Interview of James LuValle

1.1. TAPE NUMBER: I, SIDE ONE AUGUST 19, 1986

HOPKINS:

We're very happy to have the opportunity to interview Dr. James [Ellis] LuValle of the Stanford Chemistry Department, retired, for the UCLA Oral History Program. Dr. LuValle, first of all, could you give us your full name please.

LUVALLE:

James Ellis LuValle.

HOPKINS:

Is there a story behind that name?

LUVALLE:

Well, Ellis is my mother's [Isabelle Ellis LuValle] maiden name.

HOPKINS:

When were you born?

LUVALLE:

November 10, 1912.

HOPKINS:

Where were you born?

LUVALLE:

San Antonio, Texas.

HOPKINS:

Let's begin by talking a little background on your family history, about your parents. Let's begin with your mother.

LUVALLE:

My mother grew up in Texas, went to, I believe, Prairie View [University], then went to Northwestern, graduated from Northwestern University, married my father [James Arthur Garfield LuValle. I don't know too much about the background of my father's education. He was a well-read man, and skipping from Texas to Washington, D.C., he was an editor of a newspaper in Washington, D.C., before my parents broke up. They were separated, at which time we moved to California, and from that time on I'll tell you most about California. In Washington about two things occurred that might be of interest to you. One, I was introduced to the public library probably by age five or six and I guess after my parents had taken me there once or twice. I was allowed to go as often as I wanted to. I've had a love affair with the library and books ever since. Two, when I was about, I think it was eleven, Ernest [Everett] Just, the biologist at Howard University, gave me a chemistry outfit which managed to change my interest from engineering to science and that interest stayed constant from that time on. After we moved to California, I finished grammar school in California out in Los Angeles. Then I went to McKinley Junior High School. From McKinley Junior High School, I went to the Los Angeles Polytechnic High School. At McKinley Junior High School, probably the very best thing that ever happened to me is that a very brainy, very smart girl informed me that no boy could possibly be as bright, as brainy, and as smart as she was. This happened, fortunately for me, in the seventh grade, and I spent the next three years proving to her that I could be better than she was in everything, academically. It's probably the best, one of the best things that ever happened to me because by the time I entered high school, I knew how to study. I went to Los Angeles Polytechnic High School and there I accidentally became interested in track, in that I was out playing around in the field one day and the coach [Eddie Leahy] says, "Jimmy, I need somebody to run against so-and-so." And I ran against him. He was state champion of the half mile and I beat him. The day after, I became a quarter miler. [laughter]

HOPKINS:

Dr. LuValle, this is interesting. Let me back up a bit and ask you a few more questions about your parents and then move forward over the material that you've already surveyed. First of all, what was your mother's first name?

LUVALLE:

Isabelle Ellis.

HOPKINS:

Isabelle Ellis. And as you said, your middle name is derived from her last name. And do you know where she was born?

LUVALLE:

It wasn't San Antonio, Texas, but I don't know the town in Texas.

HOPKINS:

How did she derive her livelihood, as you could recall?

LUVALLE:

She was a housewife until my parents separated. After we came to California, I believe she worked for quite a few years as a secretary.

HOPKINS:

Now your father, his name, sir.

LUVALLE:

James Arthur Garfield LuValle. He was the editor of a paper in Washington, D.C., and after my parents separated, I think he spent a lot of his time being an itinerant preacher. However, we occasionally heard from him. We know that he traveled, during those years, worldwide. We don't know what places he went to. He was in Europe for a while, we're positive. He was in Alaska for a while. But in between we don't know much about it. I did see him at the Olympic trials in New York City in 1936. Unfortunately, that was a bad situation because he managed to work his way into the dressing room just a little while before I was supposed to go out and run a race. Just before I run a race, I don't talk to anybody but the coach if I'll even talk to him. And I'm afraid he became a little angry at me and stalked out and I never did see him again.

HOPKINS:

So you informed him that you don't like to talk to anybody before a race.

LUVALLE:

I told him I wouldn't talk to him, period. Because I get keyed up quite highly just before I run. In fact, I get keyed up quite highly before anything important so I just have to watch that.

HOPKINS:

And did you see him, have you seen him since then?

LUVALLE:

No, I haven't seen him since that time. My mother received letters occasionally and we did get a letter eventually. I've forgotten, my sister knows more of him than I do—that he was dead. But we don't know much about that at all.

HOPKINS:

Do you have any idea if he was in attendance in Berlin in '36 during the Olympics?

LUVALLE:

I do not believe he was.

HOPKINS:

Can you tell me something about his ethnic background?

LUVALLE:

Not sure, but I believe he was white. That's about all I can say. My grandmother certainly was white. My mother's a mixture.

HOPKINS:

Of—

LUVALLE:

I'm not sure. [laughter] It never seemed important enough for me to worry about it.

HOPKINS:

And it's not, I agree one hundred percent. Now, let's move forward then. You say that your mother, as I understand it, brought you to Los Angeles. Why Los Angeles?

LUVALLE:

Her sisters were out here.

HOPKINS:

Do you remember your aunt's name who was here? Aunts.

LUVALLE:

I believe Stearns. Her husband was a doctor.

HOPKINS:

A physician?

LUVALLE:

Yes, a physician. And, let's see, the other sister was still in Texas, a school teacher. And there was a fourth sister that I can't recall where she was. She was somewhere in California.

HOPKINS:

But there was at least one sister in Los Angeles.

LUVALLE:

That's right.

HOPKINS:

Do you remember her first name?

LUVALLE:

Fannie.

HOPKINS:

Fannie Stearns? And her husband was a physician?

LUVALLE:

That's right.

HOPKINS:

All right, and did she work for a living?

LUVALLE:

Nope.

HOPKINS:

Dr. LuValle, how old were you when you came to—

LUVALLE:

We moved to California, I think I was—I was either eleven or twelve. But I don't know which it was. I hadn't finished grammar school that I know.

HOPKINS:

And who did you live with?

LUVALLE:

We lived with my aunt for a while till we got a home of our own.

HOPKINS:

This is Aunt Fannie?

LUVALLE:

Yes.

HOPKINS:

Do you remember where that was approximately?

LUVALLE:

Yes, that was in, I guess what we call East Los Angeles [Eastside]. It was on Forty-First Street off of Central Avenue. That area at that time was a mixed neighborhood of white, Negro, Japanese. It was certainly not, by any means, a black neighborhood, which I believe it is now. And in fact, in all the areas that we lived in Los Angeles, we were always in a mixed neighborhood where we had no feeling of being in a black neighborhood. I would say that we never thought about it in those days. At least I'm sure I didn't. I think that probably because my mother had always insisted that [if] anybody asked me what I was, I was an American citizen. And I'd also had, I think, ingrained in me early on, [that] I should try to be the best I could, period, in anything I did. Because of these attitudes that she had, I never felt that I was being discriminated against. Once in a while I ran into something, but it's so seldom that I don't know about it. When I was in high school, I managed to get a job at the Los Angeles Public Library and worked as a page every evening and night until after I graduated. So I had, in those days, an excellent job for a kid. I would go to school and go from school, take the streetcar, go downtown to the main library and work there till nine or ten at night, and then take the streetcar home.

HOPKINS:

You say the main, the downtown library.

LUVALLE:

Yeah, I worked as a page there.

HOPKINS

How did you get that job?

LUVALLE:

Again, a fortuitous accident. I guess the summer of my first year in high school at Poly [Los Angeles Polytechnic High School], they had a fire in the stacks and they hired several people, as temporary people, to come in and help clean up all the books. They had to get rid of the smoke and soot that was on the books, brush them, and clean them and shelve them again where possible. And I did a job on it. The man in charge of the pages in the library offered me a half-time job as a page afterwards. He said formally I had to go down and take an exam. He said, "You're hired but go take the exam anyhow." So I took the exam and I then worked as that, from that time on. Now this was a very fortunate situation for me. I didn't realize it at the time but I'll speak about this and then we'll go back. When I entered UCLA, after a few weeks or months, I was called into the attorney's office. He said, "You're going to have to pay out-of-state tuition." I said, "Why?" He said, "Well, with this state the rule is that your home, your home is wherever your father is unless your parents are divorced, and your parents are merely separated." Well, I could no more have paid tuition, out-of-state tuition, to stay in UCLA at that time than fly. And I said, "Is there any way out?" He said, "No." As I walked out of the door, I said, "Now, wait a minute. I think I can prove to you that my residence is here independent of where my father lives." He said, "Go ahead and try." I said, "Well, I worked as a page in the Los Angeles City Library. I passed a civil service examination. Therefore, I am a resident of the city of Los Angeles, the county of Los Angeles, the state of California, and it's totally independent of where my father is." He says, "Can you prove that?" I said, "Certainly." Told him who to call, he called up. He said, "You are a resident of the state." You see, that was a very fortunate set of circumstances. Going back to my time at L.A. Poly, I would say that Professor Marpin in chemistry and Professor Schaffer in math were a great deal of help to me in those days, we didn't have counselors. I'm not convinced you should have counselors today either, in schools. One of your teachers was your counselor, an actual teacher who had you. Mine was Professor Schaffer.

HOPKINS:

Professor, sir? Would it be professor?

LUVALLE:

At L.A. Poly, she was a professor. Believe me. She had a Ph.D in mathematics. And I, at one point, asked her where I should go to school. I said, "I think I'd like to go to Caltech [California institute of Technology]." And she looked up my score. She said, "By all means, figure on going to Caltech." That's what I had wanted to do. I graduated from L.A. Poly. I had one B and all the rest As at that time. I had a fairly decent record. However, I ended up in the hospital about sometime early that summer with a ruptured appendix. Peritonitis and gangrene set in, and I was in a coma for almost thirty days. So I was in the hospital most of the time for the following six months.

HOPKINS:

What hospital was that?

LUVALLE:

Los Angeles General [Hospital]. And by the time I got out, there was no money to go anywhere. And I went over to Caltech and they said, "Why don't you go to UCLA for a year or so and then come here." So I went over and enrolled at UCLA. Nobody at UCLA knew I was coming. Everybody had assumed that I would be going to USC [University of Southern California] or to [University of] Notre Dame because they knew I had scholarships to go to both places, to both play football and to run. Probably one of the reasons I didn't go to either school was spending six months in the hospital. I did a lot of thinking at that time, decided that I really wanted an education. At that time, I didn't think I could get a decent education at USC, and I wasn't convinced that I could get a decent education at Notre Dame either at that time. So I enrolled in UCLA. After my first semester there, I managed to get a job working for the Chemistry Department in which I held several jobs as an undergraduate from that time on. So I never worked for the Athletic Department. I guess I occasionally worked at a football game, and sometimes in the summer I'd do some odd jobs, but my prime job was always with the Chemistry Department. Therefore, I was totally independent of the Athletic Department. As a result, I must say that Harry Trotter and Ducky [Elvin C.] Drake were always cooperating with me. For instance, I couldn't get out to work out normally [un]til about five o'clock in the evening because of classes, so they waited and met me at five o'clock in the evening. I never ran back east in the indoor season because it would have interfered too much with my schedule of classes. At one time, the AAU [Amateur Athletic Union] became very nasty and very insistent about the fact that I had to come back east and run. And they said if I didn't do that, they'd declare me ineligible. I went in and told then President Bob [Robert Gordon] Sproul about it. Bob Sproul called up on the phone—called up this man—I'm not quite sure what he did. But I was never bothered again. [laughter]

HOPKINS:

Dr. LuValle, while you were at Polytechnic High School, you—cite for me again how you became interested in chemistry. I know you told a brief story of the chemistry set—

LUVALLE:

Well, I became interested in chemistry from the chemistry set that I received when I was about eleven, ten or eleven, I forgot which it was. And all the way through junior high, of course, I did a lot of reading on the side at the public library and all that. I was very interested in science.

HOPKINS:

What kinds of things did you read?

LUVALLE:

Everything I could get my hands on that they'd let me read. [laughter] From science to fiction to travel books to history to biographies, I read them all. I was an omnivorous, almost, reader. It didn't matter what it was; if it was a book and it looked interesting, I read it. I think that this again was very helpful in getting me into the habit of being able to sit down and tackle a subject in a book regardless of what it was.

HOPKINS:

While you were in junior high school and high school, could you describe your social life as a kid and as a teenager.

LUVALLE:

Oh, I don't know. I guess it was like any other social life. I think I was very active in junior high. I was very active in the whole school. I knew everybody, everybody knew me. It was a normal, I guess a normal social life you'd call it. I certainly wouldn't call it anything other than that. It's so normal that I can't even recall it. And again this was so at L.A. Poly. I guess that during that period I was very interested in what I was doing. Because I was working, every night after school and all day on Saturdays and occasionally on Sundays, I didn't have too much time to perhaps have a very active social life, but actually I didn't feel the need of a very active social life, so—

HOPKINS:

Your time was well occupied.

LUVALLE:

—it was very simple. I was too busy.

HOPKINS:

What about your relationship with your sister in growing up? How would you describe that?

LUVALLE:

Oh, we got along like any brother and sister would. I had a certain set of aims. She had a certain set of aims and I guess that they were somewhat different. We were two years apart so we went our separate ways frequently.

HOPKINS:

Could you please for the tape, what is her name?

LUVALLE:

May me.

HOPKINS:

Mayme?

LUVALLE:

At the present time, it's Mayme McWhorter.

HOPKINS:

And Dr. LuValle, how would you say that your aims or your goals were different? What were her goals as you can recall?

LUVALLE:

Well, she was much more active socially, with boys and girls her age, than I was. And of course, she didn't have the problem with the time factor that I had: not having time. And so I think that by the time we— I went to L.A. Poly, she went to [Thomas] Jefferson High. At least, I think she did. I believe she went to Jefferson. We really became quite separated because we went to different high schools.

HOPKINS:

Why? Why did you go to different high schools?

LUVALLE:

L.A. Poly was the only school in the city that offered really top-notch science courses and math courses. And if you had the grades, you could go there. Otherwise, you couldn't.

HOPKINS:

From junior high school.

LUVALLE:

Yes, you could go from any junior high school in the city if you had the grades and could convince them that that's what you wanted. For instance, the physics teachers, the chemistry teachers, the math teachers, there was at least one in each department that had a Ph.D., if not two. It was quite a demanding school.

HOPKINS:

How would you compare Los Angeles High School at that time with Polytechnic High School?

LUVALLE:

Well, L.A. was a very good school too, but it didn't have this extreme emphasis in the sciences and math. But it was an excellent high school. It was the arch rival of L.A. Poly. Los Angeles High would have been a good school to go to if I hadn't been so interested in the sciences.

HOPKINS:

What about Manual Arts [High School] at that time?

LUVALLE

Manual Arts wasn't, I don't believe, in the same class, maybe it was. I don't, I couldn't really compare it. I know more about L.A. High than I do about Manual.

HOPKINS:

Manual. Would you, how would you—?

LUVALLE:

Manual Arts was certainly a good high school, as was Fairfax [High School]. I would say those four schools—and Hollywood High [School]—those five schools were probably the best schools in Los Angeles at that time, in the Los Angeles area at that time.

HOPKINS:

And when we look at Jefferson High School, how would you rank Jefferson next to, say Manual?

LUVALLE:

It wasn't as good as those. Now, I don't know about Manual, but it certainly wasn't ranked with those other four.

HOPKINS:

Did you have any difficulty at all in being accepted to Polytechnic High School?

LUVALLE:

No. My scholastic record in junior high school was the type of record they were willing to take. And the fact that I wanted to be exposed strongly to the sciences was the only other factor that was necessary.

HOPKINS:

Now, you attended McKinley Junior High School, which today, I think is, I believe is [George Washington] Carver Junior High School.

LUVALLE:

I don't know. I know nothing about that.

HOPKINS:

Now, the junior high schools, was there a similar rating for junior high schools where one should attend one junior high school as opposed to another to be on a college track?

LUVALLE:

I don't know. They had excellent shop courses at McKinley. But as far as I know, at that time, the junior high schools, all of them were—there were only two tracks really. You were going to go on to high school and college or you weren't. And most of us—well, I won't say that again because there were certainly some fellows who really took the shop courses and didn't plan on going beyond high school, at the most. But I knew I was going to go to college. After all, my mom said, "You should go to college." Therefore, I knew I was going to college. [claps hands]

HOPKINS:

Did your mother tell your sister that she was going to college? To your knowledge?

LUVALLE:

I couldn't say that. I would say, once I got into high school, I was so busy that my contacts with my sister went way down. Part of that time I would say we had had the usual number of contacts as brothers and sisters. But brothers and sisters tend to diverge in their interests.

HOPKINS:

Was your sister proud of your accomplishments in these early years?

LUVALLE:

I'm sure she was. I never asked her. [laughter]

HOPKINS:

Now, Dr. LuValle, you attended Polytechnic, as we've established. And there, I understand, you distinguished yourself both academically and in sports. Correct? Did you win any special awards or accomplishments that you could think of at this point?

LUVALLE:

Well, that was one of the few times I ran into, perhaps, a problem. Obviously with my record, I should have been a member of the Ephebian Society, but at that time, the Ephebian Society had a rule that only whites could become a member. Because of that, the faculty created the Willis A. Dunn Gold Medal, which I received.

HOPKINS:

Oh, could you repeat that please?

LUVALLE:

The faculty created the Willis A. Dunn Gold Medal for the outstanding all-around student in the senior class. And I received it. I think that a couple of years later, they managed to get this clause out of the Ephebian Society and the gold medal disappeared. [laughter]

HOPKINS:

While you were at Poly, did you have friends that were white?

LUVALLE

I have, I had a mixture of friends at junior high, at high school that were white , certainly. I never had a—what do I say? I never felt confined in who I could have for friends. My friends were those people that I liked, period, regardless of the color of their skin or their religion.

HOPKINS:

How did you feel after being denied this particular award, that is, a position in the Ephebian group?

LUVALLE:

I don't even remember how I felt. I imagine I must have been somewhat upset but I certainly couldn't tell you how I felt at this late date.

HOPKINS:

Do you remember sharing this with friends or family?

LUVALLE:

I certainly did not share it with friends. I probably talked it over with my mother.

HOPKINS:

Another interesting comment that you made is that USC you didn't feel was—

LUVALLE:

Well, I had some reasons for that. [laughter] I was approached by USC alumni to come there, of course, and I went over at one time and spent some time with Howard Jones and Dean Cromwell who were the football and track coaches. And at one point, they said, "What would you major in?" And I said, "Chemistry." And he says, "Well, any problems about that?" I said, "Yes, I don't think you have a very good Chemistry Department." They said, "What should it be like?" I said, "Caltech's." Howard Jones says, "Well, you tell us what you want, we'll change it." Well, that convinced me that the Athletic Department was saying they had too much say in what could take place in the academic department and I wasn't about to go there, period. And that probably also prejudiced me against Notre Dame. I did not, of course, go to an interview at Notre Dame, but with Notre Dame's reputation in athletics at that time, I had a feeling that there, too, maybe the Athletic Department had too much to say. I don't believe that is true anymore. I think [Theodore M.] Hesburgh has changed Notre Dame to where it's an outstanding school. But at the time, I decided no way. And when I went to UCLA, I did not plan on staying there four years. I only planned on staying one or two years and then to go into Caltech or up to [University of California] Berkeley, but by the time I'd been there two years, it was feasible to continue for four so I did.

HOPKINS:

What about Berkeley? Was that a consideration initially for you?

LUVALLE:

Not really. Caltech was the only school I thought about up until I realized that I was broke and had to go some place close by.

HOPKINS:

Between UCLA and Berkeley, Berkeley at that time must have been considered, and perhaps today is still considered the premier school, maybe not necessarily in the sciences.

LUVALLE:

Well, I think that UCLA is giving Berkeley a run for its money in virtually any department now. It's not rated quite as high as Berkeley but certainly it's up there. Actually, looking back on it, I went to UCLA at the right time in that they did not give the Ph.D. In fact the Master's wasn't given till I was already enrolled as an undergraduate. As a result, we were effectively a small school. We had less than four thousand students and also we had all the contact we wanted with every professor that taught courses. It wasn't a matter of going to classes and having virtually all your contact with teaching assistants. It was just the opposite. For instance, my discussion section in chemistry 1B was lead by [Francis E.] Blacet, no, I had [James B.] Ramsey, Jim Ramsey as my leader in discussion. He was a professor of physical chemistry. When I took organic chemistry, Bill [William G.] Young, who taught the course, was also the man who led my discussion section. When I took economics, [Earl Joyce] Miller, one of the really top-notch economics professors, also led his discussion section that I went to. When I took philosophy, [Donald A.] Piatt led his discussion section so that we were exposed to the profs. I took a course later on from Dean [Charles H.] Rieber in which we went over to his home one night a week and met different visiting philosophers that were visiting. So that in all respects, I probably got the best education that I could have at UCLA then. I had far more contact with the profs than I could have had probably at Berkeley. I don't know, maybe it would have been the same. But certainly at UCLA at that time, you could go to work and do research for the profs by the time you were a sophomore. You became friends with your professors. You talked over your problems with them. They knew what you wanted to do, what you were interested in. They advised you about what you should do or not do and they were very interested in what you were trying to do. For instance, I'd applied to [University of] Wisconsin and Harvard [University] for graduate studies. I was turned down at Wisconsin, I had a half scholarship at Harvard and I felt a half scholarship wasn't enough. I think probably it would have worked out. But I didn't even apply to Caltech. But Bill Young and [William M.] Whyburn in math—and I don't know who the other chap was, but perhaps it was [Vern O.] Knudsen—they took it upon themselves to go over to Caltech and talk to Linus Pauling, and I was admitted to Caltech. That's how I happened to go there as graduate student. Of course, I'd stayed at UCLA and got my Master's in the meanwhile. But as an undergraduate, I don't think I could have had a better undergraduate training anywhere in the United States than I had at UCLA because of the close contact with every professor in the school.

HOPKINS:

Of course, UCLA was considered the southern campus, and the satellite campus, and that sort of thing. Now, among the faculty, did you sense a spirit of competition or striving to bring the quality of education up at UCLA?

LUVALLE:

I think there definitely was that. I think they were determined to make UCLA an outstanding school very early on, which they did.

HOPKINS:

Most definitely they did. Dr. LuValle, before we leave these early years and discuss more fully the UCLA years, I'd like to recoup a couple of questions here. Did you know a Miriam Matthews while you were employed with the library?

LUVALLE:

I may have, but the name is totally unfamiliar to me.

HOPKINS:

What do you remember about your mother? You've already given us a spattering, but how would you characterize her as you think about her today?

LUVALLE:

My mother believed that I could accomplish anything I set out to do. My mother insisted that I think of myself as a human being, as an American citizen, not as an ethnic person at all, not as a black, not as a Protestant, but as an American citizen, period. She also insisted that I should from the very beginning, whatever I did, do it to the best of my ability, that if I had a job, that I should give one hundred percent of myself to that job, regardless of what the job was. My father also insisted on this. And these were probably very important, because I never thought of myself as being deprived. I never considered that I couldn't do anything if I tried to do it. And there were times later on in life where these types of things probably made, these ingrained ideas, background that my mother had given me, made a big difference in my choice of what I should do. I would say that my mother prepared me for my life, my future life very well. She gave me the training and the beliefs that have stood by me all these years.

HOPKINS:

As you think back then to your teenage years—as you said, you were very involved in your academic life and then in sports—can you share with us a little bit about the sports life at Polytechnic. Anything that you haven't commented on about your sports life? Tell me some of the sports you were involved in.

LUVALLE:

Well, eventually I concentrated on track. I had started out in football and basketball and gymnastics. Eventually I gave up everything but track, which probably was a very wise thing to do. I could have continued to play football, but I felt it was going to take too much time. Especially after I got the job working at the L.A. Public Library, it became a little difficult. However, I'd made enough impression on some of the colleges that they wanted me to play football.

HOPKINS:

I see.

LUVALLE:

But as far as I'm concerned, Eddie Leahy, who was the coach, track coach there, was again very considerate. He knew I had a job, so immediately after class I went out and worked out, which was probably a little earlier than most of the other fellows showed up, and then I would leave and go down to the library. On the days we had track meets, I had arrangements so I could come to the library late. And therefore, that's why I worked on Sundays frequently. Fortunately the library's open on Sunday. Now you say why did I work on Sundays? I would say that the main reason I worked every day I could was because we needed the money.

HOPKINS:

How would you compare your, if this was possible to do after so many years, how would you compare your socioeconomic status with other, with your friends' socioeconomic status of the time. You'd say you were better off? The same? Did you even think about it?

LUVALLE:

I don't know. I don't know. I mean we weren't, certainly, we weren't rich by any means. I don't know that we ever missed a meal. And you say socioeconomic status, well—another thing, I became very interested in music and used to especially go to the Hollywood Bowl in the summer for music. This also meant that some of the kids who I associated with, I didn't see. Frequently there were things they did those weekends and they used to laugh at the fact that I went to these concerts. Again, this is probably due to my mother. I don't play an instrument but I learned to appreciate music and I understand a lot of it so I continued to do it. But socioeconomic status? Let's say I couldn't afford to dash off to the other side of the country or probably to the other end of the state at any time, but I could do the things I wanted to do.

HOPKINS:

During the twenties while you were growing up in Los Angeles, did you visit other cities at all?

LUVALLE:

Well, with the track team we used to, we traveled, and went up into the [Central] Valley and, I guess, I don't think we went all the way to San Francisco. We went down to San Diego. But we did very little traveling during that period.

HOPKINS:

How about outside the state? Did you have a desire to do so?

LUVALLE:

Too busy. Perhaps I might have had a desire to do so if I'd been less busy.

HOPKINS:

Dr. LuValle, I'd like to take a break here for a moment before we begin our UCLA undergraduate years. Thank you very much.

1.2. TAPE NUMBER: I, SIDE TWO AUGUST 19, 1986

HOPKINS:

Dr. LuValle, we've discussed already your early years and your adolescent years, and now we'd like to move ahead and discuss your undergraduate years at UCLA. Can you tell me when you were admitted to UCLA?

LUVALLE:

February 1932, I started classes.

HOPKINS:

And again, sir, why did you select UCLA?

LUVALLE:

I needed to go to a school where it didn't require much money. I'd spent most of the preceding six months in the hospital, and as a result, what little money I'd had for college was gone, so I enrolled at UCLA.

HOPKINS:

What were your first impressions of UCLA when you arrived on the campus in those early days, when you first started?

LUVALLE

You've got to remember that the UCLA campus then consisted of four buildings on the upper quad; the education building slightly below that, to the side; the student union building [Kerckhoff Hall]; and two gyms. The arroyo was present, there was a bridge across the arroyo, and from the education building—what's the student union building name?

HOPKINS:

Ackerman.

LUVALLE:

The other one, Kerckhoff Hall. The student union building, from there down to Le Conte [Avenue], there was nothing: just flowers and desert plants. Down in the arroyo was a large collection of desert plants. Further down on Hilgard Avenue, there was Mira Hershey Hall, which was the only dormitory, and that dormitory was a women's dormitory. Other than that, that was the campus in those days. For me, my prime interest, of course, was going to college. On the second day on the campus, after registration, I took examinations in English and in mathematics. And I went over to get the results of those examinations and I was told that I would start with sophomore math because I'd done very well, so I'm sort of walking on clouds, and I go into English, and they say, "You take dumbhead English." [laughter] Down I went. Anyhow, that was the start of my college days.

HOPKINS:

Was UCLA inspiring to you at that point? Did you feel, "God, I've made it to a university and this is really great?" What were your feelings in that respect?

LUVALLE

I don't know that I could say what my feelings were then. I can tell you what happened in my first day in my chemistry class and my math class. The chairman of the department [William Conger Morgan] came in, in chemistry, and said, "Ladies and gentlemen, we are going to work you very hard. You are going to study harder than you've ever studied before. I want you to look to the right of you, look to the left of you. One of you will not be here at midterm." When I went to the math department, they said, "You're going to do more work than you've ever done before in your life, you, the freshmen who are entering sophomore math. We are not going to give you one inch because you skipped freshman math. If you feel that you should be specially treated, you should go back and take freshman math before you enter this course." And I think this was a rather nice introduction. It meant that you either got down to work from day one or you got into trouble. There were many advantages to UCLA in those days. First, when I entered UCLA, it was strictly an undergraduate school. It was known as the southern campus, a little old school down south that Berkeley let exist. There were some advantages that I didn't realize at the time; as time went on they became quite obvious. One, as there were no graduate students, the profs taught the courses and they also ran the discussion sections. As a result, some of the juniors and seniors would T.A. [serve as teaching assistant] for the profs but they didn't run discussion sections. You had intimate contact with every professor you had. The profs knew you and you knew the professors. This made a big difference. You were able to ask questions. For instance, I still remember in my freshman economics course with [Earl Joyce] Miller, that we really ran a seminar that year. It was a give-and-take seminar on economics and the cause of the Japanese-Chinese war. I enjoyed that very much. This type of thing occurred in every class I took. Some of the profs who were very important in my life were Bill Young, Jim Ramsey, Francis Blacet in chemistry; Whyburn and [Earle] Hedrick in math; Miller and Piatt: Miller in economics, Piatt in philosophy; and Knudsen in physics. I was also lucky to know [Ernest Carroll] Moore, the provost, very well. I also got to know Bob Sproul, the president of the University of California, very well during those years. I know that at one point, Bob Sproul caught me trying to tone my voice down when I was talking: he said, "Don't do that, Jim. You and I are the only two people on this campus that can be heard from one end of this campus to the other when we want to." [laughter]

HOPKINS:

I know you were successful at UCLA. Did you feel you were successful there? When I say successful, I mean in the academic realm. Did you accomplish what you felt you needed to—?

LUVALLE:

I felt I should be doing the best I could and I usually managed to do the best I could. I received the grades that I felt I should be getting. I did not compete in athletics the first year I was in school. That is from February '32 to February '33. Because of this long hospital trip, I felt that I had to build myself up slowly. And I informed Harry Trotter and Ducky Drake, the track coaches, I would not compete as a freshman, and I also decided not to compete in any other sports. At the end of my first semester, I managed to get a job in the Chemistry Department. I had some job in the Chemistry Department every semester and summer thereafter, so that I was assured of work which would allow me to make the money which I needed to go on to school.

HOPKINS:

What kind of work did you do there, sir?

LUVALLE:

At first, I worked in the stockroom for several years. I made up the solutions and unknowns for other students to use. Of course I never had any part in making up unknowns of things for the classes I was taking. I always did it for the lower classes. And eventually, I helped T.A. some of the classes.

HOPKINS:

Now this was a T.A. as you were an undergraduate?

LUVALLE:

Yes, well, remember we didn't have any graduate students. For instance, Glenn [T.] Seaborg, the Nobel-prize winner, was my T.A. in quant [quantitative analysis]. Saul Winstein, an outstanding organic chemist, was two years ahead of me. He was my T.A. in one of my organic courses. This was true; as we became juniors and seniors, we became the T.A.s for the freshmen and the sophomores. You don't obtain that sort of experience now in college. There are graduate students all over the place and they'd kill the profs if they didn't get to do it. [laughter]

HOPKINS:

How did your coaches feel about you not participating?

LUVALLE:

The first year?

HOPKINS:

Yes, the first year.

LUVALLE:

They agreed with me. No problem.

HOPKINS:

And they didn't try to—

LUVALLE:

No, there was never any pressure on me to compete the first year.

HOPKINS:

Second year, athletically speaking.

LUVALLE:

Again, I only competed in track, and that was the year, at the end of that year, they decided to send George Jefferson and me to the ICAAAA meet [Intercollegiate Association of Amateur Athletes of America] back east. We went, of course, without a coach. [R. L.] "Dink" Templeton of Stanford said he'd look after us. Well, we went back east and I was very fortunate, I managed to win the 400-meter race. I was sort of unknown totally up to that time, and established myself as one of the best middle-distance runners in the United States. The Los Angeles Herald nicknamed me the "Westwood Whirlwind" at that time. When George and I returned from that trip, I went back to work on the campus again. Then the next year, during track, I also did fairly well, and so I continued through my three years of eligibility and that meant that in January '36, I was no longer eligible because I'd competed for three years; at that time that's all the varsity sports you were allowed. I had to debate whether I would try out for the Olympic team. Actually I debated for several months whether it was going to be worth my while to go out and try out for the Olympic team, although I did not give up practicing. So when I ultimately decided to try out for the Olympic team, I was able to go on out, and was fortunate enough to make it eventually. Going back to the other extracurricular activities that went on at UCLA—

HOPKINS:

Can I interrupt you for one second before we move on with that? On the track team, we know of your 400-meter races, but were there other events within track that you participated in?

LUVALLE:

Oh yes, I ran the 100, the 220, I sometimes broad jumped, I even threw the javelin once. I'll never forget that. I also ran relays; there were two years when we went back and won the title in the 4X440 (the mile relay) at the Drake Relays at Des Moines, lowa—our team did. In any dual meet, I ran in any events that we needed points. To give you an idea of this, we went up one year to the Santa Barbara Invitational Meet and I won the all-around trophy that year. I competed in so darn many events, I didn't even know what I was doing near the end of it. But if we needed points in an event, I ran in it.

HOPKINS:

And your favorite, though, was the what?

LUVALLE:

I like middle distances first. I preferred the 400 and 800 meters to anything else. I refused to run anything longer than that. [laughter]

HOPKINS:

And your greatest success was in the 400.

LUVALLE:

That's right.

HOPKINS:

Let's talk then a little bit about other extracurricular activities. You seemed to have been more involved in student affairs in college than you were anywhere in high school, if I'm not mistaken.

LUVALLE:

That's right. I was more involved. I was on the Student Religious Conference Board I guess my junior and senior years. I was very quietly involved in student government from my sophomore year on. I was on one of the councils, usually by appointment, not by election. I was president of Blue Key my senior year, which is an all-fraternity group that represents all the fraternities on campus. I probably should not have been president because although I had joined a fraternity at one point, I became totally inactive in it, virtually immediately, because I felt that it was a waste of my time.

HOPKINS:

Dr. LuValle, let's talk then about the Student Religious Conference Board. First of all, what is that organization?

LUVALLE:

We had, and we still do, at UCLA a building where all of the religions participate where students of the various denominations meet for dinners, for lunches, for get-togethers during the week and things. At that time, we ran a routine there. One night the Episcopalians had something, another night the Methodists had something, another night the Catholics or the Jews had something, all in this building. It was the Student Religious Conference building. It was a building where all the various faiths could get together and use the building and work together. They had a student board which decided how we would operate and what we would do. One of the things that we set up in those days was this Student Religious Conference camp [UniCamp] for underprivileged kids, which has now become one of the big things that is run at UCLA every summer. I think we ran it for just two or three weeks at the beginning. It's now run all summer. In fact, this year there's a reunion. I'm not going down to it, but there's a reunion of all the people that were there in the early days, right up to now. I think it's one of the very nice things that we started at UCLA.

HOPKINS:

How did you become involved in it?

LUVALLE:

I don't remember. [laughter]

HOPKINS:

What was your or is your religious background?

LUVALLE:

I'm a Protestant.

HOPKINS:

You're a Protestant. Would you say Methodist, Baptist, or—?

LUVALLE:

I have at one time or another been a member of the Methodist Church, the Episcopal Church, the Baptist Church, the Congregational Church, the Presbyterian Church, and the Catholic Church.

HOPKINS:

Is there any event or occurrence that happened while you were a member of this board that is noteworthy?

LUVALLE:

I talked about the thing that was most important: setting up and getting this student camp for underprivileged kids running.

HOPKINS:

Let's talk a little bit about your involvement with student government. You said you had a low-key involvement. How so?

LUVALLE:

Well, I didn't want to take the time to run for office. I had lots of friends who were very active, involved in things, and most of the time, I would get appointed to some committee to work on. This way I managed to stay involved in student government without going through all the hectic problems of running for office.

HOPKINS:

Did you know Frank Wilkinson?

LUVALLE:

Oh yes, I knew Frank very well.

HOPKINS:

Tom [Thomas P.] Lambert?

LUVALLE:

In fact, we were all very close friends in those days.

HOPKINS:

I notice when looking through the Bruins back in the thirties their names were always on the pages of the paper and so on. Did you support the ideas?

LUVALLE:

Now that's another problem. I managed, throughout UCLA, to never join an organization that eventually became controversial. Now I didn't manage to do this because I realized they were going to be controversial or there'd be big arguments about what they were doing or not. I did belong to the Student Religious Conference [Board] and I felt we did a lot of things that were very good. But some of these other organizations that eventually became controversial to the point later on where everybody that was in them was being accused of being a communist or a communist-leaner or something—the main reason I never joined any of them was because people put too much pressure on me to join. I tend never to do anything that people pressure me into.

HOPKINS:

Why don't we take a break now and let's come back to this session or—

LUVALLE:

What is it you wanted to ask right now?

HOPKINS:

I was curious about the whole flavor of the times and this idea of communism. Of course, that was a big part of the thirties. What do you remember about those days? Did you feel as though communism was a problem in this country? Or to be more precise, in California, Southern California?

LUVALLE:

I don't think I felt that it was much of a problem. Of course, the newspapers once in a while would play up the fact that fifty some odd students had done something on the campus. By the time the Los Angeles Herald wrote it up, it sounded like five thousand students. We weren't even that many students on the campus. I think it's some of the same problem that Berkeley has. They say things which sound like there are thousands of students involved when you're lucky if there are a few hundred involved. Again, I don't know how important it was or unimportant, I just know that I didn't have time for that sort of nonsense. So I didn't participate in it very much. One of the things that occurred during those years that I did do—students used to have a dance on the weekends at the Elks Hall, or something. Black students went down and weren't admitted.

HOPKINS:

To the Elks Hall?

LUVALLE:

To the Elks Hall. Provost Moore asked me to see what I could do about it. I actually did some things about it. It took me about a month and a half, and it was stopped: they were admitted. But during this period, unfortunately, some of the black students on campus complained to Provost [Moore] that they didn't want me to represent them because I never spent any time with them. I didn't, because I spent my time with my friends, but I did take care of this problem so they were admitted from that time on. I must say I apparently caused some people to get angry at me. I pick my friends, they picked their friends. I've always felt this way.

HOPKINS:

What did you do to help these other students to be able to attend?

LUVALLE:

I went down and had a talk with the local Elks, and then went down and had a talk with some governing group in the city of Los Angeles about the situation, explaining that all students at UCLA should either be admitted to these dances or no students. Fortunately, I was able to talk to some reasonable people and I told them that I was sure nothing untoward would happen. I would guarantee that, and I would guarantee that people that came would be well behaved. But I said that if you don't do it, I can't guarantee a thing. You may have a lot of problems. And so they decided to try it, and it worked. Of course it worked.

HOPKINS:

The white students who ran the dances or the social events, were they against black students participating?

LUVALLE:

Oh no, of course not.

HOPKINS:

So it was mainly the officials.

LUVALLE:

Oh no, there were white students with me. I took one of the guys who had been arranging these dances with me. He was angry about it too. It was a totally unexpected situation. When it arose, we took care of it. But we took care of it quietly. We didn't have anybody outside running around with signs. We didn't have a lot of noise, people trying to crash things, or making a stupid nuisance of themselves. We talked to people, quietly and without fighting.

HOPKINS:

What do you think would've happened—the "if" question—what would have happened if perhaps the officials would've said, "No, I'm sorry—"

LUVALLE:

I don't know. They didn't so there's no problem. [laughter] Now if you want to stop, let's stop. [tape recorder off]

HOPKINS:

We continue with session three with Dr. LuValle on August 19. Dr. LuValle, we left off, as you recall, with the Student Religious Conference Board, and I just had one or two questions more about that. Can you please give a character profile of Frank Wilkinson? Your relationship with him.

LUVALLE:

Frank was a very intense person. He believed in certain things, he didn't believe in other things. I think he felt that you should believe in the things he believed in. That's not wrong; most politicians are that way. [laughter]

HOPKINS:

Was he considered radical?

LUVALLE:

He was not considered a radical at that time. Later on there came the things which labeled him as a radical. But that is after I'd graduated from UCLA. Certainly at the time we were in college, we did not consider him a radical. Certainly not at that time, did we think Frank was a radical at all.

HOPKINS:

Not to belabor this, but to ask yet another question about Frank Wilkinson, were there any areas, politically or socially, that you disagreed with him staunchly that you could share with us?

LUVALLE:

I don't recall.

HOPKINS:

How about Tom Lambert?

LUVALLE:

Tom was another politician. He and I were candidates for the [Cecil B.] Rhodes Scholarship. He received it, I didn't. And I very much wanted it. Tom, I think, made very good use of it. Again, Tom was not considered a radical in those days. I don't know if he's considered a radical now, but certainly in those days, he was considered an outstanding person.

HOPKINS:

The Rhodes scholarship, can you tell me something about the process of applying for it?

LUVALLE:

You go through a committee at UCLA, you go through a state committee, and you go to the national committee. At any one place, it's go or no go in every case.

HOPKINS:

Now as I understand, during the time you were an undergraduate student at UCLA, there was some controversy over ROTC.

LUVALLE:

That was a controversy throughout the country. That was nothing that was limited to UCLA. That was a controversy that went up and down, as far as I know, all over the country. It depended on who was in school at a given time whether it was on the ups or downs. Personally, I ignored it.

HOPKINS:

Were you a member at any time of ROTC?

LUVALLE:

No. In fact, I never took the two years of military training that everybody had to take. When I entered UCLA, I just came out of the hospital, so I managed to convince the sergeant that he shouldn't enroll me in ROTC my first year because I was trying to recover my health. Then I managed to convince him the next year that it was stupid for him to put me in when I'd only have to take one year and he wouldn't really get me trained. Apparently I talked him out of it. So I never had any ROTC. As far as my activities with other students of UCLA, there were several different groups. There were Jim [James] Miller, Bob [Robert] Young, Ray [Raymond] Vejar, Sinclair Lott and other people who I was associated with very closely on track and we have kept up a very close friendship to this day. Then there was another group; Dick [Richard] Rogan, Maury Grossman, John [M.] Burnside, Tom Lambert, Frank Wilkinson, Phyllis Edwards, Betty Geary, who I was associated with on the Religious Conference and in some aspects of student government during that period. And again, some of those people I've kept much closer contact with than I have with others of those. Part of that has been because it was simpler to keep contact with some, and others it was much more difficult. Then if we go into the chemistry department; there was Glenn Seaborg, Saul Winstein, Darryl Osborne, Bobby [Robert] Nye, Dorothy Jackson, whom I've kept contact with all these years. These were people who we worked with in chemistry and we kept close contact with each other for many years thereafter. I've lost contact with some of them now, but most of them I know where they are, and I see them from time to time; we still exchange Christmas cards. I could name another three dozen. All I've done is pick out a few names that we could talk about. All of these people were friends of mine. Some of them were close friends, some not as close.

HOPKINS:

Do you remember Gilbert [A.] Harrison?

LUVALLE:

Oh, yes, Gil Harrison's a very good friend of mine. I see him every now and then. I'll see him this November at the reunion. Maury Grossman will be there, John Burnside will be there, and quite a few of the others. Lloyd Bridges—I don't know that he'll show up or not—the movie actor, he was in my class.

HOPKINS:

Gilbert Harrison went on to become the editor of the New Republic.

LUVALLE:

That's right.

HOPKINS:

Is he still editor of that?

LUVALLE:

I don't know. I've lost track of him recently.

HOPKINS:

You were also in a fraternity. Can you describe that experience for us please?

LUVALLE:

I almost dropped out when I was being initiated. This was the so-called Kappa Alpha, or something like, that fraternity. And then I became convinced that I was wasting my time, so I had nothing more to do with them.

HOPKINS:

You went through the initiation process?

LUVALLE:

Yes, but then I had nothing to do with them from that time on.

HOPKINS:

This particular group, racially what was its makeup?

LUVALLE:

It was a black group. But I just didn't have time, really, to give myself to the sort of things the fraternity did, or to go to their meetings, so I dropped out.

HOPKINS:

During this period, do you recall what they were most interested in?

LUVALLE:

Social activities and having a lot of fun.

HOPKINS:

In theory, fraternities are a service group. Did they do very much service?

LUVALLE:

Not that I know of.

HOPKINS:

Did you join any other fraternities?

LUVALLE:

I was president of Blue Key. That's an inter-fraternity group. They were on campus at one time with a representative from every fraternity. I probably shouldn't have been president because I was not active in any fraternity.

HOPKINS:

In the majority group fraternities, was there, to your knowledge, discrimination?

LUVALLE:

I don't know.

HOPKINS:

You didn't join so—

LUVALLE:

I don't know. I knew many fraternity people, I attended affairs at various fraternities on the campus, but as far as discrimination is concerned, I was totally unaware of it.

HOPKINS:

Dr. LuValle, where did you live while you were attending UCLA?

LUVALLE:

At home most of the time; I mean, I commuted every day. I couldn't afford to do anything else.

HOPKINS:

Your means of commuting was what?

LUVALLE:

That varied from the bus to friends' cars. Sinclair Lott, for instance, used to pick me up every morning to go to school. He lived at home. Ray Vejar lived at home. Remember there were no dormitories available on campus. There were fraternities and that was it. So most of us couldn't afford to live anywhere but home.

HOPKINS:

So the majority of students who attended UCLA, would you say, were from the L.A. area?

LUVALLE:

In those days, the majority of students attending UCLA were definitely Los Angeles area people. I'm sure that has changed now with the large number of dormitories available. But in those days, with the lack of facilities—there was one small women's dormitory, Mira Hershey Hall— virtually everybody was a Los Angeles product.

HOPKINS:

What has happened to Sinclair Lott?

LUVALLE:

Sinclair Lott. Musician. He played with the Los Angeles Symphony, He played with the Hollywood Bowl group. He played with one of the studio orchestras. He teaches music. He's one of the outstanding french horn players in the world.

HOPKINS:

What university is he associated with or affiliated with?

LUVALLE:

At one point, he was teaching at UCLA.

HOPKINS:

Would you mind going through the list of some of your close friends there and maybe discussing what some of them are doing at this point?

LUVALLE:

Jim Miller passed away. Bob Young went back up to the [Central] Valley after he graduated and ran a farm for quite a few years. He turned it into a vineyard and then sold it and retired. Ray Vejar started a business with veterinary supplies, turned it into a very big business, sold it, and retired. Dick Rogan's an attorney. Maury Grossman, I believe, is an attorney. I don't know what John Burnside does. Tom Lambert is now Dean of the Law School at Tufts [University]. Frank Wilkinson is still very active in various causes. I don't know what Phyll Edwards is doing now. Betty Geary's passed away. I've lost track of Bobby [Nye] and Dorothy [Jackson]. Glenn Seaborg, as you know, a Nobel Prize winner, was chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission at one time, and is a very important person in the sciences today. He's still a professor, now a professor emeritus at Berkeley and an Institute Professor [Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory]. So he's still active there.

HOPKINS:

Did you work with Dr. Seaborg during the early forties for national defense?

LUVALLE:

No, no. Saul Winstein returned to UCLA after his Ph.D. and teaching at Illinois [Institute of Technology] Tech, became a full professor at UCLA, became one of the outstanding organic chemists in the world, and passed away while swimming in his swimming pool one day. Darryl Osborne went to the University of Wisconsin, and was for many years at Argonne National Laboratory, and he's had a debilitating illness. We keep track of him and try to contact him once or twice a year. I think that covers the list of ones I've named there, Gilbert Harrison, as you said, was editor of—

HOPKINS:

New Republic.

LUVALLE:

I see Gil occasionally and quite a few of these others which I have not named that I see and I know about what they're doing. Those of us who can will be around in November for our fiftieth reunion.

HOPKINS:

The fiftieth reunion. California Men, what does that mean to you, if anything?

LUVALLE:

What?

HOPKINS:

California Men Organization.

LUVALLE:

Nothing.

HOPKINS:

Found it in the Bruin connected with Mr. Wilkinson, I suppose, and Mr. Lambert, but I'm not quite sure what the connection is.

LUVALLE:

I've never heard about it.

HOPKINS:

Dr. LuValle, where did your parents live while you were at UCLA? Do you remember the address or what area?

LUVALLE:

Oh, various parts. Well, we moved over to the west side of town—

HOPKINS:

Let's go through that if you don't mind. If you could chart that—

LUVALLE:

When we moved from the east side of town, we moved to the Westside. We lived on the Westside from then on until I was through school.

HOPKINS:

The Westside, what—?

LUVALLE:

That would be west of Western Avenue, and somewhere between Exposition Boulevard and Jefferson, in that area. Eventually my sister and mother moved out to where my sister now lives, which is just below La Cienega and just north of the Santa Monica freeway. Those areas that we lived in were mixed areas at that time. They were definitely not black areas.

HOPKINS:

So during the years you were at UCLA, were they on the Westside?

LUVALLE:

Yes.

HOPKINS:

How did the Depression affect you?

LUVALLE:

We didn't have as much money.

HOPKINS:

Did you notice a dramatic change in lifestyles in Los Angeles and for yourself at UCLA?

LUVALLE:

I was aware of some of the problems. But I was busy trying to make sure that I worked and had enough money to go on through school and graduate, so I didn't pay too much attention to other things.

HOPKINS:

You weren't on the soup lines?

LUVALLE:

Oh no. We were short of money but we never were on soup lines. All of us were in the same boat. There wasn't anyone who attended UCLA at that time who wasn't in a similar boat. We'd go over to each other's homes for meals and things, but we didn't eat fancy meals. For instance, come over to my house, you might get chili, you might get spaghetti and meatballs. [laughter]

HOPKINS:

Was the Depression something that was constantly discussed among you and your friends?

LUVALLE:

No, no. The things we discussed were things that had to do with—well, I can't say all of them because I don't know. But among my closer friends, the ones I really spent a lot of time with, the things we discussed had to do with UCLA and what we thought we were going to do in the future in those days. We were, of course, aware of the fact there were many people unemployed and people were selling apples and such things. You couldn't be unaware of it, unless you didn't read the paper or didn't listen to the radio. But on the other hand, we certainly didn't devote all of our time and attention to the Depression, by any means. We were too busy trying to get by.

HOPKINS:

Were you conscious or concerned about the political elections during those years, during the Depression years?

LUVALLE:

I think I was aware of what was going on and I voted. But you say concerned?

HOPKINS:

I mean overly concerned, where it was a key issue with you constantly, the discussion of who would be president and—

LUVALLE:

No, heavens no.

HOPKINS:

Dr. LuValle, I think that concludes our section here on the undergraduate years. There may be some other questions that may come to mind, if you don't mind. But for now, I'd like to move on to an article entitled "The Lonely Path."

1.3. TAPE NUMBER: II, SIDE ONE AUGUST 19, 1986

HOPKINS:

Dr. LuValle, now we address our attention to an essay that was written in 1935 entitled, "The Lonely Path," an essay that won you the Atlantic Monthly essay contest in that year.

LUVALLE:

I'll correct that. I only placed third.

HOPKINS:

It's still very distinguished. I'd like to thumb through this article and ask you a few questions as they appear. First of all, what are your general feelings about the article from a 1986 perspective?

LUVALLE:

I'd have to reread it. [laughter] I suppose you want to know why it was selected. The whole reason there, that was one of a series of essays I wrote in a course in essay writing I was taking in English. We had to turn in an essay a week during that course, and that was one of the series.

HOPKINS:

Now, who submitted this article?

LUVALLE:

My English teacher.

HOPKINS:

Do you remember that person's name?

LUVALLE:

Dr. Schaffer I believe. She made us work.

HOPKINS:

Did she ask your permission to have it submitted?

LUVALLE:

I believe so; I don't remember now.

HOPKINS:

Was she in the habit of submitting undergraduate papers?

LUVALLE:

If they were good enough.

HOPKINS:

You draw a distinction between Negroes and mulattoes. Could you explain the difference?

LUVALLE:

Frequently, the mulatto has difficulties in finding where he may belong, in that Negroes or blacks tend to reject him, and according to I think more or less the group he's with, sometimes whites tend to reject him. So he has to find where he wants to fit. Sometimes this is, I believe, a somewhat difficult thing for such people. I think it depends upon background and upbringing and many other factors on how he finally solves it. It depends, I believe on what degree of mulatto he might be.

HOPKINS:

So in other words, if he's very light-skinned, then it's even more of a difficulty than if he's—

LUVALLE:

That's right.

HOPKINS:

And for obvious reasons. Attending UCLA during the thirties and growing up in the twenties, did you find your skin color to be a problem?

LUVALLE:

I'd rather not discuss that one.

HOPKINS:

One of the things you stated in your article, which I thought was very interesting, was that many Negroes or blacks at this time did not seem to fit well into the social life at colleges and universities.

LUVALLE:

Unfortunately, that's still true. If you go on the average campus, in fact, I don't know of any one where you won't find it; you will see that the black students will tend to associate with each other and not associate with their compatriots of other races very much—to the extent that I think they hurt themselves. They're in college. They're going to have to compete and deal with a multiracial group for the rest of their lives, unless they retreat into a very narrow area. This is why I do not believe in ethnic theme houses. I think it's the worst thing that can possibly happen to a black student, joining an ethnic theme house. I especially would not allow a single ethnic student of any race to join an ethnic theme house during his first two years in college. I'd absolutely insist they mix and live in the dormitories so that they are forced to become acquainted and form friends with other than members of their own race. I think this is a sad commentary that we see so much of this tendency to group together, and frequently to find racial difficulties where they don't exist.

HOPKINS:

Would you also encourage white students to seek out others other than in their race to fraternize with?

LUVALLE:

Of course. It goes both ways. I think that the white student probably feels, he doesn't want to force himself on the black student, but [if] the black student meets him halfway [he's] more than happy, usually, to meet him. I think the best thing is to absolutely insist on these mixed dormitories during their first two years in college. I feel that if they go into an ethnic theme house as a first, they'll never leave it, and I think that's a very sad situation.

HOPKINS:

The phrase ethnic theme house—

LUVALLE:

Here on the campus we have an Asian-American theme house—

HOPKINS:

At Stanford—

LUVALLE:

—we have a black theme house. These are dormitories or parts of dormitories that have been set up this way. See, we have another one. Oh. Chicano. And I believe this is commonplace in many universities, especially on the West Coast. I think it's a mistake in every case. I don't care whether they're black or Asiatic, or Chicano, or Native American. I think that they hurt themselves because they need to form friendships that are going to last the rest of their lives with the people they're going to be working with and competing with. Unless again, they're going to retreat into what I call some black profession, or some Asiatic profession, or some Chicano profession; in other words, become a professional ethnic man. There are a lot of those. Those people I don't like to have much to do with, to be perfectly frank.

HOPKINS:

Let's forget the eighties, I know you're talking generally, but let's go back to the thirties and choose a couple of groups. Most of the Orientals, as I understand it, who were in California were either Chinese or Japanese, particularly at a university they'd probably be Japanese. How did the Japanese interact with, say, whites and blacks?

LUVALLE:

Very, very nicely. Very, very definitely. Interaction was great. I had many friends. I lived in a neighborhood where there were at one point quite a few Japanese and knew them very well.

HOPKINS:

Would you say, generally speaking, that there was a difference between the way mulattoes and blacks interacted with whites? Was there a greater tendency—

LUVALLE:

I wouldn't be a judge on that one.

HOPKINS:

When you wrote this article did you feel that—

LUVALLE:

I was talking about some of my own experiences, not in general. I mean I think I summed it up in what I said previously about—even now.

HOPKINS:

What is an "ofay"?

LUVALLE:

A white person.

HOPKINS:

I hadn't heard the term.

LUVALLE:

It's one that was used in those days.

HOPKINS:

That's very enlightening, because you just don't hear that. One last question on this article, and we'll move on. There was a statement made, and I have you at a bit of disadvantage, but you said that the mulattoes need to make a choice and be concerned about uplifting themselves, in essence, and not to take over the traditional attitudes of the race. What would you consider, at least at that time, were the traditional attitudes of blacks?

LUVALLE:

Very simply, I become a doctor, a dentist, a lawyer, or a school teacher. Period! Period! That was it. I'm speaking now as a black; nothing else I can go into. Well, this was a lot of malarkey! But that was the average attitude. That there wasn't any other profession. There's no point in even trying to because we will not be accepted. This was the attitude of countless numbers of people in those days. Now I'm going to talk to the present and make a statement. During the past fifteen years there's been a change. An Atlantic Monthly had an excellent couple of articles on this problem. You've seen the middle-class black move up. If he moves out of the ghettos, he moves into mixed neighborhoods; he's done fairly well for himself now. But then you see another group that probably hasn't done near as well. These are the people that now are forming a real problem in the ghettos. The blacks that haven't gotten out; the unmarried mothers, the dope addicts, the people who feel they don't have a chance in the world. As long as they feel that way, they aren't going to have a chance in the world. Let's face it. You've got to really get up and pull yourself up by your bootstraps. You've got a major separation now occurring. Within the blacks—as a group that has moved out, and has moved up—they don't live in the ghetto now. They are making excellent salaries. Then there's another group that has retreated. Now, as this article in Atlantic Monthly pointed out, in the 1930s or forties, if you went into some of the black neighborhoods, they were quite thriving neighborhoods, in that the doctors lived there, the dentists lived there, there were a lot of shopkeepers and others that lived there and made a living off of it, in these activities. You go into those areas now, there are no doctors, no dentists, no lawyers, and most of the shops have disappeared. So all you've got are people living in a very run-down neighborhood and feeling hopeless about things. I don't know what the answer is. I don't pretend to know. But I know that it's happened. You ask about this movement up. The movement has occurred, not just for mulattoes, but for blacks too.

HOPKINS:

I know you alluded to this earlier, but did you sometimes find, as you mention in your article, that some blacks or negroes had difficulty dealing with mulattoes?

LUVALLE:

That's right.

HOPKINS:

Why do you think that way?

LUVALLE:

How do we say this one? A problem in that they see the light-skinned person doing things that they don't do, and they begin to say, "I don't trust them." Period.

HOPKINS:

Thank you, Dr. LuValle, for your comments on that.

LUVALLE:

The Olympic experience you want to do now?

HOPKINS:

Yes. I'd like to do the Olympic experience, and first of all, tell me what was that like? What was it like to go to the Olympics?

LUVALLE:

Well, I dug out a lot, not a lot, but some Olympic memorabilia that I have at home which I can show you tonight.

HOPKINS:

Oh great!

LUVALLE:

We had to make the Olympic team in New York during some extremely hot weather. At Randall's Island.

HOPKINS:

Let me interrupt you, which I usually don't do: When did you first decide that you would try for the Olympics?

LUVALLE:

I don't remember when it occurred. I just finally decided to do it. I think I ran in a qualifying meet in Los Angeles and won it, did it in very good time. I just said, "Well, I might as well try. It won't hurt."

HOPKINS:

How long would this be before 1936? Roughly.

LUVALLE:

This was in 1936. Let's put it this way. I was not one of these people who said I want to make the Olympics when I was eight years old, and worked on it from then on. I think I should clarify one other thing here. Athletics for me was something to do for fun. I never looked upon athletics as a means of making a living. I never even thought of athletics as a means of making a living. Whether I did these things or not depended entirely on whether I thought I could do them without interfering with what I thought was important, mainly my academic work. I think that a lot of other people nowadays, of any race, would be better off if they didn't start thinking about making the Olympics when they were ten years old. Now what else do you want to ask?

HOPKINS:

I interrupted you. I was going to ask you to chart for me the whole experience.

LUVALLE:

The trials were at Randall's Island. I think I lost sixteen pounds in those two days. Everybody lost weight like mad; it was a hundred and something in the shade, and no shade, and we had to run a total of four or five races to qualify for it. It was pretty nasty weather. Those who made the team, of course, had to immediately, the next day, go to the tailor's to get measured for their uniform, and their sweat suits, and everything else, and a week later we sailed on the U. S. America [S.S. Manhattan] for the Olympic games. This was probably the last time that a ship was used for transporting the Olympic team. First of all, the whole Olympic team was in steerage and the whole Olympic Committee was up in first class. [laughter] This led to some hard feelings among the Olympic team members. I got acquainted with quite a few people during the trip. As you know, one of the incidents that occurred during that trip across the Atlantic was that Eleanor Holm [Jarrett] was disqualified [by] the Olympic Committee because she had some champagne one night. What a lot of people don't know is the reason she had the champagne; the Olympic Committee insisted she come up and be a showpiece for them, while they showed her off to the other people in first class. She begged not to go because she was afraid if she did it she might accept a glass, and she had two or three glasses of champagne, so the next thing you know they disqualify her. It was one of the rottenest deals I've ever heard of. It should not have happened. It's as bad as when, after the Olympics, Jesse Owens didn't want to go on and do all these exhibitions and [Avery] Brundage wanted to declare him a professional. It's the same type of thing. They thought they ran the world, and the athletes were their servants. We weren't. We had to stop in England and put more food on the boat, because we were eating up all the food. That was an unplanned stop. Then we went on to Hamburg, where we disembarked and took the train to Berlin. When we arrived in the Berlin station there were large groups of primarily young ladies, "Wo ist Jesse? Wo ist Jesse? Wo ist Jesse?" (Where is Jesse Owens?) Because Jesse, during the preceding time, you know, had set all these world records in the United States, and if there's anything that the Germans worshipped at that time [it] was a champion. Jesse got off the train and they mobbed him. They finally rescued him. We took the buses on out to the Olympic Village, which was a lovely spot on the outskirts of Berlin at that time. It became the German West Point after the games. However, there was a definite demarcation between Jesse and everybody else. Nobody would go out of the Olympic Village with Jesse. Because he got mobbed immediately, he had to have a whole group of soldiers with him all the time to keep him from being mobbed. He traveled almost alone. I think it was a very unhappy time for him. It wasn't anything of his own choosing, but that's the way it worked. Of course, we went to the village, and we started training for the games. On the opening day of the games, we were taken down Unter den Linden and into the Olympic Stadium, and as we go down into Daneland and looked out, there was this mob of people on each side in front of them, a solid row of brownshirts, and about every tenth one was a blackshirt. All of them in full battle regalia. I swear, they could have marched off to war that day. We went on to the Mayfeld, and there we had fifty-five nations gathered together on one side of a grandstand, ready to compete for two weeks to find out who could run the fastest, who could throw the weight the farthest, who could swim the fastest, who could dive with most perfection, etcetera. On the other side we had perhaps fifty thousand troops all set to go to war. This was a contrast that I will never forget. We marched into the stadium, and after we'd all gathered into the stadium and went through the usual Olympic induction—however, the Germans had arranged for a choir of five thousand Germans to sing the "Hallelujah Chorus" to open the games. And this was indeed a very, very, very moving ceremony. You have to have been there to realize how it felt. You can't describe it. Of course, the games got started the next day. Somewhere along there the first one who won anything was a German and Hitler congratulated him. Then Hitler was informed, and rightly so, by the chairman of the International Olympic Committee that he either had to congratulate everybody or nobody. So he didn't from then on. The media then played it up that he ignored Jesse. Actually, the head of state at the Olympics is supposed to do one thing: announce that the given Olympiad is open, and then shut his mouth up from then on. He's not supposed to do anything from then on. And after he did have this German up to congratulate him, the first winner—of course this made Hitler very proud—they had to inform him that he was either going to have to do this for every winner from then on, or for none. How much the media made of that I don't know. The media of course played it up that he didn't want to shake hands with Jesse. On the other hand, you have to realize that Jesse would not have won the broad jump without the help of his main competitor, a German, who told him what he was doing wrong when he was fouling. So he finally corrected it, and won that broad jump.

HOPKINS:

Who was that, by the way, do you recall?

LUVALLE:

Can't remember the guy's name. I can maybe look it up tonight. We went on to the games and I ran in my events. We had five races in two days.

HOPKINS:

What events had you qualified in?

LUVALLE:

Only the 400-meters. I didn't even try for anything else.

HOPKINS:

The relay either?

LUVALLE:

No. We took four additional men for the relay. In my own race, as you know, the race took place and I got third; Archie Williams of the United States was first, and [Arthur] Brown was second; I was third, and [Godfrey] Rampling of England fourth; and an Australian and a New Zealander were fifth and sixth. So it was strictly an all-English-speaking final. Four men had originally been taken for the 4X100-[meter] relay. [Dean] Cromwell insisted they try out again and then replaced two of them [Sam Stoller and Martin Glickman] with other people, because they wanted to be sure to win it. That was Jesse Owens, and I've forgotten who the other guy [Foy Draper] was. I thought this was very, very bad, because they had taken these boys over and they never competed. The fact that they were two Jewish boys, of course, was made a big thing in the paper. I don't know how much that had to do with it because I didn't know Cromwell that well. I know I didn't like Cromwell, but that's another thing. They decided after the 400-meter hurdles and the 400-meter run that they were going to do the same thing for the 4X400-meter [relay]. Bob [Robert] Young, a schoolmate of mine, was on that four-man team. Short-stride Hage, a very close friend of Glenn [Slats] Hardin, who had won the 400-meter hurdles, was also on the team, and Slats and I informed the committee we weren't about to take their places. There was no point in having trials because we weren't about to do it. They had been brought over to run, and there was no way they could make us do it. Mr. Cromwell didn't like that, but there wasn't too much he could do about it. About which time Archie Williams also said he wouldn't run, so that removed all of us they wanted to put on the team, so they had to run those boys. They placed second and won a silver medal. That was much better than to eliminate the three of them so they could win a gold, as far as I'm concerned.

HOPKINS:

Were there any retributions toward you—there's not much they could do to you, but what did Cromwell—?

LUVALLE:

I don't know whether they tried to do something or not, because I ignored it. [laughter] Actually, I guess they didn't, because afterwards we traveled to several countries, and at one point no member of the coaching staff or the Olympic Committee could go with us until a day later, and I was in charge of the group that went to Paris. There couldn't have been any retribution in that. Otherwise, I wouldn't have been placed in charge of the group. There was a little hard feeling from some members of the group because I was in charge, because I got the best room, [laughter]

HOPKINS:

What about the housing for the athletes? Were you all housed together in the Olympic Village there?

LUVALLE:

Oh yes. We had dormitories which housed, I don't know, forty, fifty people each. These were the dormitories that were then used for the German soldiers' officer training. Then we had our own dining room. Had a beautiful big dining room of our own. We took our own cooks along and a lot of our own food. It's a good thing we did, because we had a tremendous number of visitors from the other countries.

HOPKINS:

Did you make friends—

LUVALLE:

Oh yes.

HOPKINS:

—from other countries?

LUVALLE:

Certainly did.

HOPKINS:

Any of them you remember that are outstanding in your mind who you may even today still communicate with?

LUVALLE:

Well, Brown and Rampling I've seen from time to time, and a couple other guys, I can't remember their names. There's a girl from Brazil I fell head over heels in love with, but she went back to Brazil and I went back to America. [laughter]

HOPKINS:

Was there any protest regarding Eleanor's—

LUVALLE:

No. I don't know. May have been, but I'm unaware of it.

HOPKINS:

What about Jesse Owens? Did you know him?

LUVALLE:

I got to know him, yes.

HOPKINS:

The question is, did you have a relationship with him, or were you friends with him, or did you strike up a friendship with him?

LUVALLE:

No more than I was friends with everybody else on the team. I mean I had some close friends there, and I knew them very well. Those people I spent my time with. Most of these were people I had run against in national meets in this country. These were the people I knew.

HOPKINS:

Dr. LuValle, did UCLA support your trip to the Olympics? How did you finance your trip to the Olympics?

LUVALLE:

The Olympic Committee paid for it, from the time we qualified for the team; UCLA raised money enough for me to go to the Princeton Invitational, and I've forgotten, I think the Princeton people paid for me to stay there until the Olympic trials a week later. Once the trials were over, the Olympic Committee took care of all expenses until we arrived back in Los Angeles. They gave us a ticket home out of New York; after we went through a ticker tape parade there, each of us got a ticket to go home. They didn't try to take us home or anything, but they paid our way. That was what the Olympic Committee was supposed to do.

HOPKINS:

I know you wouldn't have wanted this, but did you see any athletic opportunities that could be derived from your Olympic experience?

LUVALLE:

I don't know. I didn't look for any.

HOPKINS:

Jesse Owens, he looked for other opportunities, but he seemed at least initially to be unsuccessful. Of course, you had another career to go back to.

LUVALLE:

That's right. When I came back from the Olympics, when I arrived in New York, I had a wire from my mother: "Dr. [Francis E.] Blacet has offered you a fellowship to go on for your Master's at UCLA." I didn't stick around New York for very long.

HOPKINS:

You've already commented on this to some degree, but maybe you have another word. You mentioned that you didn't care much for Mr. Cromwell. What was the—

LUVALLE:

Cromwell was, and has a reputation as a great coach. But in reality he had a bunch of assistant coaches who did all the coaching, and he went around and said, "Oh, you're doing great, fellows."

HOPKINS:

Do you remember the name of any of your coaches who were closest to you?

LUVALLE:

Ducky [Elvin C.] Drake and Harry Trotter.

HOPKINS:

At the Olympics.

LUVALLE:

Cromwell was one of the coaches on the Olympics. The other guy was a guy from Berkeley at that time, Brutus Hamilton. And, of course, [Lawrence N. ] Snyder was there with Jesse; he was also one of the coaches.

HOPKINS:

Did you have any problems, racial problems, in terms of living in the facilities that were provided there?

LUVALLE:

No.

HOPKINS:

Some newspaper accounts say that Americans were treated poorly by the Germans. Is that true?

LUVALLE:

Well, I don't know. I didn't see it.

HOPKINS:

Speaking from personal experience.

LUVALLE:

I certainly had an enjoyable time. I went out several times and visited with people who invited me out away from the village. I had several arguments with the colonel who ran the village, but this was strictly because I thought he was doing things wrong.

HOPKINS:

Any other comments you might have on the Olympic experience?

LUVALLE:

No. I don't know of any.

HOPKINS:

Let's move on then to the graduate student years at UCLA. This was a one-year experience for you.

LUVALLE:

That's right.

HOPKINS:

Tell me about the admission process to graduate school there.

LUVALLE:

There was none. I graduated from UCLA, the department decided they wanted to accept me for a graduate student, period.

HOPKINS:

Now what did you study? When you came to the graduate division there, what did you do?

LUVALLE:

I actually again took primarily chemistry, but I also took some more physics, and I actually received a minor in mathematics as well.

HOPKINS:

What kind of chemistry, I have limited knowledge—

LUVALLE:

I did my actual thesis in photochemistry. I studied the photochemistry of crotonaldehyde, and was able, using microanalytical techniques, to prove what photochemical process took place. There was one problem we couldn't solve at that time and it wasn't solved for over twenty-five years, because the equipment which was needed was nonexistent at the time we were doing the work. The experimental work ran into some major problems, and Francis [Blacet] told me, recently, that if I hadn't come up with a solution he didn't know how we would have done it. In fact, he told me that the work I did at that point for my Master's would have earned a Ph.D. at most schools. But in any case, I worked, and worked very hard at this. This is an experimental thesis where one had to go down to the lab and run experiments every single day. I had learned a lot about glass blowing, but believe me, in the first two weeks of that master's degree, I learned a heck of a lot more about glass blowing. [laughter]

HOPKINS:

What was it about chemistry that you liked? I mean is there any one thing that you can pinpoint? What was it about chemistry? I mean why a chemist? Why not a physicist or a mathematician?

LUVALLE:

Well, it's very easy about the mathematician. I didn't believe at that time that there were jobs in math. I knew that there were available jobs both in industry and in academia in chemistry. I didn't believe there was a job in the world for a mathematician at that time other than academia, and I think that was probably true, and there weren't too many jobs for physicists outside of academia at that time. The only place that you had an opportunity that you can go either way, that was obvious at that time, was chemistry. That wasn't the main reason I chose chemistry. I enjoyed the type of work I did, where I could unravel a problem, and I'm sure that if I would have picked physics, I would have enjoyed the same type of thing of unraveling a problem. I picked chemistry. Part of it, because I'd been admitted to the chemistry department to go ahead and get a Master's degree. [laughter]

HOPKINS:

Kind of a logical progression there. You shied away from a planned career in academics. Was there a reason?

LUVALLE:

No. I didn't know what I wanted to do, which way. Why not leave it open both ways. As it turned out, it's a good thing I did.

HOPKINS:

Let's talk briefly about the organization of Graduate Students Association [GSA]. By all accounts, you were instrumental in seeing this organization become successful. What was UCLA like before the GSA?

LUVALLE:

This was the second year they'd given a master's, or the third, no more than that. The number of graduate students was small, and in talking to Dean [Vern O.] Knudsen one day, I mentioned the fact that I thought that—I don't know that he mentioned it—anyhow, one of us said we thought we ought to have an organization of the graduate students so they could meet each other and get together, because they certainly weren't mixing in with the undergraduates very well, and that's true of course even today. Graduate students don't tend to mix with the undergraduates very well. So we decided to try to set up our organization. I've forgotten how many meetings we had before it got rolling, but we finally set up an organization and decided to have one or two affairs for the graduate students. The first affair we had was a reception for all graduate students at Dean Knudsen's home. The reception was out on the lawn. We had a receiving line, and Dean Knudsen and his wife were in it and I was in it as well as Kay Hertzog and one or two others. And unfortunately about halfway through that, I had my hand behind me, and a bumble bee managed to take care of my finger and I went up in the air. That broke up the reception line. Mrs. Knudsen repaired my finger and we did without the reception line the rest of the time. [laughter] But then we went on to two or three other affairs. It wasn't anything fancy at that time. It was just trying to be an association where the graduate students would have a voice in what went on about them, and have a means of being heard. Also it was an association that offered the students somewhat of a chance to get acquainted with each other, other than the ones in their own department.

HOPKINS:

How were you elected president?

LUVALLE:

I don't remember. [laughter]

HOPKINS:

Do you think that there was an election, or would it have been a selection?

LUVALLE:

I don't remember.

HOPKINS:

What would you chart as the greatest accomplishment of the GSA?

LUVALLE:

I think the main accomplishment at that time was actually organizing something which the graduate students could have [as] a means of getting acquainted with other graduate students, because of the sort of affairs we sponsored; most of them were very simple. And it gave graduate students a voice. Somewhere they could go about a problem. And then someone could speak to the administration. Remember, we were a very young graduate school. And it appeared it would be nice to have the graduate students have something to say about it.

HOPKINS:

Were there any faculty or administrators who were against seeing this organization established?

LUVALLE:

No. They were all for it.

HOPKINS:

They were all for it. Were there any particular problems that you faced, other than the logistics of getting things started?

LUVALLE:

I don't think there were any major problems that year. It was just a matter of "we are so young, it would be nice that we can hear from the graduate students; we would like to be heard from, and we would also like to have a means of getting graduate students acquainted." As you know, it still goes on. The chancellor still has a reception for all new graduate students every year, at the opening of the year—or not the same day, but during the first month or so of school—at which they get acquainted. It's now about a ten thousand strong organization down there. It's a big organization now, but we were little then. Remember, we were the second year or at most the third, I can't remember which way it is, at which there'd even been a graduate school at the University, at the southern campus.

HOPKINS:

Was there any pressure on you, Dr. LuValle, from your parents or relatives to say, and if I may take this privilege, I know they often call you Jimmy, they say, "Jimmy, why don't you go to work now, and stop the school business?"

LUVALLE:

There were some relatives who did that. My mother said no, go back to school. Oh, there were some relatives who definitely felt I should stop. But my mother backed me up about going to school and getting as much education as possible first.

HOPKINS:

Did that objection from relatives at all undermine your desire?

LUVALLE:

No.

HOPKINS:

Did it make you think twice about what you were doing?

LUVALLE:

No. Made me do the other. Become more determined to go on.

HOPKINS:

We want to move now to the California Institute of Technology. After you finished graduate school, then what happened? What did you do then?

LUVALLE:

After I finished which? Caltech?

HOPKINS:

After you finished UCLA, with the M.A. in chemistry—

LUVALLE:

M.S.

HOPKINS:

What did you do next?

LUVALLE:

Went to Caltech.

HOPKINS:

You went to Caltech, and what did you do there?

LUVALLE:

I, of course, enrolled in the graduate school and went to see Linus Pauling. Linus told me that he really felt that I needed at least another year of experimental work before I started getting involved too much in theoretical work. He suggested that I go to work for Don [M.] Yost for a year first. So I went to work for Don Yost and spent a year working for him on a problem that was such a difficult problem, it has never been solved.

HOPKINS:

Could you explain that to some degree?

LUVALLE:

What we wanted to do was measure the heat capacity of a gas at constant volume. This is an extremely difficult thing to do because the calorimeter, which contains the gas, is actually going to have a higher heat capacity than the entire amount of gas in the calorimeter. Therefore, you're going to have to take the difference between two large numbers to get the heat capacity. And this is a small number. This makes it most difficult. We never got to the point where we made a measurement because I never could make a calorimeter that had a low enough heat capacity. I must have made a dozen of them during that year. I made several other things that had to be used. Simultaneously with that, up at [University of California] Berkeley, another man had graduate students working on the same problem where they were going to make two identical calorimeters, one of which would have a vacuum in it, and the other, the gas. This way they would be able to get two numbers that would be so much more accurate, that they could then take the difference and believe it. That problem failed after several years because nobody could make two identical calorimeters. After my first year with Don Yost, I shifted over to work for Linus Pauling, and went to work on electron diffraction of gases, which I had chosen to do. I also did some crystal structure. The first thing that Linus did was more or less give me a pair of pliers and say, "Go down and rebuild Brockway's electron diffraction apparatus." Well, that occupied me for six months. I was working with Verner Shoemaker and David Stevenson during that work, and we had a wonderful time there, rebuilding the unit. Then we went on and did quite a bit of work in that area during the next couple of years. Don Yost was a great deal of help throughout the time I was at Caltech and was a friend of mine up till the day he passed away. Roscoe Dickenson was also very helpful to me at Caltech; Richard [Chace] Tolman, whom I had some wonderful courses from in thermodynamics and statistical mechanics; and Linus Pauling. In fact, the entire Chemistry Department and Physics Department were extremely helpful throughout my stay at Caltech. Linus gave a lot of attention to us. He hooked up every predoctoral with a postdoctoral. He didn't have a huge number of either. He knew what was going on because he came around every night or so to find out what was going on. But you worked directly with a postdoc, as a predoc. Which meant you received a tremendous amount of experience. Well, in my case, first three months I was working with Stevenson and Shoemaker I had to go home every night and study like the very devil to try to find out what they'd been talking about that day. Verner Shoemaker, Dave [David] Stevenson, Norton Wilson, Dick [Richard Macy] Noyes, Darryl Osborne, Saul Winstein were close friends of mine during that period.

HOPKINS:

Can you describe your relationship with Dr. Pauling?

LUVALLE:

Just another one of his graduate students. He gave us all a lot of attention.

HOPKINS:

What did you think of him.

LUVALLE:

I worshipped him.

HOPKINS:

Now, some have said, I think Dr. [William G.] Young had said that he got very much involved in politics.

LUVALLE:

He did.

HOPKINS:

And what were your impressions of that?

LUVALLE:

He got very much involved in politics.

HOPKINS:

How would you feel about it?

LUVALLE:

It was up to him.

HOPKINS:

It didn't color your opinion of him one way or another?

LUVALLE:

As a scientist, I had no reason to change my opinion. And some of the things he did I agreed with, some I didn't; in his politics.

HOPKINS:

Would you care to comment on anything?

LUVALLE:

No.

HOPKINS:

Dr. LuValle, now here you are getting close to thirty-years-old or so are you involved with a girlfriend, or woman, at this time?

LUVALLE:

I had a girlfriend, yes. Very definitely. One I had known for several years.

HOPKINS:

Was marriage in your plans at this point?

LUVALLE:

We were thinking about it.

HOPKINS:

Did you eventually marry her?

LUVALLE:

No.

HOPKINS:

What about your social life during this period? Now you're extremely busy, of course, being at Caltech—

LUVALLE:

I had a social life about once every four or five weeks. [laughter] Remember we had a social life at Caltech. We had a basketball group, and tennis group, and we played. It went out about five, after seminars, and you'd play basketball or tennis, or sit around and tell each other lies for a while, and near the end of each pay period, we'd all have to get together and get our money together and go up to the Chinese restaurant to eat, because otherwise we couldn't have eaten. [laughter] But in addition to that, I had social activities otherwise. I saw this young lady. Fairly frequently.

HOPKINS:

Was she involved in science, chemistry?

LUVALLE:

No.

HOPKINS:

What did she do by the way?

LUVALLE:

She eventually became a librarian; after she'd got through at UCLA, she went up to Berkeley, took the library course, and then she got married and they moved to New York.

HOPKINS:

So through Caltech you lived at home, at your parents'?

LUVALLE:

More or less. Some of the times I stayed over at the campus for several days or weeks at a time.

LUVALLE:

Was this normal?

LUVALLE:

Again, if you had a place to stay on the campus, you did. If you didn't, you stayed at home. Those of us who were close by, that is, within driving distance, tended to stay at home because it's the cheapest way to do it. Those of us from out of state, they tried to provide places on the campus for.

1.4. TAPE NUMBER: II, SIDE TWO AUGUST 19, 1986

LUVALLE:

The other students, they tried to provide places, but there was limited graduate student housing. There was adequate undergraduate student housing. Now they have built some very nice graduate student dormitories at the campus, not just dormitories, but apartments, and are opening up some more this fall.

HOPKINS:

Did you feel, during this period, 1937-1940, while you were working on your Ph.D., that you were fulfilling your ambitions to your ability at this point?

LUVALLE:

Yes.

HOPKINS:

Your first professional career job, as I understand it, was at Fisk University.

LUVALLE:

That's right.

HOPKINS:

Can you tell me how you obtained that appointment?

LUVALLE:

Along towards the end of my Ph.D., I made a trip around the country and interviewed at Howard [University], and Fisk, and one or two other schools, hoping actually to go to Howard. But they claimed there were no openings, and I was offered a position at Fisk, so I decided to go down there and see what it was like. Actually, when I went to Fisk, I thought I would be staying indefinitely. I arrived at Fisk, and started to teach, and realized that the courses I was teaching, these kids really weren't prepared for. As I looked into it I realized, and this was a commonplace thing in those days, that students, especially from southern states, did not have the equivalent of the education that the students from the west and the eastern states had. They came through with about the equivalent of eleventh grade rather than the twelfth grade. They weren't prepared for the type of teaching I was trying to do. I had to baby the courses to some extent. Again, you have to remember what time it was. In 1940, the attitude of the students was, we have to go into medicine, dentistry, law, or ministry. Nobody's going to let us do anything else. What was worse, the attitude of the faculty was the same. I was eventually told that, well, after four or five years, I would become just like them. This was along about January or February, and I decided that I was going to do something about it, and as the national meeting of the ACS, American Chemical Society, was in Saint Louis, I went up to it, and started looking for a job. I saw Bill Young there and told him what I was doing, and he arranged for [Eastman] Kodak [Company] to give me an interview. I was interviewed at several other places. I was actually interviewed by a company in Alabama, and they actually offered me a job, and then I said, "Do you know that I'm part negro?" And then they had to apologize and take the job back. I didn't hear anything else from any of my other interviews until after school was out. I had not signed my contract for the next year because I was convinced that somehow I was going to get a job in industry. I went home, and I guess that I was leaving home, no, I was going down to buy some tickets to go up to Berkeley and see whether I could get a job working for E. O. [Ernest Orlando] Lawrence. I received an offer from Kodak to come back and be interviewed for a job. So I went back, was interviewed, and was offered the job and taken in and they said, "When can you start?" I said, "Tomorrow morning." So the chap I was going to work for went with me to introduce me down at the YMCA and I obtained a room there, and I started work the next day. A few weeks later my things arrived from home, and I was working for Kodak. You say relationship with colleagues. I had excellent relationships with my colleagues at Kodak. This was '41, of course, when I went to work for Kodak. And you know what happened in December of '41. In fact, I was at one of my colleagues' homes for dinner on December 7. We were eating dinner when we turned on the radio and heard about the attack on [Pearl Harbor] Hawaii. I thought I ought to try to do something for the war effort, and about that time I was asked to come out to Chicago and be interviewed for a job which I then accepted. We were working on poisonous gases. Trying to evaluate them for use as chemical agents in the war. I worked on that for a while, and while we were there, we tested one of the first biological agents, and scared ourselves to death when we found out how potent it was. I had gone down to Saint Louis, picked up the crystals of the material we wanted, and brought them back in a liquid nitrogen Dewar sitting beside me in the club car in the train. If we had known how deadly it was, we would never have dared do that. We went on with our testings, and I was blown up one night in the lab. We still don't know what happened that night. The only thing we do know is that some seconds before the explosion I realized there was going to be an explosion, I don't know why, and yelled, "Hit the deck!" Those of us who hit the deck only spent a week or so in the hospital before we got out. The ones that didn't were in the hospital for months. When I returned to work it turned out I was sensitized to some of the chemicals. I'd enter the lab and a few days later I'd develop an edema and swell right up. So I left Chicago, went out to Caltech and worked for Linus Pauling for a while on another project which we won't discuss.

HOPKINS:

Related to the war.

LUVALLE:

Related to the war. I then got a chance to return to Kodak, and I decided to do it, and Linus thought this was a smart thing for me to do too, so I went to Kodak and I was there from late 1942 or early 1943, I've forgotten which, until 1953.

HOPKINS:

Let me take a little closer look at the summary that you've given us. Let's start from the most recent material and move backwards. The chemical that you worked on to be used in war, did that have any relationship to napalm at that time?

LUVALLE:

Nope.

HOPKINS:

I understand there was an experiment using napalm where they were trying to use bats as agents?

LUVALLE:

Know nothing about it.

HOPKINS:

Dr. LuValle, that chemical side of the warfare that you worked on, does it have a name today?

LUVALLE:

Not discussing it.

HOPKINS:

Do you know how long your research will be classified?

LUVALLE:

I'm not even worried about it. [laughter]

HOPKINS:

Should I be worried about it?

LUVALLE:

No.

HOPKINS:

In 1941, of course, as you said, you went to—

LUVALLE:

'Forty-two, I returned to Kodak.

HOPKINS:

Let me go back a little further here. In 1939 when Hitler was making his eventful moves across Europe, was that surprising to you?

LUVALLE:

No, because I became convinced when I was in Germany in '36 that eventually it was going to happen. Nobody would believe me, but I became convinced of it.

HOPKINS:

Did you discuss this with your colleagues and friends?

LUVALLE:

Not very much.

HOPKINS:

But you were very much aware.

LUVALLE:

I did go to a so-called peace meeting, I think it was in 1939, and very vehemently told them what I felt, was roundly booed, and because I'd been to that meeting, I had a little problem in getting cleared. [tape recorder off]

HOPKINS:

Dr. LuValle, you left, of course, Fisk University then and began with Eastman Kodak in 1941.

LUVALLE:

That's right.

HOPKINS:

Did you take a salary loss by going to work for Eastman Kodak?

LUVALLE:

Heavens no! I took a salary gain!

HOPKINS:

Let's talk a little bit more about your Fisk experience. Now we talked about this—

LUVALLE:

Look. I want to get something straight now. You aren't going to believe what I was paid at Fisk. First of all, you know this was 1940. My starting salary at Fisk was $1,800 for nine months. That's not much money.

HOPKINS:

Even then. What was the salary, if you can tell us, at Eastman Kodak. Can you remember roughly?

LUVALLE:

I went up to $2,700.

HOPKINS:

Not a bad jump. The students at Fisk seemed not to have been up to snuff. Did it have anything to do with your background being somewhat superior actually at Caltech? Would that not have been—

LUVALLE:

That was part of the problem, of course. That I expected a great deal more from them than I could expect. The real thing that killed it was the fact that instead of doing an extra amount of work with the freshmen so they could be brought up to snuff, everything was babied so they could understand it, which, as far as I was concerned, was wrong.

HOPKINS:

What about your colleagues. How did you find them?

LUVALLE:

Most of them had already accepted the fact that there was no point in really doing what I thought should be done, on account of which, as I told you, there were four professions people could go into.

HOPKINS:

Did you have a sense of what their backgrounds were academically? I mean, what universities did they tend to be from?

LUVALLE:

I couldn't even tell you to this day. Some had Ph.Ds, some didn't.

HOPKINS:

Fisk and Howard were considered and are, I suppose, black universities; predominantly black enrollments, right? Did you seek those universities out exclusively, or were those the only ones that seemed to be offering a job at the time?

LUVALLE:

At the time, Linus [Pauling] and Bill Young at UCLA both felt that it would be best for me to try to go to a black university first. And then try to move on afterwards. And I followed their advice.

HOPKINS:

What did you think of that?

LUVALLE:

I thought they knew what they were talking about.

HOPKINS:

Did they?

LUVALLE:

I think they did, at that point. Remember at that point in time, things were quite different.

HOPKINS:

What do you think was their rationale for that?

LUVALLE:

That I needed to build up a reputation first, to convince the administration of one of the standard universities in the country that they should take me. And I think this was right.

HOPKINS:

Were you able to advance your own studies at Fisk University?

LUVALLE:

No.

HOPKINS:

What was your reception like at Eastman Kodak? Now according to the record, you were considered, you know, I know this doesn't carry all that much weight with you, but the first black to work at Eastman Kodak.

LUVALLE:

That's right

HOPKINS:

Why do you think you were hired?

LUVALLE:

Mainly because I had the guts enough to apply.

HOPKINS:

And you were without question qualified.

LUVALLE:

I was qualified. And I was backed by Pauling and Young. I mean there were lots of reasons why. But if I hadn't had the guts to apply, to ask Bill to introduce me to somebody like that, I wouldn't have obtained the job. Was I going to sit around and cry because I couldn't get something, or was I going to go out and tackle enough doors till I opened one? I figured I'd better tackle some doors and open them.

HOPKINS:

What was your reception at the interview for the Kodak job?

LUVALLE:

Fine. They wanted to find out whether I could do the job, because it was something totally unrelated to anything I'd done before. But I was able to do it.

HOPKINS:

What was your relationship with colleagues at Eastman Kodak?

LUVALLE:

Excellent. Excellent.

HOPKINS:

Did you have a friendship with them as well as a professional relationship?

LUVALLE:

Oh, definitely, definitely. In fact, some of my closest friends, to this day, are friends whom I met in those first years at Kodak. Not so much the first year, but when I returned. That first year, of course, I was busy chasing myself around badly, trying to get everything done that I needed to get done.

HOPKINS:

Dr. LuValle, where was Eastman Kodak? Is this Rochester?

LUVALLE:

Rochester, New York.

HOPKINS:

What did you think of the East?

LUVALLE:

I'll tell you. If you were brought up in Southern California, and grew up on the beaches, and you were transplanted to Rochester, New York, and that first winter it got down below zero and sat there, and sat there, and sat there, so that every penny you owned bought clothes, you can think about what I thought of the East. [laughter]

HOPKINS:

Explain for me, we're following a chronology here, of course, now the National Defense Research Committee, how did you become involved with that group?

LUVALLE:

Because I was approached.

HOPKINS:

By—

LUVALLE:

By somebody on it.

HOPKINS:

Not to name names, but someone from the group. Can you name a name?

LUVALLE:

No.

HOPKINS:

Since we can't discuss this, were you proud of the work that you did for the group?

LUVALLE:

Absolutely! It was necessary. What you have to realize, and I'm sure many people don't realize today, especially those born later on, that those of us who had a scientific education were scared to death that Hitler would get the atomic bomb first. Whether we were working on it or not, those of us who knew anything about it realized that there was a real problem, and that if Hitler got it first, Hitler was going to rule the world. What you did, you went to work on anything that you thought might help the country. There was no question about it. You didn't worry about whether this is very bad, or whether, gee, I wouldn't like to use this. You're a lieutenant; you're on the front line. There's a pillbox up there that's raising hell with your guys and killing them. You've got a flamethrower. Do you worry about whether it's good to use a flamethrower, or do you use it to eliminate those guys so your people won't get killed? You use it. Well, that was the attitude we had in the NDRC then. We had to solve these problems just to try to beat the Germans. Not only on the atom bomb, but in chemical warfare and everything else. We had to get ahead of them and stay ahead of them. Because somehow they had to be beat. We worried more about the Germans than we did about the Japanese. I guess the military worried more about that. The scientists worried more about the Germans. At least among the people I knew. Maybe there were people who were conscientious objectors and who objected to flamethrowers and who objected to poison gas. As far as I was concerned, and all of my compatriots who were working in these things, we had to do whatever was necessary to win the war and that was it. Period.

HOPKINS:

So we leave Fisk, and we're past the National Defense Research Committee here. Now we come to a section which I've labeled your professional career where you again go to work for Eastman Kodak in 1942. What's the difference in your research in '41 and '42?

LUVALLE:

Quite different. I was working in microspectroscopy, worrying about the size and distribution of photographic grains in a photographic emulsion in 1941-42. I was worried about whether a fine powder of material had the same density as the solid bulk material; in addition we were doing a lot of work for the emulsion research people at the time on some of these subjects. When I came back I went to work for Arnold Weissberger. I was the physical chemist in a group of organic chemists working on the mechanism of certain organic reactions. In other words, I was doing kinetics and physical chemistry on these substances. I worked for him about five years, in which we did a great deal of work in that area. During the next five years I worked for Jack Leer-Makers, who eventually became the director of research at Eastman Kodak, in what is known as a theoretical group, in which I kept on doing mechanism work, but now was working primarily in color photography on the mechanism by which dyes are formed in the color photographic process. So it is quite different from what I did earlier. During that period I met my wife [Jean LuValle] and we were married. She worked at Kodak too. We met at a dance at the Y [YMCA].

HOPKINS:

At the Y in—

LUVALLE:

Rochester. In 1953 I was offered a position with a small research and development outfit, Technical Operations [Incorporated], and for reasons I don't care to discuss, my wife and I decided we would go. I was in charge of their chemistry group and their photographic group for six years. That was in Arlington and Burlington, Massachusetts. We lived in Lexington during that period. I also taught two or three of those years at Brandeis University, teaching some graduate courses. At the same time I attended mini-seminars at both MIT [Massachusetts Institute of Technology] and Harvard [University].

HOPKINS:

Now you were saying then in 1953 you went to work for Fairchild?

LUVALLE:

No, Technical Operations.

HOPKINS:

Of Eastman Kodak.

LUVALLE:

No.

HOPKINS:

No, okay.

LUVALLE:

A small research and development company. Very small.

HOPKINS:

You don't want to discuss why you went to work for them?

LUVALLE:

For reasons I do not care to discuss. It had nothing to do with race, if that's what you're worried about. Absolutely nothing to do with anything like that. There were some personal problems that I had, and my wife and I both felt that maybe a solution was to change jobs. I can tell you this much about it. I had gotten myself so wound up at Kodak, in pressures that existed there, that I had developed a bleeding ulcer. The doctor told me, after I left the hospital, that if I were smart I'd change my attitude or my job. Pressures just kept on. These are pressures that will occur in any big organization. So when I was asked if I would consider going to Technical Operations, I decided to go. But I don't want to discuss it any further than that. I was there for six years, and I think I was quite successful there. And again I was asked if I would come to Fairchild Camera [and Instrument Corporation]; direct their physical and chemical research. It seemed to be an opportunity that I couldn't turn down. So I went down there.

HOPKINS:

Was there increased salary there?

LUVALLE:

There was increased responsibilities and increased salary. And I was there for ten years, and again, I think we were successful. While we were in Rochester, we had had two children, and we had a third child while we were in Lexington, Massachusetts. When we went to Fairchild, that was in Setauket about thirty-five miles from New York City, out on Long island. We bought a home out in Stony Brook, so I commuted in towards the city, but never into the city most of the time. And things went on there for ten years, and about that time, some government contracts didn't come through; Fairchild was folding up a lot of its research out here on semiconductors because, at that time, they were in a money-losing situation, and they decided to cut back on my laboratory. They gave me enough time so I was able to find jobs for everybody who was cut back, and then I went to Smith Corona [Marchant Corporation] as their technical director in Illinois for their copier research. They moved out here to the West Coast a year later, and I became director of physical and chemical research. Then we began to do a great deal of work with an outfit in Switzerland, which Smith Corona owned, and a company in Japan. And I became the coordinator of that work, and turned over the duties of director of the research to somebody else, because it was a full-time job. My problem was to try to keep the work in Japan, Switzerland, and Palo Alto so we were progressing towards a common goal and not duplicating each other. There was another problem, and one of the reasons I was given the job, I was fairly good at this, is that we had to be extremely careful in what our people said to the Japanese or the Swiss. Or vice versa between the Swiss and the [Japanese], because there were colloquialisms that were being used frequently without thinking, that were totally misinterpreted by each group. And I had to start looking at every letter before it left Zurich or Palo Alto to make sure that what was said to the Japanese would be understood. Of course I made various trips over there just to try to keep everything straight. It's just a matter of semantics. Now if you had to deal with people who have learned English as a second or third language, you would find that this is the problem. They learn the standard English, but they don't learn any of the colloquialisms. If you make a mistake and use one in a letter or in a speech, they'd be totally misinterpreted. This can get the guy something you don't want done. So you have to be very careful.

HOPKINS:

So from the Japanese or Swiss communication to us, to Americans, how would—

LUVALLE:

I interpreted those too. I became the semanticist. It wasn't a job I ever expected to do—

HOPKINS:

You'd picked the subject you liked the most—English!

LUVALLE:

Oh, absolutely. Then Smith Corona decided eventually to close the lab on the West Coast, move back East, and I was given a choice of moving East, or early retirement, so I took early retirement and came over to Stanford a week or so later, I guess, and became director of the undergraduate labs here which I was director of for about seven years, at which time I retired. Which is about three years ago now. That's a capsule about my professional life. Let's see, you want something about the patents. I think there were about thirteen patents, I don't know whether there were more or not. Some of them are listed here. On the numbers.

HOPKINS:

Any of them that we might find interesting?

LUVALLE:

No.

HOPKINS:

You want to comment on?

LUVALLE:

No. [laughs] They're all extremely technical.

HOPKINS:

What about Dr. Weissberger. I noticed you collaborated with and co-authored a number of papers with him.

LUVALLE:

Arnold was a great man. It was indeed a pleasure to work with him. I learned a tremendous amount of organic chemistry, mechanisms of organic chemistry. You might say that the five years I worked with him, I had one of the best postdocs you could ever have in chemistry. He was a great man to work for. The five years I worked with him was just a pleasure. And the five years I spent with Leermakers was a pleasure, except that I'd built my own pressures up, and those pressures eventually forced me to leave Kodak. That's because of ambition. I guess I can say one thing: I think part of my problem was the fact that I had come to Kodak shortly after a lot of major promotions, after some of the original people that set up the labs and things retired, and other people moved into the jobs. And so it meant that there weren't going to be many promotions for many years. I ran into this, and I, of course, realized before I left that this happens in any major company. If a man goes to work for a major company about the time that a great many promotions have taken place, so a group of younger men are now moved in, there's going to be a hiatus of promotions for a while. Unless he comes up with something that practically creates a new empire. I was a very ambitious person. I guess that I built up a tremendous amount of pressure trying to get out, trying to figure out how I was going to get the promotion I wanted. I did move up within the research ranks. I moved from a senior research chemist to a research associate. The next promotion after that required that you be a research associate for seventeen years. And that's a fair thing, but as I say, those pressures built up and they were primarily pressures I built on myself. I think we have taken you actually up from 1971 to the present. Now you want to talk about the family life.

HOPKINS:

Yes.

LUVALLE:

I married my wife Jean in 1946; you'll meet her this evening. We had three children. John was born in 1950. He is now a group leader down at Jet Propulsion Laboratory]. He's married. He's been involved in a lot of these long-distance probes to the outer planets. My daughter Phyllis was born in 1952. She, just a few months ago, a few weeks ago really, completed her Ph.D. in molecular biology at the University of Utah Medical School, is now in Boston starting a postdoctorate at Harvard University Medical School. She'll be there for probably two years. Phyllis, as an undergraduate, went to [University of California] Davis, and then did her doctorate at the University of Utah Medical School. Michael, as an undergraduate, went to Pomona College, and then did a Ph.D. at Davis in statistics; taught at Kansas State [University] for a year. During one of the summers he was working on his Ph.D., he worked at Bell Labs back East at Whippany, New Jersey. They approached him about Christmas at his first year at Kansas State, asked him to come back for an interview and give a talk. And then they offered him a job he felt he couldn't resist, so he transferred to Bell Labs at the end of that school year. He's been there ever since. Apparently he's very happy, very excited about what he's doing. He's been doing a lot of traveling; in fact, he's going to Europe to give a paper in the fall. He's married. He was married halfway through his graduate school. Phyll has been married and divorced. Of course, Jean and I have now been married for forty years. Starting our forty-first now. Very proud of our children. I might as well cover these civic activities for you. I was active In the Junior Chamber of Commerce at Rochester. You may say why didn't I go on to the Chamber of Commerce. It was too expensive. I was president and co-founder of the Cosmopolitan Club of Rochester, New York. We have a very large European population: Yugoslavians, Poles, Germans, Italians, et cetera, and they form ethnic groups within the city. We formed the Cosmopolitan Club and had a lot of fun with that the two years I was president; it's still going on I understand. I spent an awful lot of time going to very nice parties [laughter] When I was in Lexington I was elected a member of Town Meeting. That's because I talked too much at a couple of town meetings, so they decided I'd better be a member so I could have a lot more say than I could just sitting in the audience. And then I became president of Town Meeting Members Association, Lexington, Mass. I was president of the grammar school PTA at one time there. We went out to Setauket and I became a member of the Boy Scout troop committee and then I talked too much there and ended up chairman of the Boy Scout troop committee for five years. During that period I was also the summer scoutmaster almost every summer, and took the boys to summer camps and other camps, and between the scoutmaster and myself we turned this troop into one of the best camping troops in the entire council. I'm very proud of that. I was a candidate for school board in Setauket; I didn't make it. After we moved out here I became a member of the board and then president of the board of the Eichler Swim and Tennis Club and was actually president for five years. I guess there was one year I was off, but a total of five years. So that's my civic responsibilities.

HOPKINS:

Dr. LuValle, to say the least, UCLA is extremely proud of this alumnus, and which is, of course, documented by the naming of the LuValle Commons in your honor. I thank you very, very much for this interview. With that we'll close at this point.

LUVALLE:

All right.

HOPKINS:

Thank you.