UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON ARCHIVES
ORAL HISTORY PROJECT

GEORGE EVERSON

An interview conducted by
Laura Smail

Madison, Wisconsin
August 16, 1984

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction	3

Tape 1, Side 1 (16 August 1984)	4
Background, undergraduate education at UW; joining the UW Business office; working on payroll and budgets; Research Administration, federal grants and faculty 

Tape 1, Side 2	18
Business Office reorganization (1962); personalities in the Business Office; computerization; accounting system developments in the '70s and '80s

Tape 2, Side 1	29
Departmental and government reporting; more on Research Administration; merger, System accounting; public records

Tape 2, Side 2	40
Public records (continued); the '60s protests; relations with faculty; faculty pay committee; Business Office personnel; retirement

Index	50

INTRODUCTION

 	George F. Everson was born on June 4, 1922 in Lodi, Wisconsin.  He received a B.B.A. degree from the University of Wisconsin in 1948 with a major in accounting.  From 1948 until 1960 he was a staff accountant, and from 1960 until 1968 director of contracts-fiscal administration, at the University of Wisconsin.  In 1968 he became business manager of the University, was promoted to controller the following year, and held the position of director of business services until his retirement in 1984.  
	Mr. Everson, who was known for his low-key and personable administrative style, was responsible for the business operations of the University during a period of phenomenal growth and modernization.  His expertise helped the University adjust more smoothly to the tripling of enrollment, the construction boom, and the growing use of computers during the past two decades.
	This interview took place on August 16, 1984.  The interview was transcribed by Mary Gehring of Business Services and was edited by the Oral History Project staff.

Laura L. Smail	Madison, Wisconsin
June, 1987

Tape 1, Side 1
This is an interview with George Everson on August 16, l984.  The interview is in a meeting room in the library.  The interview is being done for the University Archives Oral History Project.
00:00:27
SMAIL: Well, here you are Mr. Everson—you were born in Lodi, is that right?  In l922?
EVERSON: That's right.
SMAIL: What kind of a family did you come from?
EVERSON: Well, I was in very difficult financial straits.  My father was ill a good bit of the time and my mother had to work, and life wasn't easy in those days.
SMAIL: Well, you say your father was—
EVERSON: My dad was a painter/paper hanger, but he suffered from ulcers and in those days they were not as treatable as they are today, and consequently he was out of work a good bit of the time.
SMAIL: So even before the Depression you were having a hard time?
EVERSON: Definitely.
SMAIL: Did your mother have to work?
EVERSON: Yes she did, and she somehow managed to keep us going, and I had one brother that was older than myself who has since passed away.
SMAIL: Had either of them gone to college?
EVERSON: No, my folks had not gone to college.
SMAIL: Well, I noticed that you got a scholarship to come to the University of Wisconsin in l939.
EVERSON: Yes, I was valedictorian of my graduating class and it was automatic that a Wisconsin scholarship went along with that, and that allowed me to get started at the University, and I began at UW in l939.
SMAIL: I guess I want to ask you first about being valedictorian, you therefore must have been an outstanding student?
EVERSON: Well, I had high grades at least and I guess that's the measure they used.
SMAIL: That's usually what makes an outstanding student.
EVERSON: I think I had an average of, on the basis of l00, of 96 through high school.
SMAIL: Is this because of some—were your parents very interested in learning and encouraging you?
EVERSON: I never felt pressured; I think it was just self-motivation and lovely teachers I had.
SMAIL: What were the subjects that interested you most in high school?
EVERSON: Well, almost everything, but I did enjoy—I guess we called it junior business or something such as that in high school, but all subjects were interesting.  I liked mathematics, arithmetic I suppose you call it on that level, and some place along the line I decided I should go into the accounting field, and when I came to the University that was my intention to attempt to become a degree holding accountant.
00:03:30
SMAIL: Did the scholarship—was it enough to pay your living?
EVERSON: No, all it did was take care of the fees, which I think were something like $32 a semester back in those days.
SMAIL: So you had a lot to make up for?
EVERSON: That's right, but I stayed at home and commuted, managed to find rides back and forth, usually with a car pool-type arrangement.  Once in a while I'd even ride the train.  There used to be train service between Madison and Lodi.
SMAIL: Tell me some more, go ahead.
EVERSON: With this situation I started to work at a very young age.  When I was in high school I worked on NYA projects and then when I got to the University I did likewise.  In fact, I worked for the Bureau of Audio‑Visual Instruction inspecting motion picture film for a while, I think for the grand sum of 35 cents an hour.
SMAIL: That was in the University?
EVERSON: Yes, that was prior to the war.  I had a break in my University endeavors because I became ill in—I think it was in l941—and had to quit for a while.  Before I got back I was drafted into the service and then spent a little over three years in the military.
00:04:50
SMAIL: Expecting to come back after you had finished?
EVERSON: I wasn't sure, but when I came back from service I got into some rather heavy labor-type jobs that soon sent me back to the University to finish.
SMAIL: How did you happen to get hired by the Business Office right out of college?
00:05:16
EVERSON: Well, I felt that I would like to stay in the area, and the State Civil Service seemed to be a good place to attempt to find a job.  Of course, a lot of state employees do travel but I wanted to stay around the Madison/Lodi area if possible.  With the degree in hand, I interviewed at numerous state agencies and some different offices at the University, but Mr. Cafferty and I seemed to get along quite well.  He said "OK, if you want to work for me, come in on Monday," or whatever the statement was, and thirty-six years later I retired.
SMAIL: Yes, I imagined somehow that because you were a student of the Business School that it would just naturally follow for you to go to the Business Office, but you might as easily have gone somewhere else.
EVERSON: I could as easily have been with the Conservation Department, as they called it back in those days, or with the Athletic Department.  I did interview there and I don't remember the other places, but there were several.  I kind of liked the idea, though, of being affiliated with the University.
SMAIL: Did you come to live here then?
00:06:27
EVERSON: I didn't come to Madison until l950 when I was married and then I moved to Madison, so I commuted the first couple of years or so after starting work.
00:06:44
SMAIL: The Business Office, where was it—it was in that little red building, is that right?
EVERSON: Well, there was a little stone building on the corner of Park and State which was called the—they used to refer to it as the Administration Building.  As you went up State Street there was a house, a big frame—well it wasn't so large, a frame house, and the two were connected by a corridor and there were offices along that corridor, and my first office was in that corridor area.  Very interesting layout actually, and eventually things expanded and they moved my particular section, which was then the gift, grant, contract area.  It was on the third floor of a house on Park Street right next to the stone building.  I don't remember the address; it was something like 439.  The Student Employment Office was downstairs and all those buildings are torn down now, so it's a little difficult to reconstruct.  And then finally when they built what turned out to be the A. W. Peterson Building, we moved over there in l964, and that was really something to have a new building and room to operate.
SMAIL: Which you hadn't had before.
EVERSON: Right.  You can imagine then that on days like today with no air-conditioning in those old frame buildings—we had electric fans going most of the time, but all they did was blow the papers around.
SMAIL: That's why we're here rather than over in the Red Gym.
EVERSON: Right.
SMAIL: There's a lovely breeze, but everything blows and the bus stands outside in the street and it's just too noisy.
EVERSON: That was interesting when we moved into the Peterson Building. I used the expression "felt like beans in a bottle" rattling around in all that space, but it wasn't very long we were crowded.
00:08:45
SMAIL: You started with gifts and grants right away then?
EVERSON: No, I actually worked in the payroll area.  They were just beginning to get the payrolls on what we called tab machines back in those days—the forerunners of the computers.  And they had got a little start on it but they needed some help, so I worked with a gentleman by the name of Ralph Martens who is still the chief accountant.  I guess he is the acting assistant director of Business Services as of last July, but Ralph kind of led me into what the cards were for and the IBM processing, and eventually we got the payrolls so that they were automated to a degree.  Prior to that time there was a lovely lady by the name of Eunice Schultz that used to sit up on the second floor of that little house we mentioned and pound out the University payrolls on a typewriter‑bookkeeping machine.  It was just fabulous to watch her work, and how she could keep her patience with all that I don't know, but she did.
SMAIL: One of the—perhaps it was Cafferty who said that although the enrollment had gone way up, the staff of the Business Office didn't go up in that period over those five or ten years.
EVERSON: That's probably right.  In most administrative areas if there is any move toward austerity at all that's the one that has to do more without additional resources, and it's been true right up to the current day, I think.
SMAIL: Well, were you conscious of working very hard or being very over busy?
EVERSON: I guess that was sort of the story of my life, to be extra busy all the time—you know, having to work through school and so on— and I wasn't conscious of it particularly.  Well, there was one period that I was conscious of it.  Back in those days without the computer, the budget was developed on a mimeograph machine and adding machines, and when it came budget time in the spring, everybody that could punch an adding machine was put to work on the budget, including me.  You just kind of did your other stuff on the side at that time.  I remember one year we worked every single day between Memorial Day and the Fourth of July.  Not that we put in eight hour days every Saturday and Sunday but we were there part of every Saturday and Sunday for that whole period.  That was an experience in itself, building that budget.
SMAIL: Describe it.
EVERSON: It was pretty much based on the same accounting coding system that we have now, namely campus, division, department.  For example, Madison campus, College of Letters and Science, Department of Chemistry, etc.  All the figures that went into that were—they were compiled manually by use of the adding machine and of course if there was a minor change, hundreds of figures changed for that one minor change.  We used to have adding machine tapes running from the second floor of that old house down to the first floor just for fun to see how long they would get, and they were long. Then assembling it after it was mimeographed was a circus too.  We would get a big table and then everybody would pitch in and grab the pages and try to develop volumes of them, you know, by hand.  You didn't have the collators that you now have and you'd get so tired walking around that table, a lot of times we'd take our shoes off and walk around in our stocking feet.  It was kind of fun though, everybody was—you know, the high and the mighty as well as the lowly— were involved in the same operation, and that made it very democratic.  In other words, my function as far as the budget was concerned was a mechanical one, punching the adding machine, walking around the table to assemble it and things like that, nothing in the decision-making and building it up.
SMAIL: You were aware of the existence of computers then?
EVERSON: Oh yes, and I cannot recall when they finally got the budget process onto the computer, but it certainly was one of the important things to be done.
00:13:32
SMAIL: Did you have anything to do with it?
EVERSON: No, not personally.
SMAIL: Where would that have happened?  Who would have made that decision?
EVERSON: It would have been, I suspect, Peterson and Cafferty at that time in conjunction with the data processing people that developed it.
SMAIL: I think—well, there was already a data processing person and then it begins to grow very rapidly.
EVERSON: That's right, it was—I am trying to think who it was back in those days—Gordon Johnson perhaps.
SMAIL: Tabulating is mentioned in l963‑64 so that is some time off.
EVERSON: Yes.
00:14:22
SMAIL: And when did you start working on gifts and grants?
EVERSON: Sometime in the mid '50s, as I recall, that's where my own record is rather unclear as to just exactly when that happened.  That was an area of enormous growth.  You know we had some private money and maybe a few federal projects when I started in there, and then it just turned out to be a multi‑million dollar situation with all the research grants, training grants, and contracts, and so on.
SMAIL: Were you aware that it would be growing or was—
EVERSON: No, it kind of snuck up on me; it almost became overwhelming without realizing it was growing to that stage.  Fortunately we were able to add to the staff to handle it, and when I moved out of that area Len Van Ess took over, and he used to work for me but now before I retired I was working for him, which is an interesting turnaround.  Len was an excellent organizer and he hit it at the major period of growth.  He was a much better organizer than I was, and he made the place run.
SMAIL: Well, that certainly must have been called for.  It's hard for me to imagine how you would even go about handling it.  Could you give an example of a process by which a federal grant would come in and where you would start getting involved?
00:16:05
EVERSON: Yes.  Actually, what we now call Research Administration—the Financial Office—it had different names over the years—was empowered to act on behalf of the regents.  So a faculty member would develop a proposal for a project to submit to some federal agency and it would be processed through this office.  They would check the budget, make sure it had the proper overheads and things like that involved in the budget, and then forward it to the federal agency in behalf of the regents.  If the award was made, then the correspondence and the award documents would come back to the Research Administration office, and then it would be reported to the regents, and accounts established, and copies of the information supplied to the deans and the department chairmen, and all the routine paperwork handling.  Then of course you're accountable for the federal funds and the office would then, as required by whatever the agency rules were, submit financial reports to the federal government.  Before they started using the letter of credit procedures you would get checks to cover the costs of the project, and then you might have to refund unexpended balances at the end of the grant period or contract period.
SMAIL: How did you know when this budget came in from the faculty member what it ought to be?
EVERSON: You had to rely on the faculty member first, and then his chairman, and then the dean's office reviewed them to find they were reasonable because, sitting in an administrative office such as Research Administration, you don't have the scientific knowledge to know if you need $20,000 worth of computing in this budget or whether you can get by with $l0,000.  You have to rely on the faculty member.  Then when the award is made he is initially responsible for the administration of the project and he must submit, normally, technical reports to the agency, progress reports, whatever, so there are all those kind of controls.
SMAIL: What about things like lighting, electricity and space?
EVERSON: Well, those types of costs are covered by the indirect costs that are included in almost all grant and contract budgets.
SMAIL: Right from the beginning, were they?  I assumed that was something that would have evolved.
EVERSON: It did evolve but the budget office—I remember Ed Horkan used to work on it and develop indirect cost rates way back in the early days when I was involved, so we did have them.  I think we were probably more flexible back then.  If an agency was short of funds we might shave the overhead, but you had to stop doing that as the years went by because it became a big item of support for the University budget.  You had to have a consistency so that full indirect costs were eventually collected on all government agreements.  That's an area in itself—very complex calculation to develop an indirect cost rate for an institution.
SMAIL: How do you do it?
EVERSON: Well, you have some specially trained people that gather all the information as to space usage and the costs of operating the University physical plant and all those kinds of things, and you get it all together and decide how much of it is prorated to research, and develop a rate that you then apply to some base on each project budget.  For many, many years it was based on a certain percentage of salaries and wages, but then in the last ten years or so, maybe a little—can't pin the date down exactly, it isn't that long ago come to think of it—the government virtually insisted that we go to a—what they call a modified total direct cost base instead of salaries.  It made a difference when they made that change because, for instance, a contract in the mathematics department had lots of salaries on it, so we had big overhead on that.  When it went to modified total direct costs it was still—you'd still collect overhead, but it didn't hit them as hard as it did, for instance, a physics project where there was lots of supplies and computing services and things like that that had never had overhead taken out before.  When I say overhead and indirect cost the terms are kind of interchangeable.
SMAIL: Yes, and you would deal with people like Bob Doremus in Letters and Science, is that right?
EVERSON: Yes.
SMAIL: He was their major liaison? Is that right?
EVERSON: Later, Phil Hellmuth became the liaison there as far as the federal projects were concerned, in the later years.
SMAIL: Could you question the budgets at all, did you ever?
EVERSON: Oh, yes, they were questioned frequently because you know it's difficult to get everybody to know all the little details as to what is the right indirect cost rate, and sometimes they make mistakes in addition, and if they aren't caught they would be caught in the Research Admin office and corrections would have to be made.  Then many times a proposal would go in and the government would say, yes, we like the project but we don't have quite that much money, and then you would get back to the initiator of the proposal to see if he could pare his budget down to fit what the federal agency had.
SMAIL: Then they would go through you?
EVERSON: Yes, all that type of interchange flowed through the office because it had to be official, and you know the University is a corporation and the regents is the body corporate, and you have to have authorizations that act in their behalf so that when you'd get a grant or contract it's binding on both sides.
SMAIL: So the government would—the letter from them would come to your office?
EVERSON: Yes.
SMAIL: Saying this grant is—we might consider it but it's a little too much money.
EVERSON: Yes, a letter or document of some kind, sometimes huge contract documents.
SMAIL: It must have taken a lot of skill in the various deans' offices to know how to process these grants.  Were there some colleges that were better than others?
EVERSON: Oh, yes, I'm sure that's right, and then there were some professors better than others. The real grant getters, they somehow learned the ropes.  Whether they did that through their faculty associations or their scientific journals, I don't know, but they became very adept at writing proposals.
00:23:06
SMAIL: Do you remember, or did you get to know them?
EVERSON: Not too closely, a few that had special projects with special problems you would get to know them fairly well.
SMAIL: Can you name some?
EVERSON: Dr. Barschall in physics was one that I dealt a lot with and liked very much.  Oh, gee, you know I just passed the sixty-two point and my memory for names is not what it used to be.  There were some delightful people in zoology, but names escape me—
SMAIL: Hans Ris, by any chance?
EVERSON: I didn't have as much to do with Hans Ris, I don't believe, as some others.  Oh, there is a fellow that was doing research on some kind of a moth, and he was such a nice man and I cannot remember his name, unfortunately.
SMAIL: What about the College of Agriculture people, biochemistry—
EVERSON: Yes, Joe Wilson was a delight to work with—he later came into the chancellor's administration office, but I had known him long before that and just a great guy.
SMAIL: So what makes a person a delight to work with as far as preparing grants?
EVERSON: When you have a problem they're congenial about correcting it.  You do have some prima donnas on the faculty that will tell you to stick it in your ear so to speak—take care of it, I'm not going to help you.  But they're rare; most of the people are pretty decent.
SMAIL: Well, what kind of a problem do you mean?
EVERSON: Oh, a problem with their budget.  For instance, they would say—just as an extreme example—they've only got x dollars at that federal agency and I want you to take the overhead out of this budget so that I can carry out the project within those dollars.  Well, you might have got away with that way back in the good old days, but in the last twenty, twenty‑five years you wouldn't because you have to have that consistency.
00:25:13
SMAIL: You mean the faculty member would be saying this to you, you take out the overhead so I can—
EVERSON: Right, see it doesn't—that overhead indirect cost item doesn't do anything for his project purse; the institution has to have it in order to have the lights and water and the space and so on, but it's very difficult to get that across to some faculty members.
SMAIL: Can you remember anyone who said that?
EVERSON: Oh, I can't remember any specific names, to tell you the truth, because that's back a ways.  There were some interesting arrangements with some agencies.  They had what they called fixed price contracts, and there's a tradition that on those there was a certain amount of indirect costs involved and a little bit of it would be left for the use of the investigator himself for his department, and the rest of it would go into the University overhead or indirect cost account.  Some of them would be able to build up little reserves that way, out of that little that was left for them.  And I think there is still some of them on the books today after all these years.
SMAIL: Yes, I think I've heard about that.  Did you have anything to do with—well, you must have known about the use of the overhead?
EVERSON: Yes, without being able to say exact percentages, it developed that from the federal indirect costs a certain portion, something like 60‑65 percent, was used to support the University operating budget.  See the budget is supported by tax money pure and simple, by fees that are paid by the students—fees and tuition—and by some general operational receipts which, you know, like the seeds program in agriculture and things like that that do generate some money as a sort of a by‑product of the instruction and research, and federal indirect costs.  So it's really a pooled situation where all these resources go together.  But at some point in time the University or perhaps the state insisted that a certain portion of that indirect cost income had to go directly into the support of the operating budget, which makes a lot of sense.  I mean you put on extra janitors because you got extra space which was there to accommodate this additional federal research.  It's only fair that the indirect costs that you collect on that at least part of it go into the University budget to help pay those salaries and help take care of those supply costs, etc.
SMAIL: Wasn't there some question at some point that it was being used outside of Madison for other campuses?
EVERSON: There may have been those kind of complaints, and I suspect that may be true because there was a certain portion that supported the operating budget that was sort of untouchable that had to be there.  Then there was residue that were used for special purposes some of which was—well, it's referred to as the "special capital exercise."  There is an allocation made to each campus, and then each campus to each division most years, so they can buy special capital, sometimes for other small things, but that was the major purpose of it.  Then System—under the merger—System Administration had a certain piece of this reserved for their special uses, too, and maybe they passed that out to some small campus that didn't generate a lot of indirect costs or something like that.  Could have been a basis for complaint, but I certainly wasn't involved in hearing any direct complaints.
SMAIL: And did you have any feeling about it?  I mean, did you feel identified with the Madison campus and say, “Oh, they ought—”
EVERSON: As time went on after merger, yes, I had developed a conscious and subconscious loyalty to UW‑Madison, there's no question about it.
00:29:29
End of Tape 1, Side 1.
Tape 1, Side 2
00:29:31
SMAIL: Well, we're getting a little ahead of the story, I guess.  In l962 the Regents reorganized the structure of the University—the Business Office—did that affect you in any way?
EVERSON: I'm trying to recall what that reorganization might have been.  There were changes made from time to time and it's difficult to pinpoint them.
SMAIL: I guess actually it was creating new titles like in the vice-president system.  Well, the vice-presidency started earlier but there was an assistant vice-president.
EVERSON: Yes, that was going on above my level, and I really don't recall a lot about it or why it took place or whether there were problems with it taking place.
SMAIL: So it didn't affect you really?
EVERSON: No.  It could be that someone superior to me had a title change, but he was still the same person, probably, so it wouldn't affect me.
00:30:42
SMAIL: Who were the people that you worked under and what could you say about some of them?
EVERSON: Well, I was hired by Neil Cafferty, who I think was business manager at the time, and A. W. Peterson was vice-president, and that vice-president title changed from business and finance to business affairs from time to time, so I can't recall all those things.  But Reuben Lorenz I worked for, and a little less remotely was a chief accountant by the name of Russell Foster.  That was a rather unique individual, big tall guy with a mustache, smoked a pipe, and there were times when—you know, things were a little simpler back in those days.  You could take a day off on the spur of the moment.  All it took was Neil Cafferty to say to Russ, "Hey, let's go to the race track tomorrow," or "Let's go to a ball game tomorrow," and Russ would have it organized and they'd be off the next day.  That was fun.  It really was, but that's pretty much the hierarchy that I worked for until the merger, and then of course I came under the chancellor and the vice-chancellor.  My immediate superior then after merger was Len Van Ess because he was vice-chancellor for administration of the campus and the business office, or the Division of Business Services, was under his jurisdiction.
SMAIL: Well, could you say something about Cafferty?
EVERSON: Oh, Neil Cafferty was a very unique individual in himself.  As you know he was small in stature but he was pure Irish, and he could be a very firm man but he was always very fair, friendly.  He didn't lose his temper often, but I remember one time when we were dealing with the federal auditors.  They brought in a big bunch of people and were arguing about indirect costs.  Mr. Cafferty didn't say too much, but we had a big oak table in his office where all this was going on, and he must have had his knee against a leg of that huge oak table and the table was trembling.  He was so angry, but it all worked out well.  For some reason Liesl Tarkow was involved in that discussion.  Apparently there were problems with what she was involved with and before we were through she had those feds eating out of her hand.  She was that charming a person and knew just how to handle them.
SMAIL: So it was something to do with one of the international grants?
EVERSON: Yes, I can't remember if it was Peace Corps or something similar.
SMAIL: But there was a lot of money going to Indonesia in Indonesian projects at that time.
EVERSON: Yes, there were some Indonesian projects.  But that was one time I knew that Mr. Cafferty was angry, but the only way you could tell it for sure was the way the table shook.  Reuben Lorenz has been just a wonderful person to work for.  I think I have been under him in one way or another either directly or indirectly for the whole thirty-six years I've been here or that I was here.  Never a harsh word out of Reuben.  Things were not always rosy either, you know.  There were problems and you would make mistakes, but he was just a great guy to work for.  And I guess he was elevated to the vice-presidency of the University of Wisconsin System and that's one of the reasons, because he could deal with people.  Pretty brilliant guy too.  
00:34:28
EVERSON: I worked with some colorful people.  George Scheler was supervisor of the payroll department for a long time, and I don't know if you knew George.  Great big fellow, tremendous energy—he almost dragged people along with him with his energy that he showed, and fortunately he developed good understudies, and when he retired Dick Laufenberg took that over.  That's turned out to be a very difficult job with all the complications that have taken place in pay plans and the fringe benefit expansion, changes in retirement systems, etc.  But Dick has held it together, he's done real well.  Joe Holt was a very good friend of mine and sort of a colleague, although he moved up into the vice-president’s office fairly early in the game.  But a very fine man, used to go fishing together occasionally, things like that.  I knew A. W. Peterson, but not as well as I knew Cafferty and Lorenz, of course, because he was a little more aloof type of person and a little higher level too.
SMAIL: Was he in the same building with you?
EVERSON: No, he was in Bascom Hall—there was a suite in the middle of the building there that was Clark Smith and A. W. Peterson, and then Joe Holt finally went up there.  Bob Hamas was with him for a while then Bob died prematurely.  I'm trying to think of others.  We've had lots of colorful people in charge of the Administrative Data Processing.  You either had them in your organization or alongside it, because we used to say you can't live with them but you can't live without them.
SMAIL: Yes, I'd love to know about that, anything you can say about it.
EVERSON: Well, it was at a point in time and again it's hard for me to pinpoint the exact year.  That area just blossomed.  I mean it developed so fast.  It was hard to keep up with it, but it was necessary as the University grew and more reports were required from all segments of state and federal government as well as the University administration.  You just had to put resources into the development of the computer.
SMAIL: And what about the people who were handling it?
EVERSON: Oh, there were interesting people; there was one by the name of Ted Wiese, great big fellow, almost big enough to intimidate you.  But not too bad to work with.  There was one by the name of Zeke Torzewski whose name was enough to intimidate you.  He was a very intense guy who used to—when you were trying to decide things he would pace the office, which sent me up the wall to have someone tromping back and forth.  Then I believe the young man that was in charge of the Academic Computing Center for a while was also in charge of Administrative Data Processing.  Again, his name escapes me—Dick—I know it so well.
SMAIL: When—was this in the '60s or the '70s?
EVERSON: No, in the '70s.  He preceded the current director, Jack Duwe, I believe.  Yes, in fact I know he did.  There was an interesting problem with data processing as well.  There were two elements, the academic side—not the research academic, I don't mean—but the shop that kind of took care of the registrar and offices like that, and then the shop that took care of the accounting system and the payroll system.  At a point in time again those were merged, and there were some traumatic situations apparently at that time.  I wasn't too close to it at the time, but I knew it was going on because you got a director here and [a] director here and you're going to have one shop, and one of them has to go; you know that type of thing.  But it finally was put into one data processing shop and it's worked out quite well.  But Jack Duwe, who now is the director of administrative data processing at UW‑Madison, was at one time a trainee in the business office and a brilliant young man.  I think he was one of the highest scorers on the CPA exam for many many years, and eventually he took over data processing and has done a fine job.
SMAIL: Is this in the '70s, this happening?
EVERSON: It had to be in the late '70s, I would say.
SMAIL: That they were merged.
EVERSON: Yes, could have been mid '70s because they were still in existence when the merger of the University systems took place.
SMAIL: The two separate offices?
EVERSON: Yes, of course the prior—in the old days I think we mentioned Gordon Johnson's name.  He was in charge of the tabulating department, but that was really an amateurish operation compared to what we have today, but then it was wonderful.  You would be able to do things with decks of cards, etc., that had formerly been done by hand.  I don't know what more to say about data processing.  It was just an essential element that developed and as I said, there were some colorful people in charge of it.
SMAIL: Did you yourself start using the computer?
EVERSON: Not directly.  I mean I never learned other than how to sort cards and maybe run them through an interpreter when we were developed way back in the early days.  When I first started in developing the payroll then, I manhandled a lot of cards because, you know, for every deduction and for your salary and for this, that, and the other thing, there was a separate card in these decks, and I, along with Ralph, worked on those so much that I developed strong hands.  I had brothers-in-law that were much bigger than I but I could outgrip them because I manipulated so many IBM cards for that sorter.  Today it's just unbelievable the progress that was made in the administrative data processing area.  Then in the last three or four years word processing and all that goes with it came into being, and my office is one that got into it rather deeply because I had an assistant that was a graduate accountant as well as a graduate computer science person, and he's actually the person that took my place when I retired.  Don Miner is his name.  With his help we really got into word processing and refinements of it that kind of kept us going these last three or four years.  You always think that when you get into a new feature such as word processing that things are going to be so much easier that you can get by with less people.  It didn't work out that way.  I don't think we cut the staff particularly in any way since it came in but they are able to do some things better and can do more things.  But I am not technically oriented, so when I sit down at the keyboard of a cathode-ray terminal or a personal computer, I'm frightened.  Virtually I'm strange to it so I haven't gotten into it as an individual.
SMAIL: What sorts of things did you do better with a word processor?
EVERSON: Routine letters such as Research Administration sends out.  There is a lot of standard terminology and to have that all ready and just fill-in-the-blanks-type thing is one application that is very valuable.  Reports such as our Internal Audit Department or my own experience—I would respond to audit reports and so you do a lot of writing, and of course you want to make changes, and they're so easy to make on a word processor.  You can make them quickly and you can proofread it as many times as you want and make as many changes, and it's so easy that you're inclined to get a better product, I think, in the long run.
SMAIL: Were you using a Wang or an IBM?
EVERSON: Wang.  In the last couple of months that I was in the office, my successor moved in with me and shadowed me around to learn what he could by osmosis and observation, and he had an interest in an IBM personal computer and [to] see how it might work in for some office applications.  So he had one set up in the office, and that's where I ran into that one.  While he was away I did put a little stuff on it, narrative type, but I never became an operator so to speak.
SMAIL: So you have them both in your office?
EVERSON: Yes, I think they planned on having two or three IBM computers, the mini‑computers, because there are certain applications that were best done on them.  But Wang is the basis for the office automation that we have because the network is going to be there.  I guess it has built up a little now, but it will be broader so that there will be easy communication in all areas of the campus and perhaps off campus.
SMAIL: Who decided, do you know?
EVERSON: That's a good question.  They did an awful lot of studying in the administrative data processing area and in conjunction with higher level chancellor's office and decided that Wang looked the best for our purposes, and that's why they got into Wang.  It wasn't a total commitment forever, of course, but they felt that if they went into it, it should be at least for five years.  I would guess it would go on longer than that.  Everybody didn't go along with it, though; some of the colleges have gotten into other types of word processors.  I'm sure as technology improves, which it does improve rather rapidly, they'll be able to interact quite well, but initially you couldn't do some of the interacting from the non‑Wang that you could with the Wang word processors.  That's—let's call it a bone of contention.
SMAIL: Was that one of the problems between the two wings of the data processing?
EVERSON: No, the two branches of data processing were made one long before the Wang situation came up.
SMAIL: I see.
EVERSON: Yes, I wish I could give you a date on that, but I can't.  It was quite a while ago—sometime shortly after the l971‑72 merger of the University systems.
00:47:20
SMAIL: Did it cause much trouble or confusion in the office when computers started coming in?  How did you train people?  How did you handle that?
EVERSON: Well, it's sort of an evolvement, I guess.  Some people accepted automation quite readily—in fact, were anxious for it.  Others resisted it.  I don't say actively resisted it, but just didn't push to have it in their particular piece of the operation.  The payroll‑fringe benefit area for instance, they wanted to get into it as deeply and as fast as possible.  It was a good thing they did because they needed it, as it turned out.  The purchasing area—the former director there just didn't seem to want to push it at all.  There is only so much resources available in Administrative Data Processing to develop new systems, and the purchasing area kind of was neglected for a long time.  Then in the last, let's say three years, we decided to survive we're going to have to have an automated purchasing system.  They have been working on that like mad, I think for about three years now.  It's just beginning to become implemented a stage at a time.  It's going to be very helpful to them, both from the standpoint of day- to-day operations as well as gathering of information that will allow them to perhaps get better deals on things that they buy.  When you get the information readily available you can see things that you can't on a fragmented way.
SMAIL: Oh, yes.  Is it true that a requisition costs $22 to process?
EVERSON: That's an estimate—from the initiation time to the writing of the purchase order.  $22 is probably conservative now—that may become cheaper as they get the electronic transmission developed.  It isn't here yet, but it's getting closer all the time.  As it is now I'm sure that many times a professor on a project will write something out on a piece of paper and give it to his secretary, who will type a requisition, and it's entered at either the dean or I guess pretty much the dean's level that it's entered on to the accounting system as an encumbrance.  Then it goes down to the Business Office and it's reviewed at the pre‑audit area, and then it goes to purchasing, and then purchasing re‑enters it as in the form of a purchase order.  So there is a lot of duplication of entry data, and with the new system hopefully it will only be done once and then passed electronically for approval from one place to the other, which should save time as well as effort.  Some people are frightened of it, you know.  They think you have to have that piece of paper passing through there and you probably will for a long time, but eventually I'm sure that the piece of paper, if one exists, will sit where it started and the rest will be electronic.  It took me a while back in about the '60s to accept the automation.  I thought it was going too fast.  I wanted to resist change, but they worked on me a little bit and I finally conceded that this is the way things were going to be—didn't resist.
SMAIL: What was your resistance based on?
EVERSON: Oh, I think a lack of trust of gadgetry probably.  Just, you know, I hadn't worked with it, hadn't had training in school in it or in the University.  Back in the days when I got out, back in l948, you maybe had a few references to automation in lectures, and later—I never took one but then later one of the professors used to bring the class through the Business Office so that they could look at a tabulating machine, and then later a computer and some of the things that are produced by it.  I didn't have any of that, so I was in the old school, I guess, and sort of archaic, but eventually I saw the value and the necessity for it and I conceded to—in fact, entered into the thing to try and get as much of it done as we could.
SMAIL: Well, there are people now who resist it.
EVERSON: Yes, there sure are.
00:52:14
SMAIL: You are said to have developed the accounting system that kept the University going over this huge period of growth in the l970s and 80s?
EVERSON: Well, if you're saying I developed it, no, I was not responsible for it, but I was involved in the business operation at the time it was happening.  I think we have to give a lot of credit for the accounting system development to Ralph Martens, who has been chief accountant for years and sort of a genius-type guy and a hard worker.  You almost have to—used to have to order him to stay home or he'd be back there every night and every weekend.  You know, that kind of a person.  And some people in the administrative data processing area that of course had to design and develop and program the systems—one person that pushed it pretty good that's no longer with them by the name of Bill Kenyon.  Bill had some features that you didn't like sometimes, but had to admit that he was real great at pushing the accounting system.
SMAIL: What happened to him?
EVERSON: He went into business for himself.  I think he has a computer service company now in the Madison area.  I don't remember the name of it.  But you know the accounting system wasn't one that you said, “Now two years from now we're going to have this grand thing and we're going to put it in place and start it.”  It evolves.  We naturally had an accounting system of sorts and it became a little more automated all the time, but finally got down to where you could—it was automated to the point where you could send monthly reports out into the field to be used by the deans' offices and the departments and the principal investigators.  And if they would listen to the explanation of what was there, there was a lot of information available to them.  They are trying constantly to improve that, and there is somewhat of a revision in effect now that will hopefully allow the departments, at the department level, to put in and request back information that is sort of customized for their particular purposes.  You know one department is going to want something different from another and that would be the ultimate for the time being, to be able to do that.
SMAIL: Could you give an example?
EVERSON: Oh, some department might be interested in what it spends on chemicals or postage or computer service or whatever, and through the use of the classification of account breakdown and breaking up and reporting—either isolating it out or combining certain things according to their wishes—they will get the information they want.  We have had people that were interested in keeping track separately of their classified salaries as opposed to in summary form from their faculty salaries, and up to now they have had to do it by creating a sub‑department to which the classified salaries were—a number for a sub‑department, I should say—in order to get that breakdown in reporting.  Hopefully the changes that are under way right now will cut out some of the fol-de-rol and be able to get pretty much what they want.  I don't imagine it will ever be perfect where you give everybody everything they want, but they try hard.
SMAIL: So you're accounting for everything that has been spent by a college and within the college by each of the departments?
EVERSON: That's right.  For instance, in the extramural area, every federal project has a unique account of its own.  Every gift account that comes in has a separate account number that identifies it, and reports are made monthly on the basis of those isolated account numbers.  In fact, reports are available all the time in certain form through the cathode ray terminals for those that have the ability to inquire.  For instance, you can get an account balance this moment and put a requisition through in the next moment, and the next moment that's reflected on the system, and you can find that out when you have the inquiry ability.
00:57:10
End of Tape 1, Side 2. 

Tape 2, Side 1 
00:57:20
SMAIL: You're talking about accounting; had you always sent reports to the colleges?
EVERSON: Yes, as long as I can remember there was some kinds of reports, but they were not as helpful as they have turned out to be as this system developed in the '60s.
SMAIL: So you say you are not responsible for it.  People think you are.
EVERSON: It was done while I was in charge, I guess, but as far as personally being responsible—I was supporting of it, but I didn't do the thinking that went behind it and the actual decision-making that this is the way it will be.  I conceded to the decision-making, obviously, but I guess I just wasn't that data processing‑ or computer oriented that I would have been terribly helpful in getting right down and working on it.  Sitting where I sat, I guess you knew pretty well what had to be done and what people would like to see out of it, and went as far as we could with the resources we had to improve it to the point where people got fairly decent reports.
SMAIL:  I see; the important thing there would be what people would like to see because it's usually hard for people to imagine what they might be able to use when they don't know its possible to get it.
EVERSON: There were times in the distant past when they would kind of do a little survey through the accounting offices to the investigators, particularly on federal projects.  What would you like to see?  Golly, you had all sorts of different things and you couldn't possibly, at least at that point in time, develop a system that would satisfy everybody.  You had to do the best you could with what you had to work with, and most of them were fairly satisfied.  But we hear reports that a lot of them have their little subsystems, though, too, that they adapt to their particular wishes, whether it's on the back of an envelope or a mini‑computer that they have in their office.  They're going to have their own system if they want it.  You hate to see it, though, because it's duplication, and the sophistication that we have now—there is an awful lot of information available if they just learn how to use it.
SMAIL: So that's the big stumbling block, is that people won't think of using it and won't learn how.
EVERSON: That's right.  You know everybody is busy and they don't have time to go to the—what would we call them—the seminars, the administrative seminars where you can learn this, or our accounting department.  Of course they would be overwhelmed if everybody did it, but they are perfectly willing, and they announced that—that if you want help in understanding these reports, come on in and we'll help you—explain them to you.  They have done that on an ongoing basis, and those that came in I think profited by it.  Of course there's a lot more to the accounting reports than just the ones that go out to the deans and the departmental offices.  There are reports that go to the state, reports that go to system administration, reports that go to the federal government.  It's almost unbelievable the amount of information that is developed.  We had an interesting report that came up when I was in the Research Administration area where the federal government—if you were a contractor with certain number of dollars you had to file what was called an EEOC report—Equal Employment Opportunities Commission—and for many years the form would come in and the president would have a statement typed on there that the University of Wisconsin is an equal opportunity employer by statute and sign it, and that was that.  Finally, one year we didn't get away with it.  It came back and said, “Hey, read your regulations, folks.  Even if you don't have exact records, you can make estimates.”   So we had to start gathering information on the minority status of employees and all employees, not just those on grants and contracts.  We developed a little thing and I managed to do it myself for a while, but it became so complex that finally—and you know in that area of equal opportunity everything had developed so fast that we now have an office—an affirmative action office, I guess it used to be called.  The budget office, then, they cooperated then to submit these reports, and they have become outlandishly complex.  But without the computer, you'd never be able to comply.  But with the computer they do a fine job.  It was interesting that for a long time we got away with just saying, "We are an equal opportunity employer";  the president would sign it and that was that.
SMAIL: Cyrena Pondrom worked on that, did she?
EVERSON: Yes.
SMAIL: I know she was concerned at one point as to how many women were being employed.
EVERSON: She worked in that area as assistant to the chancellor.  I think Cyrena is back professoring now.
SMAIL: Did you have anything to do with her or her office?
EVERSON: Oh, yes, I worked very closely with her on some personnel systems, again payroll related.  The personnel data and the Business Office data are very closely allied in many respects.  In fact, they're in the process now of attempting to develop—oh, let's call it an integrated personnel system which would draw on budget, payroll/personnel action form information that's on file in the computer, and they're working very hard to have a system that will give a lot of information that they don't have now in a convenient form.  Historical data on an individual is not too well-organized on the computer right now, but they are trying to develop it so that it will be, so there will be a transactional history for a person through their whole career.  That would be nice to have, because I could sit here now and tell you exactly how this happened and how that happened.
SMAIL: I guess we all at times have needed to know when we started working and changing titles.
EVERSON: Title changes and reclassifications in the classified service, that will come in time, but it takes money.  It's very expensive, because so much time has to be devoted to designing the system, and you can measure that pretty well in the data processing area for those people that are assigned to it because that's their function.  It’s either 50 percent or 100 percent time on a thing like that.  You can't measure the time that people like—in my office, like payroll director—I talk like I'm still director there—I've retired.  People such as the director of payroll and the accounting and the budget office put in so much time in meetings and discussions in trying to develop what this system will be, and that's not measured.  So the cost of the system is never the true cost.  You get the data processing side pretty well pinned down, but the rest of it is huge.
SMAIL: Well, it must be very difficult if people from different areas like that are meeting to reach a decision?
EVERSON: Yes, you hit it right on the head.  Each one has his own particular interests and—great cooperation does go on, don't get me wrong that they're always at odds, but it doesn't come easy sometimes.  We've had, recently at least, some real great people that can cooperate, like the staff and Glenn Watts in the budget office, and MaryAnn Yodelis‑Smith in the personnel area, and Dick Laufenberg and Ralph Martens in the business area.  They're the kind of people that can and do work together for the common good, so to speak.
SMAIL: Well, the kind of people would make all the difference, I would imagine.  Both their intelligence and their willingness to listen.
EVERSON: You have prima donna types or empire-building types that are only interested in themselves or their own particular area, you aren't going to make much progress.
SMAIL: What happens to such people?  They impede change, then?
EVERSON: I think you have to come to that conclusion.  You're going to have better things through cooperation.
SMAIL: Can you think of any examples of times where important decisions have been put off because of people who are in positions—
EVERSON: I guess I would rather not try to dig those out of my mind.  Remember the pleasant things rather than the unpleasant.  No, offhand I couldn't pinpoint one for you.
SMAIL: I guess that's one of the interesting things in University history is who were the people who made things go?  Because you need them and if you don't have them why—
EVERSON: That's right.  I think in the business area you have to point to Peterson, Cafferty, and Lorenz as people who made things go.  In more recent history probably Watts, Van Ess, Jack Duwe, of course, in the data processing area, and myself to a degree.  But we have people inside the structure that have made things go too, so to speak.  Again I keep going back to the Research Administration area because it's a big piece of business.  The current director and his associate director are both automation- minded, so to speak, and through the cooperation of ADP developed some rather nice information systems in the extramural area.  It's called ESIS, Extramural Support Information System, or something like that.  You get all this alphabet soup from it; it's hard to remember.  But they have done a good job there, too.
01:09:13
SMAIL: What's their link with the Graduate School, Research Administration office?
EVERSON: It's a cooperation thing.  They have special research funds from WARF [Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation] and from state funds as well, of course, that are sort of extramural in nature but not like the institutional grants and contracts from the federal government, and they pretty much administer those on their own.  They go through the accounting system, of course.  But they have, for instance, adapted the ESIS system to their WARF projects and the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences has done a little bit of that too with Hatch‑Adams funds.  They have adapted to the information system.  There's—all of the federal funds don't necessarily go through the Research Admin office.  The projects funds do, but the things like the Hatch‑Adams and the Smith‑Lever, those federal appropriations—I guess the broader block-type things are administered in the college or the unit that has access to the funds.  The Smith‑Lever, for instance, is in the University Extension.
SMAIL: Did you have anything to do with the University Press?
EVERSON: Not a great deal.
SMAIL: I know they had some problems back in the late '60s.
EVERSON: Yes.  Unless our internal audit people might have helped them develop something, we were not involved.  Somehow the press agreements that they have get to the regents to be reported, but I think as the years have gone—they used to go through the Business Office which was sort of just an extra step in the process.  I am sure they have an arrangement now where the press itself reports their press agreements and—what would you call them, when an author is involved in—yes, that's a press agreement.  The author has an agreement to get some of the royalties.
SMAIL: I guess they had some—or were thought to be by some—questionable accounting methods back in the late ‘60s and I guess—
EVERSON: I do believe our internal audit people did go in there and try to help them out in developing better systems for keeping track of their journals and their books published, etc.  But it was not earth-shaking or I would have remembered it.  Might have been to some people.
01:12:07
SMAIL: Well, you said that merger was a rather traumatic period.  Could you start from the beginning and when you became aware that it was going to happen and what you expected? 
EVERSON: Well, eventually it became legislated, so then we knew it was going to happen—all that had been talked about.  And again it was pretty much the business area that I would be involved with, but it was difficult for me to envision these two rather large institutions, the University of Wisconsin, which was, you know, Madison, Milwaukee, Green Bay, Parkside, Extension, Center System and Central Administration, and then this Wisconsin State University System, which encompassed all of the rest of the public higher educational institutions in the state coming together.  Again, looking at the business function, it seemed to me it would be so top-heavy that it would fall over on itself.  It just seemed too big to bring together, but somehow they did it, and there were lots of arguments from the academic side for and against it, I guess.  In the business area they took the two administrative bodies and somehow melded them together in a somewhat satisfactory manner, and it's worked.  I am sure that there was a lot of politics involved in—you know internal politics had to be involved in that decision so that the old University of Wisconsin people weren't given positions that were looked upon as superior to their cousins that came from the State University System, and they balanced it out fairly well, I think.
SMAIL: You said there was nervousness about what would happen to your jobs.
EVERSON: That's right.  For instance, myself, I was business manager—controller, I guess—during that time, and in central administration of the University of Wisconsin.  And that had to change with merger because it was so huge you had to break it up.  It turned out that myself and a number of the areas under my jurisdiction were then made Madison campus and put under the chancellor, but with continuing responsibilities to service the institutions we had serviced before such as Milwaukee, Green Bay, Parkside, etc.  Until that decision was made we didn't know whether they were going to fire people and consolidate; some would just have to leave.  I guess everybody was absorbed as far as I know in some way or another.  I don't recall anybody just being out on the street as a result of merger.  There was some fear that that could happen.  We got some very—I still look at the University of Wisconsin as the old University of Wisconsin without the state universities, but now that they're here and I got on the Madison campus—and I think we mentioned early in the discussion that I developed loyalties to the Madison campus consciously and subconsciously.  You looked to your leaders and we have good ones, and you know with a person like Irv Shain piloting the ship, so to speak, you have a certain confidence, and it builds a loyalty.  It isn't just the institution, sometimes the people too, and we've had some dandies in my experience.
SMAIL: You didn't—obviously your physical location didn't change at all?
EVERSON: No.
SMAIL: And you still had responsibility for Milwaukee, Green Bay and Parkside?
EVERSON: Yes.  Now there were certain functions that were performed by central administration before the institutions took over.  They had an equity in the central operation but they could pull out a little money and do their own thing.  For instance, one of the early things, Milwaukee decided they should do their own purchasing, so they developed their own purchasing department.  Extension did too, but on a much smaller scale.  You know they did a limited amount of purchasing.  Milwaukee, again, as the second largest institution, was involved in the extramural support area quite deeply, so they pulled that out and did their own administration with extramural support—built a staff, got the authorizations from regents, etc.—and then they could submit their own proposals.
SMAIL: And how did you feel about that?
EVERSON: It was okay.  We worried a little bit, you know; they were new at the game and wondered what kind of problems there would be, but they managed to get some reasonably competent people to—they didn't take people out of Madison, which is strange.  I thought that would be what they would want to do, is try to pirate some folks out of our shop to build theirs, but it didn't happen.  In the extramural support area, it didn't happen.
SMAIL: Did this leave you with too many people and not enough to do?
EVERSON: No, it was continually growing so it didn't have that big an effect.  Compared to Madison, it is a very small piece of the business, so to speak.  But things that we did hang on to centrally and continue to perform is the accounting function.  They can have their own subsystems as they see fit, but the official accounting system is still for the old University of Wisconsin part.  Now there's two separate processing shops, so to speak, in the merged University system.  There's one that operates to take care of the old Wisconsin State Universities and System Administration, and we kept everything else.  Central Administration was in our shop, of course, and that was the major shift in total service such as accounting and disbursing.  We write all the payroll checks for the processing center, the old University in other words, all the vendor checks, do the accounting, and that's pretty much it.  Purchasing is sort of a hybrid situation where Madison purchasing office will assist the other institutions as necessary.  They pretty much got on to their own for at least routine purchases.
SMAIL: Where is the other office located physically?
EVERSON: They call it the WARF Processing Center.  I know they had a computer installation in the WARF Building, and I assume it's still there.  Then they have some offices at l930 Monroe Street where the pre‑auditors and folks like that stay.  And the University of Wisconsin System controller, who's right under the vice-president, is in Van Hise Hall.  So it's kind of spread around a bit.
SMAIL: And is there computer communication between the two?
EVERSON: I think there's little direct communication between the computers, but they do supply information that will run on both systems.  For instance, accounting reports from our Madison processing center are sent to System Administration, and they can combine them with their WARF Processing Center tapes and get the information they need to send on to the state or for whatever purpose.  That's something that has been studied several times to—why have two processing centers?  Why not have one?  I think that was done at a very high level and I don't know the answers, but we still have two processing centers.
SMAIL: From your point of view, would it make more sense to have one?
EVERSON: In some respects it would, although it would be a huge operation, no question about that.  In the payroll area, for instance, it would make sense.  As it is now, when you have someone from Whitewater that does something at Madison, you have to go through a cumbersome inter‑institutional agreement arrangement so that they stay on their home payroll, so that their social security and retirement and everything stays.  Where if you had one payroll processing center it wouldn't make any difference what direct organization made the payment.  It's processed and everything would fall into place, and I suspect that there are some problems that crop up when people shift from one institution to the other, make a processing center change.  	All their fringe benefits information has to follow them, and I'm sure they're problems from time to time when that happens.  If you had it all on one it wouldn't make any difference whether the person was being paid at Platteville or at UW‑Madison; it still would go through the same payroll office.  Someday that may happen, but apparently there were good and sufficient reasons to keep them separate.  I am sure there was pressure to look at it from the highest levels of the state at one time, but it didn't change.
01:22:27
SMAIL: Have you had anything to do with the legislature?
EVERSON: Not directly.  Once in a while a call from some assemblyman or senator's office representative to look into a particular item for them, but that's rare.  Depending on the nature of the question, I would refer them to the News Service, if it were a general information‑type question.  It's dangerous to start passing out information to offices—legislative offices—when you only have a piece of the knowledge, perhaps.
SMAIL: Can you think of any example?
EVERSON: Oh, well, we've had inquiries from legislators about certain purchasing transactions, which then you respond to them directly because that's unique to your own shop.
SMAIL: You mean how much you spent for something or where you bought it?
EVERSON: Yes.  Usually an inquiry of that kind is based on some complaint by an unhappy vendor that didn't get the business and that can happen with some frequency.  Just a hypothetical example—if some legislative office or a legislative fiscal bureau person for instance said, “Hey, I'd like to know how much we spent on student services for the last five years,” or something like that, I would not attempt to answer that kind of a question from the Business Office.  I would refer that type of a question to the Budget Office.  I don't recall this happening but if someone said, “What's the current status of the teaching assistant strike?”, I would hands-off a thing like that and give him the News Service number.  Sitting there as long as I did, I didn't have a lot of inquiries from legislative offices, very rarely.  You would get them from newspapers too.
SMAIL: You do?
EVERSON: I guess that is the type of thing that particularly I would refer to the News Service—a reporter.  But if they wanted to see records which are public records, and most of our records are, then we would invite them in to take a look and make it as easy as possible.  There is an attitudinal thing there—used to be, a reporter they'd obstruct as much as possible, saying, “Hey, it's none of their business,” you know, and find things they shouldn't and so on.  But I have had the attitude, “Hey, they're going to get to see what they want ultimately anyway, so why make animosities and obstruct them and make it hard for them when eventually they're going to get there?  You might as well be friendly about it and cooperate.”  It's worked out well, I think.
SMAIL: I don't know when everything was being made public, but it was fairly recent, wasn't it, the late '60s, perhaps?
EVERSON: I think probably the statute was enacted that made most records public records.  Yes, I don't know the legislative history but I think you're right.
SMAIL: Did that affect you, did people start coming in and looking at records?
EVERSON: I don't think there was really much more of it after that, maybe a little bit.  At one point in time that I can remember very vividly, there was a person, an activist on campus, by the name of Bob Cohen.  He came marching in with a group one day and wanted to see the Math Research Center contract.  And everybody was in a dither; we didn't know whether we could show it to them or not.  Luckily Lorenz was there and he got in touch with him, and eventually they got to see it, of course.  
SMAIL: How do you feel about that? 
01:26:24
End of Tape 2, Side 1.

Tape 2, Side 2
01:26:29
EVERSON: I feel pretty much that it has to be the way it is.  It's a public institution, operated at least partially with public funds, and the public should be able to know what's going on.  The difficulty is that they can't see the whole picture, and you can take something out of context and misinterpret it so badly, and then if you have an ulterior nasty motive, you can make bad publicity out of almost anything you want.
SMAIL: Has that ever happened that you can remember?
EVERSON: One unfortunate case.  I don't know if I should relate this as a story or not, but we had a couple of doctors.  A doctor husband and wife team in the Medical School that did a lot of traveling, and for apparently medical reasons went first class quite a bit.  Somehow a reporter picked that up, and the Bureau of Financial Operations questioned the first class, too.  Unfortunately one time the Bureau of Financial Operations said, “We will approve it if you'll get a statement from the chancellor's office that this was necessary.”  And this was supposed to be zapped—just a written statement and everything would be fine.  Well, Bob Borchers was vice-chancellor at the time and I went to him about it and he said, “George, if you tell me that this is going to be the end of it and we get no bad publicity, I'll do it.”  And I said, “Well, that's my information from the Bureau of Financial Operations.  Give them that statement, that's the end of the whole thing.”  Okay, so he gave it to them.  It was only a matter of a few days; there was an article in the paper that Bob Borchers and George Everson were aiding and abetting these criminal people that were taking the state to task.  I felt so badly because my contact at the bureau—it's a state agency that has to authorize payments—was, I thought, reliable, and that would be the end of it when they got their written statement.  But evidently there was a leak somewhere in that office that called in a reporter on the subject, and I felt terrible because I had told Borchers it was the end and it didn't turn out to be, and we both got bad publicity—aiding and abetting these criminal people.  That's the only time I recall ever getting that kind of bad publicity.  And it was a letter-to-the-editor-type thing.  Evidently some person had been offended by something and wanted to make trouble.
01:29:18
SMAIL: Were you at all affected by the protest era?
EVERSON: Yes, to a degree.  For one thing, for some reason the administration building or the Peterson Building was a target of a lot of their demonstrations.  You know, they came through there several times and broke windows and even roughed up some people a time or two.  I guess it's because it's part of the administration; it's visible and you get publicity when you hit a place like that.  I mentioned the Cohen incident; that was one of the early things where they wanted to look at documents.  Of course, the Math Research Center has been under criticism by certain activists for years and years.  But there have been other times that rather violent activists have felt our dealings—we shouldn't have any dealings with the federal government, particularly in the defense area, and they have come in a couple of times and accosted the director of Research Administration—this was in recent years since I was out of there—and abused him rather bad verbally, and quite frankly, I was there one of the times and looking at the people I wasn't sure they weren't going to abuse him physically.  I think they were high on drugs, some of them at least, and fortunately the Protection and Security people came in and kept it calm and cool.  During the violent demonstrations when people were trashing buildings, ours was pretty much a target.  It was kind of interesting, but frightening at the same time, to have the National Guard and the sheriff's people and the State Patrol, local police and University police standing in front trying to keep people from coming in and doing some bad things.  It's been exciting in many ways, but I would not like to see it again.  It certainly spiced the drab life of an administrator.  There was a period there when you could smell tear gas every day.  We saw some interesting things by watching out the windows.  It was unfortunate, but I guess it all accomplished its purpose in the final analysis.  As a University person and as a tax payer it hurt me to see buildings being painted and windows being smashed for no purpose other than to make a point.  It didn't seem like the right way to go about it, but it was also impressive to see l5,000 people, mostly students, marching on the state capitol to make a point too, and retaining their composure and not doing any particular damage.
SMAIL: Yes, that was possible.
EVERSON: I think it was the fringe people that just took advantage of the situation, that enjoyed breaking windows and things like that.  I guess I was glad when it was all over.  But such a drastic way to end it.  That bombing was a sad situation.
01:32:55
SMAIL: Did you have much relationship with the faculty?  Get to know them?
EVERSON: No, not a great deal.  I think I might have mentioned when I was in the Research Administration area I had some personal contact with faculty.  Other than that the faculty that I had close relationships with would have been those that were brought on to the chancellor's staffs, such as Joe Wilson, and Cyrena came out of the academic area.
SMAIL: You said that Cyrena consulted you about—when she was considering who should be the head of Administrative Data Processing?
EVERSON: That is correct.  Which sort of surprised me in a way, but I think she felt that—well, she had a certain respect for my judgment, I think, because we had a good relationship.  But also we were a major user of the services of the area and perhaps should have something to say, at least as advice, that the person that was first in line would be acceptable.  
SMAIL: And you recommended Duwe?
EVERSON: Jack Duwe, yes.  In fact her inquiry to me was with respect to his possibly becoming the director.  And of course, I supported him 100 percent because I liked Jack and respected his abilities.
SMAIL: Did you ever have any problem getting access to data that was on computer in other parts of the University?
EVERSON: No, I guess I'd say I never really had reason to try because the things that we were interested in were on systems that were in our own area and were readily available.
01:34:57
SMAIL: Did you belong to the University Club?
EVERSON: No, I did not.
SMAIL: I'm saying that because Cafferty spoke about the possibility of there being really bad relations between the Business Office and the faculty, and cited Illinois as an example, saying that could make things very difficult, but that it wasn't the case here.
EVERSON: It was not, no.  I just never took the opportunity to join the University Club.  I had no real reason to join or no real reason not to, I guess.  In a way I guess I kind of tried to have a personal life and a University work life completely separate, and I suspect if I would have joined the University Club there would have been a melding there that would have taken away from other things.  I have been very active for the last twenty-five years or so in my church and have held some official position or something over all of that time.  I think it's important; I want to continue it and I didn't want to get involved in too many things that interfered with it.  You can only do so many things.
SMAIL:  Yes, you're smart to know that.
EVERSON: That's because I was on a task force with John.
SMAIL: Ah, that was with John Ross.  What was the task force?
01:36:23
EVERSON: It was a University System task force to study the possibility of a 12‑month payroll system for 9‑month staff.  We were instrumental, I think, in turning it around.  It was not feasible to have such a system operated by the University, and lo and behold we got almost—pretty much the desired result by turning to the financial institutions and putting out sort of a request for a proposal as to who would accommodate these folks and take part of their money during the academic year and return it to them during the summer, and turned out that the University Credit Union was the successful proposer.  They got the thing running, and I guess everybody is happy with it.  Their money is invested—what they decide to put in during their regular academic year is invested.  They get a good return on it, and it's returned to them in accordance with their wishes in the summer months.
SMAIL: I didn't know about that.  Was this a whole System-wide committee?
EVERSON: Yes, I think just about every institution in the University System was represented on that committee but—pretty good size—but because it would have represented our processing center and my division particularly, I had a vital interest in forestalling this effort to develop such a system.  It would have been tremendously expensive, as we found out when we got some estimates, and if it had to go, then something else that we were working on would have had to be delayed.  I felt that was one of the big successes I had was working on that task force and turning it off.
SMAIL: Who appointed you to the committee?
EVERSON: I think Reuben Lorenz.  I believe it was Reuben.
SMAIL: That's interesting; I mean, did he foresee that in fact this wouldn't be good for the University and know that you would argue against it?
EVERSON: I'm not sure what his attitude was, but he knew that we had studied the subject from time to time over the years.  It wasn't a new subject, but this time there was some real pressure from some of the old Chapter 37 institutions to have such a system.  But we turned them around in their thinking during the task force meetings, partly on the basis of economics, but I think partly on the basis of administrative feasibility as well. 
SMAIL: Why was John Ross on the committee?
EVERSON: He was the—they wanted a faculty member representative.  I don't know why John was particularly picked, but he was a good one.  He went along with my thinking; that's why I say that.
SMAIL: He said, “If you think of the University as a watch with many interlocking gears, springs, etc., George Everson was at the very center, made the whole thing work when the University went through a period of growth from l970 to now.”  Fifteen percent more enrollment, much bigger budget, new relationship with legislature.  How did he do it?  What kinds of problems did he face?  When was everything computerized?  How was it managed?  You discussed that.
EVERSON: Yes, I think he gave me credit for being more deeply involve—for instance, the legislative changes—I had nothing to do with them.  But kind words.
SMAIL: And so you don't say you made the whole thing work?
EVERSON: No, in all honesty one person doesn't make anything work.  It takes a whole group of people and I've had, I think, by and large excellent people managing the departments in my former division.  That's what made it work—the Ralph Martenses, the Dick Laufenbergs, Don Kochs, Don Miners.
SMAIL: How did you find them?
EVERSON: Well, as people retired—for instance, in the payroll area, George Scheler retired.  He had pretty well understudied, or had as an understudy, Dick Laufenberg, and through a competitive procedure, Dick was the best candidate and we grabbed him, of course, to continue on.  That position has been changed from classified to academic staff in the meantime which was during my tenure there.   Sometimes it's difficult to get the one you want.  This was a case where we did.  He was ideally suited for it because he had been well-trained by Scheler.  Ralph Martens has gone on forever.  He was working part-time when I came aboard in l948 and has continued in the accounting area ever since.  I guess I mentioned that as of July 1st Don Miner intended to make him Acting Assistant Director of Business Services.  Don being relatively new, he had only been around the University eight years or so as an employee and would need someone from the old school, so to speak, available and on hand, and Ralph Martens would be a very good—and I think that's what he did.
01:42:20
SMAIL: Why did you retire so early?
EVERSON: Well, a couple of reasons—thirty-six years in that rat race you might say is wearing on a person, and I had developed an ulcer at one time, and I had had some other medical difficulties with heart, etc., and I think that's what really pushed me into doing it early.  But I was tired too.  You know, when you get up at 5:45 in the morning for thirty-six years to get to work on time or something similar to that, it becomes wearing after a while, and you look forward to not having to do it.
SMAIL: Are you enjoying it?
EVERSON: So far.  Of course, I'm completely disorganized as yet.  I have been doing the things I want to do; like I love to fish, and I've been doing a lot of fishing this summer, puttering around the house, that kind of thing.  Mowing my own lawn—trying to at least.  But the thing I'm finding difficult in retirement is convincing myself that I can loaf if I want to.  It seems that I have been busy so long; you feel you have to be busy every minute and that's not true.  So I am beginning to—now if there's a Cub ball game on TV in the afternoon and I'm not fishing, I'm going to sit down and watch the Cub ball game if I feel like it, and that's great.  But I'm having to train myself to do that.
SMAIL: How does your wife feel about it?
EVERSON: Well, she's glad to have me home.  I haven't got underfoot too much yet, I guess.  In fact she's said, “Hey, I think our relationship is better that you're around more than when you were working.”  Of course I also entered into helping her with some of her little charity things.  We drive Mobile Meals every couple of weeks, and now a little more increase in that because they needed someone on the far east side so they added to the staff.  Those kinds of things are nice, too.
SMAIL: So you got early retirement, is that right?
EVERSON: I retired at sixty-two.
SMAIL: I mean isn't there a special allowance, isn't the University making it attractive to do that?
EVERSON: There was a time that it was, but it was a sunset legislation.  But then they made some overall changes in the retirement system that benefitted me considerably in that one of the features was that after twenty years of service you could retire at sixty‑two with a full retirement benefit.  Before, without the twenty years— or was it thirty—twenty or thirty you lost about 6 percent per year off your benefits.  Well, that legislation reduced that.  It's 4 l/2 percent or so now, I think, each year that you go early if you don't have the magic number of years' service, but that was a great boon to me.  I kind of felt that I should have gone under with the medical situation the way it was, I should have gone under that one year of possibility of retiring early.  In fact I kicked myself for not doing it.  But then with this new legislation that came in, I'm very fortunate that I didn't because I'm financially much better off now than I would have been because I would have lost about l8 percent of my benefits by going under that sunset law.  Well, some people never will retire, I guess, or don't want to, but I was actually looking forward to it.  I guess in addition to being, as I say, a little bit mentally tired after all the years, that the physical situation prodded me to a degree.  But I'm hoping now that getting away from all the harassment that goes with working that the medical situation may improve too.  So I have not regretted for one instant that I retired.
SMAIL: Well, it certainly—I do encounter different attitudes toward retirement.  Most people look forward to it, it seems.  Some people just dread it.
EVERSON: Some people apparently have nothing to occupy themselves, except their job, and if that's the case that's bad when they do have to leave a job.
SMAIL: Well, shall we call it quits for now? 
EVERSON: Yes, unless you want to go into this committee affiliation a little bit more.  It's just a personal history rather than of interest to the other people.  I have sat on a number of committees over the years but it really adds nothing to the history of the institution.
SMAIL: Well, let's stop now in any case.

End of Tape 2, Side 2.  
01:47:36
End of interview.

Index

Barschall, Henry H., 14
Borchers, Robert, 41
Cafferty, Neil G., 6, 8, 10, 18, 19, 20, 33, 44
Cohen, Robert, 40, 42
Doremus, Bob, 13
Duwe, Jack, 21, 33, 43
Foster, Russell, 18
Hamas, Bob, 20
Hellmuth, Phil, 13
Holt, Joseph, 20
Horkan, Ed, 12
Johnson, Gordon, 10, 22
Kenyon, Bill, 27
Laufenberg, Richard, 20, 32, 46
Lorenz, Reuben, 18, 19, 20, 33, 40, 45
Martens, Ralph, 8, 27, 32, 46, 47
Miner, Don, 23, 47
Peterson, Alfred W., 7, 8, 10, 18, 20, 33, 42
Pondrom, Cyrena, 31
Ris, Hans, 15
Ross, John, 44, 45
Scheler, George, 20, 46
Schultz, Eunice, 8
Shain, Irving, 36
Smith, Clark, 20
Tarkow, Liesl, 19
Torzewski, Zeke, 21
Van Ess, Len, 11, 19, 33
Watts, Glenn, 32, 33
Wiese, Ted, 21
Wilson, Joe, 15, 43
Yodelis-Smith, Mary Ann, 32