Class of 1928. Conducted by Marilyn Summers on September the 27th, 1994 at the Georgia Tech Alumni Faculty House. The subject of this interview is student life at Georgia Tech. Thank you for this opportunity. I'll start my little speech by saying I moved from Athens to Atlanta in 1921. At the age of 15, I learned how to drive a T-Model Ford. And if y'all had never driven a Ford, T-Model Ford, you don't know what I'm talking about. To stop, you have to mash the clutch halfway in and mash the brakes on. To go, you mash the clutch all the way in to make it go. That was when I was 15 years old. I moved to Atlanta. I attended Tech High on Lucky Street. While there, I enjoyed the school. We had a good basketball team, we had a football team, and I also enjoyed the shops. I liked shops. 

One day after graduating at a drugstore, a bunch of us who had just graduated saw a tech graduate in the drugstore and we asked him, the first thing was, he had said that he had graduated and we said, what were your grades? and he looked at us like we were crazy. He says, I graduated. 

So we knew what he was talking about, then we forgot about grades because having just graduated from high school, grades were important. 

When I started off at Tech, I registered in electrical engineering to become electrical engineer and I registered in the co-op program. program. I got a job working at a lumber mill. 

Early one October morning, it was a little chilly, I reported to the lumber mill somewhere on Marietta Street, I don't remember exactly and it was a bunch of men standing around with a big drum and a fire in it, warming themselves and chewing tobacco and spitting in the fire. 

So I walked up to them and said My name is A. Harris Goldwasser. I'm a Georgia Tech student. I'm going to become electrical engineer. The foreman was there and he scratched his head and said, well, let's see. Uncle Bill is loading a wagon with two by fours right down over there. You go over there and help him load that wagon with those two by fours. 

I said to myself I'm going to be an electrical engineer what is it doing loading two by fours on a wagon so I then turned to the foreman and said I'm going to be an electrical engineer he says I don't give a **** what you're going to be there is a sawmill right close to where that wagon is you can listen to the humming of that motor while you load that wagon I said I do thank you for the job and I left it and I come back and registered in regular school that was the beginning on freshman year I don't really have a whole lot to remember except I do remember I never was good in English and we had a professor that pointed me out the first day of the class these are not going to pass well I did not pass and to my happiness he wasn't back the next year I thought I was good in maths. I had in high school, at Tech High, I had geometry, and I loved it. I knew it. 

But some reason or another, I couldn't get it over to the professor. And if you made a certain grade, you did not have to stand the exam. 

So I threatened the professor, and I said, I know what it is. I know geometry. I'm going to get 100 on this exam. And he laughed at me. I didn't make the 100, but I got 98. I had previously said that I liked shops. I took wood shops, Uncle Jaime. He was an elderly fellow, and I wish now I remembered more about him. He was very nice. Everybody loved him on the campus. He had the wood shop. I took the founder shop, and I'll have to tell you a little bit about that. 

In the founder shop, we had to mold, make a mold to make things, and everybody had to stand the examination. The examination was to make a mold so that you could make a cup and a saucer from that mold. 

Well, to be different, he put a spoon in the cup. I passed the test all right, but he thought he would fix this by putting a spoon in it. Those are a couple of things that I remember from my shops at Tank. 

Now, there's one other thing. The class of 28, the electric class of 28, was the first class to make an electric motor. They furnished us the shell, and we did the winding as the students to make the motor. I've been sorry ever since. My cousin, who also was a tech graduate by the time I was, wanted that motor. He thought he needed more than that, and I'd given it to him, and I've been sorry ever since. 

While I mention my cousin's name, he was also a co -op, and he installed WGST when it first came on the campus. 

Now, I don't know to what extent he extolled it, except he was the hands that put it together. He is now deceased, which I'm sorry to tell you, but that was Isidore Goldwasser. He's on the records. And while I'm speaking this way, I had a... He was the first cousin. I had a nephew, ***** Goldwasser, to graduate from Tech. And then I had another cousin. I can't remember right now his first name. He was at Goldwasser. He's now in New York and he's made a very good name of himself. When I was at Tech, I was the first student assistant to Dr. Wyckoff in the Bacteriology Lab. I had to make the cultures that we would put germs on to watch them grow and I had to wash them. And I remember one time in one class that Dr. Wyckoff was absent, so I had to direct the class. But, you know, we didn't do too much that day. I was also assistant to Professor Lucas in the material lab. 

He had me helping to grade the papers and lots of stuff that I didn't know what I was grading, but each student got a grade and I didn't fail any of them. I enjoyed that kind of work. 

Now, Professor Lucas, we called him Filthy Lucas. 

Now, I don't know if you want this on the tape or not. 

Now, this was right after World War I, and he was still wearing his boots and leggings from the Army, and that's how he got his nickname. We also had Professor Fields. He was a dean of men. 

He was a very nice gentleman, and he had a son in school, which was in my class, which got killed in an automobile accident, which was unfortunate. 

But Professor Fields taught, analyzed, I can't pronounce it, geometry. And nobody in the class never knew what he was talking about. It was just pitiful that he would be a professor. And he was a good man and those things, but nobody understood what he was talking about. My junior year, let's stop for a minute here. 

So I said when I was in grammar school in the fourth grade, we had to take penmanship. 

I was left-handier then, I used to write with my left hand, and my teacher told me if I did not change and learn to write with my right hand, I would never pass penmanship course. 

Well, naturally, I was interested in passing. I learned to write with my right hand. To this day, I can drive a nail with either hand. I saw with either hand, and I use my left hand almost as much as I do my right hand. 

But the tragedy of the story is, and this may be of interest to lots of people, I stayed two years in the fifth grade because of changing from right hand to left hand, And I have later learned that the scientists know that as a fact. It holds you back. 

Well, I'm an example as a whole back. My best year at Tech was my senior year. Each year I got a little better after the fifth grade. 

So I did not graduate with what we'd call big honors. 

But I'll say like the graduate that we talked to in the drugstore, I graduated. 

I'm going to skip over a little bit after college, and then I'll come back because we want to talk a little bit about a T-model Ford. 

I got a job after graduating with the State Highway Department, and I was working on a job in Austell, and I couldn't get that, so I decided to buy a car. or went to a used car lot, and the man had at least 25 T-model Fords on the yard, and he wanted $35 for any one I wanted. 

Now, I beg of you, how would you pick out which one is a good car? 

I was a young graduate. 

I knew I wasn't going to crank each one by hand and see if I could make it run, or maybe it wouldn't run, and I would just go through all of it. 

So I sat back, and I thought about my tech training, and I said, now, let's analyze this a little bit. Anybody that would take care of a car and put a good horn on it should be a pretty good car. 

So I went around and instead of cranking it I blew the horns and I picked out a car which turned out to be very good. Later on the top fell off of it but we rode around town and in fact I had a rich aunt from St. 

Louis to come down and we saw the city from my T-Model Ford with the top down and she enjoyed it very much. I stayed in the band while at Tech High as well as at Georgia Tech. I was not a good musician. I guess I faked it all the way through, but I stayed in. I got my four sweaters each year and enjoyed very much being in the band. 

I did not make the band fraternity, and I was always disappointed that I was never invited, but I went on. 

One little incident of the band that may be of concern to you, all of interest to you, Sousa was in town at the Grand Theater, and he directed us in a song, in his song, at the Grand Theater one evening. And I'm very proud of the fact that I played under Sousa. 

In respect to the same Grand Theater, after a ball game, if Tech would win, it was always noted that the freshmen would crash the Grand Theater, march in the theater, walk across the stage, and come out. 

Well, one game, one of the freshmen slipped and fell through one of the drums in the orchestra. And that was very embarrassing to the school. 

I think, I don't know who paid for it, but that was very embarrassing, and that was the custom here, as well as coming from Athens, whenever Georgia would win a game, they would ring that **** bell all night on the campus, and this was the custom at Tech, was to parade through the Grand Theater. 

I joined the band, we were practicing in the basement of the YMCA, and when the stadium was completed, we moved over there. We were very happy with our quarters over there. Roman was the band leader, and he was called Walt Roman at that time. He was a little short fellow, which we all loved him. 

And by the way, he died and I, every time I go out to the cemetery where my mother and father are, his grave is there and I think about it. He had a son who also played in the band, I don't know where he is now, that went to Tech. 

In my senior year, Jack Holman was president of the class, and we all loved Jack, and I thought a great of Jack, but he was a friend of mine, and we corresponded several times after that. He is now deceased, and I am very sorry because he was a good fellow. 

Let me tell you, my junior year I changed to become a civil engineer because some of my subjects I wasn't doing as good as I wanted to do, and the labs were very complicated. It got a little bit too much for me, and Dr. 

Snow was head of the Civil Engineering Department, which we all thought very much of him and loved him. I'm not sure if this old building is still the same Civil Engineering building. I don't remember the name of the street. story about Dr. Smith. He was a genius in math. He would coach all potential football players such as Stumpy Thompson. And before Dr. 

Smith got hold of him, they put Stumpy in a junior high school, seeing if he could get enough points to get in school, which he finally did do it. And he was a little short fella, his legs. One leg was as big around both of my legs, but he was really a good football player. Dr. 

Smith taught math, and one of the classes that we had under him, Gordy, who now owned the Varsity, is now deceased, was in my class. And every time Gordy would come in the room, Dr. Smith would say, poor boy, poor boy, he'll never make it. And it looks like Dr. Smith was wrong. There was Dr. 

Skies that I never did have class under him, but I was told that as class would start, he would stand at the entrance door with a piece of chalk in his finger and thump it diagonally across the room. If it didn't go in the box in the window, at the end, you had no class. 

But I don't know any day that they didn't have class. That was his story about he would thump that piece of chalk and that would determine his class today. On this campus at the main building there is a water fountain. 

And as a freshman, I used to visit that fountain often and that was a metal chair and on it was a plate that says the class of about 20 years prior 1928 gave it to the school and i used to say to myself god they must be old now and where i'm sitting today they were young chickens when i was in school we had a business school and on the campus that all the students were not engineers. They were on the campus taking courses in business. And as a side entrance here, in the fraternity, 85 fraternity, we had a fellow named Gordon. I don't remember his name, but he took his theses, as Rich's as his theses, for his graduation. And I have draw some plans and some sketches for his thesis. 

Well Richards liked it so much they made him a vice president and that's where he went to work when he graduated from Tech. Ben Gordon was his name. 

We had a house on, trying to think of the name, on West Peace Street just around the corner from the campus was our Opportunity House for A. E. Pye. I had, I'm not sure if I had mentioned this before. Cut it a minute. Just a little to say about Bo Cat's T-Mall Ford. We would kid him and we would watch him crank it. You know, you had to crank him at that time. 

And whenever we would see anybody with an arm in a sling, we knew he had a T-mile Ford because they would always kick back, and when they did, it broke your hand. 

And the reason for that is on the steering wheel, there was a spark, and there was a gas lever that you pulled down. 

If you pulled the spark lever too far, that made the motor backfire. 

And when it cranked up, it decided it was going to run the other way, and it would always hit you on the arm and break your arm. 

So that's another reason why I didn't want to crank those 25 T-Model Fords on the yard when I was trying to find one. They didn't have starters. They had starters at that time. 

And as Athens, we owned a T-Model Ford, and we would make trips to Atlanta quite often and get caught at nighttime. And the only lights we had on it was a butane gas that you'd have to light it with a match. And it would not throw a ray out from the car more than two or three feet. And you more or less had to feel your way as you went along. I can remember many trips after a rain on some of the hills. We all had to get out and push the team all over the hill. And then we'd jump back in and go chuck, chuck, chuck onto Atlanta. which was a sort of a recent, for regular trips in that Tmall. 

By the way, when the World War I came along, this is not related to tech, my father sold his Tmall Ford, which he had paid, at that time, was about $400 for one, and they needed all the cars they could get, so I think he made a profit on it after about four years, that there was so much in demand. 

And then we got a Page and a Dodge, and I'll tell you another story, which is still off the campus, but it's part of my life, that we had a little trouble with our Page, and the Page was supposed to have been a little better car, and there was only one mechanic in Athens that worked on better cars, his name was Epps, and I had gone to school with his son in Athens High School. 

So we took it to him and he looked at it and I think he moved two wires and he never run better in his life. 

And by the way, the Epps Airport at this time, his sons or grandsons owns the Epps Airport off of Peachtree. 

Getting back to school, there was social life on the campus, but being Jewish and living in the city, Most of my social life was off-campus, which I guess was natural. I knew quite a few people in the city, and I did not have too much social life on the campus. There was plenty here. 

But football games were very attractive. At being in the band we attended all the local football games and played at all of them. We thought we had a pretty good band. I don't remember just how many pieces were in it. I knew several of the people from the city that were in the band right now. 

I'm not going to name those that are not with us anymore, but we practiced in the basement of the YMCA to start off with until the stadium was built, and then we went in and moved in under the stadium for our band practicing, which we had regularly. 

I'd like to tell some things that's more or less dealing with my life, which is the results of going to Tech. 

I got a job with the Federal Power Commission after being out of work after the Highway Department let me go and I was roamed around. I worked for one fellow in Atlanta that put up overhead doors. I think I worked for $125 a month for him and he didn't have the money to pay me. 

But my wife was making more money than I was making at that time. 

However, with the Federal Power Commission, my job was to study river basins and to inspect power plants for safety. One of the river basins that I studied was the Oconee River. at Athens, and the Oconee River runs through below Athens to Milledgeville. The Sinclair project was at Milledgeville, and I came up with a plan. 

I drew the first line on the map to put a pump storage project at the head of the Sinclair Reservoir, which I had worked out was economical. 

Our office told the Georgia Power Company about it, and they decided it was economical, and they built the plant, which at the present time I understand is the Wallace Project. It's one of the best projects they got for peaking power. That was one accomplishment that I'm very proud of. I did have a plan for the But I never was able to convince the engineers that it was a good plan. My plan, just briefly, was to draw it down only one foot year round and put it up as a pump storage. And that way the city of Atlanta could get some water. 

It would still be operated as a flood control and navigation project with the peaking power and the pump facilities. 

But somehow or another I haven't been able to convince the right people that that's the way to go on that project. 

The first thing I knew about Georgia Tech was Georgia playing Georgia Tech. I sold Coca-Cola's as a young boy at the football games. 

And I can remember I didn't sell many Coca-Cola's, but I did make lots of money by walking under the wooden platform where the seats were. 

When the tech students or the Georgia students would have a good play, they would all jump up and down, and the money would fall out of their pockets, and I would go under the stand and pick it up, and that makes a pretty good day for me. I remember that as a boyhood starting off my tech life. I've been asked lots of times, why didn't I go to Georgia? 

Well, I didn't go to Georgia. I guess I knew too much about them. I prefer tech, liking labs and liking engineering and things of that kind. 

So I decided I wanted tech since we were living, already living in Atlanta at that time. I have lots of stories about Georgia, but I won't waste them on this particular go-around. 

As a student on the campus, I was interested in acting, in that I had been in a club off campus and had been in one or two plays, and one play that I was in, we were doing fine, the play was going along, and it was my time to say something, and I froze up, and no words that anything could come out, which was very embarrassing. 

So I decided that maybe I would join the club on the campus and learn how to act, which I did. 

However, I was never put in any place, but I was a member of the marionettes on the campus. I hear lots of people talking about girls being on the campus. That was nothing new to us. We had a girl on the campus. The dean's daughter was on the campus, and we all knew it for now. 

I'm not sure if she graduated or what course she took, but she went to school with us, which we couldn't say anything. 

I joined a local club in Atlanta, about fourteen of us, that were going to Tech, and we were trying to bring A. E. Pi back to the campus. With petitions and all, we were unable to do it, so we wanted to keep the club going. We joined the A. E. Pi on the Emory campus. We were known as the students of the Tech campus. 

About two months Before I was graduating, which I was more or less responsible for the club, at that time I was the chairman of the club. 

Dean Skiles called me in and told me that I would not graduate unless we got off of Tech campus immediately. 

Well, we got off of the campus, but we're very happy to know today that AEPI is very big on the campus, and we're very proud of it. In the band, we played various songs. As I previously stated, we played under Sousa at the Grand Theater. Our main song was Ramblin'' Wreck over and over again. 

It was played at all the ball games, and it was very stimulating to the players and everybody at the game, and I'm very disappointed that Tech let it get away from them. the song of Ramblin'' Wreck, that they don't own the rights to it. I have a little story to tell about Bill Fletcher. He was a Tech student, and he played football under Alexander. 

And it was unfortunate that I don't know how he happened, but he lost one of his eyes, and he had a false eyeball that he carried, that he was in that eye. 

And at the football games, he would take that socket out, and since the fields were not like they are today, they got very muddy. 

And mud would get in that ice socket, and he would thrill his opponents by getting in line and taking his finger and cleaning the mud out of that socket. And when he would do that, then he was a big, heavy fellow. 

It looks like the opponent's line would just open up, and he would go right through, and right behind him was the quarterback with the ball. 

However, he did, after he graduated, he was assistant coach to Alexander. 

Wilson, who was a member of the band, a nice fellow, his daddy was a contractor in Atlanta, and he had a brother. And Wilson used to always get up and holler, spread out Walt, spread out Walt. 

Well, Walt was, I guess, a 300-pounder in the line. And when he spread out, nobody could get around him. And that was one way that we won most of our games. I do want to say this about Thrasher. I thought of lots of Thrasher. Thrasher was a good boy, was a good student, and he was a good football player. He played every game while he was on the team, and he got no publicity whatsoever. He then also became a professor on the campus. 

I don't know if he's still living or not, but Thrasher was really a good fellow, and he was due lots more credit than he ever got. 

We did have, in my freshman year, one of our classmates killed himself on the campus, which we all liked. And I never did know why or how, but I understand today that's sort of common on campuses. 

But we did have a student to commit suicide on the campus, which was very shocking. I liked Peter Punn. Peter Punn was a big, handsome fellow that you just couldn't help but like him. He was a smooth fellow. He wasn't a smart aleck, and he was really a good ball player. And I also liked Player. Player was a baseball player. He's still around, I thought, a great deal of Player. And we had a good baseball team, and we also had a good goth team at that time. 

And I've been trying to remember, we had lacrosse, I think that's the right name, it's sort of like soccer on the campus, that I didn't participate in it, but there was quite a few people on one of the professors, Armstrong, I believe, no, I'm not sure what his name was, that would direct that part. 

And I noticed one of the, this is just rambling a little bit, one of the machines that as an electrical engineer we had to run tests on is sitting on the campus as a model right across from the old civil building that it's too bad they finally retired him there. 

I remember in the foundry, I made a, my father was a shoemaker when he first come to this country, and I made a hammer, a shoemaker's hammer for him, which he used and liked very much. 

But I don't know what happened to the hammer. That was in the foundry. One thing exciting on the campus that we never as students could understand. 

One of our librarians was a writer and one of the books she wrote was not at that time of the best selection which she was very much embarrassed and I understand that a time when a tech librarian was cut short after that book was published. 

I I hope I have given some thoughts of the campus because I would like to say this, I've always said for a student to do good, especially an engineer, that during his summers, say his freshman summer, is to get a job in a line that he thinks he's interested in and And he will either decide to continue in that, or he will change to another course. 

If he waits until he graduates, it still will be very good to him to have the training that he gets at Georgia Tech, but he could have been lots better had he selected something that he was interested in. 

Another thing that I've always said, that life could not be greater than to have a hobby and make a living at it. And that's why I'm trying to say, as far as the course is concerned, if you knew what it's about. When I went to Tech, I had no idea what I was going to be. I just had some friends that were good scholars, and they were all talking about going to college. My mother, I'll go back to her a little bit and give you a little background there. 

When she was in the fourth grade, she loved to read, but my grandfather had a tailor shop, and he needed help in a shop. 

So he took her out of school, and she measured men's suits and sold them and made men's suits when she was in the fourth grade. 

However, she did not stop learning. She read every book in the library, and I am very proud of her. 

My grandmother, who comes from Austria, was a college graduate, so I guess maybe some of that rubbed off on me. And I'm proud to have been invited. I hope I have said something, and thank you.