John: In the 1960’s there was a group from Reed College doing bed-rolling with somebody inside of it—from Reed College to Seaside. We decided to one-up Reed. I lived in Gannon hall—second floor. We had a toilet—one of the guys' dad was a plumber in Everett.. We had a toilet we used as an ashtray in one of the rooms. So we removed that toilet and decided to turn it into a rolling toilet.

We got some buggy wheels, some lumber from “Rogers,” which they were just building at the time. We built a three-foot high cart, built a T-bar with 1” pipe, then we put the toilet on top. On the 8th of May 1964, fourteen of us from Gannon Hall—taking turns, pulled the toilet from Gannon to KXLY radio in Spokane for 22 hours. That includes a stop by the State Patrol (in Colfax). The other two participants were in vans following along. The toilet was spray-painted in all kinds of bright colors. The State Patrol was going to take it away from the students. The patroller called his supervisor—who was a WSU alumni. He gave us some reflectors from his patrol car, flashlights for the front of the toilet, and told us to continue to on our way.

To make things better, we knew this girl, who we called a real “blonde bombshell,” to sit on the toilet as they pulled it up to the radio station when we got to Spokane. We had a police escort in Spokane all the way up South Hill, with this really pretty girl sitting on the toilet. They didn’t know we had beer sitting inside the toilet the whole time. We set a world record for the longest distance traveled in a toilet (water closet)—21 hours (+1 hour with police = 22 hours), and 92 miles.

My family has been here since 1918. A lot of us met our wives/husbands here. My wife was on the Dean's list. I was on the Dean’s list. We were good students, but one day we built snow forts below Gannon Hall. The cops demolished it. Then we filled garbage cans with snow. They demolished those, but it bent the radiator on their truck. So they were stuck, and we were throwing snowballs at them from the bridge above so they couldn’t leave. None of us got caught. But some random kid walking back from studying at the library got surrounded by the police—solely because he was outside. He wasn’t involved in any way. We watched from the windows.

We would go up to the CUB and for 42 cents total for food—we’d have a date.

We got married between our junior and senior year. 1966-1967. When we went here, it was eight or nine thousand people. We got involved with the community. Everybody wanted to know each other. It was a great place to be, and we really miss it. I got two bachelor’s degrees at separate times. I sold insurance for a few years before I came back to college for a second degree. Then I got a master’s degree at PSU in Portland. I had to serve in the war at the time before I could go back and get my master’s.

We had a live cougar for the mascot. One night, Butch the Cougar, died—we swore one night that they cooked the cougar. Obviously the cook didn’t, but we always joked about it.

Jan: We were here in an era when things were about to change. We wore wool skirts, 2-3 layers of long socks, boots. Things started to change about our senior year. A lot of protesting started during senior year. We couldn’t even wear slacks until the protests. Maybe a few colleges were more progressive at the time—Berkeley, Reed, and Evergreen. But for the most part, women weren’t allowed to wear jeans or slacks.

We got stuck in Washtucna—in a blizzard. We were standing there with our suitcases. We trusted anybody back then. Somebody stopped by (who we knew) and gave us a ride to Seattle.

John/Jan: We were on campus the day Kennedy was killed. We were serving lunch and people came into line sobbing. We didn’t believe them at first. They shut down school. We were emotionally shocked and distraught. That was our freshman year. A few years later, MLK. A few years later Bobby Kennedy. This was way too much—all our great leaders at the time were being killed. We were young and really respected these people—they were doing things that we actually appreciated.

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