president for instruction here at blackburn community college and it's my job because this program started on time within certain parameters and within

it's an honor to welcome all of you to dr heiner's introduction induction into the watkin community college hall of distinction the hall is a very special part of what we've come to call the whatcom way its purpose is to recognize honor and promote the uh individuals who have contributed uh in an exceptional and especially positive way to watching community college or who have brought prestige and pride to the college community through their achievements through community contributions and public life both qualities i think characterize dr heinrich well it is not true as rumored that harold's appointment came directly from herbert hoover he is the longest serving president in the system 23 years in the same job in a position whose average tenure nationally is something like 4.6 years that longevity is his achievement in itself however the monument to his longevity you see around you a dedicated faculty and staff a widely respected set of programs a gorgeous campus gathered tonight our staff faculty friends family colleagues who have known and worked with harold for many years i would particularly like to recognize some special people and ask them to rise as they call as i call their names first uh our community college board of trustees chair phil itself now i can't see out there so i'm assuming that you're standing up right thank you hey phyllis there she is

chuck robinson chuck

robert b t fong robert

sue cole sue

and barbara rothcart i'm not sure that barbara's here yet she will be um and our foundation directors director chair why it's still itself i know you're here

pat hein long time friend of the college pat

julie johansen

julie

kurt anderson

local dignitaries in attendance pete kremens the county executive e

senator harriet spinelli i'm judge chuck snyder chuck

a very special person to introduce an international friend and associate and those of you who've been associated with harold for many years know of his uh his fierce pride at whatcom's international movements on mr sanjiro takahashi from our sister city of tatayama from the shiraiyo

academy as we would expect in an occasion like this other presidents and former presidents who worked with harold over the years are also here um i i'm particularly proud to uh introduce bill christopher who is now the president of cascadia community college

also a member of the hall of distinction and my predecessor here gerald humphrey president of ptc

jack o'hara president of edmonds community college jack

i saw jerry come in jerry flora former president of western washington university

ken mortimer former president of western washington university canada yes there he is

and jim port former president of valley community college finally we have several former trustees in attendance uh including jim mckellen jim jim wilson

pat hi pam phil sharp

and terry tree gary

one student activity that harold has always supported is its music programs he is as many of you know something of a musician himself playing the mouth harp in an unusual not quite ready for the street band it's with pleasure that i give to you the outstanding locking community college chamber choir directed by sharissa shiravalati

theresa

oh

thank you good morning i just wanted to give a really brief introduction to the song that we're going to say it's called i'm a train and the reason i chose this song is because i thought well i was kind of having trouble finding something that would fit the occasion and i thought for harold he's done so much work over such a long period of time kind of like a trade you know carrying a heavy load working long hard days so that's the idea behind the salsa

look at me i'm going somewhere on the train

look at me

oh

is

train

and we have one more special kind of silly treat so harold if you're out there this one's for you

sorry we got a little window

louisiana

don't you cry for me i come from alabama with evangel on my knees

what

thank you um ron lafayette tonight's master's ceremonies is an old friend of harold they they were students together believe it or not at schedule valley college many years let's just leave it at that many years ago ryan claims to have been in the community college system for 36 years man and boy um ron eventually earned a bachelor's master's degree at western uh in speech audiology audiology and pathology and eventually he got his doctorate at byu he's been in the community college system for um well almost as long as harold and he's known hero for a long long time we invited actually we invited ron here because uh it's widely known throughout the system that ron has the pictures ladies and gentlemen ryan lafayette president of north seattle community

college

thank you uh i don't think a better night or dave could have been chosen for uh for this wonderful event i wanted to make sure harold that i started by telling you how grateful i am for having you including it tonight and like i just kind of share it in this wonderful celebration of your leadership here at wacom and the college itself and all the things that have happened here over the years uh you know the presidents your colleagues and friends uh i learned this when i worked with the state board you remember this of the days you were there the state board has an opinion about every community college in the state and kind of a hierarchy of which one's the best what are the problems here and what are the problems there and and i i learned that it's because of the conversations that they have with the staff as they go around the state and talk to trustees and talk to students and they really get a feel for it and you probably know that whatcom is viewed as the gym the place that's been built over these years and i remember hearing i thought about you when i heard this that it takes a lot of things but really two things for a president to be successful one is vision and another is persistence and certainly you have those along with many other qualities this place is really a reflection of you that i know you would be very quick to say

you and lots of people that you've met and worked with and people in the community uh and indeed the students that have given you feedback about the success of the college and you and your work and i know for me i never missed a graduation because that pays for the hard times doesn't cause you especially that's what it's all about and you've said that many many times in your book and uh your thoughts and in the conversation well thank you ron it's uh

well you told earlier this is celebration it's a celebration i want to stay in celebration and not in sentiment

there anyway these people are students friends they're people i love there are people who love college the community people of the world who are having great experiences because of this college and opportunity but we wouldn't have hit the top ten so it's all part of the same same jewel what i know about you is uh they feel that too it's kind of a shared thing so that's what we're doing together and we're trying to make the world a better place and well that sounds rather grandiose indeed that's really what it's about um

harold and i had a wonderful trip and uh we thought it'd be a good idea for us to have a conversation when i've attended these kinds of events i've always wondered what the person being acknowledged or honored thought about the comments that various folks came up with yeah so tonight we're going to have an opportunity to speak after they speak so it's getting ready to get loaded up okay and we'll have we'll have some fun and years ago you know you were scattered and i was scheduled a little bit later and then i came up to bellingham and and went to western and i was working at uh at moore's hardware and i remember uh the idea of whatcom and what it was then and college without walls and interestingly later i went on at a college without walls in eastern washington but boy this college somehow had a lot of walls and it was an accident

there was no accident it had to do with visions and it had to do with persistence and i was thinking about those early days and some of the fun that we've had and the stories that we heard and thought back to my own uh thoughts of passing some of those buildings the signs sort of hanging on and wondering what a community college really was and we had some great people that you work with in those early days and some of them i know are here to share some of their thoughts in fact one fellow that you work with is now my neighbor at cascadia community college just a few miles away from the north and i met bill christopher a number of years ago and bill and i have had some nice reminiscing about you in his days here at watkin and i think he's going to share some thoughts with us now please help me welcome dr bill christopher president of cascadia community college and a former view instruction here at watsonville

we'll talk about that

it's a it's a it's a real honor for to be asked to speak at this celebration i spent 14 years at whatcom and every single one of them was memorable every single one of them was memorable in a good way and a good part of that had had to do with uh with the guy i worked for i only had 80 minutes speak i think that's what trish said maybe he was eight i'm not sure so there are so many things i'd like to to share with you some of the things that harold and i accomplished or did or worked on together i'd like to tell you some of the stories of him and i going fishing fishing together because every time he tells and he exaggerates it makes me look bad but i don't have time to do that tonight um i'd like to tell you about times when i went around with him in one of his old cars to every used car place looking for another part that had to be chrome or something else but i don't have time for that harold um what i would like to start off with though is take you back actually a couple of years prior to me coming to whatcom judy and i my wife were up in bellingham for a wedding of some friends of ours and i always like to take a look at the college campuses in the towns that i went to and i had never been on the whatcom community college campus in 1982. so we went searching for it and there was a sign on marine drive said what could community college and in fact this was the first time i'd been in bellingham so junior and i really didn't know where we're going but we saw the sign and we headed out marine drive and we kept going and going and going and going and we then saw the next time we saw it was entering the london nation and we figured we probably went too far so we turned around and came back and the next thing i know i was back downtown belgium we never did see the campus and i had no idea what it was like or where where it was or how big it was or anything well a couple of years later i found myself here as deed for instruction working for harold and one might ask without a campus how how could you do that well you know in the interview was very clear that that the leader of this institution was a man of vision and that the faculty and staff were excited and enthusiastic about the things that they could do and and how they could build a campus like this how could you resist coming to a place like this that own no least an old supermarket with some faculty offices in the old walk-in freezer how could you resist coming to a place where they had two portables that were given up from south puget sound community college and they were sinking slowly into a swamp how could you resist well clearly i couldn't and i came i can remember not too long after i had came here harold came into my office we his office was in the trailer that was sinking faster than my office was fortunately they i think they did something to level it out because he didn't want to climb upstairs eventually to get to get out but he did come over to my office one day and i think he said as i remember it correctly he said the surplus truck is coming the surplus truck is coming well the state surplus property truck i mean i knew what they they came to your campus to take all the old stuff that you didn't need and carted away so i couldn't understand why he was so happy he told me they were coming to drop things off and he was pleased

harold's a complex individual a very sensitive individual some of you may remember most of you probably weren't here when when the school first opened but during christmas harold used to get dressed as santa claus in the evening and go and bring candies and little gifts to the children of some of the staff that worked for the college and i know later when the son got old enough he brought his son along he said willingly dressed as an elephant

of course the other side of parallel sensitivity uh he was part of a plot one year just before april's april fool's day about two weeks before and i think it was his idea the staff would come into my office before april fool's day and turn my chair down one notch lower every day every day every day you know they all had rings on their faces by april fool's day i was like this

and i disappointed it because i didn't even knew what was going on i just kept working

that's the other side of heroin snow days everybody wanted to know was why they're going to be closed as soon as this first snowfall fell well harold and i had planned here's what he told me to do call me up early in the morning i was living on south hill he was living in that cabin out in the country the deal was that first thing i had to do was wake him up because he sneaks he likes to sleep woke him up if he could get out to the main road and i could not slide down 15th street and kill myself then the school would be open i don't think in the 14 year years i was here i don't think we have closed did we one maybe once

technology harold and my wife judy suffer from the same problem they have epilepsy

echolapsy by definition in webster's collegiate 27th edition is is a problem where people have absolutely no interest desire or no knowledge to learn anything about technology but when harold and i used to talk about advancing the the technology around here and maybe even getting a phone system with voicemail

he said no wait we can do it cheaper his office was downstairs and i was right above them he said this weekend let's get the concrete saw we'll drill a hole in the ceiling bring some string into juice cans and we can talk to each other whenever we want

harold was a was a good mentor i i've learned a lot there are a couple there are many things that he said that i tried to write down or commit to memory but i think there are two that i'd like to share with you that has have stuck with me all these years i still believe they're true i still remember them they're still trying to live by these ideas one he said hire good people with good ideas and see where it goes and he's done that at this place with faculty and staff the place is wonderful the second thing he told me one day was you know it's not so much about the things that you do as an institution that are good because most institutions do good things it's what you do that's good that makes you unique and i think that's so true and i think through his his wisdom and leadership whatcom is not only good but it certainly is unique there are a couple of other phrases that i i think they're attributed to other people or other things but i honestly believe that they were harold's ideas first and disney first state there's a movie that used one of harold's praises that phrase was as you can guess build it and they will come

there's another one that's that everybody contributes to yogi berra and it has to do with with harold willing to explore almost any road almost any path and create that vision yogi was supposed to have said but i know harold said it when you get to the fork in the road take it harold thank you so much for 14 years of mentoring of being a colleague and a friend i really appreciate it

so

he wanted but i think you're probably a two pound butter guy you know what that meant right up there way down the creek and uh after we got this wine out of the tree and started fishing a nice bit but then

so what i would do is high rope around my fishing buddy and around the next tree up there take the clothes off grease them with butter and then slide them up two pounds of butter

but you didn't want to go anymore yeah you might be never gonna go fishing i think i might be a five pounder

you know uh uh it was fun listening to bill and those early days and i know uh building community colleges uh uh everybody knows everything and i'm sure you and bill did a lot of different things together of course technology has become such a big part of who we are and you know those rumors that i was talking about but defying colleges this college is known for its use of technology and the services that students have available here how did bill play into that that's where you are that was a little a little off shall we say a little different every day he'd spend all the money he had so many ideas he'd come in the next day and i said no we spent that yesterday but he'd keep going so financed with this technology where is it going to ask people their visions this was ten years ago they looked along and there was a picture on and said i think that in just a few years the monitors will be like that picture on the wall crazy isn't it you've wrote a grant for a million dollars and now we have monitors yeah like picture on the lawn and uh some of you may not know that cascadia is the newest community college in the state of washington it's where all of us uh focused all the innovation and teaching and learning and and what the future ought to be for teaching and learning and and bill is the exactly right guy to leave that place and i know what he learned here will add to that add to what we're all doing in this this wonderful jury that we're on yeah you had some other folks in those early days and you know one of them got to be real famous for work that she did and i know you also have some uh things that you attributed to some of that experiential learning and alternative learning styles and uh dr susan mancuso he was at western now and you worked together early on didn't you uh yeah first time i met susan was at a conference at your place she was very pregnant very direct idea feeling very energetic and then her daughter became part of like our family for one family so she's here yeah let's meet the doctor susan manning

educational services back in those days which was a job with many many hats welcome to thank you very much um it's an honor to be here carol i thought it was kind of brave for you to invite me here lots of stories but i noticed bill got eight minutes and i only got four minutes it just never changes

so now that four minutes of stories

well harold remembers meeting me at a certain time in my life and i remember it differently um i actually remember harold i remember meeting him the first time he was interviewing at watkin community college for the dean for instruction position and it was held in one of the five classrooms that existed at that college of course in the converted grocery store and i was at the interview at the time i was kind of on a leave of absence for a bit because i had my four-month-old daughter with me and she started hiccuping during the middle of the interview and so i had to leave so i'm saying that because i can't take any responsibility for what happened after that interview um harold did come our way and one of the things i noticed early on that harold didn't seem to know very much about academics faculty he was from student services and so he didn't he really didn't even know much about budgets i think he was kind of a rookie at the time but then you know we were all rookies um we were an unusual college at the time so not knowing a lot was kind of okay it worked at that time in many ways we made it up as we went and harold kind of made it up as he went

one example was during budget time of the year and each year we would prepare our budgets and this was in the early days we would prepare our budget we'd go into herald's office to negotiate with him and sitting with him was very easily his assistant and we found ourselves negotiating with mary rather than harold and i often wondered about that she seemed to understand budgets but i'm not sure harold did years later when i was the dean i wish i could negotiate with mary she was a lot easier

harold learned about budgets but i think carol was perhaps better at building planning buildings than planning budgets and some may be talking about his building years a little bit more but i think it's ironic that hero came as a builder to watson community college that had no buildings and never ever intended to have any buildings yeah that harvey was a builder at the time of interviewing to work at whatcom i and my husband were building a long house and soon after harold was hired he started building a loft house now mikey was the second one so he knew what he was doing come to find out that he knew a lot about building this was something he didn't know about budgets not so sure in the beginning but building yes it seems that he knew a lot about building more about building log houses than he did about budgets but both of those involved both budgets both buildings as the decades passed

we continued to be a very creative college and bill spoke to the support that carol provided for the innovative kinds of things that we did considering we didn't have buildings and then when we did have buildings we didn't have much else because we were poor we were really really poor often we were hungry for the bare basics that other colleges had bill and i would plead for some measly crumbs like a microscope for biology or a few hours of an advisor to meet with students

but usually there just wasn't enough money yep staff were wonderfully creative have great morale we're excited to be working with students come to find out harold has stashed away all the money he stashed it and you know what the big black hole that's what we call it was the black hole i don't think bill ever got to see the black hole i never got to see the black hole the only people who got to see the black hole was the duck buck and the auditor

he accumulated funds like a magnet lots of money i think in the big black hole i worked for work for harold for 22 years well i was here 22 years not all of them i was here a little bit before harold but i never got to peek at that goal in fact i really just liked the black hole i still have sometimes some trauma about it i visualize i visualize being adrift at sea and there's a life raft and harold has it i don't get it there's something more important than me being on the life raft or bill on the minecraft for that matter

maybe harold was much better at budgeting than i realized because he was able to amass funds creatively build this college soften the blows of state budget cuts when other community colleges were suffering we were not because of his funds in the black hole while i may have trauma he was doing some very creative work perhaps his eyes were bigger perhaps his vision was bigger than those of us working in the trenches who didn't have the same kind of vision i'd like to return to something mentioned um earlier about my four-month-old daughter who was at carol's interview at the time harold had a son and i ran into jason's total of mine he was not aware that he was going to be here and that i had a story to tell jason um well jason was three months older than jennifer was and as we both were building our houses and eventually lived in them our children became best friends playing and i think jason you probably agree argued a lot they were really very much like brother and sister and bill mitch mentioned christmas but i had a little different take on christmas each year at christmas harold did dress up as santa and came over to our house to visit my young daughter who was withdrawal and then one year when santa left she goes mom santa sure smells a lot like harold

so i told girl that the next day and i said has jason ever figured that out he said no had he figured it out jason still didn't know that pharaoh came as santa to his own house and didn't know about that um but the ruse was up soon after that the point is that harold got only had a black hole full of money he also had a very wealthy heart a very wealthy heart full of gold for children particularly for children but also for students young adults maturing adults and fully mature adults at rockin he was adamant about his his commitment to keeping to opening the door and keeping the door open for every possible person so that they could give an education his heart his heart of gold cared for students he wanted to make he wanted college to make a difference in their lives like santa visiting my my daughter he wanted to give the gift of an education truly truly wanted to give that gift of an education to every person who had a vision of making something of her life and he continued to do that for many many years i learned a lot from you hero much that i have carried on in the years since i thank you for learning about budgets so you could fund the dreams of all of those individuals thousands and thousands of individuals for whom this college has made a difference because of your leadership thank you for all that you have done for the college and for our community this college has had a huge impact in making this community a vibrant place

thank you you know what i noticed uh harold in those early years things were pretty rough and pretty tough and it's clear that you have a lot of fun and a lot of hard work together how did you get from a college without walls to

you know capital money was always hard hard to come by and it's still very very competitive i think that people may assume that we started building without building we started to call it about buildings because we believed him we didn't because there's no way we could do it we were told that we had a district but no vision no mission no demand most students but our purpose was to separate this county from the neighboring college we were part of our scandinavia college's district and we had a technical school that one people tied in so senator atwood franklin's at the time said i don't have a column oh and we'll just give you washington county for an affiliate out there district 4 right next to support advance for funding and but he said understanding is no money no expectations for college and then we had trustees at least one of them was here not only rituals and they said we can do it so they they began a concept of college without walls they don't want walls to bloom walls and the faculty who are here uh soon circumference they did the darndest things we had i think we had two languages at two levels in the same room at the same time now some people think i'm exaggerating maybe but we think the garden still we've got to talk anywhere we could give space and anybody who had a an idea we'd find a teacher and there are lots of people with great creative ideas out there so that's sort of you know as i as i learn more about you and your background and where you came from and your family and uh how it was important to adapt and and make your own way and if you didn't have it you figured out kind of uh how to get it and

you know this whole thing about college does politics have anything to do with being the successful president do you think it's all possible but the walk way is something we refer to and it's been around for at least as long as i have to walk the way it's not doing things a certain way it's getting them done one way or another this this beautiful building here was the first one in front of the second was legislation but they wouldn't fund an auto party so if you had a lot of time in there you'd lose enough points that you would get the project but they would find two turning rooms and a room and so we have a wonderful beautiful innovative uh auditorium i i've got a question for you do you think anybody still believes that uh just plain old country boys stuff that you try to feed all the rest of us

you mentioned a bit about trustees and you know uh i've heard a lot about about about leadership and uh i'm going to take a little advantage you know the first uh really wonderful leader i had a chance to be around was david morris in those days at florence hardware and i was the real admirer of his and i started learning about leadership and and and what it takes to be successful and what i also learned is leaders don't do it alone there are a lot of other people there not just people who work for them but people who support them land with them uh and in our business there are people who give you permission really they they are trustees who work with us on behalf of the citizens of our state to ensure that that what's needed and what's best uh is fostered and developed i've noticed too that some trustees just tend to stand out not just at their college but in the whole state you get to know them uh we get to hear about them and their influence on the institution and the community you've had some great trustees here over the years and and i think one of your one of your trustees who was with you for a long time is going to share some some thoughts with us now uh phil sharp who's an attorney here in dellingham is uh forward phil and talk a little bit about your years working on some of that growth that we've been talking about

i had the privilege to serve on the board here for ten years and uh it was during uh the stage where we moved from having one building and three acres of land to the buildings that you see today essentially and a very large campus and uh one of the things when i first came on the board is harold sat me down and they do orientation and he said now phil i need to tell you that there's one important rule and that is no surprises and that made a lot of sense to me and i was on the board for several years until i realized that what harold meant by that is that trustees are not supposed to surprise hero but it's okay for harold to surprise trustees and and and he regularly did so and um he knew at my first board meeting i said harold we need to get as much land as we can and harold looked at me and said you're my guy so when i became chairman a few years later carol keeping with the no surprises was a good one to pick up the phone all the time and give you what he'd call a heads up and i remember distinctly one conversation the phone rings hello oh hi harold how are you well i'm just fine thanks uh what's up you're buying some land are you uh for the college how much land would that be oh for 38 that's a lot of property um do you know how you're going to fund it

i see carol is that legal

you you don't you say you don't know

well have you called the attorney general and asked them whether it's legal oh good good what do they say they don't know either

well harold um if if if there's no prohibition on it as you say and no one knows whether it's legal or not are you comfortable going ahead i i thought you would be

well now now tell me here let's let's just think this through what what's the worst case scenario if it's not legal do you know what happens oh good you've looked into that we're bringing why don't you share that i see a fine well how how big could the fine be five thousand dollars well we we can we can probably handle that anything else oh there is something else what would that be jail time well how much do you have time 90 days well well harold are you comfortable doing 90 days in jail if it comes to that

what are you talking about i know you say i know there's no surprises what's that have to do with you doing jail time what do you mean that's the thing oh harold do you mean the chairman of the board

well in light of that maybe we ought to just can we sit back and think about this no you you're going to close you're going to sign the documents right now carol let's go carol

approach to land acquisitions and buildings was the same it was ready shooting

yeah so there were never any surprises that there there was one surprise though and that was that none of us on the board could ever figure out what harold was saying you know he has a tendency to kind of wax away and you kind of fall asleep on it i can remember my seed me was uh uh fueling formally and and fielding and i would sit there together and we'd listen to harold make a report and that fielding had turned to me and very quietly and say phil what did he say

i said i have no idea and he said wow it's probably another

building um the the um the thing though i can say about harold is that um harold rose toward his object with a muffled aura he banks on people underestimating him and he makes it easy to do

at times is overwhelmingly underwhelming and and and that is a tremendous strength because when people underestimate you you can sneak up on it you can get it done and he did the state legislature he did for the state board and that's how they got all the capital to build these buildings i on a more serious note i uh in the 10 years that i spent here with harold and the wonderful board members i came to appreciate the unique opportunity that this community had to build a college and how blessed it was to have someone with girls ability to actually carry that vision through to fruition bob kennedy once said that few of us have the greatness to bend the course of history but that each of us can make a contribution toward the betterment of others and that every time a person stands up against the injustice or acts to improve the lot of others it's like dropping a pebble into a pond it creates a ripple and if thousands of pebbles are dropped into a pound from various points of courage and dairy they create ripples that can combine to create a tidal wave that can tear down walls of oppression and really what this place is about is giving opportunity and that's what harold's done he's a pebble in a pond a very important pedal that created a ripple that has created to some degree a way which has changed the fabric of this community i am i came in 10 years to really love this place i love the faculty i love the staff i love the students and i also came to love my friend harold heinrich thank you

thank you phil that was wonderful yeah tell me a little bit about the children phil is uh really smart there i spotted that everybody's also a very kind person she picked smartness against kindness time was going every time so i watched for his time kind of spots his openings that worked on them and he was always there he was always trust me you know i i know he's uh he's gonna reason that at the university he must have picked up a few tricks and went on to the western view

gosh i don't know i would

humanitarian by

that was a really great story about the property and everything but there's a lot of truth in that there's a lot of risk in this job it takes a lot of confidence and a lot of team playing and a lot of really understanding among folks because the risks are volunteers yeah and they come from our community again and again and again i think the president has to play on the edge not only this but on the edge when you're out there you'll watch for people who are there too and somewhere in this area in this room i want to come out and play it and play david sorry took a chance ken hurts took a chance trustees over the years

and there are lots of stories tied about phil bailed the other one

with the fountain on the corner was an idea so we were planning it david sorry had a funny nice plan but it was it was just really expensive so we're gonna do it for a while a couple years and plan i thought no we've got to build that but all the permanent oregon we're going to do it we'll be right out so they've done this huge hole they put in big rocks there's equipment everywhere trustees came in and said the meeting was the next day of government what's that i said well that's our problem and they said shouldn't we have known about it that's kind of embarrassing because what i had forgotten was what i thought i told him it was two years ago

phil said who was here two years ago he was in iowa he said i remember earlier and we

well i think another another innovation of college without walls uh but i noticed you've got a lot of talent that would play from the back i understand that you have some musical groups around here and uh there's a group that does a lot of entertainment around here uh known as the hall monsters is that right well tell you the truth they changed their name they were last time they're not parked ready for railroad avenue

they're probably better than all monitors help me uh welcome earl bauer and ben [ __ ] who are going to entertain us for a little bit please come forward

don't give us much

yes

ladies and gentlemen our first piece will be a collection of four french jazz pieces by the gypsy guitarist django reinhardt so if you'll hold your applause till we've finished we believe we'll let you know when we need to pause so

oh

oh

um

my

is

worth waiting for me in my videos um

hmm

i ain't misbehaving i'm saving my love

by a notable musician you don't never know what he's going to unpack out of the case there but we know his initials hh and harmonica herald and he's a welcome member of our group

now earlier this evening we heard a beautiful rendition of both suzanna from the mockum choir and it's one of our favorite songs and we were going to play it we were a little worried that we might be upstaged and now we of course haven't heard it we know we'll be upstaged but what better place to be upstaged but on this beautiful stage but this is our impromptu rendition of oh susanna right after we tune up

oh

everybody

my brother and i slept in the same bed and staying room for years he would i remember him begging mom to make me throw this thing out make him stop making him stop well you know i know i know your brother's here tonight and uh and uh you've got a lot of family here tonight and uh brother bruce is going to come forward and offer a few remarks and along with some others from here

by the way

uh susan that black hole of money i know it's been around a long time harold was so tight when he was young he'd buy candy bars in the lake just visit last night

just like to share a few memories of growing up with harold

our parents moved out here from colorado in 1939 i believe and dan built a one-room log cabin up the base of blanchard valentine harold hadn't always been this distinguished looking gentleman he was a one-room cabin that built for twelve dollars as i remember just for the blast and when love was in the hospital when i was born one night dad put the floor down in the house in the cabin like one car was breaking the stand on it i don't know where the floor was

anyway back back to the thing we grew up in pretty bigger circumstances and uh dad didn't have a lot of money he was the whole family moved out here about the same time and uh harold and i were talking a few years ago just to show you the insight um it says you know we were we were really poor growing up i said yeah we were i said yeah but the good part about it is we didn't know we were poor i guess that makes all the difference in the world but you think that everybody everybody lives that way harold's life's been a good worker this is just a pick on him from the younger years showing that he's just a normal person here i was emerging for his gardening skills you didn't tell him you built that car oh we have some pictures yeah he wouldn't push me in that car it's our little sister she's uh 10 years younger than me i think i was about 12 there maybe harold wouldn't push me to make me very mad that was my very first car

anyway harold had his gardening skill i always admired that because i couldn't grow anything he'd grow vegetable gardens out there in the woods and grass wouldn't even go there he would do it he always had a calf project or a pig around it

to raise he was great with animals i think the only time i ever felt like the little brother i don't have it for years because i've always been bigger my older brother not my big brother the only time i really felt like the little brother i remember i think i was probably about eight or nine and it makes him was just a year and a half older dad had taken this big old maybe it wasn't that big because we were smaller but it was four or five foot in diameter logged down behind the house that would cut for wood and hero went out there all by himself with a two men uh saw you know the little crosscut saw and cut a big slab of wood off that there's our cabinets a 12 cabin i always admired then i thought you know i knew he was closer to being a man than i was upstairs we had a milk cow i always come for a little day you know i think i outboxed the wall one time we pretty well shared the chores of tearing the water and splitting the wood and what happened but i never liked that cow

he's a taller man it must be a really good picture

our dad convinced that i was too small so meryl just really loved to do it

we got along pretty well all the time with a normal sibling rivalry and if it was one time i think the last time that we ever had a rolling around in the gravel fight we were walking home from the school bus one day and we had this neighborhood had built this large wood shed carol remarked he said that's a really nice job those shingles you put on that [ __ ] everybody knows there were shakes anyway that was worth it you're not throwing that on my body you know we got a great big fight about one of those things where shingles are shaped

a big problem as far as you know with the law or getting into serious trouble growing up i remember one time me and some of the buddies got into the burlington high school they had a motorcycle at the time and they got this four wheeled caster desk out and harold was pulling one of his buddy buddies down the street hi funky pulling on his body down the street on a motorcycle and this chair when the police stopped disappointed anyway i'd just like to say how very proud i carol's accomplishments and his career and particularly what he's done here at blockchain he's always had the love of this college and for what he's done with the community and i'm proud to be his brother thank you very much

but i know always have been much better

looking

thank you your son uh jason is with us tonight is jason at jason lunchtime for jason is about ready to finish medical school you've got to be

proud he'd make something himself hey graduates next month

right yeah celebrating that medical degree

and promoted to captain that's higher than marine corps cocoa

great to have you here thank you i don't think i ever told you that but uh when i interviewed for medical school the interview was going really good and uh you were towards the end of the interview and the doctor was interviewed he says well i was just going over your transcript and i see one thing i want to talk about it says you uh you graduated community college in 1998 yeah it says you started in 1986.

and i was i don't see i didn't look at it but i did in 1986 i took uh spanish for children

and i passed so i still got here

so this is uh this is real special for me this is a guy i learned a lot about leadership and

setting uh setting lofty goals and serving the community by serving serving individuals

we moved i moved up here uh from the first lock house and really i feel like the college has been sort of like another brother or sister we die we drive out here on the weekends and and see what's going on and always kind of walk around the next building that was going up and thankfully uh when i stopped growing the buildings kept growing and it's uh it's pretty amazing so i didn't quite know what to say today so i stepped back and thought really hard and everyone knows my dad especially over the last maybe maybe five or six years has um has been victim or fallen to the pleasure of his poetry rather yeah i'm sure you're more than happy to share some of his fine

fine poetry

and you won't have to ask he'll just he'll come up and share so i um i wrote a pleasure a very poorly written poem for him i hope it's poor enough

so this is untitled to work on that together later

for my dad the president a greater guy i've never met he has a vision and forms a plan and achieves more than the average man from a college without walls and floors he built the campus and opened doors for any person from any place to come and learn in this new space how does he do it you might ask great pictures um so i lost my spot how does he accomplish such a task well i'll share with you some steps he takes to accomplish things that are so great every good idea begins i hope this is bad enough for you every good idea begins with quiet reflections to search within quite often he thinks at the oceans bay where the orca whales swim and play that was the one clever wine but if you missed it i'll share it with you

and then he writes down every step of his intricate plan so that he can get the funding and help that he will need to build the buildings that you see then every weekend he comes around to see how construction is going down it's kind of hit its only way to run it they'll lay some bricks and put a plaster so that construction may go faster then when the work is finally completed the ribbon is cut and more students are seated he will write a poem that mostly rhymes to celebrate such exciting times and before the party has died down and people are still trying to figure out what that latest poem was all about he's drawing up plans for a roundabout or maybe an aquarium a museum or a stadium for this is a man who dreams and build and doesn't take the time to rest this guy who is the president is certainly among the very best

thank you jason uh you know jason has the opinion of you're and everybody i never died

and jason you need to know that

a poem about me once just that it's kind of all the presidents that i'll never forgive for

i think it's one of those gifts you just had

here scott

scott uh is uh of course uh another one of uh thank you i wrote a couple pages of poems too so actually you know i tried i really tried to write a phone and it was beyond me so well you know it's really hard

i called dad the other day on the phone and i said that we were talking i said how do you know when you succeeded in life and dad says well the meaning of life just a minute and he grabbed his phone book and one day he was only reading the last part though i mean i think it's in the phone book so and it's good it's good i like that i like it i've done fishing with that too it's an it's an experience um i've done skookum once or twice i know i know the other kids have mine was thunder creek which is pretty much like scooping and it's it's like this going down it's terrible going up it's an experience but i need to say you know it's an honor for me to be here tonight to recognize someone i've admired my my entire life and i want to do one of my associates taught me to do and that is to pre-apologize so if i offend anybody tonight i pray apologize so we got that covered out of the way

the reason the reason i do that ahead of time is that the higher sense of humor sometimes is funnier to the highers than anybody else

so if you've ever read the far side if you get the far side it's really funny if you don't get the far side the comic strip you wonder what the guy was talking about so there may be a little bit of that going on tonight so so if you don't understand what i'm talking about it's okay probably a lot of people don't

this is this is actually kind of fun because when i go to funeral i always wonder why people don't need ahead of time before the person dies and i also thought it'd be good a good thing to do is meet ahead of time everybody gets together and talks and visits and let the person know how much you appreciate them but it doesn't happen that way so usually we get together in the dead and they can't you can't visit with them so for me this is kind of like a funeral

in a good way

so if i don't make your actual funeral you understand

this is the guy who asked me when i go to the dentist if i had any gold philly statement

let me let me clarify that the way this story went when i was younger dad always when he smiled he had these gold fillings back here and i thought that's great and i asked myself well when you die you know i want those gold fillings and so for probably about the past 10 10 15 years every now and then i get a little baggie when he's had a gold tooth replaced there'll be a little gold filling inside

pretty quick here i'm going to be making a ring or a pendant or something out of that starting to add up

so growing up behind her it was kind of neat when i when i first heard about this i immediately called up and to find out who he was in charge of this i got a hold of trish and so i got on the agenda so i got to get on the agenda and and i didn't have a lot of direction on on what to do so i was pretty well open on where where i could go with this thing

or if she did give me direction maybe i just didn't catch it but i think it had something to do with with memories and growing up and with dad and that type of thing so that's the way i took on this thing

i was going to talk about the incident of the misplaced car and the undeserved but you know my therapist says you know you buried that man

cass tried to bury that memory he felt really bad about that it was all business understanding of course i was the one that got beat but i'm not you know what i'm done okay okay i'll go there

i'm a pretty mellow guy but about well when i was about 10 or 12 i wasn't quite as male i wouldn't go through this um

and we were doing some wrestling and i got a bit angry at my grandparents house and and dad's well actually i didn't even do anything i just got angry and i had stormed off i went over and sat by the gardener and a while later it became time to go and and dad came over and said scott's time to go i don't i don't even know if i said anything i got up and i walked back to the car well dad moved the car so i got so i gotta beat no i didn't get beaten i got a squad or something but there's always this big thing about you know the car was here he moved the car there he can't get me i went here you thought i was just i said go to the car you know what good for the building car

but i'm not gonna i'm not even going down there like i said i tried to block that memory out but what i'm gonna start with here is a couple years later the tree falling incident

you know what i'm talking about a couple years of the tree falling incident the tree farm yeah anybody that knows my dad knows that he he cuts down trees i mean he loves cutting down trees in fact you just mentioned we're going to take out some trees and his eyes light up

so i was this was down in olympia's property down down in little rock and we were clearing some trees i think it was just me and him clearing trees he was clear and i was just hanging out and the next thing i know is this tree has been right on head now i'm thinking in this whole area that he's got to call this tree you would think he would miss my head

and then actually as i was writing this i got to thinking about that i'm thinking you may have done that on purpose so when he comes to my house we cut down trees we put it we put a big bull's-eye and it usually gets pretty close so i'm thinking he may have done that so if i lose my train of thought a little bit or i get a little a little bit distracted you'll know why it had to do with that and i still have you know i felt the bump right here in that tree so i want to start tonight with talking about the tree falling incident

oh wait i covered the tree

no all not all my childhood memories of growing up are painful ones or beatings and things like that and i i don't know who is on the list or who is going to attend here but is there a guy in the audience named roger that had a beach cabin in the early 70s okay i can't you can't you can't see anything up here because they got a light so roger if you're out there this is for you you know rocket yeah okay well we're talking you know we're talking early 70s and it's right out of the 60s so the 60s are still kind of in the 70s and

dad yeah i don't even remember if it was i know it was you and me and i don't remember who else was with us but we went to this barbecue at roger's house and roger i don't know was he an old student yes it hit me he was well yeah they were all babies

was he a student at schedule no he was classmate in high school oh and then they worked together well he would go to roger's house and roger had i think there was a house on the beach so we knocked on the door and this woman answered i don't know if it's his roger's wife roger's girlfriend she answers the door and she's talking to us so i'm thinking hey who cares about the tree thing

let's hang out more

i think that was my first real toughest woman other than my mom

mom doesn't count you forgive me a lot faster than your mother

well you know dad says he didn't realize that roger's wife or girlfriend was going to answer the door top or be topless at the party but he knows we're going to the party i think that and he's driving really fast come on let's go through the door

and roger's wife's girlfriend dancer so i think i think he knew something

yeah when i was coming i saw a lot of kids in the audience and you kids know as well as i do you know we help our parents grow up be successful happy with life we do all we can do to help them

and you know my dad was living the dream when i was a kid he was at the top of his game he worked at skagit he was i don't know what he did but he uh he had the key to the college and on sundays we could go down and empty the pinball machines out in the pool table so on sundays we could play pool play pinball all we want i mean what what can be better in fact i don't even where's the pinball room around here

i don't believe we have one okay you're

so i mean yeah i thought that was it what more could he want now as we go forward a couple of years he had he had a job in the meantime where he traveled a lot but then he took a job up here at watkin and i came up to wacom i remember coming up one of my first trips and i went out i think i exited you go past the mall it's like northwest texas or something like that and you take that road and you head out of ways there and you watch real careful you see a sign off on the right and there was this little a couple of little buildings or five billions there and so i'm thinking you know he left pinball and pool tables for for what but if it makes him happy you know i'll support him

um when i look around the campus you know what you know i've seen him help to create it it just amazes me

you know a couple years ago when when this building was built that we're in tonight and when he when he told me he took me aside this was in fact jason justin you guys didn't do this conversation he said son i'm naming the building after you you know what i thought you know that's an incredible way to honor your favorite child building after him so i i appreciate that

but i think the campus itself is is truly one of the most beautiful that exists and as far as the community and the students and the faculty and everybody here it's something that that you can be very proud of i want to share it just you know lying down here and mine i looked at it again it didn't show time for me so i figured just you know i just coached on that but i'll write it down in a second i want to share just a couple things that i don't know if they're hinderisms or what have you um this one i learned the other day in fact

my niece who's staying with with harold right now shared this one and it is there's a mouse in the house that's okay until he crawls on you

and then you gotta take care of him

uh if you've got the trees build the house

dad you know most of you probably don't notice dad was in service uh lost his toe in in the war and uh still to this day doesn't have a toenail sure the grandkids but when he was discharged

any other normal family we butcher the chickens and watch them run around the yard

you know i remember waking up on a cold crisp morning you know the kind where it's just it's cold there's frost on the ground the hose is frozen takes me out we do a little bunny time we push them so we shoot the pig i mean every family does this right you shoot the bin yeah i always stood up in the tree skin a me all the different butchers hey that's the kind of stuff we do normal stuff stuff so that's not anything out of the ordinary when uh when dad was just well got out of the army he had a couple boxes of those metal military boxes of shells so another aneurysm is save your shells you might get a gun someday

so he's been out for i guess in 40-ish years with a box of shells and he got a gun jason gone with gun that fits those shells and we went up and shot it um you know another thing that dan has taught me that i that i found very valuable in life a couple couple more one is eat lots of ice cream anytime eat lots of ice cream and hug

people you will see him hugging anybody and everybody

a couple of my kids couldn't be here tonight um we've got five we asked them to to share some some thoughts the ones that couldn't be here had a couple of um keeping with the poetry poem thing jamie's eight so i asked her you know she writes them she said she write a poem so she wrote a phone you might want to publish this one on your book okay and it comes complete with picture it her poem is why are you my young little cub scurrying around under the wintery sky when you should be under your mother's eye

um my other daughter who couldn't be here they were out of state wrote up one of those fancy oriental poems for you

she's 12.

so here's her poem you are so special when i see you i light up i love you grandpa

let's see now one daughter could be here tonight she's going to read her thoughts in

person

harold has been my grandpa for four and a half years he has not just been my hair but he's been the best grandpa ever

he's been there for me when i needed him