BETTY NEIYES INTERVIEW

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... Betty Neiyes. Today is April 16, 1979, and my name is Linda Dewey.

Dewey: I guess we can begin, Betty. You're a teacher in school, and have been since probably near the very beginning.
Neiyes: Practically the very beginning. Dr. Lewis J. McDonald, our first superintendent, came July 1, 1957. School started with [six] teachers: Mr. and Mrs. Steve O'Brien, and Mr. and Mrs. Howe, and two more, Mr. and Mrs. Scott. And it was in one butler building that the Bureau [of Reclamation] managed to put up with us by putting down that it was to be a warehouse, and this way it was justified. Bessie Kidd Best [phonetic spelling], who has been county superintendent of schools of Coconino County--was--for over forty years, talked to the board of supervisors in Flagstaff and talked them into starting an accommodation school for the construction workers here in Page. Of course the workers were here to build Glen Canyon Dam. So Dr. McDonald took a leave of absence at Mrs. Best's request, to organize the school. And he was happy to do it and thought it an exciting project. He took this leave from Northern Arizona University, in order to do this. Dr. McDonald had been my very first boss in 1944 in Jerome, and he had taught my husband in high school. Now, it was because of him we came to school. He needed Ralph and he needed another teacher, and so we arrived November 2, 1957.
Dr. McDonald laughed a lot about [t]his, in July, when a reporter from The Salt Lake Tribune came down to interview him and asked, "Where can I find the superintendent?" And Dr. McDonald said, "I am." And there he was, with a plumber's helper in his hand. He had been cleaning out one of the bathrooms, or trying to get it to work. And so he thought that was a nice beginning.
School was so much fun. By the time I got here, there were two butler buildings up, and [they] had started the third, because more and more workers were coming in. There were teachers for elementary and junior high. High school, the teachers who were hired for that, were to help the youngsters with correspondence courses, because an accommodation school usually doesn't have a high school. But it grew so, and Mrs. Best was able to get this arranged, so that in the fall of 1958 we had regular high school classes, with library and study hall.
Dr. McDonald then just stayed from July 1, 1957 until January 1, 1958. Mr. Roy Gilbert came to take his place, and he was superintendent until October of 1958. During the summer of 1958, we knew that many more classrooms were needed, so Mr. Gilbert and Percy Marx [phonetic spelling], who was a surveyor for Mary Chapman Scott [phonetic spelling], down on the dam, went to Washington with one or two more to appeal to our representatives and senators, and got money for temporary--and "temporary" should be in quotes--elementary school buildings. And so they were put up looking sort of like army barracks on Seventh Avenue, across from the Catholic church. And there they remained until 1976. And they were used all but a few years of those times, for school buildings. And so they were not as temporary as all that. But we were two weeks late getting started in school because they were working three 8-hour shifts, building those buildings for us, and they put them up in two weeks. And so we had to go about four or five Saturdays and an extra week or two--the elementary school did--in the spring of 1959, to make up for the time that we had missed.
There was such an air of excitement, and we had the feeling of being pioneers in the school, because when we first came in early 1957, there were just stacks and stacks of three or four different versions of music books, and we had two lovely pianos. But we did not have more than a dozen copies of readers of one level or one kind. But music we had! And Mrs. Best, bless her dear heart, one of her main concerns was getting a flagpole up. And so that was one of the first things my husband did, and that was winter of 1958, and had a flagpole for our school.
The transit homes along South Navajo and Aspen had been put up for the Bureau of Reclamation workers. Five were turned over to school personnel, and we lived in one. The superintendent had his office in the first one, closest to the school. And for a year or two, the first grade met over in there. And they were in there conducting classes when there was a blast outside, and one corner sort of sank a little bit. (laughter) Gave them all a start. My room was right next to the door, and when the alarm would go off for blasting--which they were leveling off out there--one particular time it was really close. Well, it was right almost next to the stoop that was built in front of it to get into the door of our school. And when it went off, I said, "Well, children, maybe we'd better get under our desks until the blast goes off." And so we did, and we stayed and we stayed and we stayed, until finally I began to feel silly and I said, "Well, we can't have this, let's go on with our work." And we did, and when the blast went off, it was not--we jumped a little, but ignored it, except for that.
Chris Sheff [phonetic spelling] who is now a teacher on our staff in the high school and has been a councilman and president of our local education association, was in my first fourth-grade class, and he still remembers getting under the desk, and then getting out. But it was fun, the whole thing was fun. The children loved it, the parents were so cooperative and excited about everything, and wanting everything to be so that their children would not be deprived, even though we were living in such a remote area. Because when we first came, the Babbitts Thriftway and the service station and the post office and the bank was in a trailer then, had just been in operation a week when we came in November. So they had been going to town--Flagstaff--to get things. The only way to get across to the other side, of course, was the famous footbridge, which I'm sure has been covered by other interviewees.
Dewey: You might tell about that. It's kind of nice to get some differing viewpoints of things.
Neiyes: Well, as the kids say now, it was [a bit hairy?]. We had a lot of tourists drive fifty miles from the main highway, just to see the construction of the dam, and to drive down. And the only way across the river was--it wasn't really a swinging bridge, it was on cables from the top, too--but the bottom was cyclone fencing and the side, chicken wire, and just a little cable. And being, what, 750 feet above the canyon floor, and you could look down through.... When I first tried to go over it, the fencing hadn't been attached, so that it was sort of wrinkled. Ralph said, "Don't look down." Well, then I knew I would trip and fall. And my children were leaning over the side with nothing between them and.... It just terrified me, so I turned around, and it took me about fifteen minutes to walk twenty feet back. I almost froze. But strong construction men did freeze out there.
Dewey: Did it move in the wind?
Neiyes: No, it did not swing back and forth or anything, but it sort of gave a little as you walked across. Later on I was able to get across it, and it was quite a thing, getting across that bridge. It just added to the excitement, and it was fun. Tourists would come and watch the ironworkers building the bridge, and sometimes, just if they were bored, the workers would get down and act as though they were falling off and land into the net below.
Dewey: Oh! just to scare the....
Neiyes: People who were watching. But that bridge was just wonderful. It had not a single lost-time accident in the building of that bridge.
Dewey: Did they lose any people when they were building the dam, do you know?
Neiyes: Oh, yes, I think. I don't remember how many--not more than seven or eight, I think. But some union officials had said that there would be probably around ninety-eight in the building of the dam. But there wasn't. And every one could have been prevented. One, I know, is the monkey cage, which took men down from the top of the dam, down to the floor. Something slipped and it went down, and the man was standing below. And another one, a big earth mover or scoop swung around and hit another man. And they were all really preventable. They were manmade errors. And they had an outstanding safety record building the dam. When you think of all the high scalers going up and down that canyon wall with heavy surveying instruments and so on, on little flimsy things, it was a beautiful, beautiful demonstration of man's capabilities. The bridge, of course, it shows on record, one year, it was 1960, I think, that it was finished, and it won the award for the most beautiful construction of the year by some engineering organization. And still it is just absolutely so beautiful, the way it was built. And when the two sides met, they were off less than a sixteenth of an inch.
Dewey: Oh, my word!
Neiyes: Yes. They started from each canyon side.
Dewey: That's amazing, isn't it?
Neiyes: Yes. And the one arch. And so what they did--you'd have to ask a physicist or construction worker--they waited 'til nightfall, because it needed either to expand or contract, whichever it is, and then it met exactly right. And so it has been wonderful. We took our school children down on the celebration date, the day it was dedicated. And the safety record was phenomenal.
That first spring of 1958 there were no paved streets, and there were no street lights, and there were no trees, not a blade of grass. No houses, just the transit homes and then across town the mobile home courts for the construction workers. My husband drove the bus, the school children, over, simply because it was safer that way. There was so much blasting going on, getting streets laid out, that everyone felt safer to have the youngsters not walking home.
Dewey: What did your husband do?
Neiyes: He was maintenance foreman.
Dewey: At the dam?
Neiyes: No, at school. And he was until 1969, when he passed away.
Dewey: What brought you here?
Neiyes: Dr. McDonald did. I had taught for him, and he had been Ralph's scoutmaster and his teacher in high school. And then he was the one who hired Ralph to be maintenance foreman in the Jerome-Clarkdale Schools, when they combined. And he needed Ralph, and he needed more teachers, when there was an extra building ready. So that is why we came, and we were never sorry.
Dewey: What did you think of this place when you first saw it?
[Next 15 min. is a repeat of everything recorded so far. (Tr.)]
Neiyes: First saw it in September, because Louie didn't want us to come up until I had seen it. Ralph had been up in July with Dr. McDonald. But it was one of those perfectly gorgeous fall days, and we were just enchanted with ___________. (inaudible, both talking at once)
Dewey: Isn't it pretty here in the fall?
Neiyes: Yes, and the differentness [sic] of it, no paved streets and hardly anything at all. So we said yes, we'd come. And then we came in November, as I said, because that's when the other butler building was ready for another teacher. And then everything that was needed, nearly, Louie--Dr. McDonald--would send Ralph back to Jerome, where Dr. McDonald had been a teacher and principal and superintendent many years, and said, "See what you can get." So Ralph salvaged some children's desks, and I wish I had some now, because if they're not antiques, they're collectables. They're the old, old desks. And we used those until more and more we could get the new ones.
That summer, I was down in Jerome, and so I went through the old--wherever you put old books--with one of the principals.
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Dewey: Okay, I think it's working now.
Neiyes: We picked up about 200 books for our elementary library, at ten cents a copy. And that was neat. Just this year, Mrs. Huntley [phonetic spelling], our elementary librarian, showed me a book that she said had been there with the number 2 or whatever on it, from the very beginning. And I said, "Yes...." (tape speeds up and slips into oblivion, remainder of Side B is blank)
[END OF INTERVIEW]