There were many successes and all in all, a very satisfying place to work. The rapport with out entire staff was excellent, and all of them were wonderful to me. I loved each and every one of them.
Meantime, after being in the Counseling Service at the Y for many hears, the Counselor for Women quit to get married and move away and I was asked to take her place. I really didn’t want I would mostly be called the Dean of Women and at the various conventions I had attended, I had no desire to be one of those little ill dressed women, who didn’t especially appeal to me, called Dean of Women. But, they finally persuaded me to take it and I moved into an office next door to the Dean–I think it was still Lloyd, Dean of Students. Then he left and two or three other deans were appointed, that I enjoyed working with and finally Elliot Cameron was appointed.
About this time the Wilkinson Center was being built and the Dean asked me if I would be interested, when it was finished, in counseling half time and working in the Wilkinson Canter with the Student Body Officers. He said they really needed someone with music and drama background to work with the students, especially the Vice-President of Culture and the Women’s area. Since music and drama had been my first love all my life, I decided to take it and then began some of the most interesting years of my life. I would counsel half time and the rest of the time work with students. Dean Cameron said if I didn’t like it after a year, I could return to the Administration Building and keep on with my old job. It sounded interesting. So we started having meetings often with those of the staff that had been hired for the new building and we made many plans for the building and the students.
When the center was about three-fourths built, Donna was here and she came up to my office and we went over and walked all through the building (among the builders) and it seemed monstrously large. She asked what in the world we were ever do with such a huge building. I said I wasn’t sure, but only knew that every other building that had been built on campus was too small by the time it was finished so I supposed they had decided to build one large enough. (Of course, we had only been in it for a month when we knew it was not nearly large enough.)
When it opened in 1967, I moved my office to the 4th floor and was appointed adviser to the AWS and Vice-President of Culture Offices. I also did a great deal of counseling and working with student leadership training. At that time we were still holding student assemblies every week, along with Devotional and Forums.
The head of the center was Lyle Curtis and the staff were great–LaVar Rockwood, Curt Wynder, Addie Jean Fuhriman, (fellow whose name is the same as the first head of the motion picture department at the Y, etc.
I was officially Adviser for the A.W.S. (later the Women’s Office) and the Culture Office. I also had many other assignment and enjoyed every minute of it. Lyle was a wonderful person who was not very tall or large. On the other hand LaVar was a big tall person who was very dynamic and the students loved him. They all liked Lyle, but he knew that they didn’t feel toward him as they did LaVar. And this caused problems, and many times in our staff meetings were counseling sessions in resolving the problems between he two of them. But I even enjoyed that. And it kept me on top of counseling techniques.
We had wonderful Fall trips with all the student body officers.
Just working with the wonderful students at the Y was a great blessing. We had a fine crew of advisers and the upper echelon staff at the E.L.W.C. and I enjoyed every one of them. Each Fall we sent with the Student Body Officers (usually to Aspen Grove in the mountains above Sundance), and it was a great experience, both spiritually and temporally. We had lots of fun along with all the training we did with the student body leaders.