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You the reader should know who we are, the authors of this lengthy history, and ones strongly influencing the statistics program at MSU in the eras 1971-99. So here I go, hold on, and I'll tell you who I am! I finish by telling what/who brought me to MSU. And too, you can learn a little about the University of Wyoming (UW), Iowa State University (ISU) and Dr. Theodore A. Bancroft, Head of the Department of Statistics and Director of the Statistical Laboratory, recognizing that ISU and he in particular having had a significant influence on the Statistics program at MSU.

Just shortly out of high school, I had finished one year of college and another year at farming. This was the time of the Korean War (1950-1953), it not being hot nor fully cold yet. I saw military service coming and signed into the Air Force in January 1953, beating my draft notice by two weeks. By 1955, I had become assigned to Offutt AFB near Omaha, NE, as an administrative clerk in the personnel unit of the Strategic Air Command (SAC). This was the Headquarters for the big bombers protecting (?) the free world from Russian-communist domination by "mutually assured destruction."

The University of Omaha (later part of U. of Nebraska) provided an active night-school program at the Base. Having ample free time, I enrolled in every course that sounded interesting, took a few classes in on-campus, more by correspondences, and successfully challenged some courses too. In Wyoming cowboy lingo, I "corralled" enough credits for a Bachelor Degree. But I wasn't entirely proud of that achievement, so I enrolled for one more semester on-campus, that enabling me to sign-out from the Air Force ninety days early. It was here that I took my first course in Statistics, it offering little inferential reasoning, but concentrating largely on writing meaningful informational statements and constructing interpretable displays.

At the University of Wyoming   

It was on a cold 20-below January day in 1957 that my new bride Lillian and I began a trip to Laramie, Wyoming to begin a graduate program within the College of Commerce and Industry (C&I) at the University of Wyoming (UW). Enroll in what courses? I had no idea ahead of time; it didn't matter; I expected to be back on the home farm near Riverton, Wyoming, soon or else working as a carpenter, my childhood dream! C&I was home for an accounting department, another department named industrial management, and too, a statistics department. Economics moved into C&I a few years later.

I was paying my own way on the GI Bill with no graduate assistantship and enrolled in any courses again where ever I pleased. Dr. Edward C. Bryant (PhD, ISU 1955), Head of the Statistics Department, was a valuable mentor at that time. Bryant nominated me, on the basis of my first two quarters at UW, for an assistantship through the Western Data Processing Center and funded by IBM. This assistantship was discussed in the Era 3 topic: "Statistical Calculating Facilities: 1920-1950s" (select to view).

I had about two years of courses "under my belt" and I finally had settled in early 1959 upon a MS thesis topic "An Examination of Managements Objectives for Installing an Electronic Data Processing System," it being based on published data. I was awarded an MS in Industrial Management (1960). Someone had advised me, to save back all of those statistics courses and to assign them later to another MS, which I did.

And now a recess in time, Lillian and I would soon be a family of three and we needed more income security. I had applied for employment at three computer companies, completing interviews at two. I got a quick rejection from one, me concluding that I didn't pass the "cigar-smoke test" related to the typical business conference of that time. I had not heard back from another where I thought I had provided a good interview, and yet at another, IBM the elite of the three, seemed to have little interest in me.

Employed by Division of Business and Economic Research

A potential job in the Division of Business and Economic Research, another department in C&I at UW, moved into a higher priority. I completed my interviews for it and was offered the job for an eleven month contract at $6,000 starting June 8, 1959 (worth $50,000 in 2017 dollars). That was about twice what I was receiving from my assistantship and GI bill combined. Yes, Lillian and I thought we could "get by" on that. It too being a little better than farming or being a carpenter, I accepted their offer! A significantly higher paying offer from IBM arrived a few days too late.

Many characteristics of the Division were similar to those of the Montana Agricultural Experiment Station (MAES), but not for agriculture and instead supporting Wyoming businesses. It offered a channel for supporting research effort by C&I faculty and graduate students. It had been started about three years earlier in 1956 by Floyd K. Harmston, now the Director of the Division. Harmston had completed an MS in Economics and prelims for a PhD. He, I and one secretary were the only UW-budgeted staff. Budget expansion through use of research grants was assumed.

All faculty in C&I were quite young. While only two held completed doctoral degrees, most had passed qualifying exams and were considering or conducting research for their dissertations. The notion of a modern university having twin responsibilities for both teaching and research was reaching UW by that time.

Many smaller western university faculties faced similar conditions. Student enrollment had doubled, and then tripled, after World War II with the easily afforded entrance provided by the GI Bill. Experienced faculty with terminal degrees were bought up quickly by the bigger prestigious universities. They simply were not available to new programs offering only master-level work in small universities like UW. In one sense, these places “grew their own” by selecting quality teachers and eager learners who had progressed beyond a master’s level. Then, they encouraged departure from the campus for advanced coursework at one of the prestigious universities and tried to develop an environment conducive to completing research for a dissertation.

We made extensive use of additional funds provided by various state agencies such as the Wyoming Natural Resource Board (WNRB), the Wyoming Travel Commission and the State Highway Department. The Division was obligated to provide some general service to the Wyoming public by reporting on general economic activity and by publishing results of its business research.

WNRB had separated Wyoming into six “local economic systems” and wanted the Division to conduct a study of each area. Results expected were 100-page booklets contributing to “a better understanding of the local economy and help point the way toward some of the logical places for emphasis in future development” (statement of purpose in one study). On my first day at work, I was pointed to a box of dusty records from interviewing businesses in the small town of Jackson near Teton National Park, and more records from interviewing departing auto travelers. Harmston handed me a completed booklet for another study area and told me to produce a booklet like that one for Teton County.

The next year (1960) WNRB was able to fund a study for a four-county economic area specified as Southwestern Wyoming (SW). Too, the Wyoming Travel Commission wanted us to do another study of auto travelers coming into the State about like Harmston had conducted for Teton County, and I had written up. I was assigned these two big projects, the Wyoming Traveler study and the SW study. Harmston had other “hot irons in the fire” in cowboy lingo.

I applied everything I had learned about sampling in Dr. Bryant’s course, and even more, in organizing the study of travelers. We interviewed travelers leaving the State at six exits during selected sampling-designated periods over that long summer. You may imagine all of the training for interviewing crews and of coordination with the Wyoming Highway Department. I will say little more about the traveler study except to note that I produced a small 50-page version and another more detailed 150-page version for publication in 1961.

The other project assigned to me, the SW study, brought in an equal amount of learning in developing sampling frames of businesses and interviewing material. We used a high degree of stratification and often applied ratio estimation when secondary information was available such as taxes, employment, and even some census data. We interviewed most selected businesses directly, but used mail-in surveys for agriculture, households and a few businesses. Possibly surprising to some readers, the UW was very much respected by Wyoming people and we received a high degree of cooperation with our interviewers and had good mail-back rates. I was able to hire nine good interviewers that summer and divided them into crews of size three for work on the auto traveler study. The crew in western Wyoming also interviewed businesses.

Harmston and I wanted to try a new approach in describing SW economic activity through developing a Leontief Input-Output model. [NOTE: Leontief, Wassily W., The Structure of American Economy, 1919-1939. NY, Oxford U. Press, 1959] Such had been tried on a national level before, but we seemed to be the first to attempt such for a small local economy. Likely every reader has heard of “stimulant actions” by a national leader, such as a cut-in-taxes leading to an expected increase in GNP (Gross National Product) through the “multiplier effect.” The same “multiplier effect” occurs in Teton County with the visitors to the area providing the Input dollars and the Output being all of the resulting business for motels, gas stations, groceries, local government, service employment, etc., as the input dollars are spread around. Moving forward, I will call these various economic actors by the term industries herein.

The numeric solution produced from a Leontief model provides multipliers for each of the industries defined in its matrix, that size being huge for a large economy, and such an attempt presents a huge data assembly problem. I defined only 26 separate industries for the SW study, and I specify the symbol A to represent my central 26x26 matrix, it being the main feature in the analysis. Entries within columns of A would be our estimates of the proportion of purchases for the industry assigned to that column from every other industry, each generally being small, but all proportions in a column adding to one. As an example, a dollar paid for lodging into its column would show how many cents would be paid out from that original dollar to a grocery and how much paid for labor (to the maids, into the household industry).

Some simple algebraic manipulation places matrix A , with matrix identity I, into an inverse matrix expression (I - A) -1, which we needed to calculate. Calculating an inverse for a 26⨯26 matrix on the new, but still antiquated UW’s Bendix G-15 by using the algorithms we now use, in my guess, would have taken the large part of a day. And too, we may have faced register overflow and calculation failure from the single-precision arithmetic it would be using. However, the needed inverse matrix can also be expressed (I + A + A2 + A3 + - - -) which for small elements, aij << 1, can provide a quick approximate inverse. Using that, we stopped at the product specified by third or fourth power.

The entries in the inverse matrix show both the direct and the indirect affect of a dollar coming into the local economy. A dollar paid for lodging in particular “bounced around from industry to industry” to produce $2.28 of business altogether, that being the sum of the Lodging industry column. My SW booklet was published as A study of the resources, people & economy of Southwestern Wyoming,1962, 112 pages. We published a methods-level book Application of an Input-Output Framework in a Community Economic System,1967, 125 pages, U. of Missouri Press. The MSU Library catalog lists the latter book but not my SW study. Several of Harmston’s similar booklets are listed. Harmston and I provided consulting assistance to both the U. of Utah and U. of Denver in their attempt to repeat our kind of economic analysis.

I did my matrix multiplications on the Bendix G-15 computer in the early morning hours (4-8 a.m.). I don’t remember any subroutines for matrix multiplication being available, so I likely wrote my own for row -to-column product summation procedure. We had to punch our data and any needed programs (coding) into paper tape. I often made errors and had to start over upon finding such when printing out my tape.

The G-15 could be called a “washing-machine computer” producing clean results. A sister Division of the Bendix Corporation produced automatic clothes washers, common to many laundromats. It was smaller than the 2-3 ton IBM 650, the Bendix G-15 weighing about ½ ton. It had a rotating drum memory of 2160 29-bit words. A working model cost $60,000 and rented for $1,285 monthly [NOTE: Wikipedia].

My work in the Division continued on in a similar way into 1963. I had however, discovered a good topic for a thesis in statistics. We used many simple ratio estimators for very small samples. A ratio estimator is known to have bias for small sample and that bias could have aggregated in one direction across our many small strata. I found one unbiased ratio estimator and proposed a modification that I thought might improve its efficiency. This grew into a suitable thesis topic having a title “Some Evaluation of an Unbiased Ratio Estimator.” That, along with the graduate courses I had saved back, provided an MS in statistics (1963).

With two MS level degrees and a good record in research, I was advanced in faculty rank to assistant professor and granted continuing tenure. Harmston temporarily left UW to finish his PhD at the U. of Missouri, basing his dissertation on developing an input-output model for the State of Missouri. I stepped into his place as acting director of the Division for 1963-6 4. And then it was my turn to begin a two-year leave from UW to start toward a PhD at ISU in fall 1964.

At Iowa State University

My first contact with someone at ISU was with Dr. Theodore A. Bancroft, Head of the Department of Statistics and Director of the Statistical Laboratory. Through his office, he directly handled all paperwork for incoming graduate students. As noted in his obituary[NOTE: Wayne Fuller and Oscar Kempthorne, American Statistician Vol. 41, 1987, issue 3] “he cared deeply about the lives and the concerns of students” ... [and conducted] ... “the initial advising of all graduate students within the department.” He in particular over the years, turned me into a statistician!

The Bancrofts invited us new students to a picnic that first week, likely about a dozen of us. My family having our four young children stood out, one a five-month old baby and the oldest going into kindergarten. Mrs. Bancroft, Lenore, made a special point to visit with my wife, Lillian, inquiring about how we were doing. Did you find adequate housing? We had reserved space in one of those old wartime Butler huts then on the ISU campus. A family of six could hardly fit in one. They were famous for heat in the summer, cold in the winter, drafts and dust when the wind blew, and continual uncomfortableness all year around.

A few days before leaving Laramie, a friend had stopped by and told me that he was going to Ames to see his uncle, a barber. Barbers are noteworthy information sources. I thought no more of it. But then a few days later, this friend called me from Ames, telling about a nearly new three-bedroom house a little south of Ames for $125 monthly. Renting our old little house in Laramie would cover two-thirds of that. Do you want it? Yes! — and the owner held it for us upon perhaps the word-of-a-barber until we arrived a week later.

We dozen new students at the picnic were one or two women, about three foreign students, one man older than me, about half of us were starting toward an MS and the other half going toward a PhD. Fuller and Kempthorne noted 25 graduate students altogether and 30 faculty members in 1972. In 1964-67 my guess would have been 20 faculty members, based on ten usually attending the weekly seminars. Yet some could have been away on Bancroft’s many off-campus projects such as the four of us on the Chapingo-Mexican project which I will tell about later.

I had been granted a teaching assistantship, and would be working with two others to handle the recitation sections for a course like our Stat 216 at MSU. The course used Elements of Statistical Inference by David V. Huntsberger, and he was our supervisor. A young women regular faculty member provided three weekly lectures in two large auditoriums. We three assistants each were assigned three once-a-week recitations sections, having enrollment of 15-25 students. We made up our own quizzes, but worked together on a weekly lab, mid-terms and a final exam, the final with approval by Huntsberger. We assistants issued the final grades and in a sense held the responsibility that the course material actually was learned.

I was comfortable delivering talks upon my work back at Laramie but I faced this new experience with some trepidation. Nevertheless, I soon achieved good rapport with my students and I discovered that I could enjoy teaching too. Complimentary student comments and other measures of teaching performance reached my supervisor. I was making satisfactory progress in my own coursework.

Huntsberger and Bancroft seemed sufficiently pleased with my teaching that I was assigned to teach a single section of a senior-level statistical methods course the next year (fall 1965), a course similar to Stat 324-5 here at MSU, but at the 400 level. Enrollment came from across the campus, and particularly several undergraduates statistics majors. I remember the text selected for me being B. Ostle’s Statistics in Research, Iowa State U. Press. One or more of my labs were directed toward using statistical software available on the IBM 360 then at ISU. There were two other sections, one with “a marginal direction on plants” and another “toward animals.”

My Graduate Program

Reaching the middle of winter quarter that first year, I had become well acquainted with other graduate students, the teaching staff — and they with me. I was taking advanced calculus to overcome some of my deficiency in math. I was enrolled in an advanced sampling course (that one easy for me due to my coursework and experience at UW) and design of experiments taught by Kempthorne (his Design and Analysis of Experiments, with some unnecessary material in the forthcoming computer age).

That spring, I “sat-in-on” a more practical 500-level experimental design course taught by Foster Cady (I’ll tell of him later in the Chapingo-Mexican project). I had completed the intermediate statistical methods course taught by Bancroft (his Topics in Intermediate Statistical Methods, a little out-of-date for the computer age) and a linear models course (book by ISU graduate Frank Graybill, Theory and Application of the Linear Model, a good course for me, some displays were shown from the IBM 360.)

I was looking toward the forthcoming more advanced statistics courses and especially that upper-level statistical theory with much apprehension. These were directed more toward preparing a student to advance the science of statistics, and not toward just applying statistical methods. “Advancing the science of statistics?”, that was not something I felt capable of doing, “a mathematical kind of person?”, no that was not me!

At sometime during that mid winter, Dr. Bancroft called me to his office to develop my graduate program in more detail. He had looked at my vita describing my time at UW. He told me that the ISU staff in economics and in statistics wanted to try a new double major concept for doctoral work spanning both economics and statistics. The prospective candidates would complete graduate coursework and prepare for a near doctoral-level understanding in both fields. The joint degree would prepare one to become consultants, teachers, etc. But they would not necessarily concentrate upon preparing to extend the science of either. The student would take the same qualifying exams used by doctoral candidates in both fields - - though with some possible exceptions and substitutions to meet their specific goal of study.

A double major? That was just what I wanted to do too! “I was their student and I jumped at the chance.” Of course I would need to “start over again” with at least a full year of coursework now in advanced economics, and competing with other students majoring in economics. I selected (really was assigned) an advisor in statistics (Wayne A. Fuller, staff member in statistics, PhD in agricultural economics, 1959) and across the campus in economics (George Ladd). I only registered for one more course in statistics at ISU, that being econometrics taught by Fuller, using his notes. Two-thirds of my two years of coursework at ISU was actually in economics.

Boxes of Data,A Gift?

Time has moved forward into the middle of fall quarter 1965, beginning my second year at ISU. I had no thoughts whatsoever about a research topic for a dissertation. I was teaching in statistics but often hurrying across campus to attend a course in economics. A crack at those tough qualifying exams, now in two areas, lay on the horizon for me at the end of the forthcoming summer of 1966.

Unexpectedly, Dr. Bancroft and my program advisor Fuller brought me news of a potential gift — seven boxes of punched cards, several boxes of completed interview questionnaires, and a box of clipped newspaper ads placed by grocery stores. These were dusty research data differing little from those Floyd Harmston dropped in my lap a few years earlier on my first day in my new job at UW. These data related to eight weeks of meat purchases in summer 1963 by a panel of 624 families in Webster County, Iowa (forty miles NW of Ames). The Statistical Laboratory had designed the study and collected the data for the Iowa Agricultural Experiment Station. An earlier funding source for data analysis had abandoned the project. But now, Bancroft had convinced the American Meat Institute to cover costs to complete the study.

Dr. Bancroft expressed “your back-ground is equal to or better than anyone on campus to complete an analysis and write up appropriate reports.” I would be supervised by faculty from both Agricultural Economics and Statistics. And, “you will surely see some special problem during that effort which would be suitable for a doctoral dissertation. Your appointment would be changed over to the Agricultural Experiment Station for three-fourths-time work at $6,500 annually.” That would be more than my starting salary back at UW five years earlier.

“You can keep your current office in Statistics, set your own schedule to finish your courses in economics and prepare for qualifying exams, but please finish this uncompleted project for us. We need it Dick, you can do it! Do you want the job?” Once again, I did — very much so! This fatter paycheck would more than double my teaching assistantship. My GI Bill money source had run-out. Lillian had refrained from even buying needed lipstick and looked forward to a professional haircut.

I continued teaching the statistical methods course I had been assigned through winter quarter in order to carry those students through their two-quarter sequence. By spring 1966 I was ready to look into the boxes and to start thinking a little about data analysis. Only a couple more courses in economics remained to be taken on my program of study. The Statistical Laboratory offered a big room quite close to my office supervised by Norman V. Strand, it being used by projects like mine and others Bancroft had taken on. The project budget adequately supported needed additional clerical work such card-punching of newspaper information. The computer center was even close by, for moving those heavy punched-card boxes by hand-truck and back after loading to magnetic tape - - that was quite “a new day” compared to five years back at UW on that little Bendix G-15.

Preparation for qualifying examinations occupied most of my summer. The qualifying exam in statistics was scheduled first in the fall (it having about three days worth of problems – 9a.m. to 5p.m. – or later, as long as we needed). I achieved high marks on this first one and was “on top of the world!” Economics came next, and in two parts. I passed the first on “micro” economics and failed the second on “macro.” I renewed my study effort and I, with a couple of other students, remedied the second exam along in January.

Study for the written exam in statistics was made easier by the Statistics Department supplying access to a file of exam question used over about the previous five years. The students in economics may have assembled a similar file in an ad hoc way by remembering and recording questions asked earlier. My residing over in Statistics kept me from such help, and also, I never did learn to “talk like an economist,” which always cost me points in any of my oral exams.

Another Splendid Opportunity

Data analysis filled most of my time following the fall-exam period. I was making good progress on both my dissertation problem and a full general analysis of the panel data. Potential graduates usually start looking for their new jobs in early spring. I had given no attention whatsoever to that. Even though now entering the third year away from UW, my tenured status at UW enabled a return — and my believing that they wanted me back. I simply was too busy working on “pork chop and wiener pricing” to think about future work right then. With much optimism, I believed I could finish possibly by the middle of the coming summer.

But then in December 1966, Dr. Bancroft brought me one more new “splendid opportunity that just fit my talents and experience.” ISU had received a grant a couple years back from the Ford Foundation to develop new graduate programs in statistics and agricultural economics at Mexico’s National Agricultural School. I looked up the location on a map — just across the old Texcoco Lake bed northeast of Mexico City at Chapingo.

I was well acquainted with Foster Cady, the ISU statistics faculty member who joined that project the summer of 1965. “Wouldn’t you like to look over the situation? We’ll fly you down before you give us your final decision.” Knowing us, you may guess Lillian’s and my coming decision.

The project paid for my tutoring in Spanish. I found a tutor, Mrs. Isabel Hanson, the Mexican wife of a graduate student in agricultural economics. They would soon be moving to Mexico for work on the project too. My two years of Spanish in high school finally proved valuable. In hindsight, I could have substituted mastery of Spanish for merely passing reading competency in both French and Russian. I spent a couple years trying to learn Russian, starting that back at Laramie.

But how can I finish my doctoral research, write up a satisfactory dissertation, produce a publication for the American Meat Institute, write an Experiment Station Bulletin, and prepare for a move outside the U.S.? My family needed passports, visas, physicals, shots, extra clothing, school books, etc. etc. Another race with time began! They wanted me to be in Mexico by the middle of the summer. I must work hard!

A draft for an Experiment Station bulletin was finished (R.E. Lund, L.A. Duewer, W.R. Maki and N.V. Strand, Characteristics of Demand for Meat by Consumers in Webster County, Iowa, Special Report 56, Iowa Agricultural Experiment Station, February 1968).  I flew to Chicago to give a presentation to persons at the American Meat Institute — “telling them that young low-income families like ours were the biggest consumers of wieners!” I wrote and defended my dissertation successfully in early June (Factors Affecting Consumer Demand for Meat, Webster County, Iowa,1967). I did not pass through a graduation ceremony. My diploma was mailed to our home in Mexico.

At Chapingo, Briefly

The undergraduate students were out-on-strike when we arrived. They had taken over the campus and closed it down! We could go onto campus to get our mail at its little post office and fresh milk from the dairy, but that was all. The problem was political, about which I had little insight. Mexican politics often has its roots on its campuses. I used this six-week recess to improve my Spanish. I rode one of those crowded buses into the City to attend a language institute, usually standing the whole ride.

I joined a team of three other young faculty members from ISU. These were Foster Cady already mentioned, Donald K. Hotchkiss another young ISU statistician and another man from agricultural economics whose name is unremembered. Cady, having been at Chapingo two years would soon leave. Barry C. Arnold joined in summer 1968, he was somewhat new to ISU, held a PhD from Stanford University (1965). Our presence and working in their place, enabled 6-8 regular Mexican faculty assigned to the College to complete their PhDs in “recognized” universities, most at ISU and a couple at North Carolina State U.

Briefly, our assignment was to create the new graduate programs in statistics and in agricultural economics. We served as ISU paid experienced visiting faculty in running a modern U.S.-style teaching and research system, but perhaps more specifically, an ISU model. We taught courses, helped develop graduate curricula, assisted graduate students on their thesis research and consulted with agricultural researchers on statistical problems. Occasionally we offered off-campus lectures at other colleges and at governmental research facilities.

Typical student class enrollment was similar to that for my last semester in 1969: 15 in second-term statistical methods, 6 in econometrics and 4 in sampling theory, for which I kept a record. All of our teaching and most statistical consultation was in our limited Spanish. We referred to English language books kept on reserve for the students which they generally liked better than most often poorly translated books into Spanish. Perhaps as expected for my three named courses, the books were Snedecor and Cochran, Statistical Methods, new 6th then, Cochran, Sampling techniques, 2nd ,and notes for econometrics. Arnold referred his theory-enrolled students to Hogg and Craig, Introduction to Mathematical Statistics.

The Statistical Center operated an IBM 1620 with appropriate supporting punched-card equipment. A regression program and one for ANOVA for balanced designs with covariables, were available for student labs and other research, these having about the same capability as software back at ISU on its IBM 360. (Far better than I found at MSU when first coming here in 1969.)

Graduate student enrollment in statistics averaged about six students from which about three completed an M.S. each year. Theses generally related to problems found in agricultural research. We attended and participated in all Mexican National Statistical meetings and were funded to attend one national meeting in U.S. I fully believe the opportunity for professional growth, including Chapingo’s library, seemed equal or better than at MSU, my first few years here.

Appointment into the Department of Mathematics, MSU

I had arranged an interview trip for a teaching position at Drake University, a small privately funded university in Des Moines, Iowa. I drove into Mexico City a couple of days before departure to confirm my plane reservations. Phoning from Chapingo was difficult and unreliable. A phone message awaited me at the Ford Foundation office.

Dr. Lewis Barrett, head of the Department of Mathematics at MSU wanted me to come for an interview too. Once again Dr. Bancroft unknowingly to me had been at work on my behalf. Knowing nothing about the potential job and seeing that it was in a mathematics department, I would have declined to look further if anyone other than Dr. Bancroft had advised me to consider it. I altered my plane reservations, but still interviewing at Drake University first. Des Moines would be a good place to live and it was close to some of Lillian’s family.

Drake’s job looked so good that I nearly accepted their offer immediately. It was at an Associate Professor level, one step up from my rank at UW. The dean even drove me around to look for housing; they truly wanted me! – me as an economist as much as a statistician.

I went on to MSU, largely just as a courtesy. I woke early in Bozeman to bright sunshine. Absorbing that beautiful morning, and with mountains encircling the city on three sides, I knew I had come home!

My interview went well. The job surprisingly fitted my background even better than the one at Drake. Tiahrt ushered me before important deans, and even into meeting some faculty in the Economics Department. Barrett quickly arranged a reception at his house that evening where I met several math faculty. But could I fit into a Mathematics Department? Could they stand a “halfway” economist in their midst?

Barrett conveyed an offer at only an assistant professor level and a little lower salary than at Drake. Nevertheless, I signed an acceptance anyway that following morning. This was back when a university could hire a person they really wanted without a formal search. I bought a new house that afternoon (our present one at 319 North 15th Avenue) and returned to Mexico on the evening flight. Now fifty years later, I’m still pleased with that quick decision!

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Last revised: 2021-06-04