

LaVOY:  Tod was born in 1958, September 12. Now, here you are. You have been teaching history. You have been coaching. Now, suddenly you've accepted the assistant superintendentship. How does this affect your life?

DERICCO: Oh, I was really afraid. Scared, I should say, because, boy! It was a tremendous job, and we just had a new system. We were just going into the county system although the books had been drawn up and everything else by Jack Davis to go to the county type of programs, but still it was, I knew it was going to be quite a challenge. My office during my assistantship, my first office was at West End Elementary School. I had an office next to Don Johnson who was the principal, and I remember the first day I went in there. My secretary was Dorothea Martin who is Dorothea Ratzlaff now, and the first day I went in there, of course, you know you just wonder what you're going to do, and, of course, all of these things come piling in. Here comes this salesman in with three machines for scrubbing and polishing floors. I said, "Well, where'd this come from?" He said, "Well, the assistant superintendent ordered it." I said, "Well, just a minute. I'll get the budget out." Well, I got the budget out. There was a one-page budget with just a few items [in] general categories, and I asked Dorothea, "Well, where's the rest of the budget where we're supposed . . .?"      "Ah," she says, "that's it." So I operated that first year, and my superintendent was a new superintendent, Dr. [Kenneth] Iverson from Iowa. He had gotten the job as superintendent, and he didn't know much about what was going on either. It was all new to him. So he took over as superintendent of the schools, and he was from Iowa. Of course, their method of operating was quite different from Nevada's system, and it was all new to him, so here we were both together swimming.

LaVOY:  The blind leading the blind.

DERICCO: That year as [assistant] superintendent I really had a job because I had to make up the total budget for the year for everybody for all the schools, and then I was also in charge of maintenance, and I was in charge of the hot lunch project. I was in charge of the curriculums. Of course I didn't have a budget to operate, so I had to create a budget on my own for the first time. He handled the financing formula, so that first year was really something to do. But, the one thing it did for me was that it gave me an insight into the whole school system so that when I became superintendent it was just a matter of just changing offices.  I knew the operation of everything that was in the district itself.

LaVOY:  Well, now I'm curious. With three scrubbing machines facing you on your first day, what did you do with them?

DERICCO: I ran to the superintendent. I said, (laughing) "Where am I going to get the money for this?" He says, "Okay. Well, we'll figure something out."

LaVOY: They had bought the three machines?

DERICCO: Well, yeah, they had bought them already, so we had to take them. So, we had the three scrubbing machines, and that was the start of my . . . and, of course, I have to thank Dorothea for all the help she gave me. She kind of led me this way, that way on things, and, you know, those secretaries are like your right arm.

LaVOY: Did you have any problem with any of the principals of the various schools as the assistant superintendent?

DERICCO: No, I never did have. I had some good principals in the schools itself, and, as the years went on, we did change. I had Don Johnson, and, of course, he was a veteran. I had Gene McIntyre who was a veteran and who had taught school here and also was a veteran in our district. Bill Wright had the high school at that time, and I also ran the Northside Elementary which was just a four-room classroom building at the time and didn't have a principal, so I was more or less principal of that school. We had Dixie Valley also which is about seventy miles from Fallon.

LaVOY: Who was head at that school?

DERICCO: We had a teacher out there that was head of it, and she was more or less the teacher-principal, and then I had to go out there a couple of times a month and see how things were going.

LaVOY: Did she have many students out there?

DERICCO: Oh, they had about anywhere from six to seven students, and, a lot of them were placed in the homes out in that area by welfare.

LaVOY: Did you have Cottage Schools, too?

DERICCO: Oh, yes, Cottage Schools was another one of our schools?

LaVOY: Who was the principal of that?

DERICCO: They were just teachers. I was principal of that one, too.

LaVOY:  In other words while you were the assistant superintendent, you were principal of, literally, three schools.

DERICCO: Right. Well, I had Northside, Cottages, and Dixie Valley. Don Johnson had West End. Gene McIntyre had Oats Park, and Bill Wright had the high school.

LaVOY:  How long were you assistant superintendent?

 DERICCO: I was assistant superintendent from 1959 to 1968.

LaVOY:  And was Iverson the superintendent all that time?

DERICCO: No. In 1960, Dr. Iverson left and he went back to Iowa, and Mr. Walter Olds took over as superintendent of schools.

LaVOY:  Where did he come from?

DERICCO: He came from Jerome, Idaho.

LaVOY:  You haven't mentioned his name before. The school board brought him from Jerome?

DERICCO: Right. I guess they had advertised the position and he had applied. A couple of the board members went over to talk to him in Jerome and came back. They hired him outright then.

LaVOY:  Had you applied for the superintendent's job?

DERICCO: No, I didn't apply at that time for the superintendent's job. I didn't feel I was seasoned enough to take that job.

LaVOY:  Did you have a lot of support from the community as assistant superintendent?

DERICCO: Oh, yes. I did have a lot of support. That's one thing about the community at that time. Of course, you had your run-in with parents, different parents on different issues, but on the whole your parent support of the school district was great.

LaVOY:  How did you happen to become the superintendent?

DERICCO: Well, after seven years, Walt Olds decided that he didn't want to be superintendent anymore. He wanted to be assistant superintendent, so in 1969 he asked the board if he could become assistant superintendent and put me in the superintendentcy. So, we had a board meeting, and they brought this up, and they offered me the superintendency, and they said Walter wanted to become assistant superintendent in charge of finance. I said, "Oh, gosh, I don't think I'm ready for this." "Well," they said, "we think you're ready and you should take the job." I kept saying, "I don't think I'm ready." "Well," they said, "this is an opportunity for you and it's not going to come around again. You go out in the hallway and think about it for fifteen minutes and then come back, and if you don't want the job, fine. If you want the job, it's yours."

LaVOY:  And then you'd be without a job.

DERICCO: That would be another thing. They said, "You wouldn't have the assistant job because Walt would move in there."

LaVOY:  Now, "they" is the school board?

DERICCO: Yeah. Or else they'd put me somewhere. I don't know where they'd put me. A teaching job or whatever. [tape cuts] They could have been using a little bit of pressure tactics there, too. I don't know. If I had said no, I didn't want it, maybe they'd have kept Walter Olds at superintendency and just let it go on like it was. So, I went outside and I walked up and down the hallway there, and, of course, my secretaries were there, and Peggy Graham says, "You've got to take the job. You've got to take the job. You can't do anything else but take the job." We only had a couple of secretaries at that time there. I took a deep breath and I went back in after fifteen minutes, and I said I'd take the job.

LaVOY:  Did you have a chance to call Donna and talk to her about it?

DERICCO: Not right away, no, because she was teaching school. Of course that was another concern of mine, would Donna have to give up her teaching job? I didn't want to do that because she was a good teacher. They said, "No, she can continue teaching. You can take the job and she'll continue teaching." So that kind of helped a little bit there. I remember that after I got off work, I went over to Mr. Olds' house, and he said to me, "Well, are you all ready to go? We'd better have a drink on this." I said, "Walt, I don't know why I took that job. I don't think I can handle that job." "You won't have any trouble. Don't worry about it." We had a drink and I went home and I told Donna that I was going to become the superintendent.

LaVOY: And that was what year?

DERICCO: In 1968.

LaVOY: That you became superintendent.

DERICCO: And Walt Olds became the assistant for three years.

LaVOY: Well, now, here are you in a completely different job. Who was on the school board at this point in time? One or two of the names will be fine.

DERICCO: I can't remember who was on there (laughing) now that I think about it.

LaVOY: Was [Paul]McCuskey?

DERICCO: I think McCuskey was on there and Dana Coffee. I don't know if Jim Wood was on there at the time. Virgil Getto was on there one year when I was there, and Louis Venturacci was on there, and George Frey.

LaVOY:  You think just roughly, they were on the board?

DERICCO: Yeah, I think they were on at that time. I don't know if the minister was on there from the Methodist Church. I think those were the ones that were on it at the time.

LaVOY:  Well, this was a new life for you being the chief honcho now of the whole school system. How many years did you stay as superintendent?

DERICCO: Twenty-two years.

LaVOY:  As superintendent!

DERICCO: Twenty-two as superintendent, nine as assistant, and four as a teacher.

LaVOY:  My goodness! You're Mr. Education himself. Tell me some of your policies as superintendent.

DERICCO: Well, the one thing I wanted was to provide the best education that we could for the money that we had for our students, and, of course, I always wanted to get the best teachers that we could get. This was quite hard to do in the early days for a community away from Reno because all the graduates that came out of the University system wanted to go into the Washoe County School District, so we would get very few from the University at that time. Usually, we would get our teachers from other states. California, but mostly Idaho and Wyoming and Montana and those areas there. It was a struggle trying to get teachers to fill in, and sometimes you would get teachers that shouldn't be teaching to be frank with you, and, of course, at that time it was quite easy to get rid of them as compared to now in getting a teacher out of the system. I wanted my teachers to do the best job they could. I expected them to teach and to do a good job. I expected my principals to aid them, to help them any way they could, and, of course, I expected my principals to be loyal to me and any problems that we had. One thing that I always wanted from them is to know any problems that they had that would eventually come up to me. I hated to be surprised on anything. I said, "If there's a problem--I don't care how little it is--let me know so I can prepare myself." And I would do the same for them in order to handle situations as they arose. My philosophy was to get the best type of program that I could for my young people here in the county.

LaVOY: Did you have a dress code in the schools for the teachers?

DERICCO: Oh, yes, we had a dress code. Ties were required and dresses were required and nylons and everything else, and, of course, as time went on we did move to pantsuits, but the type of pantsuit that was a combination, and, as time went on, you would get a little bit more lenient with the dress. Other school districts would change their policies, and, of course, when the school district formed their association, that's when the battle started because then we had to negotiate everything from contracts to dress code and curriculum and everything else with the teachers and slowly but surely they became less formal, less formal. Of course, the old-time teachers that remained on for years still, like Ed Arciniega, he always had his tie on, and he was always professional. Other teachers, too. A lot of them did continue dressing. But, when the newer ones became more informal it used to burn me up. I did call a few of them down on their dress and I told the principals they had to, but as time went on, now it's very unbelievable.

LaVOY: Yes, I'll agree with you on that. When did the teachers' union first start? Approximately.

DERICCO: It was in the early 1960s when Walter Olds was there. Started becoming an organized unit. I refer to them as a union because they are a union. They say, "No, we're not a union", but they are a union, and, of course, they work for their benefits. I can understand at the early time when they worked for better wages because they weren't paid too well and the benefits weren't too good. Now I think their wages are great and their benefits are outstanding that you don't even see in private business nowadays. But, they seem to want more all the time.

LaVOY:  Yes, and I think that the discipline and the dress codes have gone completely out.

DERICCO: Right. The discipline, the teachers are afraid nowadays of suits and of being challenged by the courts and by the parents, and, of course, they did away with the paddle. Of course, I think, maybe my thoughts are not good, but I think a good paddling once in awhile on the backside does a lot of good. Does more than words and straightens things out, and, by gosh, I think we're at a point where we should come back with that. (laughing)

LaVOY:  Well, I can't help but agree with you on that. When did the drug problems first start in the schools?

DERICCO: Oh, they started around in the 1960s little by little. We didn't have too much of it at first, but as all school districts, eventually you're affected by it. Something that you have to face and it's a challenge and you try to do the best you can with instruction and everything else. But, it's here and it's still here, and it's still a battle.

LaVOY:  Now, when the Naval Air Station, Fallon, reopened, did you get quite an influx of students?

DERICCO: Yes. We actually operated three bus loads of students from the naval air station here in Fallon. So we had quite a few students that came from the base.

LaVOY:  Were they accepted, or did they cause disruptions?

DERICCO: Oh, no. I think they were accepted quite well within the school district itself. Maybe some of the parents weren't too happy with some of our programs. I know they'd come from different areas, and they'd say, "Back there we had this and that," and, of course, this is Fallon. This is the way our programs are. But, on the whole, they were a great people, and they helped the schools quite a bit.

LaVOY:  And the Federal financing helped, too.

DERICCO: Oh, yeah. Still, there are people in this community that believe the base people come to school without paying anything and that's not true. First, we get the allotment from the state on them, but then, also, we get allotments from the government on the A and B students. On the students that lived on the base we receive a certain portion of money per student and the ones that lived off the base in town we received a certain amount of money. So, actually, when you come right down to it, we were receiving more money per student from the military than the students that lived in town that weren't military connected.

LaVOY:  Approximately, how much money, during your tenure, per child was allocated?

DERICCO: Oh, gosh. The high school students got the greater portion of the money. I'd have to think back on that one. We had pretty close to three thousand dollars per student for total monies, grants and everything per student throughout the year. 'Course what you do on your formula, you see how much money you can raise locally through your taxes and then the state gives you money to build up to a certain plateau which is an even amount for the student. Each year it fluctuates, the amount of money you get from the state and 874 [Federal Program] is the same way 'cause the government always kind of jockeys that around. Depends on how much money they need for the military, but the high school students would get the bigger bulk of the money because of the programs that they had. I'd have to look and see what they're getting now and then compare it back and see how much they're getting.

LaVOY:  Well, I was just wondering. Did you always have textbooks for all the students?

DERICCO: Oh, yes.

LaVOY:  I notice that's one of the problems at this moment. Of course, we won't go into that because we're just talking about your tenure as superintendent of schools.

DERICCO: Our principals would make sure at the end of the year. They'd count all of their textbooks and kind of estimate what they need for the next year, and then maybe we'd have to order a few more. Of course, a lot of times--I know that this controversy here is that they said they're not ordering because they're going to get a whole new unit next year, but you have to have textbooks. And another thing that's bad is that the students don't take care of the textbooks. They lose them. And that's why they're . . . I was talking to Mr. Linderman, and he said they spent over four to five thousand dollars on replacement textbooks each year that students lose. Of course, they have to pay for them, but they depreciate the amount they pay. I think they should pay the full amount. You have to pay the full amount to get them back.

LaVOY:  Were you superintendent when the district purchased the Minnie Blair properties of the new high school?

DERICCO: Yes, I was.

LaVOY:  Were you involved with that negotiation?

DERICCO: That was really one of the greatest purchases we ever made. Do you know where Laura Mills Park is located today? We owned that piece of property there at first, and we planned on building an elementary school there, and then the board decided not to do it, and Mrs. Blair wanted to sell that property. Al Childers was a construction man at that time, and he wanted to purchase the property to build these homes, and Mrs. Blair said, "No, if the school district wants to buy it, I will sell it to them." So she did sell it to us.

DERICCO: We purchased 66.6 acres, and I think it was 2,500 dollars an acre, and Mr. Childers had offered them 5,000 dollars an acre. It was a middle school at that time, and they named it Minnie Blair Middle School. So, we did get that acreage, and it was a godsend because we've expanded the high school there to a large high school which will house anywhere from 1200 to 1400 students, and the west end we have the Lahontan Elementary School there and in between we have all the physical education athletic facilities for the high school and the Lahontan Elementary School uses it also for p.e.

LaVOY:  Well, that certainly speaks highly of Minnie Blair that she put the students and the school ahead of the profit from a contractor.

DERICCO: It kinda made me sick to think about it. In 1970, we floated one of our bond issues, and I had proposed the building of a new high school for this bond issue which would have been about four million dollars. I remember that there was a contingent of people that went out and formed a committee and worked against us to defeat it, and they did defeat it. We lost by, I don't know, about fifteen votes or something like that in getting that bond issue passed for that high school. So, in 1972, we proposed another bond issue for half the amount, about two million dollars, for a middle school, and that passed, and we built the first phase of it. We did it with the idea with building the first phase of the high school with this building which became known as the Minnie Blair School, and when we built that school on that property we called it the Minnie Blair Middle School. Later on it was converted to a high school which it is today, and I felt very bad because it wasn't the Minnie Blair Middle School, but we did retain the name of the Minnie Blair complex which is the original building itself, so it still has her name on it. So, that whole complex, the high school, The main building where the administration is is called the Minnie Blair.

LaVOY: Now, I remember when that opened, were you responsible for naming the section that is the Anne Berlin section?

DERICCO: That was later on in years. I was out then. I wasn't superintendent then.

LaVOY: You had retired?

DERICCO: I had retired. But I think, if I remember right, I think it was Dorothea Martin Ratzlaff that proposed that. Or was I still superintendent?

LaVOY: I thought you were.

DERICCO: Yes, I was still superintendent right at the end. That was right at the end of my superintendency, I guess.

LaVOY: Now, was the gymnasium that was named after you, was that prior to or after that?

DERICCO: That was prior to.

LaVOY:Now, how did you react to having the gymnasium named after you?

DERICCO: I was flabbergasted. You know, to have a building named after you. I never thought that would ever happen to me.

LaVOY: Who brought this up?

DERICCO: That was brought up by Jim Winans and Dolores Mussi. They proposed it at a board meeting one night out of the blue when we were doing the construction, and they passed it. I don't know if they did any leg work before, but, anyway, they passed it that evening.

LaVOY:  What was your reaction when you were told that it was going to be named after you?

DERICCO: I couldn't talk. (laughing) In fact, I started to get tears in my eyes. (laughing)

LaVOY:  Well, that's a normal thing with you, Elmo. (laughing) I remember, as a newcomer, I came to the dedication. It was a very, very touching one. Would you give us just a quick rundown on what happened?

DERICCO: Oh. That was outstanding . . . First, I told Donna, they said they were going to have this dedication. I said, "Well, I don't see why they're having it. There's not going to be many people there for that." She said, "Well, anyway they're going to have it. We have to go." Of course, my buddy from Chicago came. Flew all the way over here.

LaVOY:  His name?

DERICCO: Albert Rodrigues. I didn't know he was coming, and I walked into the foyer, and he had his back turned to me, and then he turned around. Of course, that was a bolt of the heavens when I saw him, and then we went into the program. They had a Marine honor guard, and they brought it from Pickle Meadows. I was thoroughly impressed by that (laughing) to have a Marine Corps honor guard there! And the high school band played different selections, and then Rollan Melton was the chief speaker. The emcee was Mike McGinness who was chairman of the board, and then Rollan proceeded to cut me up (laughing) in his usual way. But, it was a very nice program. Reverend [Robert] Porterfield did the benediction and everything.

LaVOY:  Another thing, the plaque is lovely. Who got the plaque going?

DERICCO: The kids did.

LaVOY:  Your children?

DERICCO: My children, yeah. They had that made, and then they put that saying on it from a poem that I like on education. They had the verse there. The three sentences there I think it was.

LaVOY:  Do you remember what it was?

DERICCO: A builder of temples a child's immortal mind.  I think it was.

LaVOY:  The place was just absolutely filled with people.

DERICCO: Yeah. When I walked in there, I couldn't believe all the people that were there.

LaVOY:  Well, true to your form, you got all teary eyed. [end of tape] How soon after that did you decide to retire?

DERICCO: Oh, I had thirty-four years in. I was going to retire after thirty-six years because that's how far your retirement goes, and I still had a year on my contract. I had gone into my thirty-fifth year, and I was deciding whether to retire then after we'd just passed a big twelve million dollar bond issue to build the new elementary school and also to add onto the high school and a few other buildings that we had, and I thought, "Well, this would be a good time to do it." I could have gone on another year. I had another year on my contract, but I'd kind of made a promise to Peggy Graham. She was going to quit a couple of years before, and I said, "Now, Peggy, you can't quit now. You gotta go a couple more years, and we'll go out together." Well, that year came, and she said she was going to retire, so I couldn't renege on (laughing) my promise. I guess I could have if I wanted to, but I didn't think I should, and I thought it was about time for me to end it. I'd completed thirty-five years in the system.

LaVOY:  That's a long time.

DERICCO: I made a commitment. Yeah, for a guy that took the job. When I first took the job back in 1955, Donna and I thought we'd stay here for three years, and then we always wanted to move to Reno and be in Reno, but we never did make Reno. We liked it here.

LaVOY:  Now, in those years, you saw the school grow, you saw the new high school being built and everything. You saw the problems that came with the 1960s. When did you get special education in the schools?

DERICCO: Well, the special education, came by mandate from the government. I think it was the early 1970s that they started the special education program.

LaVOY:  Probably from the Kennedy influence.

DERICCO: Yeah. I think it was right in that area there. The 1960s to 1970s that they started to come out with these different laws and stuff on education. Actually when I was assistant superintendent, we did have a special ed unit. That was in the 1960s. We had the class over there at the old Catholic Church in the quonset hut over there, or in that one building that they had the old church--it looks like a boxcar. We had the class in there, and later we moved it to the old agriculture building over at the old high school which is now the junior high school. Of course, it's been torn down since then. But it was in the 1960s that we did have the special education programs come about.

LaVOY:  Who was the first special education teacher? Do you recall?

DERICCO: Oh, gosh. I didn't think I'd ever forget her name. She's a very nice woman. An older woman. Very compassionate. I'd have to look that up and see.

LaVOY:  Well, I know in the last few years since you have retired, they've had some problems with the special education teachers. I don't know what the problem is, but you had none of that when you were the superintendent of schools?

DERICCO: No, no. The law wasn't as strong then. We did the best we can with what we had, and as time went on, parents became involved and the demand was greater all the time and you had more and more special ed people.

LaVOY:  Is this more and more special ed due to the fetal alcohol syndrome and fetal drug syndrome?

DERICCO: I think it is. I think in talking to Lenae, my daughter, who's a third-grade teacher at Albert Seeliger School in Carson City, she said that she notices that now--they've cut the classes down to fifteen to one in many cases at the primary level, and she feels it has to come to that because of that type of student that they're starting to get into the districts. It's taking more and more time of the teacher, and, consequently, the classes can't be as large. But, I do think it's having a definite effect, and it's starting to show up into the school systems now.

LaVOY:  That's very tragic that this is happening. It's just society in general. Now, Lenae is the only one that followed in the teaching footsteps of her parents. Your son, Tim, what does he do?

DERICCO: Lenae, this is her twentieth year of teaching, believe it or not. I can't believe it myself. Tim works for American Cement. He drives the cement truck and does work like that.

LaVOY: Where does he live?

DERICCO: He lives in Sparks, Nevada.

LaVOY: Does he have children?

DERICCO: He has one boy which is Wilson named after Donna's father, and he'll be four years old this December.

LaVOY: And then Tod?

DERICCO: Tod is working for the State Highway Transportation Department in Reno. The main depot over there. He's a mechanic, and he works in the shop with another person. He's in charge of the tuning shop. He does all odds and ends working there.

LaVOY: Does he have children?

DERICCO: Yes, He has one boy which is Zachary, and he's a six-year old.

LaVOY: Is that the one that looks so much like you?

DERICCO: No, that's Wilson that looks like me. He's the four-year old. Zachary is a blond and he's the one that looks like the other side.

 

LaVOY: Well, it's wonderful that now you have two grandchildren.

DERICCO: I have two grandchildren.

LaVOY: And you spoil them rotten.

DERICCO: Definitely. (laughing) But I'm firm with them. (laughing)

LaVOY: Oh, yes, I can tell that. When did you move into your home that you're living in on Adobe Road now?

DERICCO: Just about thirty years ago.

LaVOY: Did you and Donna help build that yourself?

DERICCO: Yes. This is the third house we built. We built one on Cora Way. We built that one first in behind the hospital [155 N. Russell] and then we built one on Cora Way and then this one on Adobe Road.

LaVOY:  I understand that you did electrical work and everything on it. Did you?

DERICCO: *I* did the electrical work?

LaVOY:  Or Donna did? (laughing)

DERICCO: Well, Donna's the one. Donna won't let me near any

tools.     (laughing) Donna's the mechanic. She fixes things. Of course, I do little odds and ends now and I'm amazed I can do some things, but she likes to lay cement bricks. I'm the hod carrier. She hangs paper and I'm her helper, but she's the mechanical one. I'm her helper.

LaVOY:  Well, this is a lovely home that you have and now that all the children are gone and just the two of you are banging around in it, I imagine it seems kind of empty at times.

DERICCO: Oh, yeah, but it's great to have when the kids come around. We were going to sell it and move into town. We're glad we didn't. We still like it out there. It's a great area of town.

LaVOY:  Now, you've been so active with school activities and everything, and I know I hear stories about you getting up at two and three in the morning and going over to the school and seeing that the water was turned off and everything else. You're still doing that with a lot of different things around town. I know you're very active with the St. Patrick's Catholic Church there, and you have your coffee klatch every morning. Would you tell us who the members of your coffee klatch are?

DERICCO: Well, we're all retirees, and we seem to gain a little bit all the time. The first group that started out there was Al Glaubitz and Curt Porter, and then they invited me. Then I got Ed [Arciniega] to join us. Then we got Maurice Hanifan to join us and Lou Buckmaster. He retired from teaching so he's with us right now. Steve Maffi, who worked for Kennametal, he's with us right now. Glen Jacobs and Don Johnson. He's another one who's an ex-principal. He's with us. And just yesterday for the first time we had John Hanifan. He's retiring from Kennametal at the end of this month, and Maurice dragged him over there for coffee, and he said, "You got to get involved and do things, and this is one of the important things of the day is to have our little coffee group which we discuss all the problems of all over the world and the country and Fallon.

LaVOY:  And where do you meet?

DERICCO: We meet at the Nugget [70 South Maine], and we have anywhere from eight to ten show up at a time. Only on Wednesday there's only about two or three of us. Bill Deal's another one that's with us. The bigger part of the group, they go out and play golf that day. So on Wednesday there's only about two or three of us.

LaVOY:  Now, you've been very active with the Senior Center. What are some of the things you've done there?

DERICCO: Well, I was talked into getting on the advisory board of the Senior Center by Maurice Hanifan, and then Jim Regan asked me also. I joined them, went on the advisory board, became chairman of the advisory board, and I was on there for about two years, and then I got off for about six, seven months. They asked me to come back on again, so I'm back on again as chairman of the board. It's very interesting. I really enjoy it because I see a lot of the people that I've known over the years, and, of course, the Center needs a lot of help and work. We're trying our best to improve things over there, and I think we have through painting, and we got the City to take over, put in a new sewer system for them, and they helped with the electrical system which was in dire need of help. We did receive pieces of equipment from Pete Larsen of the Subway who gave us a serving table and also a three-door refrigerator. He gave them to me, actually said to put them in the St. Patrick's hall, but we couldn't get them in there. It's not large enough. We thought, well, if we were going to enlarge the hall, we'd keep it until then, but it doesn't look like we're going to be enlarging the hall for a long time, so I thought, well, it'd be great to have them over in the Senior Center, and we took them over to the Senior Center, and they have that now.

LaVOY:  Of course, I know, Hanifan and Arciniega hate to see you come because you always have a can of paint for them and a job for them to paint something.

DERICCO: (laughing) Oh, yes. They're my helpers. I like to keep them active. I don't want them to become too complacent, so I get them to help me move things over there and to paint things. In fact, we just finished painting the storage shed that the high school carpentry built the Senior Center to store things outside. They don't have much storage, and it had to be painted, so Ed, 'course he's our leader as far as paintings concerned, and we painted the shed for them. Our next project--I haven't told them yet--but, we're going, in the spring, we're going to paint the downstairs. (laughing)

 

LaVOY: And then you also have been very active on the [Churchill County] Museum Board.

DERICCO: Yes, that's been a very interesting board to be on, and I'm on my second term there. Well, actually two and a half terms. I filled in for a gentleman.

LaVOY: And you became chairman.

DERICCO: And I later became chairman for two terms on that one, and I'm still active there, and we still have nice projects developing there. Putting the cement pad in the back of the building. That's one of our main projects. The County's going to do that for us. We have to talk to them and get going.

LaVOY:  Were you one of those responsible for bringing Jane Pieplow as director?

DERICCO: I was on the board for interviewing.

LaVOY:  She is outstanding.

DERICCO: We have an outstanding person there.

LaVOY: You did a great job.

DERICCO: I hope that we don't lose her, but I know she'll want to go to bigger things in the future, and she's doing so many things right now, rebuilding and changing things in the Museum. In fact, we're going to go on a project to go get the bricks at Fort Churchill that they made about three or four months ago, and we're going to bring those back, and then she wants to fix the kitchen. Wants it to look like an adobe house. She's doing a new project all the time. She's outstanding. We really got a winner there. Boy, that was a great choice!

LaVOY: Then you have been very, very active with the Knights of Columbus. Tell us some of your jobs there.

DERICCO: Well, I've gone through all the chairs of the Knights of Columbus. I've been Grand Knight for two terms. I've been on the board of directors. I'm off of that right now, and now what I just do is help more or less with the social activities of the Knights. I'm the social chairman. They always make me social chairman, and then I help with the cooking for different projects

LaVOY:  The pork feed is the big thing there, but tell me about the Andrews Sisters that you started.

DERICCO: Oh, the Ambrew Sisters?

LaVOY:  Andrews.

DERICCO: No, they're not Andrews. The Andrews Sisters--that's another group. The group that we got to come and visit us was the Ambrew Sisters, and they're an offshoot of the Andrew Sisters. They happened to come through Fallon one time and their car broke down, and we happened to hear about it, so we were having our pork feed at that time, so I asked them if they would come over and do a song for us that we'd give them a free meal if they wanted, and they did. They did say at the time that they couldn't come at that time, but they would come another time, and they did. They did come last year, and they did perform, and they're an outstanding singing group. We tried to get them again this year, but this year they're on tour and everything else and so they couldn't make it, but maybe next year they might come again. I don't know.

LaVOY:  I have to add a little comment in here that Elmo Dericco in a wig is smashing. Maurice Hanifan in a wig is absolutely beautiful, and Ed Arciniega in a wig, you just can't imagine what a glorious woman we had. I don't think I need to say anything more, but they are wonderful. Now going on, you're also on the advisory board of the Community College. Tell me a little about that.

DERICCO: Well, I'm on there with your husband [John LaVoy] as you know. I'm a little disappointed with that board because--maybe it's not supposed to be, but I thought we'd be more active and participate in more things. What we actually do is we go to a meeting about every two or three months, and it's a video-type meeting with Carson City. We talk back and forth, and they discuss issues with us and then that's it! I’d like to become active in a lot more things in the Community College. Now with this new person [Dr. James Randolph] that's president of the Western Community College, we might become more involved. I hope so. I told them, "Hey, I just feel inadequate. I don't think I'm doing something." The one thing that we did do that I'm quite happy with is that I've always, even I was superintendent, I couldn't see why we were holding the graduation of the people in this community college over in Carson City. Now, I understand at first it had to be, but as it grew and grew our graduates would come to a reception here, maybe two or three nights before, then they'd have to drive clear over to Carson to graduate. I remember the president at the time, Mr. [Anthony] Calabro, and I was at the School District, I kept on him all the time. "Why can't we have graduation over here?" So, finally, when I got on the advisory board, I did get a letter drawn up and all the advisory board members signed it, and it was just about the right time because they've outgrown that Carson one. It's too big. Next year we are going to have graduation here for the first time for our community college.

LaVOY: You're also on the University of Nevada Reno Alumni Board?

DERICCO: Right.

LaVOY: And this year you received a nice award from that. Would you tell us what that was?

DERICCO: The award I received--this is my second. First I started out as alumni chapter president from Fallon and then I got on the board. I'm on my second term of the alumni council now, and I've received an award at Homecoming for alumni service or service to the University and promoting the University to students or to people in the community and wherever, and so I did receive a nice silver bowl at the Homecoming dinner which I thoroughly appreciated.

LaVOY: It was held where?

 

DERICCO: Silver Legacy is where they held the banquet this year. Of course, I accepted that on behalf of all the people that helped me get it, too, because there's a lot of people that help you do these things, and they should get the credit too.

LaVOY: We've covered, I think, the four main things. Now, what else do you belong to that I don't know about?

DERICCO: (laughing) I think that's about it. I don't think I belong to anything else that I can think of.

LaVOY:  I know you're busy in everything.

DERICCO: Oh, yeah, I work at the church. I contribute to the church whatever I can as far as labor on things. With my limited mechanical ability.

LaVOY:  I see you changing the light bulb once in awhile. (laughing)

DERICCO: Yeah, I change that once in awhile. In fact, we have to go up to the hall and change the ballast now. I have to get my helper, Mr. Hanifan, to help me.       I'm active in that, and I enjoy doing things at the church.

LaVOY:  Can you think of anything that we might have missed that would be of interest for this oral history?

DERICCO: Not right now. Actually we went further than I thought we'd go. (laughing) I have some things as far as school's concerned in buildings and stuff like that that I've accomplished over the years. I don't know if you want to have that in there or not.

LaVOY:  I would like very much to have that. Why don't you jot down the things accomplished with the schools, and then we will have another very short session and get that in and then implement that into the overall interview. Well, Elmo, I think what we will do is have an addendum on another tape at a later date very soon right after Thanksgiving and then we'll add that as an addendum to your oral history. On behalf of the Churchill County Museum, I want to thank you for giving us this time. It's a wonderful interview, and we do appreciate it.

DERICCO: Well, thank you. It's an honor to do it.                (laughing) [end of interview 1]

Interviewer

Marion LaVoy

Interviewee

Elmo Derrico

Location

4325 Schurz Highway, Fallon, NV

Comments

Files

Derrico.jpg
Elmo Dericco.docx
Dericco, Elmo interview 1.mp3

Citation

Churchill County Museum Association, “Elmo Derico Oral History, 1 of 2,” Churchill County Museum Digital Archive: Fallon, Nevada, accessed March 29, 2024, https://ccmuseum.omeka.net/items/show/231.