Interview Excerpt, Charles Huenemann, Ph.D.

Dr. Charles Huenemann is a Professor of Philosophy at Utah State University who was assigned to an office in the Barn when he arrived at USU in 1994. He recalls the following:

"It was really great to be in the Barn because we had a sense of camaraderie, and we were off on the edge of campus in a certain sense in a marginalized building, and people would say, “Where’s your office?” “Oh, the barn.” It was kind of a funny place to have an office, and we were away from Old Main and the heart of our department with all the hustle and bustle so we kind of felt like we were out in the boonies, and I think that kind of drew us closer together….

"The fact that we were all in this old building together gave us this sense of being a club in a way, and as new people came into the Barn, they would join the club, as people left the Barn, we would designate them as honorary Barnies, which is what we called each other, Barnies.

"A guy next to me had a pet snake in his office, but every so often he would let the snake out to just kind of climb around…. What was funny, the snake’s name was Smith, and you’d be walking down the hall and suddenly there would be this four or five foot long King snake. It looked kind of vicious…it didn’t look vicious but it was noticeable. You’d be standing in the hall and it would kind of slither up to you and you’d jump out of your skin for a minute. But this guy was very good at taking care of his snake.

"One day I was at home got a call from this colleague, and he said that Smith had gotten out of his office, and he thought it had gotten into my office. So he asked if I could come up and unlock my office so he could get Smith back out. I showed up and sure enough, Smith was in my office and had pooped [laughs] some mouse remains out on the carpet. My colleague was very good about cleaning it up. It was surprising because you’d just be talking and look down and see a snake; it’s just instinctive to just jump.

"I had the chance to move to another condemned building [in 1999], the computer science building, where the library is now, and it was a bigger office, although it would be a stretch to say that it was a nicer office. It was still ugly, but it was kind of bigger, and I thought, 'Well I’ll go ahead,' and it was actually kind of a question of loyalty in a way because I felt that I was abandoning the Barnies. Then I knew, of course, that we would stay in contact because we were all in the same department. But it was this question of conscience in a way like, 'Should I leave the Barnies, am I ditching them?' They, of course, rubbed it in and said, you know, 'Oh, turning your back on us are you; you think you’re too good to be in the Barn anymore?'

"The Barn had an esprit de corps. I think all the old Barnies have a special allegiance."

Interview Excerpt, Harold Kinzer, Ph.D.

Harold Kinzer is a retired Speech Communication Professor who wrote a detailed history of his connection to the Barn. Below are some excerpts which provide a feel for his relationship to the building, the students, and the program.

"From 1994-2007, the primary Barn use was speech communication instruction, the Barn continued to be known either as the “Art Barn” or “PSYAL” (psychology animal lab).

"During the 14 years that I was in the Barn, I began each term by joking that the Barn is where the university hid embarrassing professors. Possibly some students, after working with me, thought that this was a truthful statement. While I was out, an unknown student taped a vinyl clown to my office door. I took this as a compliment and kept it there until my retirement. Of course, I might have misunderstood the student’s intent.

"Most students had a hoot presenting speeches in an actual barn haymow. While waiting for class to begin some students would explore the abandoned equipment I had piled on the first floor. None had seen electronic equipment with tubes. Yes, radios once had big glowing tubes!"

1959 Bid for Barn Remodel

Historian Jon Alfred has located, in USU Special Collections, a three-page bid that Anderson Lumber (now Stock Building Products) prepared in 1959 for a remodel of the Barn. The bid is shown here, courtesy of USU Special Collections. Jon also noted letters from the same time frame from Dr. Twain Tippets, Chair of the Dept of Fine Arts, and Art Professor Dr. Harrison Groutage to USU President Daryl Chase, requesting use of the Barn as a ceramics studio, because they had lost their Old Main studio in a fire. A letter from the USU Board of Trustees to President Chase subsequently approved the Barn remodeling project. Interestingly, Logan evidently lacked natural gas at this time, so USU's kilns were heated with butane.

Original 1919 Barn Blueprints & Architect

USU History graduate student Jon Alfred, working with the wonderful scholars in USU Special Collections, has found the original blueprints for the Barn, drafted by W.L. Skidmore in 1919. We believe W.L Skidmore is William Lorenzo Skidmore, who attended Brigham Young College and had a practice in the Arimo Block in Logan at the time he drew the Barn plans. We also believe the Mr. Skidmore moved to Idaho Falls shortly after construction of the Barn. Today, Idaho Falls is home to Skidmore Construction, and while their web site indicates 50 years of experience, we wonder if there could be a link to our W.L. Skidmore. We'll investigate! In the meantime, here is one of the five blueprints Mr. Skidmore drew for the USU Barn.

Interview Excerpt, Jerry Fuhriman, '66

The following is excerpted from an interview by Barn research team member Jeannine Huenemann with local artist Jerry Fuhriman. He is a Cache Valley native, whose dad Wendell Fuhriman took care of the cattle and was a cattle judge on campus. In the 1960s, Jerry was a student at Utah State University and later became a faculty member of Landscape Architecture. He remembers art classes in the Barn:

"I took a class in the Barn....it was either ceramics or sculpture, I could have had two classes but I remember that they were both from [Larry] Elsner. So my memory of the Art Barn is less the structure, and more the personality of the instructor.

"I probably didn't appreciate how great of an artist he was at the time. I remember he was very, very quiet and you would show him your project, and unlike most people he wouldn't just start chattering about it right away. He would say nothing but he would pick it up and he would hold it, and he would caress it with his hands because part of the sculpture was just the tactile, you know the surface and how it felt, and the weight of it, and proportions and so. And then generally he would say something none committal like 'you know you might work on the form a little bit,' which left you wondering what you should do about the form.

"It wasn't until years later, in fact, it's interesting that he was my professor when I was a freshman and he was also on my tenure committee (when I was a professor). So I went a long time knowing him and then eventually collecting his work, and realizing what a terrific artist he was."

Interview Excerpt, Manon Caine Russell, '53

USU Folklore graduate student Jeannine Huenemann interviewed Manon Caine Russell, daughter of George B. Caine, longtime department head and dairy teacher Utah State University. She recalls campus and the barns:

"He'd (Dad would) walk down the hill for lunch.... Well the barns were near the office. The Dairy department was on the north side of the Quad in that building. And the barns were behind that. Campus ended there…. Dad spent his life with the Dairy department at Utah State and it was a very important part of all of our lives. Of course we lived right across from campus, so we were there a lot."

Stories are rolling in!

After a letter to the editor appeared in the Logan Herald Journal a week or so ago requesting that folks share their Barn stories, we've received a bunch of calls that promise to lead to a rich (and often very funny!) set of oral histories. A team of USU graduate students in folklore, history and landscape architecture are following up on tips and contacting callers to set up interviews so we can capture all the great information out there in the minds of former Aggie faculty, staff, students, and members of the broader community. We'll post interview excerpts as we generate them!