Sometimes three weeks or a month later he’d ask someone to reconcile what they had said to someone three weeks earlier.

I was impressed with his love of dramatic, almost melodramatic films like “High Noon” and “Dr. Strangelove.” I think those two films had to do with this issue of moral courage. “High Noon” was one man standing up for what he believed and being deserted by the townspeople. I think that is part of what […]

He’d have donuts and cider, 30 or 40 people sitting around his living room talking about some speaker who had come on campus or some topic of the day. He seemed to be very much in touch with students. To me he got inside someone’s head faster than anyone I’ve ever met in my life. […]

In my freshman year, it was the fall of 1969. I remember the freshman entryway there was a poster for SDS [Students for a Democratic Society] saying come join us in Chicago for Days of Rage. People went into Chicago and started beating up policemen and the policemen beat up the protesters. Those things were […]

Ah, he was often upset with me or frustrated with me because he didn’t think I was serious enough. I was pretty open with him about the fact I used to smoke a lot of pot back then and thought that Williams was pretty irrelevant to my life and, “Why was I here and what […]

What was unique, we didn’t visit four different areas of the country and observe people, we lived in homes. And so that was, I think, the real key or trick to this whole thing was we were instantly immersed into a family and a community in an area. Sometimes accepted, sometimes maybe not accepted right […]

There was some competition, I don’t know if competition is the right word. We were taking notes on what everybody else was doing.

One of the things that he got real excited about once was a conversation Joe Goodman and I had when he was driving us some place. Joe said, “I’m sorry, but I think these people are lazy.” We were talking about Appalachia, you know. “These people are just lazy. They could work but they don’t.” […]

…I remember that experience because my parents were incredibly impressed. Well, he had decided that what worked for me in Williams-at-Home was that I related to people through work, and when he met my father he then understood that because my father was a construction worker, elevator construction, and comes from a very Blue Collar […]

I used to go over his house a lot. And that’s where I think Dick Slade was kind of living there in the spring of ’74, another Williams-at-Home guy. I’d hang out with Dick and talk and we’d talk with Bob. He was pushing me all the time. “Well O.K., now you’re back here, what […]

CHAPTERS

Introduction
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
Final Note