John Herbert Marean Oral History

John Herbert Marean Oral History

John Herbert Marean Oral History

Churchill County Museum Association

Churchill County Museum Association

August 20, 1996

Analog Cassette Tape, Text File, Mp3 Audio

English

Audio Cassette

1:00:47, 50:20

Churchill County Oral History Project

an interview with

JOHN HERBERT MAREAN

Fallon, Nevada

conducted by

MARIAN LA VOY

August 20, 1996

This interview was transcribed by Glenda Price; edited by Norine Arciniega; final by Pat Roden; index by Gracie Viera; supervised by Myrl Nygren, Director of the 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

John Marean comes from a background of gentility, intelligence and independence which probably contributes to his attitude toward life. As a youth he walked to a different drummer, perhaps because he knew that his ideas were ahead of others of his generation. As with many students of the time he participated in grade-school programs and high school dances. As an extracurricular activity in high school, he assisted a local ham radio enthusiast to broadcast the high school football games. His independence is evident when he declares that he did not attend any of his graduation ceremonies!

John's desire to "make things happen" resulted in his registering in engineering classes at the University.

John's pre-war induction into the Army Air Force led him into a field that he had never expected to enter. This came about . . "All because I could type!" It headed him to the exciting new field of radar with training in Great Britain. His subsequent years as a pilot and instructor in the Army Air Force could have been the impetus that led him into teaching. Following his discharge from the service, the classroom once again beckoned and although his career started inauspiciously, he suddenly found himself writing a text book on the various aspects of teaching science. Invitations to present his ideas at the prestigious campus of The Massachusetts Institute of Technology as well as invitations to Exeter and Philips followed; eventually he was called to join the faculty at the University of Calgary in the Province of Alberta, Canada. His hands-on method of teaching was very much accepted in Canada, and he, an engineering graduate with a BS degree from the University of Nevada, found himself teaching education classes in the Department of Education at the University of Calgary. He later received an invitation to come to Japan to explain his theories on teaching physics and other sciences. His comments on the Japanese method of teaching are different as well as enlightening.

It is obvious that John could still be a positive force in the classroom, but life has slowed and retirement has settled-in. Although it appears he would rather be in the excitement of the scientific world, he is valiantly trying to adjust to a life of leisure and perhaps some fishing with his son in Quathiaski Cove, BC.

A flash of his independence flared briefly when he explained why he is now a Canadian citizen "Taxation without representation! My ancestors threw tea in the Boston Harbor to show their contempt for a government that was taxing the people unfairly, and now we are experiencing the same treatment from our own government."

Hopefully, John will find the peace that he seeks in the wilderness of Canada and continue to put his intellect toward writing more books whether they be textbooks or articles on the views he holds on education and life in general.

Interview with John Herbert Marean

LaVOY:  This is Marian Hennen LaVoy of the Churchill County Museum Oral History Project interviewing John Marean at the annex of the Museum on August 20, 1996. Good morning, Mr. Marean.

MAREAN: Good morning, Marian.

LaVOY:  I've been reading about your family. Very, very interesting family. I'm going to have you start and please tell me the name of your grandparents.

MAREAN: My father's father was Delzene Marean [born November 22, 1848]. His wife was Hannah Elizabeth Marean [born March 3, 1852], but he always called her Libby. My mother's father was George Johnston, and his wife's name was Laura Wagner before they were married.

LaVOY:  Getting back to Delzene, what was his occupation?

MAREAN: He was a telegrapher with both Western Union and the U.S. Weather Bureau. It was interesting in reading a diary that he kept for the year he turned twenty-one. He talked about the problems of trying to make a living as a telegrapher. The income was not very great. Also about the first nationwide strike that they had.            Of course, Western Union was about the only nationwide industry that there was.

LaVOY:  How did he happen to go into telegraphy?

MAREAN: His brother was a telegrapher in the Washington, D.C., area before my grandfather left the family home.

LaVOY:  And where was that?

MAREAN: It was in Pennsylvania. They had moved from the Boston area where the family had been located for a century or more and came into eastern Pennsylvania. A family of six they couldn't all stay at home, so they disbursed as people do now, and his older brother was a telegrapher and taught my grandfather who was on his own and even managing some of the stations within a couple of months.

LaVOY:  Was it your grandfather who had experienced polio?

MAREAN: No, it was my father.

LaVOY:  All right. We'll continue with your grandfather.

MAREAN: When they retired they moved here to Fallon and lived with my aunt and uncle of the William Colemans. Grandfather passed away, I think, about 1930 [May 9, 1930] and Grandmother in 1940 [August 1]. My mother's parents stayed in Washington for all of their lives. He was the interior decorator for the Old Soldiers' Home, but he also served as interior decorator in the White House for more than a year. Among some of our treasures are things made from fabrics that were scraps left over from some of the upholstery work in the White House

LaVOY:  That's interesting. What president was there at that time?

MAREAN: I don't remember. I don't know.

LaVOY:  That's very exciting to hear about things like this.

MAREAN: Yes.

LaVOY:  Your grandmother was a member of the Brewster family?

MAREAN: Yes, she was descended directly from the Mayflower Brewsters. Not Elder Brewster, but, rather, his brother. I've always felt very proud about that.

LaVOY:  I think you should be, and I imagine she was a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution?

MAREAN: I don't remember that being a part of her. She was a strong church woman. A strong woman! And they were quite a couple. Loved them dearly.

LaVOY:  I can understand why. Was he not employed at one time by what was called the U.S. Signal Service?

MAREAN: Yes, I think that was early in his work and then Western Union and then the Weather Bureau.

LaVOY:  Did not the Signal Service become the Weather Bureau?

MAREAN: I think it was. Yes.

LaVOY:  Well, he certainly had an early start.

MAREAN: He was a pioneer. (laughing)

LaVOY:  He certainly was a pioneer in all of those things. Then we'll come back down to your father. What was your father's name?

MAREAN: Stanley Marean, or S.R. [Stanley Reed] as he was usually called, was the fifth in the family of six of the Delzene Mareans. He was smitten with polio as an infant and didn't walk until he was nearly five years old. To make it possible for him to walk, they had to cut the Achilles tendon, and so his feet and legs were never strong. I don't remember his actually doing it, but I know from the pictures of the old days he wore braces when he first came West. It didn't make easy it for him to be on the survey crew which was his first job. (laughing)

LaVOY:  I would think that'd be very, very difficult. I was rather amused to read that they felt the polio was caused by teething spasms.

MAREAN: It was not identified as polio by the way. Of course, in those days it was called infantile paralysis. Only lately that they've called it polio. I think it was one of the first of that kind of operation, but his heels were pulled out because of the . . . and his left hand was always weaker than his right hand.

LaVOY:  Something that I read that was so amusing, and I'd like you to comment on it. He was dressed with very long curls and a Lord Fauntleroy suit.

MAREAN: (laughing) Yes.

LaVOY:  and I know you must have heard comments from him about that.

MAREAN: (laughing) Well, I'm sure you couldn't have put him in one after I knew him. (laughing) He wanted to be a man, and he was a wonderful man.

LaVOY:  I believe I read that he loved his mother even more dearly when she permitted his father to get his hair cut.

MAREAN: (laughing) Okay.

LaVOY:  (laughing) And that she put these long curls that she kept them immaculate and kept them down his back and he hated them with a passion.

MAREAN: The family has been blessed with moderately curly hair. Wavy hair at least, so I think it's a tendency to make it look beautiful. (laughing)

LaVOY:  Well, I can understand that being a mother myself. Where did he attend school?

MAREAN: In Washington, D.C.

LaVOY:  And what prompted him to come to Fallon?

MAREAN: His older brother, Herbert, was here as an engineer having graduated from Cornell University, and he was a government employee, I think, as an agricultural expert really. Dad hadn't found anything that really moved him. He barely finished high school. He got in a little trouble at the end. He (laughing) lived at the edge of the rules, so he came. Uncle Herbert [Marean] offered to let him live here and possibly get a job. Of course, there was such a shortage of people at the time that he went to work right away.

LaVOY:  He arrived in April of 1906?

MAREAN: 1906, yes, and went to work, amongst other things, but, then went to work preparing to bring his bride-to-be a year or so later.

LaVOY:  The first night that he was here he had quite a traumatic thing happen to him. Do you recall?

MAREAN: He was in a rooming house, and when he went out to breakfast he didn't take his personal possessions with him, so he was robbed while at breakfast. So he had nothing of his own.

LaVOY:  No money?

MAREAN: No money.

LaVOY:  No nothing.

MAREAN: And, of course, there weren't credit cards in those days.

LaVOY:  Well, that was so sad. What was his first job?

MAREAN: He was with a survey crew, I believe, and they were beginning the planning of the Lahontan project.

LaVOY:  Did he do some carpentry work before that?

MAREAN: He's always done it. That was one of his specialties in school. He learned all of the existing crafts and skills at that time, the trade. There was a limited number of them as compared to today. He also taught himself shorthand, and that was how he moved into the office work rather than the field work. Although he continued to be a field representative where he worked, and I remember trips that he and we made into the headwaters of the Truckee or the Carson River to see about the water distribution, the water allocations.

LaVOY:  I notice that he had, also, before he went into the office, I believe, worked for a short time as a ditch rider.

MAREAN: Yes, and he did some of that as part-time in the office, too, I think.

LaVOY:  With his polio, riding horses as they had to in those days, was that not difficult for him?

MAREAN: Not a problem apparently. I never heard him complain about it. I never saw him on a horse, but, of course, his problem was from the knees down largely, and he could support himself obviously.

LaVOY:  I just can't imagine him walking through the sand and the dirt . .

MAREAN: (laughing)

LaVOY:  and over the brush

MAREAN: Right.

LaVOY:  with no Achilles tendon.

MAREAN: Yeah. Of course, they more or less repaired. In fact his ability to walk improved throughout his life. He had only a slight limp.

LaVOY:  He moved on from this office work to a very prestigious job.

MAREAN: When he left the irrigation district here, they were just beginning the Rye Patch Project in Lovelock.

LaVOY:  Well, even before that, did he not become the water master and the superintendent of irrigation here?

MAREAN: Yes, I think so. He worked essentially to the top. He was not district manager, but . . .

LaVOY:  He was working at that time for the Bureau of Reclamation, was he not?

MAREAN: That was the beginning work, yes.

LaVOY:  And then he went when that was changed to the TCID.

MAREAN: Truckee-Carson, yep.

LaVOY:  Then he also went along with that.

MAREAN: Yes, for a few years.

LaVOY:  Did he ever comment to you about bringing the electric power from the water?

MAREAN: He certainly, I'm sure, promoted it. I was fairly young when electricity came into the area. I remember when we got it at the ranch we had a place four or five miles out west here, and one of his friends, Huggins, who also, I think, worked for the District but knew a lot about electricity helped to wire our new house. It wasn't new at the time. In fact we lived with kerosene and Coleman lamps for a number of years, but we had a flush toilet.

LaVOY:  (laughing)

MAREAN: My father would not take his wife out in the country unless she was equipped to live as she would have lived in town.

LaVOY:  Well, that's very admirable because few of the settlers here did that.

MAREAN: Oh, I know. No, they build the barn first and the house later. (laughing)

LaVOY:  Yes, (laughing) and the little friendly house in back stayed there a long, long time.

MAREAN: That's right.

LaVOY:  I thought it was very interesting that he spoke about the mines and everything around here. Rawhide, Wonder, whatnot. Did he get out to visit those?

MAREAN: Oh, I think not. Of course, transportation wasn't very easy. We didn't get our first car until in the late twenties when we moved out to the ranch.

LaVOY:  Was it about 1927 roughly that you got electricity or was it a little later than that?

MAREAN: It was probably about then, I think, but we had moved out, and I remember I had to hand pump water into the pressure tank so that we could flush the toilet.

LaVOY:  (laughing)

MAREAN: But it came to various parts of the community at different times, and as soon as it was available he was one of the first to sign on for our district, and it was a convenience. It certainly was.

LaVOY:  I should say so. Then after he finished with his work here in Fallon, where did he go?

MAREAN: He went to Lovelock. Well, he spent sometime in the Reno work, I think, sort of on extension. We were still living here in Fallon on the ranch. 1934, I guess it was, when he went up to Lovelock. It was when I was finishing high school. Worked there again as hydrographer. The man who was in charge of the building of the Project, the superintendent, was transferred, and Dad was made manager until it was taken over by the Humboldt-Lovelock Irrigation, Light and Power Company, I think it was. [Pershing County Water Conservation District] (laughing)

LaVOY:  Then he had another short stint with another water…

MAREAN: That was how he finished his career. He went to Burley, Idaho, for the Minidoka Project which is the largest irrigation system in North America, and he was sent there to be prepared to become, as he did become, the project manager there as he was at the time of his retirement.

LaVOY:  You mentioned how he didn't want to bring his wife-to-be out here unless she had some of the comforts of the D.C. area. What was your mother's name?

MAREAN: Ruth Hosie Johnston, and she was born in 1886. She would have been a hundred and ten this year. Earlier this month, in fact. (laughing)

LaVOY:  Oh. I understand she was very tiny.

MAREAN: She never quite reached five feet, and she was proud of it.

LaVOY:  Four feet ten is what I think I read someplace.

MAREAN: Four eleven.

LaVOY:  Oh, that's huge!

MAREAN: Yes. What she always used to boast about was when she got her first driver's license--of course, we didn't need drivers' licenses to begin with--whoever was filling out the blanks, Mother said, four eleven or four eleven and a half, said, "Oh, Ruth, you can't be that short," and left off the eleven and a half, so her driver's license showed she was four feet tall. (laughing)

LaVOY:  Oh, my. (laughing)

MAREAN: She kept that.

LaVOY:  When she came out she came by herself. Can you tell me anything that she told you about that?

MAREAN: Yes. She came part way accompanied as far as Chicago, and then the rest of the way was on her own. The dominant thing that I remember was somehow or other she had been told along the way that they didn't have much coinage in the West, so she should have plenty of coins. She had this leather moneybag, so every time she spent something she did it from currency, and she arrived in the Silver State with a bag full of coins. (laughing)

LaVOY:  Well, being as tiny as she was, that must have been very heavy. (laughing)

MAREAN: That was a burden. (laughing) And then she arrived in Hazen, of course, and the railroad had not yet been built. Dad met her. They came down by horse and wagon, and it had apparently rained. Between here and Hazen, the opportunity for some mud holes. It was quite an experience for her.

LaVOY:  She probably wished she were back in Washington, D.C.

MAREAN: There was never any indication of that. In fact she was the one who subsequently said, no, they should not stay in the East when they tried to go back to God's country. She endured a great deal as they came back because there was no job here, and they had to spend a year and a half, two years in Yuma [Arizona]. World War I. The influenza epidemic. All of those things. Strong maybe.

LaVOY:  I understand that they were married 1907.

MAREAN: 1907, yes.

LaVOY:  October 3.

MAREAN: Um-hum

LaVOY:  October 2, 1907.

MAREAN: I thought it was the third. Okay.

LaVOY:  That's all right.

MAREAN: We celebrated it about that time. (laughing)

LaVOY:  It was interesting that they were married in the home of the Project Superintendent. Do you remember his name?

MAREAN: Oh, dear. I should. The memory isn't always there.

LaVOY:  Was it Thomas [H.] Means?

MAREAN: Means. Yeah, the Means family. That's right.

LaVOY:  Did she ever comment on the wedding day or anything?

MAREAN: Not particularly as I recall. The Means' house was right next door to the house that Dad had built for Mother.

LaVOY:  Was that house in Hazen?

MAREAN: No, here.

LaVOY:  Here in Fallon.

MAREAN: In Fallon, yes.

LaVOY:  And exactly where?

MAREAN: On Williams Avenue. It's about four or five blocks from the courthouse.

LaVOY:  Your mother was very active, and she founded one of the very ancient clubs here.

MAREAN: The Artemisia Club.

LaVOY:  Did she ever mention why she was the founder of that?

MAREAN: Well, they felt responsible to the community and were aware of what some of the women were going through as they accompanied their husbands in on a business trip of some kind. Horse and wagon again for groceries, and frequently the women had nothing to do in between arriving and getting the groceries and then until father had the work all done. They wanted to provide some social options to the women, and I think that's the way it began. It eventually grew and I think it became a very responsible service organization in the community. She was one of the founders. I think there were four or five of them that got together and said, yeah, we ought to do this.

LaVOY:  They got a house that the women could go to to refresh themselves?

MAREAN: Yes.

LaVOY:  That's a very admirable thing.

MAREAN: It is.

LaVOY:  I noticed also that she was also very good with working with the Red Cross.

MAREAN: When the Red Cross needed help, she was right in there. I don't know what she did in World War I 'cause that's when I wasn't, but I know she did in World War II very definitely. They were not in this community. She could not sit still without doing something with her hands. Crocheting was her specialty. She didn't knit as much as many women do. I remember her first really major project became because she made a pair of booties for her first grandson. My sister Peg's boy, Bill [Hatton], and they were so admired everywhere that she started making them for gifts, and I'm not sure of the number. I know it was well over a thousand pair and closer to twelve hundred, thirteen hundred pair of baby booties that she crocheted.

LaVOY:  And gave them all away?

MAREAN: And gave them all away, but kept track of every person who received them.

LaVOY:  The lucky people that received them. I hope they were kind enough to give her a big thank-you for them.

MAREAN: As long as they provided the yarn. (laughing)

LaVOY:  She must have really been something great.

MAREAN: And then she went to making aprons for gifts. She would stitch up material and make pretty little aprons, and when she could not longer do that, she started using yarn to cover wire coat hangers. Made thousands of those. I still have a hundred I suppose left over (laughing) including the last one that she couldn't quite finish.

LaVOY:  Your parents were really tremendous people.

MAREAN: Yes. They were pioneers.

LaVOY:  Indeed. How many children did your mother and father have?

MAREAN: There were three of us. My sister, Peg, or Margaret [Marean Wheat], as she was officially called.

LaVOY:  She was born in what year?

MAREAN: [September 8] 1908, and brother, Bob [Robert Phillip Marean], three years later in [July 16] 1911. In between that and the time of my birth they returned to Pennsylvania where Dad thought she would be happier. He always felt guilty about bringing her out into this barren part of the world. He was selling milking machines which were just coming into practice, and that was good dairy country in Pennsylvania, but because of the war [World War I], people were not investing in that sort of thing. They were both homesick for the West, so Dad started negotiating to return West. Hopefully here, but as I said earlier, the only opening in the West was in Yuma where the Reclamation Bureau was also doing some building work. As soon as he could, he was transferred back here and then worked his way up as you say. I was born in August [31], 1917. Yuma was pretty warm for a pregnant woman (laughing) so she came back to Fallon prior to my birth and stayed with her sister, Elizabeth Snow, so I was born in Fallon although the family lived in Yuma. Apparently we returned when I was just a bit over a week old, so my initial residence in Fallon was not very long. I don't remember either trip. (laughing)

LaVOY:  I was interested in your sister, Margaret. She became quite a historian.

MAREAN: She was everything, and she did it by teaching herself. She went to the University for most of the year, but fell in love with Bill Hatton, and they were married before her first year was out, so she didn't complete one year of University. She and Bill had four children, and they lived initially in a tent house on our forty acres out west of town, then got some property over on the river. Peg was not one to be contented as a housewife. She was efficient at it, but not dedicated to it. She began exploring, reading. She became very interested in the local native people and built up a relationship with them. She also became interested in some of the geological areas around and trained herself quite well in geology, aerial photographs, maps, and things of this kind. Her first project, as I recall, with the native people was trying to make an oral record of the language while some of them still spoke Paiute. Her first instrument was a wire recorder, and she made quite a record with that, but then someone else came along and approached it from a little [different] angle but was doing it and she didn't see any reason why she should do what somebody else was doing, and she went then at an anthropological study of the people themselves. Taught herself photography. I was pleased to be able to help her a little bit with that 'cause I was doing some of that teaching. Lived with them in some of the things they preserved out of their culture. The pine nut gathering or the rabbit hunt and things of this kind. Then consolidated all of this, her pictures and her story of them into the book Survival Arts of the Primitive Paiutes. The word primitive had a negative connotation as far as she was concerned. She didn't want them called primitive people although obviously one of the meanings of the word is exactly what they were.

LaVOY:  And she did all this while being the mother of . .

MAREAN: Well, yeah, she sort of relaxed her mother responsibilities. (laughing) Those kids became very strong on their own.

LaVOY:  The four children.

MAREAN: Yes. During all of this time she remarried Wendell Wheat, and they had a son. Wendell was an outdoors person and very effective in what he could do, and he did some trail guide work and harvested fence posts and pumice block. Worked for a while at Honey Enterprise and so on. They were very happy together. Maybe because they weren't together all the time. (laughing) Each of them was doing exactly what they thought was the most important thing.

LaVOY:  I know her book has become a much sought after classic.

MAREAN: It is. I was pleased to find that it had been favorably reviewed in Scientific American, for example, as a very highly recommended work. Since I know the reviewer and the quality of his knowledge, I certainly appreciated that it was recognized that way.

LaVOY:  Who was the reviewer?

MAREAN: Phil Morrison. A physicist that I had had the opportunity to work with in one of my adventures, so I was very pleased with that.

LaVOY:  With your parents, when did each of them pass away?

MAREAN: I remember mother was 1982. She was living with me at the time. Dad was eighty-three when he died and had been born in 1883.

LaVOY:  1966 probably.

MAREAN: 1966 sounds about right. [end of tape 1 side A]

LaVOY:  Well, now, let's get to you. I think before we get to you, I want to record just a little comment that I read about your father. I believe the Washoe Project had him quite upset.

MAREAN: Yes, very much so.

LaVOY:  Because it was going to do what?

MAREAN: It was going to change the allocation of water rights and deprive some of the people who he felt were properly entitled to the water. He developed an awareness of the responsibility to see that the water was properly allocated. He had some concerns that he had been responsible for lowering the level of Pyramid Lake (laughing) and so forth. One of his favorite expressions, he returned to Reno after his retirement and I remember him saying one time, he says, "Flush the toilet. They need the water in Pyramid." (laughing)

LaVOY:  (laughing) The statement that I would like to record, he said quote, "In suing TCID Board attempting to save money for fellow water users failed to take an aggressive stand against the Federal government which blatantly refused to live up to its half of the contract agreement." And I believe that's what all of our water fights right at this moment…

MAREAN: Oh, that's where it started. Yes.

LaVOY:  He was very, very foresighted.

MAREAN: Oh, indeed he was.

LaVOY:  Let's just get on to this gentleman called John Herbert Marean.

MAREAN: We shouldn’t leave--it's on your record elsewhere, I know, but sister Peg, of course, was granted an honorary degree from the University of Nevada as a result of her work in all of the fields in which she engaged.

LaVOY:  And she certainly deserved it.

MAREAN: I'd like to say a word for my brother, too.

LaVOY:  Go right ahead.

MAREAN: Bob was older than I, of course, and my keeper for quite a while. He was very tolerant of me. Bob did his university degree in philosophy with a minor in psychology, but graduated at the time that there was still a Depression on, and his first work then he obtained through Dad's influence, I'm sure, as an operator of the power plant at Lahontan. When that was taken over by Sierra Pacific he then moved to Reno and worked there. Went on then with the Federal government in the irrigation and utility project in Wyoming and Colorado. At the time of his retirement he was responsible for the allocation of electricity in the largest interconnected electrical system in the United States. That out of a degree in philosophy.

LaVOY:  That's very admirable. Really.

MAREAN: So again he showed the same talent that Peg had of being able to pick up and learn something and be very effective in it.

LaVOY:  Had good genes.

MAREAN: They were. That's exactly it.

LaVOY:  I should say so. Let's get to yourself. When were you born?

MAREAN: I was born in 1917. They were glad I represented another sugar allocation.

LaVOY:  Oh, for World War I?

MAREAN: Yes. (laughing)

LaVOY:  (laughing) And where were you born?

MAREAN: I was born here in Fallon. As I said, Mother who was living, the family was living in Yuma, Arizona. Mother came back, I guess, along in July sometime of 1917 and stayed with her sister, Elizabeth Snow.

LaVOY:  Where did Elizabeth Snow live?

MAREAN: They were here in Fallon. Her husband, George, was also with the Bureau. She had come out West at Mother's suggestion as had Dad's sister, Helen, and each of them married one of the local men and stayed on in Fallon.

LaVOY:  Were you delivered at home?

MAREAN: Yes. I was born in the house. What else was there?

LaVOY:  Did your mother ever mention that a doctor was in attendance, or was it a midwife?

MAREAN: Dr. Gardner was my birth doctor. I hope it is on the record somewhere about the Dr. Gardner and so forth. A marvelous man who had lost both of his legs in a train accident, but continued house calls and so forth. He was just a wonderful doctor.

LaVOY:  For heaven's sake. I had never heard that.

MAREAN: I think he fell under a train or something and both his legs had to be amputated, I think, below the knee, but he had . . .

LaVOY:  Prosthetics.

MAREAN: Yes.

LaVOY:  And still made house calls.

MAREAN: Oh, yes.

LaVOY:  In a buggy probably.

MAREAN: Oh. Wherever, yeah. Most of them, of course, would have been here in town. He was a good medical man as well.

LaVOY:  Well, that's wonderful. Then you returned to Yuma.

MAREAN: Yes.

LaVOY:  And how long were you there?

MAREAN: It was something over a year, I believe. I don't remember. (laughing)

LaVOY:  And then you returned?

MAREAN: To Fallon.

LaVOY:  What were your very earliest recollections of Fallon?

MAREAN: I'm afraid they're stimulated by having looked at pictures. I remember seeing me with some of these things. I remember the parades. Mother always managed to get us into the parades somehow.

LaVOY:  Oh, as participants?

MAREAN: Yes, oh, yes.

LaVOY:  What do you recall yourself doing?

MAREAN: Oh, once I was in my red wagon that had been dressed up as a fire engine or something or that kind, and once I was a firecracker. I personally remember that because it was cardboard and it was too long that I kept bumping my heels on it, and it hurt! (laughing)

LaVOY:  (laughing) Did you win any prizes?

MAREAN: I don't think so. I think the first prize that I got was at the fair. The real Nevada State Fair, not this fake that they're having in Reno right now, where my rabbits won a blue ribbon. They were magnificent. (laughing) That was my 4-H project. I was probably eight or ten years old.

LaVOY:  What do you first remember about the streets in the town of Fallon?

MAREAN: Of course, I had nothing to compare them to, so I remember now as I look back, yes, the streets were very wide, but I think we had pretty well done away with the board sidewalks at least certainly by the time I was walking them. We went to the ranch, and the only time I was in town was going to school, so I traveled from the school down to where I picked up the bus and back again. Sometimes went as far as getting a gum ball or a candy bar at the store.

LaVOY:  You mentioned the ranch. Exactly where was your father's ranch?

MAREAN: This was best located, I guess, that it was just short of the Sheckler Road beyond the ranch. So it was about four and a half miles west on Highway 50.

LaVOY:  What were your chores on the ranch as a little boy?

MAREAN: Mostly cutting kindling. (laughing) Because I was very small and young as well. I've always been small. I grew into each of the responsibilities, and since Bob was as much older as I when he went to University, I was still ten, eleven, twelve years old, so then I took over what he would have done which was largely the milking, but there was the chickens and the pigs and so on. Each winter we would cut down a cottonwood tree and prepare it for burning because we burned both wood and coal for heat and cooking, but we had an electric stove as well. Right from the time we got electricity.

LaVOY:  That is unbelievable.

MAREAN: As I say, because we had running water, we had a hot water tank with the coil in the wood burning stove, so we had hot and cold water at the kitchen sink. A hundred and some gallon tank in the upstairs in the house. Built into the house so that there was running water and pressure pump at the kitchen sink. The well at the house was not very productive. It wasn't as good as the one where we had the animals, so one of my early jobs was pumping the well dry at which time I was allowed to take a penny out of this jar and put it in this jar. I later sold them back to Mother and put them back in this jar again. (laughing)

LaVOY:  (laughing) When you started school, you said you had to go by bus.

MAREAN: I started school while we were still living in town, and we lived only a few blocks from the old elementary school.

LaVOY:  Which is now the Cottage School?

MAREAN: Yes. That year because they were anticipating the baby boom, they encouraged anyone who had a child who would not normally be eligible to go to school, but was ready to go to school, to enroll. There were three of us who would normally have started a year later. Whatever year that would have been. I graduated from high school in 1934, so I must have been twelve years younger than that. There were three of us then who were a year younger than the average of the students. Mother was very happy (laughing) about that because I was, apparently, very precocious and exhausted her as far as anything she could do for me academically because she had not finished school. She had only been through grade six.

LaVOY:  Do you remember who the other two were that were in your categories?

MAREAN: I believe it was Maria Arrizabalaga and Kenny Tedford. I loved school. Always have.

LaVOY:  What teachers do you recall from that early period?

MAREAN: Miss Richards was my first teacher. I remember Mrs. [Lucy] Burton. More than any others I remember the high school teachers, of course, because I was at an age where I was remembering people. People didn't matter to me particularly when I was in my earlier years. In fact not until after I'd been in the service.

LaVOY:  From Cottage School you went to the Oats Park School?

MAREAN: No, I went to West End and then to Oats Park.

LaVOY:  I have talked with several people about their idea of when they graduated from eighth grade, and I've gotten some very interesting comments. Do you have any that you'd like to add?

MAREAN: I didn't go to graduation, I remember.

LaVOY:  Well, shame on you.

MAREAN: (laughing) I don't remember what the circumstances were. I remember the last couple of years. Well, I remember some wonderful things coming out of Oats Park. The Taft sisters, Laura Mills. Just wonderful teachers. All of them. Succermann. She was one of the penmanship teachers.

LaVOY:  What was her name?

MAREAN: Her name was Succermann. Beautiful lady. Hattie Petersen was a penmanship teacher as well. Mr. Best was our principal. I was in classes with Elizabeth [Best].

LaVOY:  That would have been his daughter?

MAREAN: Yes. His older daughter. Knew all of the older ones, Robert [Best] and Eldon [Best]. I remember we put on musical plays at one time or another, at least two of them. One of them was something about pirates. I happened to be Pegleg. I could bend my knee farther than anybody else so I could wear a pegleg which was a cutoff tennis racket. (laughing) I always did like music and enjoyed singing whenever we could.

LaVOY:  Was that The Pirates of Penzance, by any chance?

MAREAN: It wasn't that. I'm sure that none of us could have done Gilbert and Sullivan, but it was a pirate play of some kind. The pirates were dancing and singing and so forth, and I was the pegleg pirate.

LaVOY:  Of course, your mother was in the front row.

MAREAN: I presume so. I don't remember much of the family reaction. There was no question that, since it was going to be done, I was going to be involved in it.

LaVOY:  Moving on into high school, what are some of your high school memories?

MAREAN: Generally good. I did not involve myself in sports at all, although, working with Merle Smart who was the local ham radio and electronics person, set up public address for the football games, and that was my first work in carrying a microphone. We did play by play there sort of thing. Play commentary on it.

LaVOY:  Excuse me, was Willie Capucci interested in that at that time, too, or is that later?

MAREAN: Willie was playing sports, I think.

LaVOY:  Oh, at that time?

MAREAN: Yeah. I know he was on basketball, but we didn't do anything with sound at basketball at all, so I was one of the scorekeepers. Sometimes I changed a little letter or something in the balcony to know what the score was. In fact on one occasion missed my ride home, minus twenty degrees, I walked home after the ball game. (laughing)

LaVOY:  Oh, my goodness! It's a wonder they didn't find your corpus delicti out in the middle of the road. (laughing)

MAREAN: (laughing) I was well dressed and warm and comfortable.

LaVOY:  What was the recreation of the high school students basically?

MAREAN: This is again in the early thirties, and there was very, very little. We did tumbling, but only because somebody knew a little something about it. It was not an official thing. There was no phys ed. We had dances.

LaVOY:  Where were the dances held?

MAREAN: In the gym. A tiny little gymnasium, actually.

LaVOY:  Are these the dances that Mr. [George] McCracken kept close eye on the boys and girls?

MAREAN: Oh, yes, very much. Absolutely. As he did all through the school situation. He did it very intelligently. He knew he could not be everywhere at all times, and he didn't really want to catch anybody guilty of communicating between the sexes in spare time, so he always jingled his keys as he walked down the hall. You knew Mac was coming, and so you certainly never left yourself in a compromising situation.

LaVOY:  Did you have any girlfriends at that time?

MAREAN: Oh, usually three or four at a time all the way through. Yes, I was very much aware of the opposite sex. I enjoy them, and I still am. (laughing)

LaVOY:  (laughing) Now, the dances that you're speaking of, do you recall who the musicians were or what type of music you had?

MAREAN: Gee, I don't. It was live because hardly anybody had records or record players, and none of them would be loud enough to dance to.

LaVOY:  How did the Depression affect your family and affect your friends?

MAREAN: We had the easiest ride of anyone because Dad had a salary, and we also had the ranch to produce a lot of our own things. I did not experience any personal restraints. I didn't get much for the cream that I turned into the creamery. I did all the milking, of course, after Bob went to the University.

LaVOY:  How many cows did you have to milk?

MAREAN: Oh, up to half a dozen. It was not a major enterprise, but it provided us with our own and a little bit of income. Butterfat was selling for nineteen or twenty cents a pound, and you don't earn much that way.

LaVOY:  But nineteen or twenty cents in those days was very important.

MAREAN: And I bought postal certificates with it because they were paying two percent interest. (laughing)

LaVOY:  Tell me about postal certificates. We haven't heard anything about those.

MAREAN: It was a way of saving. I think I bought ten-dollar postal certificates when the money was available. I had used some of my money for my bicycle which was stolen.

LaVOY:  Stolen? By whom?

MAREAN: I don't know. (laughing)

LaVOY:  Never got it back?

MAREAN: No.

LaVOY:  That's too bad. And you had to go the post office to buy these?

MAREAN: Yes.

LaVOY:  And in what increments could you buy them?

MAREAN: I think you could get one as small as two dollars. I don't remember, but there was a place they could endorse it each year on the back that it was still valid and get the two percent.

LaVOY:  They're back now to what they were then. (laughing)

MAREAN: (laughing) Yes, isn't it the truth? Which was a reasonable thing. I kept those for quite a while.

LaVOY:  You were saving them for what reason?

MAREAN: Because one saved.

LaVOY:  You didn't think of college or anything like that?

MAREAN: Oh, I thought of nothing but college, but I wasn't saving for that particularly. My first car was a Model T Ford that brother-in-law Bill's [Hatton] brother had bought in Reno so he could drive it to Fallon. It was the easiest way for him to get there. I think he had paid five dollars for it and abandoned it when he got to Fallon. (laughing) It wasn't in any condition to go back to Reno again. This was my first car. I scrounged the neighborhood and got a new universal joint and put it in there and got the thing running. Of course, stripped it down. There's no point in having a body on a car if you're a fourteen, fifteen year old. Ran all over the ranch with it. When I went out to get the cows in the pasture, I didn't ride a horse or anything like that. I took my stripped-down Model T.

LaVOY:  Oh, my.

MAREAN: They were quite frightened of it and returned at a pretty fast clip, and I lost quite a little bit of milk as they were running (laughing) along, and the four streams spraying out to the right and then out to the left and so forth. I sold that to, I guess maybe it was Garnet Freeman because they wanted something to convert to a tractor. And then I bought an old 1924 Chevrolet from the Ito or Kito family or both, whatever it was, which barely ran because they were not really up on how to maintain a car. So I had to do some work on that as well.

LaVOY:  You didn't run that out after the cows.

MAREAN: No. No, no. I was the high school student that had a car, you know! The old cone clutch on it. I drove it quite a little bit. Licenses weren't required. If you could reach the pedals, you could drive a car. I remember being allowed to drive it to school, and I would fill up with kids who, of course, wanted to ride along with it. Had trouble with the battery connection though I didn't know it, and so I had to crank it. I remember one time I parked down in front of the barbershop and when I went to go back, I had forgotten to take it out of gear, and so I cranked it. It started. Fortunately, it was in reverse, and it went back out into the street. (laughing) It was a wonderful car. I had to sell it finally because I wanted to buy a typewriter because I was going to university, and I used the typewriter. I sold the car for the price of the typewriter.

LaVOY:  Well, that was a great deal! (laughing)

MAREAN: It was. It was good. And served me very well, and being able to type was probably the most important thing in my life because it helped me through university, but it also saved my life in the military because I had inside jobs instead of digging foxholes.

LaVOY:  Tell me, this typewriter--obviously you had to learn to type in high school.

MAREAN: Oh, I took typing.

LaVOY:  Who was your typing teacher?

MAREAN: The first, and she lasted only a little while, was Euphemia Clark, the daughter of Walter Clark from University [of Nevada]. She was not suited to teaching a non-academic course in a country high school, (laughing) and she resigned during the year. I don't remember who replaced her. This was in a post-graduate year. I did not go on to University when I finished. I was young. We didn't have all that much money, and so I worked for the Rundberg's at their service station [Valley Service Station] on Williams Avenue for a little while. Did half days at post-graduate course where I reviewed second-year algebra, helped Mr. [Chester] Giblin in the science lab and also grading the drafting students' papers and took typing.

LaVOY:  I'm not quite sure. You did not go to a graduation ceremony at the end of four years. You went at the end of five years?

MAREAN: No, I graduated. I had my diploma.

LaVOY:  But, you went one more year.

MAREAN: Just a half year, and that's when we moved to Lovelock and the project there.

LaVOY:  Getting back to high school. What were some of the teachers that you really remembered as having been a real benefit to you?

MAREAN: Well, Hattie Brown with language, and I took both Spanish and French. F. Dean Moore, the English teacher. Mac, of course. Outstanding mathematics teacher and speech because we had forum. Speech was not part of the curriculum, but there was evening sessions of forum and I was fortunate enough to get a ride with Ray Alcorn most of the time because we were still out in the country and come back in on Tuesday night. And Chester Giblin, and I spent a lot of time with him drafting, chemistry, physics. Biology wasn't offered here at that time, and it has become the most popular of the science courses in other schools, so I've never had a biology course although I was science educated.

LaVOY:  Tell me about graduation evening.

MAREAN: That I didn't go to the graduation.

LaVOY:  No, this is in high school.

MAREAN: Yeah.

LaVOY:  Oh, you didn't go to high school graduation either?

MAREAN: I didn't go to graduations. (laughing)

LaVOY:  Shame on you.

MAREAN: I think I didn't. I don't remember. Something always interfered with graduation. I'm not sure that I went to the function. I may have. If so, I have memories of graduation. The students were on the stage in the gymnasium.

LaVOY:  About how many were in your class of 1934?

MAREAN: There were thirty-two students. Something like that. Not a very large class.

LaVOY:  Have you seen any of them recently?

MAREAN: No, not recently, which is, of course, I've been out of the country.

LaVOY:  Was Marvin Weishaupt in your class?

MAREAN: Very likely. Class of 1934.

LaVOY:  I just wondered because he mentioned that he knew you.

MAREAN: Okay. And, of course, I knew some of them by coming back for another half year. The ones I remember were Carmen Wholey, Doris Jones, Aldene Branch, Anne Gibbs, and then amongst the boys--I do remember some.

LaVOY:  I was just wondering. (laughing)

MAREAN: (laughing) Jim Stark. I guess Norma Conrad, Bain's (Banus Stark) wife, was in the same class. Kenny Tedford, Ben Morehouse. Ben was probably my closest friend. All of them were then ahead of me at the University--those that went to University, but I ran into Ben in World War II. We were in the same tent in Fort Monmouth, New Jersey, getting ready to go over to England to study radar with the British. 1941. Pearl Harbor time.

LaVOY: Isn’t that interesting!

MAREAN: I had not seen Ben for a long time. We were dispersed there, but then came back together and worked together with a night fighter group until Ben was killed.

LaVOY:  You finished the half of year with your post-graduate in high school, then you moved to Lovelock because of the Rye Patch Dam.

MAREAN: Yes.

LaVOY:  Did you live in Lovelock or go right to the University?

MAREAN: No, I lived in Lovelock until time to start University in 1935. [End of tape 1]

LaVOY:  While you were in Lovelock before you started to school, did you do odd jobs?

MAREAN: I had the opportunity to work as a gas jockey in the service station associated with the auto court where Mother and Dad lived until they got their first house up there. Those are days when you had to pump the gasoline into the glass tank up on top and then draw it out and so on. In fact I worked the next summer also in another auto court and another gas service there, the Sunset. That was about all there was available at the time. I got ten cents an hour, by the way.

LaVOY:  Well, that's very good wages. (laughing)

MAREAN: (laughing) You don't buy much university with that. I did have enough money to pay for my room rent for the first year, but I had help from Dad.

LaVOY:  Were Two Stiffs selling gas in Lovelock at that time?

MAREAN: Yes. They were across the street from the Sunset where I was working.

LaVOY:  Oh, I see. Well, they're still there.

MAREAN: They're still there. Right. No, I remember them. Sometimes people would park in our place and want to bring the hose from Two Stiffs across the street because they were so well known. They had so much signage along Highway 40.

LaVOY:  When you went to the University, did you have any trouble registering, or was that very simple?

MAREAN: No, it was very easy, and, of course, my high school record was favorable.

LaVOY:  I suspect it was all A's.

MAREAN: No, no. No, no. No. I didn't care about the A's. Just no D's. (laughing) The education that I received here in Churchill County High School was really outstanding. It prepared me for everything. I could move right into the classes in engineering in which I registered with no problems whatsoever and succeeded. In fact, I qualified for a scholarship as a result of the work I did in the first year. Also, I was able to pass with considerable success the examination for Annapolis and earned a principal appointment to Annapolis on the basis of my tests. I took those at the same time some university sophomores took them, and I scored better than they did.

LaVOY:  As a freshman?

MAREAN: Yes.

LaVOY:  Amazing.

MAREAN: I was not successful then in entering Annapolis because I was too short. (laughing)

LaVOY:  Oh. Your appointment came from whom?

MAREAN: It may have been Senator Cannon. I'm not sure which.

LaVOY:  Probably Pat McCarran.

MAREAN: No, Pat's went to somebody else. There were two senators, of course, and each had an appointment. Was Cannon a senator at that time? [Ed.Note: The other senator at that time was Key Pittman.]

LaVOY:  I don't believe at that time, but my mind is an absolute blank as to who it might have been. I'll look that up and find out for you. What a shame.

MAREAN: Not necessarily.

LaVOY:  Well, I mean just the fact that it would not have cost your family anything to send you to Annapolis.

MAREAN: By the time I got out (laughing) would have been 1940, and things were pretty warm at that time. I did serve, but with my physical size I'd probably been put in a submarine. (laughing)

LaVOY:  Yes, and in those days you wouldn't have wanted that.

MAREAN: No. Thank you.

LaVOY:  So, you continued on with the University.

MAREAN: Yes. I graduated in 1939.

LaVOY:  Did you join a fraternity or did you live in-?

MAREAN: I lived in Lincoln Hall and belonged to the association there.

LaVOY:  There were other Fallon boys in Lincoln Hall at that time, were there?

MAREAN: Yes. I roomed with my to-become brother-in-law, George Wade. I don't remember too many of the others. A lot of them did join fraternities.

LaVOY:  Was Bill Lattin in Lincoln Hall with you?

MAREAN: Yes.

LaVOY:  What were some of the professors that most impressed you in the engineering department?

MAREAN: I eventually went into electrical rather than mechanical engineering in which I originally enrolled. Irving Sandorf particularly because my interest was in communications, and that was his specialty.

LaVOY:  And he just passed away about a year ago.

MAREAN: Yes, and we were very good friends as long as we could be in touch with each other. We always considered him to be a nasty little man, but he was a good instructor. Graduates of the University of Nevada were chosen over those from Cal or Stanford by the big corporations. The representatives came and recruited from our class before they went on to California.

LaVOY:  Who was the dean of the college at that time?

MAREAN: Sidley was at one time.

LaVOY:  Well, that's alright. I thought that you just might recall who it was.

MAREAN: Did Palmer become dean by that time? I'm not sure. Stan Palmer. There were two brothers, and Gus was in mining and Stanley was in electrical engineering.

LaVOY:  And you felt that that department at the University was one of the outstanding?

MAREAN: Engineering was. Certainly was. Of course, Mackay School of Mines was outstanding. We were very distinguished in electricity. Mechanical sort of along there. My most remembered professor that I started doing some graduate work with him afterwards was Dr. Leiffson in physics, although Dr. [Leon] Hartman was also a very good instructor, and I learned some from him. He, of course, became president.

LaVOY:  I was going to ask if he was president at that time.

MAREAN: He became president during my stay at the University. I had him as a freshman and a sophomore. Maybe didn't take anything until second year in physics. Physics was my favorite, but engineering was a job. I mean, who would hire a physicist? But then it became my interest, and it was my major teaching subject in high schools. I love it. (laughing)

LaVOY:  The four years that you spent there, what do you recall as some of the recreational things that you did? I can tell you were a wonderful student, but you certainly had to recreate a little bit.

MAREAN: Well, I was a good student when I applied myself to my studies, but I was on academic probation for one term.

LaVOY:  And how did that happen?

MAREAN: I fell in love. (laughing)

LaVOY:  Oh, well that explains everything. (laughing) And who was the young lady?

MAREAN: The lady I married. Alice Wade. It was pretty important to spend quite a bit of time with her. I don't know how I affected her academic rating. She was never on probation, but I failed communications from Sandorf and had to stay for another term to actually complete my degree, so I finished in 1939 and a half really. (laughing)

LaVOY:  She was attending the University at the same time you were.

MAREAN: Um-hum. She was a couple of years behind and in home economics.

LaVOY:  Now, here you are, you're, really, I feel, very brilliant, and instead you are chasing ladies. (laughing)

MAREAN: Well, that's part of being bright. (laughing) That's part of what we're here for.

LaVOY:  (laughing) And finally you did graduate. Did you go to this graduation?

MAREAN: No.

LaVOY:  Well, just shame on you.

MAREAN: Well, we had a Mother's Day celebration for my grandmother, and that was her last year. That was 1940 when she died. I was in between classes, you see. was not eligible for graduation with the group I started with, and I was not really part of the next group.

LaVOY:  You just decided you wouldn't go.

MAREAN: That's right.

LaVOY:  Good. Then, after you graduated, what was your first job that you got?

MAREAN: I got a job with PG and E [Pacific Gas and Electric] in Stockton [California]. All of the fellows who had graduated regularly got in with the big corporations, Westinghouse or General Electric or some of those. I took a job as a draftsman with PG and E in Stockton. Stockton in the wintertime is not a pleasant place to be. I was not really very sorry that the military alternative was available, and I was on the third draft in February, 1941. I had worked for fifty-five cents an hour for Pacific Gas and Electric, and twenty-one dollars a month didn't look too bad when somebody else was paying for the food and that sort of thing. It was very honorable to go into the military at that time. It was a war that it was easy to convince yourself that you should be participating in it, and so I accepted the draft and was in the Infantry because the Sergeant who interviewed me didn't think that I should be in the Signal Corps even though I had a degree. I couldn't answer the one question he knew the answer to. Actually I answered it two ways. Both of them right, but that wasn't the answer he wanted, so he sent me off to the Infantry at Fort Ord [California]. But I was in the headquarters company, and thereby was allowed to do such exotic things as change fuses on that sixty pound radio that I might be carrying on my back or to pull wire out over the battlefield. (laughing) Didn't care much for that, so when the First Sergeant came out one morning and said, "Can anybody type?" and I could, I held up my hand. Now, they say you never volunteer in the Army, but it turned out that that was the best move for me. The other fellow who could type wasn't as good as I was, and so I got the job of company clerk. So, I was sitting in the orderly room typing out payrolls while they were out digging foxholes. Also, I learned then about an opportunity to use my degree to get a direct commission, and so in October, 1941, I was raised from Corporal to Second Lieutenant, and that's when I went to Fort Monmouth [New Jersey] preparing to go to England to study radar. We didn't call it that at that time. It was confidential work. Then I transferred to the [United States Army] Air Corps--what was the Air Corps at that time became the Air Force--to use the airborne radar with the night fighters. Returned in 1942 and was married.

LaVOY:  Excuse me just one moment here.

MAREAN: Yes, of course.

LaVOY:  You were in England then when Pearl Harbor . .

MAREAN: No, I was on my way to England.

LaVOY:  When Pearl Harbor was bombed?

MAREAN: Yes. I was in Fort Monmouth preparing to go in December, actually. Just before Christmas was when we were scheduled, but, of course, when Pearl Harbor occurred then it shifted all of the plans, and we didn't leave until January on a ship that had come out of Singapore with a lot of wounded soldiers on it and things of that kind going back to England. I was assigned then as an individual to an Air Force squadron for practical training. Had some academic training in it in Scotland, and when we were fully trained we were brought back here to work with, because Britain was way ahead of us on electronics.

LaVOY:  What base were you stationed at in England?

MAREAN: I started out at Tangmere which was in Sussex. An operational night fighter squadron flying Bullfighters.

LaVOY:  And you saw the raids?

MAREAN: Um-hum. There were some. Not many. We were quite a ways from London. That's where most of them were.

LaVOY:  How did you feel as you looked at these German planes coming in and the fires coming up from the buildings?

MAREAN: I didn't actually directly experience anything. I saw the left-avers, the remainders of it. It was kind of exciting. Here you are in your twenties, and here's an opportunity to engage in what men are apparently supposed to do. No, it was great. I was most impressed with the barrage balloons and the other fortifications that were around there. It ruined the landscape, you know.

LaVOY:  Of course. (laughing) Didn't a lot of the raids use Salsberry Tower as their direction point to head to London?

MAREAN: I'm not sure. We were south and east of Sussex, so as I say, we were strategically placed to intercept planes coming into southern England, which is, of course, why we were there. After my training they were converting the squadron over to a different airplane, and I was assigned then to a different duty, and I was the radar officer for a group that were working a special field. This was up in northern England.

LaVOY:  When you were in Scotland, where were you stationed?

MAREAN: It was just outside of Glasgow in Prestwick. Prestwick was one of the major international bases, and that's where all of the brass went through.

LaVOY:  Did you find Scotland interesting?

MAREAN: I loved it. Prestwick was where Mother's mother came from.

LaVOY:  Oh, that's interesting!

MAREAN: I tried to find the Hosie name there. There was a Hatton there, but I never got in to find out if that was of the family because, of course, she had left a hundred years earlier.

LaVOY:  Then, all together, you spent about how much time in the British Isles?

MAREAN: At that time about nine months. I came back in October.

LaVOY:  How did you return?

MAREAN: On the Queen Mary which was then a troop ship. It would carry fifteen thousand people.

LaVOY:  Did you have any alerts on your way home?

MAREAN: Yes, because the Queen Mary had run into a destroyer in the harbor and caved in the bow of the ship, and they had to build a new bow on it out of concrete to bring it then to Boston so they could put it in dry dock. There was no available dry dock to refurbish it there, so we came across the North Atlantic with a flat front, and we're not accompanied because normally she could outrun anything, but not when she had a concrete bow. Yeah, we had fun. (laughing)

LaVOY:  Coming across, what were some of the things that you did to amuse yourself on the trip across?

MAREAN: On the way over it was a very slow trip, also, because the ship was not equipped for the North Atlantic having come out of Singapore. We drank hot buttered rum and played hearts, and I won the Atlantic Ocean.

LaVOY:  Oh, you did?

MAREAN: I won it. (laughing) I never tried to bring it home with me though.

LaVOY:  (laughing) I'm glad you didn't.

MAREAN: On the trip back I was most impressed with the pilots who were ferrying planes to England. What a bunch they were, really. From every country. Experienced pilots, so there was no common language, but everybody knew what everybody else was saying. See, they flew over and then came back by boat, and they were very, very well paid, and so they gambled all the time. And to watch them with money of all exchanges, all kinds. Even some of them that didn't work anymore because they came out of occupied Europe and playing dice or cards or something of that kind. It was fascinating. Everybody knew what the values were. I mean, there was no arguments of any kind. (laughing)

LaVOY:  Did you also win on this trip?

MAREAN: I don't gamble. I grew up in Nevada. (laughing)

LaVOY:  (laughing) Going across you did and won the Atlantic Ocean. Coming back you didn't.

MAREAN: Oh, well, yes. When all you have to worry about is real estate, that's fine. Somebody else's rich then.

LaVOY:  (laughing) The women, the WAFS, had not started piloting the planes across at that time, had they? That was pre-WAFS.

MAREAN: Well, WAFS was part of the British…

LaVOY:  The Americans that were women.

MAREAN: Oh, there were women among the group. Some of the pilots were women. I guess that was WAFS. I've forgotten. They had acronyms for everything. What I was thinking of was the W-A-A-F, Women's Auxiliary Air Force, rather than WAF was what we sent over.

LaVOY:  I wondered because I know there's a gentleman here in town who had many, many hours in the air, and when he decided he was going to join the Air Force, he was very upset because the WAFS had taken the place of what he and his group wanted to do, the ferrying, so he was very upset with the WAFS, and I just wondered if there were some returning with you on the ship.

MAREAN: Yes, there were some on the boat. They were beginning. This was 1942. I think that was about when they started.

LaVOY:  So then you landed, I surmise, in New York City?

MAREAN: No, we landed in Boston because that was the only place there was a vacant dry dock that would accommodate the Queen Mary. I went by train to Fort Monmouth again, and again I was with Ben Morehouse. We had been separated over there. We had trained together, been separated again, and came back together. It looked like we were going to get sent to a Signal Corps station to work with ground based radar, and we were in the Air Force, after all! So one of our University friends, Charlie Allen, was in the Adjutant General's office in Washington, and we phoned Charlie, and said, "Would you like a couple of people who are trained airborne radar people?" It turned out that they were. That they were just a night fighter school in Florida, and they were looking for someone to help train the operators, and nobody in North America had an operating experience with airborne radar, so all of a sudden we became radar observers and were instructing. This was my first teaching, then, in the night fighter school in Orlando. Ben and I decided that if we were going to fly, we ought to be driving, so together we put in for pilot training as officers. They accepted some but not all. They accepted me because I was still a Second Lieutenant. Ben, who had taken ROTC, was a First Lieutenant, and they didn't want to tie up that kind of person. I went through not as a cadet but as an officer, although I did get my First Lieutenancy before I had to report (laughing) so they were getting the same thing.

LaVOY: So this was in Orlando where- Where did you take your training?

MAREAN: Through the southeast. Montgomery, Alabama, to begin with, a couple of stations in Georgia and South Carolina.

LaVOY:  Where did you get your wings?

MAREAN: Spence Field, Georgia. I didn't want to go to night fighters. I wanted to fly one of those hot little planes, not a big twin-engined truck. So, I had only single-engined rating. What I really wanted to do was fly the North American P-51 Mustang, and they decided instead I should go to Mitchell Field and P-47s, the Republic Thunderbolt. I had seen too many of those in the lake at the end of the runway in Florida. They were a very, very difficult plane to fly. I was married then and decided maybe I would just as soon fly a truck, so I called the boys in Florida, and said, "Would you like a radar observer who is also a pilot?" I had to go through twin engine transition then in Colorado. Meanwhile my squadron had moved from Florida to California so when I rejoined them as a twin engine pilot, I rejoined them in Fresno [California] and continued instruction work there then. One of the only two rated radar observer pilots in the United States. Ben had been killed by that time in an accident.

LaVOY:  Where was he lost?

MAREAN: In Florida. In a flight that I might just as well have been on. The plane that he was in got in the prop wash of the target plane and flew into the only mountain in Florida. Two hundred and some feet high. That was pretty tough. So I stayed there then through the War. Was scheduled for overseas once and broke a bone in my foot playing basketball. (laughing) Required physical education and recovered from that very quickly. Returned to flying status and was scheduled then to go again and came down with an ulcer. So when Hiroshima passed, I was one of the earliest to be discharged. Medical disability, had had some overseas service, was married, and by that time we had our first child, so I was out in August, 1945, and walked into the classroom as a teacher in September.

LaVOY:  In what classroom?

MAREAN: Teaching science.

LaVOY:  Where?

MAREAN: In Fresno.

LaVOY:  Oh. I want to regress just a moment. You mentioned that you were married. After you came back from Scotland, I surmise that you came out and were married here?

MAREAN: Yes. We were married on Alice's home property. She was teaching in the schools here [Fallon] as a home ec teacher. We were married in February, 1943, in her front yard.

LaVOY:  Who performed the ceremony?

MAREAN: She'll be able to tell you. (laughing)

LaVOY:  And where did you go on your honeymoon?

MAREAN: Back to Florida.

LaVOY:  By train?

MAREAN: Yes, with everything that we needed to set up the household in an upper berth from here to Chicago. We did have a little more space going from Chicago down to Orlando.

LaVOY:  I imagine it was very difficult for her to come from Nevada and then go through the South with the segregation as it was at the time.

MAREAN: We were sort of isolated from it. We observed it but it was not a problem with us. I remember because we went through in South Carolina, Georgia, and so forth, seeing some of those local Negro people, but we were not mixed with them in any way. Yes, there was surely segregation. A couple of things I remember about them. They tried to get white shoes, and they had, of course, shiny white teeth, so with the blackout you'd see a pair of shoes and a smile walking down the road. (laughing) Then, also, our allocation of gasoline at that time, and there was usually a car somewhere in their families, they would get their two gallons of gasoline, I guess it was, put one in the tank and drive until they ran out, put the other one in, and come back home again. (laughing)

LaVOY:  Well, that was rationing.

MAREAN: That was it!

LaVOY: About how long did you and your wife live in Florida?

MAREAN: Well, we were only there for two or three months because when I got back, my orders to flying school were waiting for me. I think we lived there for a couple of months.

LaVOY:  And went to Georgia?

MAREAN: Montgomery, Alabama, for a couple of weeks. South Carolina and Georgia to continue the training. Finished in Georgia in October, I guess it was, of 1943, and out to Colorado then through the winter to twin engine transition and then on to California.

LaVOY:  When you were released from the service, you went into teaching, you said, in Fresno?

MAREAN: Immediately.

LaVOY:  And what did you teach?

MAREAN: I taught physics and chemistry, and they wanted me to teach biology, but I had never taken biology, so instead I taught a civics class.

LaVOY:  Did you teach in high school?

MAREAN: Um-hum.

LaVOY:  How long did you stay?

MAREAN: Just a year and a half there. Spent all of the money I had earned and the extra money that had come because I was an Air Reserve officer and decided I couldn't afford to raise a family as a teacher, on my own, everything of the kind. We didn't live high on the hog. Alice was a very, very good homemaker. That was her field, but she also was a Depression person, too, and knew. They suffered in the Depression. Simply they could not pay a family man to teach. I worked in the summers. Went to school some, too, but, everything I could do. So, with my engineering degree, I got a job as a heating and air conditioning salesman particularly because they were trying to open the Nevada territory, and it was a chance to get back to Reno. We moved back here and I [End of tape 2 side A] sold very little heating equipment because it wasn't really available. I missed teaching so I went again to summer session and got a job teaching in Reno High School in 1947. Taught there. I had one year of leave of absence and worked with a project at MIT [Massachusetts Institute of Technology], a physics project sponsored by National Science Foundation. Began writing textbooks because I had been doing some junior high work then in my year of leave. As a result of that, then, subsequently was invited to go to Canada to the University in Calgary and enter the education faculty there since my book had been adopted in Canada.

LaVOY:  Just one question. You took a leave of absence from Reno High School.

MAREAN: Yes.

LaVOY:  And you went back to Boston? Or you worked through MIT to…

MAREAN: Yes. I lived in Boston. Worked the summer, and then they asked me to stay on and serve in the liaison to the pilot schools that were using this new physics program, so I went through most of the prestigious schools in New England.

LaVOY:  Which ones?

MAREAN: Phillips, Exeter, and one down in Pennsylvania. Also, we had a pilot school at University of Chicago.

LaVOY:  Explain exactly what these pilot schools were.

MAREAN: They were introducing this physics program that we'd been writing. They gathered people from all over the country to prepare this physics program. We were at the point of being Sputniked. In fact, I saw Sputnik when I was up in New Hampshire doing some of my coordination work, and physics was the thing that they felt we needed more help with, and we were going into the Space Age, so this one professor at MIT got a grant and had people coming from all over. Teachers and professors from Cornell, MIT, University of Illinois, and so on. That's where I met Phil Morrison. They asked me to stay on then and work with the teachers because we were at the same time finishing the writing but we were also revising it. It was marvelous to sit there with essentially Nobel Prize winning people. In fact, one of the people that was on our committee involved in the project was the widow of Enrico Fermi who was the first really nuclear person in North America. From that I was able to come back and initiate a new program at Reno High in physical science. A marvelous opportunity to teach in a way that I found out was the best way to teach. Teach by doing things rather than by just listening and reading, and that led me then to start writing for the junior high school. The same kind of thing. It was well received in a few places.

LaVOY:  What was the title of the book?

MAREAN: Introductory Physical Science -- A Laboratory Approach. It was a grade nine program.

LaVOY:  What publisher did you have?

MAREAN: Addison-Wesley. In fact, ours was the first book that Addison-Wesley published for the schools. They were in university publishing prior to that.

LaVOY:  Where is the headquarters of Addison-Wesley?

MAREAN: They're now in Palo Alto [California]. They were in Massachusetts at the time. I subsequently with other authors wrote life science and physical science texts [for high school students] as well, but about the time these came off is when we were in the back-to-basics movement in the sixties. Mine is not a back-to-basics text. It's an inquiry text, so we dropped out of popularity, and only the one book went into a second edition. The others, well, they simply--well, first of all, nobody knew how to teach that way. It was not directed teaching. We encouraged kids to inquire by doing things in order to come up with some significant answers. That's why they wanted me in Calgary. I went ahead and taught people so they could do that if they needed to. I think it'll come back someday because we're teaching robots now. I had the opportunity to teach for two years in Japan. I taught English (junior high school- conversational English) just in 1992 and 1993 and got to look at the Japanese school system, and it's no good. It teaches test takers, and they forget all about it afterwards, but they have no creativity, no opportunity to think, and, believe me, if anything we need it's people who know how to think.

LaVOY:  What was your position at the university in Calgary?

MAREAN: I reached the role of associate professor in the faculty of education at the University of Calgary in Alberta. I stayed there until they said I was too old. I got all the way to sixty-six before they booted me out. I would have been out anyway because I have none of the academic requirements. My degree is a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering and yet I was teaching graduate students in the faculty of education. (laughing)

LaVOY:  Well, that speaks very, very highly for your intellectual prowess. What year did you retire?

MAREAN: From there it was 1983 when I was sixty-six, continued teaching, of course.

LaVOY:  In what?

MAREAN: I had part-time employment with the University in continuing education, adult education, and that's really quite rewarding. I learned and then taught computers to seniors. I was engaged in a project with the native people there and preparing them to enter further education in the health careers. We wrote our own curriculum and taught them. And then, as I say, I went to Japan. Oh, I did consulting work with the department of education when they were upgrading some of their science programs and so forth.

LaVOY:  That was at Howard University?

MAREAN: This was in the Department of Education of the province of Alberta.

LaVOY:  Oh, in Canada.

MAREAN: Yes. I'm a Canadian now.

LaVOY:  Oh, are you really?

MAREAN: Yes.

LaVOY:  When did you take out your citizenship?

MAREAN: Around 1977, 1978, somewhere in there.

LaVOY:  And what was the reason for that if I'm not being too personal?

MAREAN: I'm glad you asked. It was the same reason that my ancestors threw tea in Boston Harbor. I was being taxed, and I could not vote. I felt that if I am helping to support the government I ought to have something to say about who's doing it for me. You see. Taxation without representation. And if I were to apply and be accepted again, of course, in dual citizenship I would have to pay all those back taxes on my Canadian income.

LaVOY:  And that I know you wouldn't want to do, and I don't blame you.

MAREAN: I will not do it. It's contrary to what we got started with. That's the way this whole thing began is that we had a government and Britain was in charge that was taking from the people without giving them anything in return.

LaVOY:  Very interesting philosophy.

MAREAN: I'm very proud of having been in the United States. I love the United States, but they do some dumb things. (laughing)

LaVOY:  (laughing) You returned from Japan in 1993. Returned to Calgary?

MAREAN: Yes. No, actually, I returned to a little old, almost deserted coal mining community in the southern Rockies near the U.S. border. It's called the Crow's Nest Pass. It's the lowest pass across the Rockies.

LaVOY:  Is that where you're living now?

MAREAN: No, I expected to. That's where my son thought he wanted to retire, and he's designated himself to be my keeper, so that's where it would be. He had lived there and had started buying a house, and so I moved into that house and bought it. But, he has now found a better place to live. We're living on an island in between Vancouver Island and the mainland a hundred and some miles north of Vancouver on the Vancouver strata, Quadra Island. I only went there in June of this 1996, but we're building a house and really going to be happy there. He has a boat.

LaVOY:  You can fish.

MAREAN: I'm learning. You don't do much fishing on the desert. (laughing)

LaVOY:  No, you certainly don't. I'm going to regress just a moment. You and your wife, I am surmising, have separated. Is that correct?

MAREAN: Yes.

LaVOY:  How many children did you have?

MAREAN: We had four children. My daughter, Alona [Marean King], is now fifty-two. She was born in [October 10] 1944. Ray [Marean] is two years younger. He just turned fifty this month. [Born August 10, 1946] David [Marean], who is living in California, is three years younger than Ray. [August 16] 1949 was his birth year.

LaVOY:  He was born in Reno?

MAREAN: Yes, and Steven, our youngest, was also born in Reno in [August 11] 1952. Alona, the daughter, is in Idaho as an optometrist, and she has two children. David has two children. Ray has none, and Steven was killed in an accident in 1987, I guess.

LaVOY: Oh, what type of an accident?

MAREAN: Motorcycle. He was trying to teach his adopted son to ride a motorcycle.

LaVOY: Where was he killed?

MAREAN: This was in Alberta also. He was living there.

LaVOY:  Did your wife move to Canada with you?

MAREAN: Yes. But, then her mother, who was living here in Reno--she was in her own mobile home out near the airport--she became incompetent, and Alice returned. We were having domestic problems. It was difficult for Alice to move to Canada.

LaVOY:  And when did you divorce?

MAREAN: 1986. We separated in 1973 or 1974. No particular reason to divorce. I'm awfully pleased to say we're communicating very well. We seem to get along a little better in two different countries than in the same one, but it's been very easy to be here with her.

LaVOY:  The son that you are living with, which son is that?

MAREAN: That's Ray, the oldest of the three boys.

LaVOY:  And he liked Canada?

MAREAN: Oh, yes, very much so.

LaVOY:  Has he taken out Canadian citizenship?

MAREAN: Yes, he has dual citizenship, and Steven who also had dual citizenship. It's been a very favorable place. Ray found himself well suited to both the climate and the work. He's working with a credit union. Steven was not too well directed. He finished high school in 1970 which was right in the Viet Nam thing. The draft board hounded him for quite a while, and through help from his older brother he found ways of stalling until finally that was over. He did not go to Canada to avoid the military but it was a better place to be to avoid the military. By that time we all realized that the Viet Nam thing was not the kind of war experience that I had had. There was not any justification for it either, of course. We feel very happy that none of the boys actually then were involved in that military operation. Steven had finally decided what he wanted to do. Here he was pretty nearly thirty-five years old. He decided he wanted to be a teacher, also, and was also set to move back to Calgary and go to the university and this accident happened, so…

LaVOY:  The accident was in Canada?

MAREAN: Yes.

LaVOY:  That's just too bad. You've had such an exciting life, it's just been a pleasure listening to it. Have we missed anything at all that you would like to add?

MAREAN: There's been so many good things. It's just incredible that one person could have had as much as I have.

LaVOY:  I will agree with that one hundred per cent.

MAREAN: I had the privilege of serving as the president of the National Science Teachers' Association for a year. At that time there were only about twenty-five thousand members. It's closer to seventy-five thousand now.

LaVOY:  What year was that?

MAREAN: 1962-1963. And that, of course, was a step up toward-that's when I started writing actually. 1962 was the first book. If I hadn't done the writing I wouldn't have gone to the university, so all of these things are interconnected. As I said earlier, typing was the most important subject I ever took (laughing) 'cause it was the key to many of these things. Nobody could have had it any better than I, really.

LaVOY:  No, I should say not. Now, you are here at this point in time just on a visit?

MAREAN: Yes. This was the reunion of the Reno High School staff and students, and they were kind enough to give me a special invitation to the reunion of one of the classes. The forty-fifth reunion of the class of 1951 which was held at an incredibly fine residence of one of the students, and then the general one which was held for all of the staff and students of Reno High School from time immemorial.

LaVOY:  That was the one that was at Rancho San Rafael?

MAREAN: Yes, yes.

LaVOY:  Did you see a lot of your old colleagues?

MAREAN: Yes, I did. I saw colleagues and students, and it was extremely gratifying to see how successful so many of them had been. Again, I'm sure a lot of it they owe to their education. They wouldn't been have there if they hadn't felt good about Reno High School. I spent about at least an hour standing under a tree there in San Rafael talking to one of the students who was one of three that went out of one of my classes to Cal Tech one year.

LaVOY:  And who was that?

MAREAN: This was Herb Flint. He was a young man from Reno. All of them were, of course. This was the class that I mentioned earlier was so wonderful coming out of my work at MIT. I was able to set up this two-year program for students at Reno High, and from that group three of them went to Cal Tech. Only takes 180 students, freshman, a year.

LaVOY:  What is this Herb Flint doing at this moment?

MAREAN: He's in computer work in Salt Lake City and came back for the reunion.

LaVOY:  Whose home did you have your faculty party in?

MAREAN: Jerry Poncia. Jerry is an architect, but he is also involved with some of the gaming. His little house is only thirty-five thousand square feet.

LaVOY:  Oh, my! I believe he has an interest in the El Dorado.

MAREAN: Yes. He opened his home. It was his class that had the reunion.

LaVOY:  Well, that is just marvelous.

MAREAN: Well, as I say, nothing bad. Nothing bad.

LaVOY:  Not at all. Not at all. Do you have anything else that you'd like to share?

MAREAN: Well, I think if anybody's been able to stand this much, they're probably saturated, too. (laughing)

LaVOY:  I think it'll be one of my most interesting interviews, and on behalf of the Churchill County Museum Oral History Project, I want to thank you.

MAREAN: Thank you very much, Marian. I've enjoyed it immensely.

LaVOY : Thank you.

Marian Hennen LaVoy

John Herbert Marean

Churchill County Museum Annex, 1050 S. Maine St, Fallon, NV