VT Stories Oral History with Bertram Kinzey, Jr. May 19th, 2016 (Ms2016-015)

David Cline: Absolutely yes. Thank you so much for doing this because this is

an honor. Let's start with your biographical background. This is David Cline for

the VT Stories Project. Today is May the 19th, 2019 and I'm in the Alumni

Center. If you could introduce yourself with a full sentence, my name is--

Bertram Kinzey, Jr: Okay. I'm Bertram Kinzey, Jr. of the class of [19]42 in

architectural engineering, so my first introduction to what they call Virginia

Tech now [laughs], 00:01:00was way back in 1938, when I was a gresham went to the

engineering extension in Richmond where anybody in engineering could go there

for two years and then come up here for two.

David: Okay.

Bertram: However, in architecture you're only supposed to be there one year

because you needed to get up here and start learning how to be artistic in your

second year. It just so happened that my father who 00:02:00had suffered the effects of

the Great Depression back in [19]29 was just getting back to the position in

left in Richmond before we moved over to the Cleveland which you shouldn't have

been [laughs]. So, the money for me to come here was not there. Well what

happened though was that I showed up obviously at the beginning of what would be

my sophomore year and the head of the extension said, well why aren't you here?

I said, well, because you know, the funds for me to go up to the campus 00:03:00 just

aren't there. Oh? Well, yeah, you should be there, but you can do it. You can

stay here, and as far as the money bit how about you teaching solid geometry to

these fellows entering engineering that didn't have that. Because if they didn't

they had to of course get it. I said, okay, yeah, I'll teach it. So they paid me

more than-- I was giving my father money in fact before it was all over. So here

at the age of eighteen I was teaching college students, just before I turned

nineteen to be more accurate about it. So when I came up here the following

year, of course Cole said, hey, you're a problem because you're behind in

architectural design and freehand drawing and 00:04:00all this stuff that architects are

supposed to be good at. And my father of course made quite a point, hey, he was

told he could and what you're telling me is it's going to cost extra money because--

David: Oh right, right.

Bertram: Yeah, and so what happened, if you look at my record there's none to

compare with it at all. Why? Because Cole bent the rules like you would never believe.

David: And who is that that you're referencing, Cole?

Bertram: They had a doctor, yeah. So you see 00:05:00they had what they call the design

and constriction option. Design, well yeah, we're going to be an architect.

Construction, no, you're going to be a contractor. Well I didn't particularly

care about the contracting, but I took both of them and also signed up to get a

graduate degree, and he worked out a course of study for me that would take only

one extra quarter to do all that. And to show you how he bent the rules. When I

got my bachelor's degree after four years I came back up to the drawing board to

finish a drawing I already had a degree for.

David: 00:06:00 [Laughs]

Bertram: Ahh, so of course--

David: Were there the same professional degrees back then with the B. Arch and

the M. Arch? Do those exist yet?

Bertram: You're using the wrong term. Because all they could give was BS and MS

in architectural engineering.

David: That's how it was then?

Bertram: Oh yeah, that was it. It wasn't legal for a VPI to give anything other

than BS and MS back in those days.

David: They didn't have the professional Bs?

Bertram: So that's what mine reads, yeah.

David: Right, can we back up for just a second?

Bertram: Yeah.

David: I wanted to just ask you about your childhood before getting to VPI. When

you were born and where you were born and raised.

Bertram: Oh boy [laughter].

David: And then we'll get back to VPI.

Bertram: Well, here the past month where I was born is in the news. Holden, 00:07:00Massachusetts, a little burg just west of Worcester, Mass. I was born there.

David: What year were you born?

Bertram: 1921. Two months later my father got a job in Richmond, so here in the

cold December of 1921 we wind up in Richmond. So we lived there until 1921 when

we went to the Cleveland area when my father was offered a position back in

those days of seven thousand dollars a year.

David: What year was that you moved to Cleveland?

Bertram: Well, I lived in Berea which is a suburb of Cleveland and Baldwin

Wallace 00:08:00College is in that town. Musically it's quite well known. Well, with two

parents who weren't musical at all that was quite a change for me. At any rate,

so I was there through my seventh-- just as I was getting in junior high school

before we came back to Virginia 00:09:00and lived just outside of Richmond. But during

my senior year we had moved finally back into Richmond and I graduated from high

school there. The amusing thing being that of course the country school in

Ashland, a high school of eight rooms, their math sequence and what happened in

Richmond in high school didn't coincide. So when I went into the math class as a

senior in Richmond I said, what is all this stuff? Well, fortunately the 00:10:00 woman

was the head of the math department and she looked up my record. She said, have

you had trigonometry? I said, no. She said, well these fellows have started it

and I was just reviewing them. Oh? So she said, you come after class and I'll

get you straightened out. I said, fine, so she did, but the school said, hey,

you've got to go back-- Come on.

David: Oh no.

Bertram: So finally, after the school year had started it was not quite a week

before they, well you've got to do it! Okay. So I go into this algebra class

mind you, and this woman has put out a test. The first question, 00:11:00tell by nature

the roots of these equations. Well, all you had to know is the square root of

B²--4 is C, you know. You could tell by inspection; those were her exact words.

So I write down the three answers. So here comes this thing back. Minus five,

minus five, minus--what? They're right! Well yeah, but you didn't tell me how

you did it. I said, you didn't ask me! You said, tell by inspection. I've got

three years of Latin behind me and I know what the word inspection means whether

you know it or not. [Chuckles] And, oh, okay. So then the next thing you know

here's another exam or test, two equations, and well two unknowns, so you had to

solve it. So I solve it and write down the whole bloody thing, you know, come

on, and this comes back marked 00:12:00wrong. I said, I got the right answer. Yeah, but

I can't figure how you got it. I said, well that's your problem. So, the bottom

line of that was here's my report card with a lousy grade in math and my father

says, uh-huh. And he wrote a signature on there you won't believe, saying, hey,

no way. Because he knew I knew my math, and so my homeroom teacher said, well

you better show it to her. Her first question, well what does he know about it?

I said, well he was assistant professor at Princeton, why? In military 00:13:00 science

and tactics, but I didn't-- [laughter]

David: Yeah didn't tell her that part.

Bertram: So she never questioned me from that day on, even once when I was

wrong. And the whole class knew it so we jumped on her, but all of that-- And of

course she never knew that I was teaching solid geometry in college two years

later. Come on. [Laughs] So I've got a history back in teaching that can't top

anybody. [Laughs] In fact, when I retired from teaching in [19]85, I told these

people, well, I've been teaching sixty years at college, and I know they look at

me and say, you're a big liar. Well, I was only eighteen when I started. Come

on. Anyway.

David: So you came here.

Bertram: So I came here in 1940 actually.

David: Okay, 1940. And you didn't have to participate in the Corps.

Bertram: No. So, I came with one of 00:14:00the fellows that went to the extension with

me and so we didn't have to be in the corps. WE could live in town, so we lived

well, if I tell you, you know, where the 622 [North] restaurant is?

David: Sure.

Bertram: That was a math professor's residence and that's where we lived.

David: He rented out rooms?

Bertram: So we rented a room for eight dollars a month [lauhgs] there during

our, well, sophomore and senior years, and ate across the street. This 00:15:00 couple

from Floyd County, they had a farm and had across the street their house and

quite a bit of land where they could grow groceries. Of course that doesn't

exist now, but at any rate, so they fed us for five dollars a week. [Laughs]

Come on. Of course tuition was $120 a quarter. So we lived there. Well, the

professor, that family were Lutherans. Well I wasn't a Lutheran at the time; I

was a Methodist. In the Methodist 00:16:00church they had a doctor so and so DD there

that was for the birds just to put it bluntly. So the Lutheran church had this

brand new fellow by the name of Robert E. Lee believe it or not, who was

top-notch. I mean he told them, no, I'm going to have a Sunday evening service.

Oh no. Well he was so good he drew people in there. So that was more convenient

for me to go there anyway and then when I was a senior they lost their organist,

well how about playing the organ? So I did.

David: Oh.

Bertram: Yeah, so I played the organ there right through my graduate year even.

The amusing thing being that during my junior and senior year there was this

girl going to that 00:17:00church. Her degree was in business, not home economics like

most girls, but at any rate, but she and I were both interested in music and I

took her to the senior dance. When I did well my parents lent me the car to go

get her, take her back. What happened? Well, when we came back from the dance I

opened the car door, 00:18:00the glove compartment was down. Somebody had--my brother's

SR camera and my sister's box camera were missing. Hmm. And I know this guy

thought he had it made. Well here's this car with a Richmond license. This guy

is graduating and going to be gone. Two mistakes. One was I came back for a

graduate degree. Number two, I lived in town and I knew everybody! [Laughter]

So, during my graduate year I was working with this scout troop and the

scoutmaster's son was a photographer nut. My camera was--bellows was leaking,

well I know where you can get an SR-- You do? Who's got it? The fellow at the

Western 00:19:00Union place. I said, Oh? Well we were parked in front of the Western

Union. Uhh. Can you get it? Uhh. Well you just do that. [Laughs] So he got it,

and my brother was working over in Owens Hall. He was three years younger than I

am. So I take the camera and he says, you recognize this? Well of course on the

strap where he marked it and the fact it had a cracked lens, oh yeah. Back in

those days Blacksburg had a--

David: Hold on one second, there's a knock at the door. [Break] okay, we're back

with Mr. Kinzey.

Bertram: At any rate, Blacksburg only had one policeman, a tall guy so he was

called "High Pockets". So High 00:20:00Pockets and I go to meet this guy and he tries to

tell a story that obviously didn't had up, so he had him. So what they ever did

with him I don't know. [Chuckles] Well, of course during my graduate year the

campus was becoming an Army camp, so some of the architectural professors I had

were teaching anything but architecture. One of my final classes I was the only

student because nobody was entering, 00:21:00well, the normal courses of study with this

place turning into an Army camp.

David: Right, and everybody off to war.

Bertram: Yeah.

David: Tell me a little bit more what that was like at that time, what the mood

was, what it was like being here with the war.

Bertram: Well, the usual Corps experience for example, or the usual campus life

like they're talking about the well, ring dances and all, that just stopped. It

didn't exist. Well, and then of course when I finally get my master's well I

couldn't go to work for an architect, not during the 00:22:00war. So what do you do? One

of my architectural buddies who was deaf in one ear so he wouldn't wind up in

the service anyway, he went to work for the Norfolk Navy Yard, so I did too. So,

when you're doing that of course you had an exemption to make that contribution

which in my case is kind of amusing because my brother who is three years

younger than I 00:23:00am, well, he wound up over at the University of Virginia and

wound up in the Navy. So he bounced around the Gulf of Mexico I suppose looking

for U-boats and what. At any rate, so I was on a hell of a lot more ships than

he ought to think. Not only ours, but the English and the French. Come on. And

that went on until well rather late in the war with Uncle decided that maybe I

ought to be drafted, so I had to go through the usual process of being looked

at. And his statement was, well I was 00:24:00quite nearsighted, but I was good enough

for limited service, so you might be called up probably in about a month. I

thought to myself uhh, and put me where? So I decided well, why don't I go ahead

and apply for a Naval commission? So I did, in spite of the fact that the boss

in the Navy Yard wanted to keep me from doing that, but he didn't have any right

to do that and I had to fight him to get by him.

David: What projects had you been working on at the Naval Yard? What kinds of things?

Bertram: I was in the structural section. Well, there's a certain amount of

similarity between that and building structure. One thing I did learn though is

how to draw ship plating drawings, which is a neat 00:25:00trick compared to what you do

for architecture. [Chuckles] But anyway, it was for me a very good experience.

David: Did it teach you anything that you were able to then later draw on in a

more regular architectural practice?

Bertram: Um, I wouldn't say so, no. Of course the amusing thing was we were

asked one time to draw some platforms for the Norfolk Train station, and so this

had columns going down to footings. It was quite 00:26:00amusing that the boss sat at a

desk who was, well ever since high school this was his job in the Norfolk Navy

Yard. He wondered whether I knew what-- My immediate boss who was also an

architectural graduate he says, I think he knows what to do with a footing.

[Laughs] Come on.

David: These other guys didn't know how to do a footing. That's great, unless it floats.

Bertram: [Laughs]

David: Back to the commission, so you applied for a commission.

Bertram: Yeah. But my nearsightedness was such that they didn't like it, said,

no way. Okay. And, as it turned out I wasn't called up for service either and I

also got 00:27:00married. Anyway, of course the minute the war was over the job at the

Navy Yard, I could finally go to work for an architect. So, I got a job with an

architectural firm in Richmond, which happened to be the firm that added the

wings to Jefferson's State Capital way back in 1906. That's the firm I went to

work for, which was trying to get back on its feet after the war 00:28:00obviously. The

amusing thing was they had four principals and they had four of us guys working

on the drafting boards. We had to support the company, anyway, that was the

situation. So, I was able to work for, it was a little more than two years. But,

in the fall of 1946 I decided to come here for a reunion. So I come here, and of

course I see Professor Cole and he says, 00:29:00have you ever thought of teaching? I

said, yeah, I did some teaching. He said, well, I'm going to need, of course GIs

coming back here I'm going to need some faculty, so how about it? I said, well,

he said, I'll call you probably sometime in the spring. So I go back to

Richmond. What I find out, the bosses had lost a contract they were depending on

and that was so bad that they let the highest paid man go. I thought hey, and I

ain't--hmm. But right around then Cole calls me, so I said, Well, I tell you

what, 00:30:00I'm thinking about making a change, but I'll give you first crack. So he

goes to Newman, who was President at the time and at any rate I was offered a

little under what I was making at the architect's office, so I said to Cole, I

said, uh-uh, you got to meet it, which was three thousand dollars a year at the

time. [Laughs] And I can only guess that he wanted me to do that, so he went to

Newman and he says, I want that fellow, and so I got hired. So I came here in 00:31:001947 and--

David: Is this the professor of architectural engineering?

Bertram: That's right. And my first job he wanted me to do was to bring into the

architectural curriculum certain courses that were taught to us by the

electrical and mechanical engineering colleges when I went to school there.

Well, what that meant was of course the electrical boys this is a lightbulb and

this is how you estimate how many working plane, to which I have to say,

huh-huh, that's all well and good, but from the architectural standpoint that's

not the first question. How do we want it 00:32:00visually revealed? We can get what

you're talking about all sorts of ways, you know. Come on. Or the mechanical

boys, here's a [ball] and that's a radiator. I said, huh-huh, but we're talking

about human comfort, thermal comfort and yet how about the damn building? The

best story I can make that so graphic is that I made a visit here one time and

here's this aggie engineer yet building his house. And so I go in there and

here's this living dining big space all spread around, great big sheets of

glass, about three of them at least I think, and underneath a little register. I

reached up and I looked at it. I said, you didn't double glaze 00:33:00those? No. The

mechanical boys said I wouldn't save enough on the fuel to justify it. I said,

that's not the issue. The issue is human comfort you know, and it does get down

to zero down there and you're trying to remain seventy inside let's say. You

know what the inside surface temperature of that glass is? It's

twenty-two-degrees. You know where it's warmer? In your refrigerator, and you

didn't have a hot register to offset it. It's ridiculous. [Laughs] Well, so my

bottom line was that here I was teaching--well what some schools were calling

mechanical and electrical equipment of buildings. Well the heck with that. 00:34:00 What

we're talking about is environmental technology.

David: Okay, right.

Bertram: Yeah. Heat, light, but not sound, in spite of the fact that was coming

in. Right after World War II architectural acoustics was beginning to be

something we knew quite a bit about.

David: Right.

Bertram: And here I sit with two degrees and not any instruction in that area,

but I've got to teach it so I've got to learn it. Well, as an organist I was

obviously interested in that sort of thing anyway, so, I went to work on that.

And then at MIT, the big firm of both [inaudible] Newman back in those days was

the one in architect acoustics, they gave a short course in the summer. So I

went there and 00:35:00well, I decided I'm doing pretty good, the only thing is I can

organize it better now that I've gone through their stuff. So I finished my text

book on the subject which included three chapters in architectural acoustics,

the first two that ever were anywhere, along with this other, the thermal so-on.

So I started writing that textbook before I left here, but it was about four

years after I left here after I finished it and finally managed to get the

publisher to do it. They always want, oh you've got to make it smaller, come on,

but so it 00:36:00finally got out. Now later on of course with all the changing

technology, well, they thought it was about time we ought to revise it. I said,

yeah, I agree. Yeah, but you can't. I said, look, it's going this way whether

you like it or not. What you're telling me is you want me to do a lousy textbook

I wouldn't use in my class. Why should I bother? Heck, I was doing a-- When I

moved to Florida in [19]59 to teach there--

David: At the University?

Bertram: Yeah. What happened was architects all around Florida called the

University, got somebody, know somebody about acoustics? We need somebody-- So I

had a consulting practice all over the whole state and beyond. Well, [laughs] so

I like to tell students when they worry about their job, say hey go out there,

if you asked me what I was going to do when I had two degrees I'm going to be an

architect drawing buildings, that's not what I've been doing. And I'm not a

fellow in the American Institute of Architecture, but I'm a fellow in the

Acoustic Society of America in spite of education.

David: Right. Fascinating. So you were right at the beginning really of that field.

Bertram: Yeah. So I was fortunate enough to attract a student while I was trying

to get some research going at Florida. Well the school wouldn't put up something

to get it going. It should wouldn't do it, wouldn't do it. Oh come on. That or

the thermal stuff, either one of them. Anyway, it's rather fortunate there was

this fellow that was a student from Rensselaer Polytechnic came and I was doing

a graduate course in environmental stuff, and so he wanted to be part of that,

and of course he had to do a thesis. Huh-huh. And for him to do it he needed

certain instrumentation to use. But it so happened that we were ready to go into

a brand new building, so the dean says, here's some money so you can buy new

furniture for your offices. I said, new furniture to hell with it. I'm painting

my damn desk. [Laughs] So I took that money and bought this instrumentation this

fellow needed for a thesis in which he compared if you built models of a room

and popped signals in it how can you predict what the real thing would do. So he

did that. He was so good we hired him on the faculty before he even got his

master's degree, and then when I retired he succeeded me.

David: Oh, okay.

Bertram: Now he's retired and I don't know who the hell, but at any rate.

David: So you retired from Florida?

Bertram: Yeah.

David: So you spent a number of years there.

Bertram: Yeah. So at any rate he and I are obviously still great buddies.

David: When did the architecture school start here?

Bertram: 1929 when Cole arrived here to start it, yeah. During the process of my

being on the faculty here in the [19]50s the architectural profession was

getting a rather annoyed at this business of calling architecture architectural

engineering and didn't like that term. That number one. Number two Is that

architecture was getting to the point where instead of having a four-year

bachelor's degree it needed to be five. So the National Council of Registration

Boards required that schools have a five B Arch degree for students so that when

they got that they could ultimately become registered architects under the law.

Well, so we had to establish that here, so that took the place of--

David: You were here for that change?

Bertram: I was here during that, yeah, and Steger's first degree was that

degree. [Laughs] And instead of the design and construction option of my day,

well, building instruction curriculum was started by Bill Favro. Of course a

good story about Bill Favro is that his wife and my wife went over to Radford.

Mine came back with a boy, his came back with a girl. [Laughs] What kind of

irritated me was that when Favro's, the Bishop Favro Hall was what do you call

it? Anyway--

David: Dedicated?

Bertram: Dedicated. They got his two daughters here and they didn't invite me.

Come on. I wanted to go see this gal and say, huh-huh, I know how old you are

but I won't tell anybody. [Laughs]

David: That's great.

Bertram: When I left here they did institute urban planning. They got a fellow

from Florida as a matter of fact to introduce urban planning in the curriculum.

Of course now the variety of stuff offered by the College is more than I can

tell you about off the top of my head, but of course that's true in well any

college of architecture now where-- Well, landscape and urban planning and all

the others.

David: Well what do you think about the changes of architectural education in

terms of this kind of specialization and splitting things out more, taking the

construction piece out?

Bertram: Buildings are so complicated. Well, it's like these days if you're

going to do a building of any size at all the architect will have to hire a

structural engineer, because by law he's got to do it or a mechanical guy

because it's got to be heating and cooled. And, if acoustics is important,

again, they are so complicated they've got to have all these--

David: One person can't do it, yeah, all, right.

Bertram: You can't do it, and so their big job is to know how to get these guys

together and make it come off.

David: That's harder than it sounds most of the time.

Bertram: Yeah. So it kind of amuses me that yeah, to stay as a registered person

what, you've got to do a certain amount of credits in continuing education. And

so I've been doing that until quite recently until finally I decided come on. It

isn't worth the time and money. I'm certainly not going to try to do it anymore,

and even the dean of architecture said, why should you bother? I said, that's

right. Somebody would have to twist my arm even to do a residence for them, and

for that I need to be registered anyhow.

David: Right.

Bertram: So, [laughter] yeah. Now one good thing about Professor Cole was that

he knew the business of architecture. That was his big thing. In fact, he and a

fellow by the name of Small wrote the well, the book that every architect having

a business and wanting to know how to run it should read you know. His last book

in fact was called Building for Investment and I have an autographed copy of it.

He never claimed to be a top-notch architect, although he did some buildings

around here that were pretty good after all for the time.

David: But he knew the business.

Bertram: Yeah. He knew the business and that carried over into his running of

the Department of Architectural Engineering. He knew how to run that place and

how to make faculty get along with one another whether you like it or not. And

you could imagine that if you have very arty guys on one hand and very technical

engineering guys on the other hand that sometimes uhmm. Anyway, it's amusing to

me how well he did that, and of course when Cole retired in 1956 he retired, the

next guy came in and didn't know how to do that. And I had to tell him, hey, I

can't teach because you're not running this place like he did, and that's the

reason I left. And of course the amusing thing is that I can say, well in

Florida I was under ten department heads, one of them left on his own accord,

just one. Come on. [Laughs]

David: That says something.

Bertram: Yeah, it does.

David: Did you ever take a turn as chair of the department down there?

Bertram: No. It's kind of amusing. My father said, when are you going to be a

dean? I said, I wouldn't be a dean for anything. I said, number one, I wouldn't

be teaching anymore. Number two is I have to tell people where to get off and

I'm not good at that. But, of course the amusing thing is when I did retire

there was a situation in Florida where you could teach for another five years

despite, or at least one term despite the fact you were retired. Early we had a

faculty meeting where they were supposed to consider a new department head, and

here was this guy from Georgia Tech who wanted to come here. I heard all about

it. I said, well, I can tell them why they don't want him, but they're not going

to pay any attention to me since I'm--so why should I? This guy comes and I had

a hard time with him but I didn't give a darn you know because I could tell him

off. So finally the faculty realized yeah, they made a mistake. So they go to

the interim dean mind you, hey, this guy-- So. The interim dean goes to the

department head and said, hey, you've got to step down the-- The guy said, well

he wouldn't do it, to which the dean right floppy said, well then you're hired.

Ooohf. I thought to myself interim deans are usually quite not that assertive.

So I went to him and I said, more power to you buddy. That needed to be said.

[Laughs] Come on.

David: Amazing, yeah.

Bertram: Oh gee. Just like some of our current situations, particularly

political. Come on, can't you do better than that?

David: Absolutely, yeah. So do you miss the classroom?

Bertram: Uh, I wouldn't say so, no. I do a little bit of consulting. In fact,

I've got, somebody called me the other day would I come. Well, my probably is

getting there, so I don't know how I'm going to work that out. Yeah, if it's

what I call a one-man job, fine. If it's going to take more than that, not to

mention some fancy instrumentation which I don't have anymore, uh-uh. I'll have

to say no. I'm not able to do that anymore. Fortunately, well for example, over

in Lynchburg was a hotel that had problems with noise. So I go up there and tell

them what to do about it, no problem. Or, a contractor in West Virginia was

doing somebody's house and the problem of sound between the master bedroom suite

and what's above and all that stuff, yeah, I can handle that sort of thing okay.

David: You have to keep up-to-date on the technology.

Bertram: Oh yeah, sure.

David: So you read the literature on it.

Bertram: Oh yeah. But one common thing is that if somebody is building a

building where they have these dividing petitions between spaces and they have

to provide a certain level of sound isolation they will have in their specs that

they've got to have somebody come and prove they're doing it.

David: Right.

Bertram: Well, that means you've got to have something to create the signal, a

pretty hefty signal at that and measure all that stuff.

David: To test it, yeah.

Bertram: So it takes the instrumentation plus two people to do it, so something

like that. Nope, nope, I'm not doing that. I've done it, but I don't do it

anymore. Of course the amusing thing was that in Florida, you know what I mean

by a snowbird now?

David: Yes.

Bertram: These rich people that come down and want to live down there, so here's

these high rises that they build and so here are there people building these

high rises, so they pay a fancy price for it and then they find out they can

hear their neighbor and all sorts of things like that. So what happens is these

people as a group hire somebody like us to come and make measurements and so on,

and try to sue the developers. And of course the developers have to hire another

crowd to make measurements, including impact measurements which is tricky to do

if there ever was one. Of course the amusing thing on that score is there's a

tapping machine that you buy in order to make those measurements and it's kind

of expensive, so a former student of mine and I we owned one together.

David: I was going to say you engineered one, yeah.

Bertram: So they would be hired by one group and I'd be hired by the other one

and we would use the same thing. [Laughs] Come on. We knew how it was going to

come out and nobody is going to win anything after the fact anyway, but we would

collect our fees. [Laughs] Oh gee, yeah. One of them it had a top floor, which

you can imagine was high priced stuff. And here was this, beyond the kitchen a

tile floor. You could drag a chair on that floor and you could hear it two

floors down. Why? Because a concrete structure will transmit that sound quite

well and you won't hear it until what? A gyp[sum] board finish is connected to

it somehow, and it's a good loudspeaker.

David: Oh.

Bertram: Yeah. What's happening? Well yeah, it's way down here. [Laughs]

David: That's fascinating.

Bertram: Yeah. A resilient floating of pipes handling your water closet wastes

and so on. Come on. Little things that if-- they build it they do it right, but

now after the fact trying to do it, fix it, well yeah, you can do it, but--but.

David: I have to say though I do have some sense of missing the sound of the

heating pipes clanging which you don't hear much anymore, but there's a fond

memory of the old libraries -- clang.

Bertram: My baseboard heating in the house I built yeah, you could hear it

squeak a little bit, but it wasn't very loud.

David: I just have such fond memories of my undergraduate of working in the

basement of the library and the steam pipes just bashing.

Bertram: Oh yeah.

David: Movie theaters -- bang. So let me ask you what drew you back to

Blacksburg then after your career in Florida?

Bertram: Well, my older son went to school here. Since he grew up partly here he

wanted to come to school here. Okay, so he did, and so he's a big Highty-Tighty.

In fact, he's president of their alumni situation until very recently. In fact,

Schaeffer, who was head of the Highty-Tighties way back in the [19]50s went to

the Lutheran Church, so I knew him quite well that way, and I played for his

funeral in fact. When he died I bought his trumpet from his widow and that's

what my son played and they have it on display now.

David: Oh, I know that trumpet, yeah.

Bertram: That's it. Anyway, so he wanted to get back here ultimately so he came

back here in what, probably 2005 or [20]04, because he lived right outside of

Atlanta for--oh what's the place, at any rate, for several years. When he left

here he was in the Army first for about a half a dozen years. His last duty was

on a DMZ zone in Korea. When he got back from that and landed in El Paso he

thought the heck with this. The next time they will probably send me to-- And he

didn't like that so he got out of there. But at any rate, in 2005 or [20]06 he

calls me and he says, hey, you don't need to keep up with that acre lot and big

house and mom is going downhill, you better come here. And her dementia was

getting kind of bad about that time. His idea was that we would live with them,

and I had to tell him, uh-uh, she's not going to be able to do that. So we came

back here in 2006 and she landed over here in Heritage Hall for not quite a

year, until finally well, one day I was feeling a little bit of pain and I said

gee, I'm overdoing it. He said, no, we better check this out. So they take me

over here to the hospital and so what happens? I wind up in Roanoke, huh-huh.

Yeah. The only way to fix it is have a triple bypass. And they had this surgeon

there who said, well you're eighty-five and you know you might not make it. And

so from his standpoint he didn't want to do it, and so here are the options you

know. I said, huh-huh. These options don't sound very good to me. You're living.

So what? [Laughs] I said, no way. You still say the chances going the other

route your odds of coming out okay are better than not. And after all sooner or

later you know you're not going to make it anyway, so what the hell? And my

family agreed with me. We were all ready to go to the University of Virginia

because this guy wasn't going to do it, so he finally agreed to do it, so he

did. For my final visit to go see him he sent his sidekick. I said, you can tell

that guy he can come on, go jump in a lake. [Laughs] But, I was in rehab

obviously right after that and supposed to go home on a Tuesday. On Sunday

morning before that Tuesday at 4 a.m. here comes my son and daughter-in-law.

you've got to come home. Mommy's in the hospital. Ooh. Well obviously my point

was to get home and see if she could realize why I was gone for a month. Instead

here I see her struggling trying to live when the doctors already told them they

didn't think they could even get me there before she was gone. Well, she did

live for two days. That I didn't need. I just didn't need it. So, then while

here I was living when my son and daughter in law invited-- Well what's the

point? So that's the reason I'm in Warm Hearth now all by my lonesome for the

first time ever, because I always had roommates, even when I worked for the Navy

Yard. My buddies that I went to school with here we stayed together.

David: Right.

Bertram: Yeah. And of course when I got married I had to kick them out. At any

rate, so here I'm living alone and trying to do things I like to do. Life's not

dull that's for sure, because I sing in the Blacksburg Master Chorale group

which didn't exist when I--

David: I remember seeing you sing there. Yeah, yeah.

Bertram: I have substituted at the organ that I used to play, which is still

over in Christiansburg. I've even played for our own church once, and now they

have their mics redone. Well, here last fall the pastor said, hey, how about

redoing the drawing of the church, because what we're using on the bulletin

shows ivy and that's long gone. [Laughs] Huh-huh. So, I took a couple of

pictures and went and drew it and so that's what they use.

David: Oh fantastic.

Bertram: Yeah.

David: That's neat.

Bertram: So, that was all well and good, but then here the first of this month

we're going to have an evening song at which they're going to dedicate this

rebuilt organ, and so the organist is, hey, draw the organ. I said, well drawing

a building is one thing, but drawing a dang pipe organ is another story. Come

on. So I did, and--

David: Putting you to work.

Bertram: Yeah. I hadn't done-- Well you see, when I was a student, and a very

irregular architectural student, I was never taught watercolor, and so what

watercolor I did was-- Well anyway, so most of my drawings are black and white

drawings in either pencil or ink. So when they asked me to do this, so here I

pull out my old pens, including the pens, I even lettered my own diploma name,

because well when I was a graduate student I lettered my own name on my diploma

and the date and the whole bit.

David: That's great.

Bertram: Anyway, life is not dull and sometimes it gets pretty hectic to put it

bluntly, yeah. But I tell you, tracing this history is kind of got me stumped on

how to answer some questions here, which I'm trying to do.

David: It's a good project though.

Bertram: I should be the best guy to do it, so come on, get me the documents I

need to nail it down.

David: If they exist. They might have just disappeared. Well anything else that

I should have asked about?

Bertram: No. Well of course I was quite amused at this fellow that proceeded me

talking about the honor code. And I think about what happened when I was a

student and somebody broke into one of our professor's offices, and how did he

do it? His wife worked for the dean of engineering, so she had a key that could

go into this office. And so this fellow allowed him to do some cheating and we

caught up with him. But another time, when one fellow was accused of, I forget

the details now, but there was no way of proving it, and even Cole and I had to

say, well, no, so he got by on that. But then a little later he slipped up and

this was right after Cole had retired and we caught up with him. So when I saw

Cole when he retired he went to Washington in the AIA office there for a couple

of years, and so I had to tell him, I said, well we caught up with that guy. [Laughs]

David: You got him. It took a while, but yeah.

Bertram: Yeah. Anyway.

David: Well this has been an honor and wonderful stories. Thank you very much. I

really appreciate it.

[End of interview]