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https://archivesoralhistories.csusm.edu/files/original/1889cecb528454849ec8fbed1d12c9ea.mp3
69e8fb585d91537bbcd272920b5d0c87
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Title
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Oral history of Theresa Rios, April 7, 2022
Description
An account of the resource
Theresa Rios is a retired Escondido librarian, where she created Las Embajadores Biblioteca. In this interview, Theresa discusses teaching children to read, empowering children to learn, and how her childhood impacted her passion for teaching children to read and love learning. This oral history was made possible with generous funding from the Ellie Johns Foundation.
Creator
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Theresa Rios
Contributor
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Madison Teater
Date
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2022-04-07
Coverage
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Escondido (Calif.)
Arizona
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California State University San Marcos University Library
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English
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<a href="https://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en" target="_blank" rel="noopener">In copyright</a>
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Theresa Rios
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<a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/</a>
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Sound
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https://archivesoralhistories.csusm.edu/files/original/d3c147170d930bc7f12d9f580bba4753.pdf
ad9279d0bc173837718e150a224623cd
PDF Text
Text
TRANSCRIPT, INTERVIEW 2022-04-07
THERESA RIOS
MJ Teater:
All right. It is recording now. All right. So today is Thursday, April 6th, 2022 at 1:07 PM. I am MJ Teater, a
graduate student at California State University San Marcos. And today I'm interviewing narrator Theresa
Rios for the University Library Special Collections Oral History Project. Theresa, thank you for being here
with me today.
Theresa Rios:
You're very welcome.
Teater:
<laughs> All right. Just to get started, can you introduce yourself, like, say your name and when you
were, or maybe not when you were born, but where you were born?
Rios:
Mm-hmm. My name is Theresa Rios. I was born in Clifton, Arizona.
Teater:
I'm going to ask you a few questions about your childhood and maybe your upbringing. So, how long
have you lived in San Diego if you were born in Arizona?
Rios:
I came to Escondido in 1970. I brought my four children and myself and we moved here and my exhusband and I have been here for fifty years. I lived in La Jolla for five years. I love Escondido. I came
back to Escondido in I believe, [19]78.
Teater:
Mm-hmm.
Rios:
And I have been here ever since.
Teater:
Wow. I love that. That's so cool. So at what point did you become a librarian? Or what was your journey
to become a librarian?
Rios:
My journey was-- I have this write up from this Hispanic newspaper and it tells me here when I started
the library was in... back in, oh my goodness. I’m little nervous, but not really. Anyway, I came, I started
working, I came back to Escondido. I started going to Palomar College and from there I met my husband,
Dan Rios. After that, I left Palomar College and I went to the employment office and they sent me to the
[Escondido Public] library and I got this job at the library and I thought, my goodness, I love this job. And
so I started by being a library assistant. And from there, they started giving me some privileges about -being Hispanic, there was no Hispanic library books for either the children and even the adults. So I
Transcribed by MJ Teater
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THERESA RIOS
started-- Oh my goodness. I started, well translating for the library, whatever they needed. Anytime they
needed a Hispanic to translate something, they would call me. I started teaching some of the librarians,
what to, how to discuss things in Spanish or to answer in Spanish when someone came to the library and
had no Spanish experience or could not. But there was no one that would write anything. I transferred
papers, whatever they needed. Then I started seeing that the children, I started saying stories to the
children and I noticed where a lot of the Hispanic children did not understand what we were saying [in
English], what I was saying to them. And, so then I told my supervisor, I think we should start a Hispanic
program – a storytelling time. And so he said, yes, whatever, it would be wonderful. Go ahead.
Whatever you think. And at that time, I had a lot of the mothers that came with their children
sometimes, and they also didn't know English. And so I decided to start Las Embajadores de Escondido.
And they, they just thought again, Liz Painter was one of them. She helped, she helped a lot, because
she was very friendly with all the people and she also wanted us to try something different. So again, I
said, yes, let's do this. Let's tell the stories to the children in Spanish. And so there's a nice picture. The
newspaper came over -- The [Escondido] Times Advocate -- and I have this, I'm sorry.
Teater:
It's okay. Do you want me to pause the recording?
Rios:
Yes. One moment. Okay. There's a very nice picture of me with this book that I would tell this story, Las
Zapatitos Colorados, “The Red Shoes” and with this story, I would tell all the children to be very careful
about who they went with, how not to go with just anyone and just sort of try to... tell them to be
cautious, but at the same time, there was a lot to learn. We had a lot to learn. But you you'd have to see
this, this article. And do you read Spanish?
Teater:
I know enough to muddle through it, you know <laugh>
Rios:
Oh good, good. Because this whole page is in Spanish. It's from the Hispanico, Hispanic Times. And it was
way back in 2000. June 22nd, 2000. And it says Theresa Rios, nueva de delegate al club del
parlementaria. Parliamentary.
Teater:
Oh cool.
Rios:
And before that well I was at Palomar College. I was with Concerned Citizens of Escondido at A Day With
Your Neighbor Luncheon on May 7th, 1982: Theresa Rios, Pichacon Lupita, and George Lopez. And
there's my boss over here. He's not mentioned, Jon Ericson. Anyway, there's a whole page of me with a
picture of the, telling the story to the children. And I would like for you to see that, cause it just explains
a lot. I had no idea I had done so much. <laughter>, it's bringing back all these memories and I loved it. I
mean the, the library to me was like home. I mean wonderful.
Teater:
That's fantastic.
Rios:
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THERESA RIOS
Anyway, again, like I say, anything you asked me to do, whether it was a police department or it was the
library or my bosses, the children were very important to get them started learning. I still have many
friends here in Escondido that when I see, we talk about all the things that we did. And the library I've
been going there and Roberta, she was my dear friend there. Just a lot of the gals that were, that are still
there. Some of them the other day I went to the library and there was Francine, this one, she said
“Theresa! How are you? I haven't seen you in,” you know, things like that. And I just love the library. I
love going back. I'm just gonna kinda stay in touch, you know?
Teater:
Yeah. That's, that's great. That's so great.
Rios:
Back to, I mean, back to the -- what other question, I mean, I think I mentioned...
Teater:
That was a good starting point. So, can you tell me more about the Embajadores program?
Rios:
Yes, the Embajadores we, like I said, the children's mothers, some of them, some were elderly ladies
that came to the library that were my friends that I would tell them, come join us. I mean, come join the
Embajadores. We want every child in Escondido to have a library card.
Teater:
Oh.
Rios:
I want every child to know, to learn how to read at a very young age. And so they came, they came from
all over and we would have -- one time we had this salsa contest, not a contest, but everybody brought
different kinds of salsa and my salsa won a blue ribbon. <laughs>
Teater:
Ooh.
Rios:
It was technically a blue ribbon. It was just a wonderful time. And the people came, we would have
different places that would sponsor us. One of them was El Tapatilla in Escondido would send food.
Again, a lot of stuff that's in this article brings back a lot of memories. But the Embajadores came and
they gave tours. I taught them to give tours through the library. I taught 'em to sit and talk with people
that need just answers in Spanish or just to get together with other ladies that, that spoke Spanish only.
And then bring them in as far as, trying to -- if they wanted an education, if they wanted to join literacy
[program], things like that. I mean, literacy was just starting; the literacy program. And, and we had, you
know, different people teaching other people Spanish or English or...
Teater:
And about when were these programs happening?
Rios:
That was back in that era, which is, you know... [unclear] There's a lot of paperwork that have here that I
I've been going through, but you know, it's been so long. It's been-Teater:
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THERESA RIOS
Yeah. Yeah. Well that's okay. We can keep going. So, can you explain how, like early reading programs
are impactful for a child's life? Like why that was so important to you?
Rios:
Because when I went to-- the reason that I believe this is so important is because I also, when I went to
started kindergarten, I did not know a word of English. Very little, very, very little. My parents did not,
we did not speak English at home. My father knew a little more than my mother, my mother didn't. I
mean, because of her hardships, her mother died when she was, I believe, in third grade, I'm not sure,
but the schools were what, you know, and she lived in a ranch and she was left with four or five or six
little ones that she helped grow up. And a baby that my, her, my grandmother, her mother died. So my
mother always thought education was very important. You need it. She would get very upset. Um, so I
knew that... And then I have -- Me marrying so young and having four children. I decided, nuh-uh, if I
would've had this education before, I would have, you know, not being so afraid of trying of being
around people that could teach me that could read, could that would teach me. I mean, there was no
nothing in Clifton Arizona where I was born. There was, there was some things, but not enough to
inspire me at a young age.
Teater:
Mm-hmm.
Rios:
And so I believe that if the children could get it right into them and tell me their stories, and then I
would try to direct them when I would ask questions. Well, what do you do? How do you read at home?
Do you do this? No... Do you like coming to the library? Oh yes. We like it. Do you like to hear stories?
Oh, yes. And then I would ask some of the children little questions. I don't know if I should say this, but
What do you do? Oh, we drink tequila.
Teater:
<laugh> oh, no,
Rios:
We would laugh over that That. I said, “Oh, no, we gotta get this--” <laugh>. I mean, I don't mean to it
it's part of growing up it's in their environment, their family so again, I, I would see parents and I would
say, well, you know, good, this is not so good. But, oh my God. And it just, I mean, you'd have to talk to
my supervisor, which was Joanne, oh, my away. Well, and Laura Mitchell was also one of my bosses. And
like I said, city manager at the time, I can't, it's gone right now, but I'll have to get those names if you
need 'em. But they would, give me card blank for whatever I wanted to do. I was so fortunate and so
lucky and, a lot of like Graham Humphrey, he was the head of the library at the time. And he knew my
husband very well. Dan
Teater:
Mm-hmm <affirmative>,
Rios:
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THERESA RIOS
And again, all I had to do was, well, Mr. Humphrey told me I want more Hispanic children here. I want, I
don't-- at the time, I don't know whether he meant to say anything like this, but he said, I don't wanna
see all this white Anglo-Saxons <affirmative> and I thought, oh my God. I mean because I believe that
they're the white or the black or the Hispanic. We, they all need to learn everybody. <affirmative>
Everybody needs to get some sense when they're young of what's going on and reading stories. I had no
prejudice whatsoever, but I also understood the situation: who had the opportunities at home who
didn't. And the ones that didn't of course would take priority of my attention, because I would have to
explain myself more to them or listen to them a little more, so that they give me ideas of what, how I
could help and how everybody in the library could help. Not just me. I didn't want, whenever somebody
treated any of 'em with disrespect, I would just jump up and say, no, it's not the way we treat people. I
mean, I had to fight everybody, not fight, but kind of.
Teater:
But yeah, I know what you mean.
Rios:
And I'm still doing it. I still do it. Even in my church at resurrection and everybody is welcome. Everybody
is a child of Jesus. Everybody deserves a right to be heard. Of course, sometimes people are not in the
mood to be heard or this and that. But with me, they'll come and tell me anything. and I feel how can I
say I, a lot of humility that they can do that with me. But I feel if they're wrong, I'll tell them if they're
hurting, I'll listen. And if they just wanna talk, that's good too. So we get along and that's how I get along
at the library, and all my life.
Teater:
That’s Fantastic
Rios:
I guess this is how I tried to be. And what else can I tell you?
Teater:
<laugh> all right. Let me, let me look through my questions because you're, you're answering so many of
them. So what can library librarians who only speak English do to support the Spanish speakers of, you
know, Escondido and San Diego?
Rios:
What could they do?
Teater:
Mm-hmm.
Rios:
Is that the question?
Teater:
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THERESA RIOS
Yes.
Rios:
They could take classes in Spanish mm-hmm <affirmative> They could have someone there to help
interpret. They just like, you know, now a lot of people are coming like from other countries and we
have to continue to learn. <affirmative> Although I'm fluent Spanish and English, I love French, but you
know, I'm not that good at it. And I I'm very close to my Filipino friends. I have a daughter-in-law that's
married to my son and a wonderful family. And here in Escondido, I very belong to my church at
resurrection eighties and the man, all we are very good friends on the counter. I am a greeter at my
church on Sundays. <affirmative> I, we all work together. So Like I say, whoever walks into that door
always gets a good morning from me when I am greeting. And a lot of them too. And I say, we need to
be very kind, but at the same time we need to. But anybody just run out, you know, they're having a
problem. One, we have to kinda-Teater:
What other, are there any other initiatives that you worked on while you were in the library? It sounds
like you had a lot of support from your supervisors.
Rios:
Well I was on the desk. I started on the desk. Like I said, greeting people and what do they need? Or
they would tell me what I need to find out this, I need to go to this desk or I need to go here. I need to, I
need to know about that. So I would direct them to wherever. That was part of our job, to direct people,
to wherever they needed to go and help them. If they couldn't find something, if they had the librarian
on the desk was busy we could try and just keep them moving. But at the same time, I had meetings
with several people. I mean they have this special room. Can't think of it right now. I mean, it's just
upstairs, but I would do whatever it took to for the children to have special things going on. I mean,
yeah, I have to go back. But if you see this picture of me taken when I would read stories, oh, and I got, I
got this job at the library, like I said, way back then, but my husband and I were planning a trip to Mexico
City, Mexico, a three week trip through me to Mexico. And I told my boss, I told Joanne Greenberg. I
said, I think this was in August that I got hired around that time. And in December, we were planning to
go to Mexico for three weeks, four weeks. And I said, I would have to work here, but I have to ask, my
husband and I are going to go to Mexico, and I want to go very badly. I've never been to Mexico City.
And, if you will, let me go. And, and let me come back to this job. I promise to work as hard as I can. And,
you know, they let me do this after just being hired a couple of months. And I was all very grateful for
that. We had a lovely time in Mexico. We had children running after our van and I mean things I saw and
and my husband being a photographer, took pictures of the kids and the dresses, the colors. It was
amazing. So I came back to the library and <affirmative>, I had all those stories in me from, for the
children and for, you know, even adults.
Teater:
Mm-hmm <affirmative> sounds like, that sounds awesome.
Rios:
Seeing the no education, you know, a lot of we were out in the mountains where there were, and I said,
and here they get a chance to come to America. And here we have all these mentees for them. So again,
Mr. Humphrey had told me just whatever you need to do. And Joanne Greenberg the same. And then
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THERESA RIOS
Laura Mitchell, she's whatever I wanted to do till my husband got sick. And then I said, I can't anymore, I
have to-- <affirmative> He had Gotten this infection that he hardly couldn't walk for about a year.
Teater:
Oh no.
Rios:
But I took care of him. And, and he, we did wonderful, I mean, far as, and he came out of it and now he's
on dialysis. He has been for five years. And again, it's a challenge just every day is a something new, but,
but I live a quiet life. And if I can be, I tell people at my church, I will be here, but if I can't-- <affirmative>
And, and that's the way I said, if you want me that way fine. If not, well, I have to something else,
because as far as my church and my masses, I can always see them at home. I can, you know, do other
things, especially now that everything is on TV. So, yeah. But at the same time, I'm very close to my
priests that we built this new church here in Escondido, Resurrection, and I have had a lot of
opportunities to help there. And again, I meet a lot of my people from the library and invite 'em there
and come and see and bring your children. And again, I'm still involved.
Teater:
So you're still involved with children's programs then?
Rios:
Not as much as I would like to be, because, like I said, I can't commit myself too much because of my
husband.
Teater:
Yeah.
Rios:
I have things that I need to do, but any chance I have, and they're having something really special, I try
to attend.
Teater:
That's Nice.
Rios:
Or I just, I have a kind connection with the children at the church. And, and I just love it; just even when
they just say good morning, back to me, or hello or goodbye. And excited and on their way. And I'm on
my way too.
Teater:
Sounds awesome. What has your-- what has connecting to children, or what has connecting to children
meant to you? Like over the years as a librarian?
Rios:
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THERESA RIOS
What has connected mean to children?
Teater:
No. What has your connection with children meant to you as a librarian over the years?
Rios:
The in, oh, I just love to hear a child read. I love to just see their little faces when they hear a story. I'm
just know, like I said, I have four of my own and, and a lot of nieces, I come from a family of ten, five
brothers and five sisters. So I have nieces and nephews. And, anytime I'm Aunt Terry or Aunt T, or
<laugh>, you know, we have a connection with, and in the library, of course they all know that, that I
worked there. Anybody could come and, and visit their friends, cousins, nieces, nephews. And one time I
had my grandson at the library. I baby him in the summer. Because my daughter and her husband had
business to take care of up in Woodland, California. I mean Auburn. <affirmative> And Mr. Humphrey
says, oh, my, my grandson was, I think he was seven or, or so seven years anyway, I had him in, enrolled
him into the Boys and Girls Club. And so I had my friend Darlene from the library take him and they
came back, both of them crying. <laugh>
Teater:
Oh, no.
Rios:
My grandson wouldn't stay. He would, he wouldn't stay. And I was working at the library. I couldn't, you
know, I've taken care of customers. And so they came back crying, and then I said, okay, you come to
the back. And I set him down there and I said, don't you move, you stay right there and eat your lunch or
whatever. And anyway Mr. Humphrey was very kind, he never said a word to me about, yeah. Was that
of order or anything. I mean, he let me do whatever was necessary for me to continue working there.
Teater:
I love that. That's so sweet.
Rios:
My grandson. I mean he loved being there at the library with me. <laugh> can I say, I mean, family
always came first with me and I tell all my, the people that I know when they can't attend a meeting,
that I, or something that I'm involved with, I say, and they say, my family, my doc, or doctors do
whatever families first you take care of that, do not worry about anything else. And I'm saying it's family
first when they need whatever they need. But at the same time I live my own life. It's a different life
because my husband and I have been married forty-one years. Cause he's my third husband. So I have to
do what is necessary to have a good life. And at the same time, do what what's good for other people,
especially children and others. But when I can't do it, I can't do it. Like I said, in my home comes first
right now with my ill husband has been ill for over 20 years.
Teater:
Oh no.
Rios:
Transcribed by MJ Teater
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THERESA RIOS
And he retired. So, but he manages, he's a wonderful person. I mean, I could not ask for a better mate.
Teater:
Well, that's good to hear. I think those are all of my questions. Is there anything else that you want to
add to your experience as a librarian or anything about that?
Rios:
Well, I just want you to make sure that, is there any way I can mail this literature to you, this newspaper
articles and some of the things that I've did or I'll tell you, do you ever get to the pioneer room?
Teater:
I do not. So for here, I'm gonna pause the recording. --All right. Well, thank you so much for your time,
Theresa. It was really great talking to you and learning all about your experience as a librarian and your
impact on literacy in Escondido. It sounds so fulfilling. Thank you for your time today.
Rios:
You're so welcome. And Jay, what, what was your name, Jay?
Teater:
What? My name is MJ.
Rios:
MJ. I knew I had one right. Okay. MJ, thank you for calling me and giving me the opportunity to say all
these things that I hope will help other people.
Teater:
Yeah, they will. Thank you so much for your time today.
Rios:
You're so welcome.
Teater:
Okay. All right. Have a good rest of your day.
Rios:
You too goodly.
Teater:
All right. Bye. Bye.
Transcribed by MJ Teater
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�
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Transcripts
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Title
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Rios, Theresa. Interview transcript. April 7, 2022.
Description
An account of the resource
Theresa Rios is a retired Escondido librarian, where she created Las Embajadores Biblioteca. In this interview, Theresa discusses teaching children to read, empowering children to learn, and how her childhood impacted her passion for teaching children to read and love learning.
Creator
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Theresa Rios
Contributor
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MJ Teater
Date
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2022-04-07
Subject
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Latine Americans
Libraries -- Literacy
Public libraries
Coverage
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Escondido (Calif.)
Arizona
Publisher
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California State University San Marcos University Library Special Collections
Language
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English
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<a href="https://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In copyright</a>
Rights Holder
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Theresa Rios
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text
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SC027-17
Date Created
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2022-05-13
Community history
History Department internship
Latine experience
Women's experience
-
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Oral Histories
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Oral History
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Interviewer
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Madison Teater
Interviewee
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Theresa Rios
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Las Embajadores de Escondido
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5.4 2022-04-07 Oral history of Theresa Rios, April 7, 2022 SC027-17 00:34:29 SC027 California State University San Marcos University Library Special Collections Oral History Collection CSUSM This oral history was made possible with the generous funding of the Ellie Johns Scholarship Fund at Rancho Santa Fe Foundation and the Library Guild of Rancho Santa Fe. Escondido (Calif.) Hispanic Americans Libraries -- Literacy Public libraries Las Embajadores de Escondido Theresa Rios Madison Teater m4a RiosTheresa_MadisonTeater-2022-04-06.m4a 1:|24(4)|43(1)|52(14)|59(1)|66(7)|72(14)|86(14)|107(4)|122(11)|141(8)|159(6)|174(7)|193(3)|205(3)|219(12)|235(1)|249(11)|256(6)|271(5)|289(13)|315(15)|326(1)|337(12)|345(15)|352(7)|367(2)|383(1)|406(3)|433(13)|440(10)|456(13)|472(3)|491(7)|510(11) 0 https://archivesoralhistories.csusm.edu/files/original/1889cecb528454849ec8fbed1d12c9ea.mp3 Other audio English 68 The Introduction of Theresa Rios / Becoming a librarian Teater: < ; laughs> ; All right. Just to get started, can you introduce yourself, like, say your name and when you were, or maybe not when you were born, but where you were born? Rios: Mm-hmm. My name is Theresa Rios. I was born in Clifton, Arizona. Teater: I'm going to ask you a few questions about your childhood and maybe your upbringing. So, how long have you lived in San Diego if you were born in Arizona? Rios: I came to Escondido in 1970. I brought my four children and myself and we moved here and my ex-husband and I have been here for fifty years. I lived in La Jolla for five years. I love Escondido. I came back to Escondido in I believe, [19]78. Teater: Mm-hmm. Rios: And I have been here ever since. Teater: Wow. I love that. That's so cool. So at what point did you become a librarian? Or what was your journey to become a librarian? Rios: My journey was-- I have this write up from this Hispanic newspaper and it tells me here when I started the library was in... back in, oh my goodness. I’m little nervous, but not really. Anyway, I came, I started working, I came back to Escondido. I started going to Palomar College and from there I met my husband, Dan Rios. After that, I left Palomar College and I went to the employment office and they sent me to the [Escondido Public] library and I got this job at the library and I thought, my goodness, I love this job. And so I started by being a library assistant. And from there, they started giving me some privileges about -- being Hispanic, there was no Hispanic library books for either the children and even the adults. So I started-- Oh my goodness. I started, well translating for the library, whatever they needed. Anytime they needed a Hispanic to translate something, they would call me. I started teaching some of the librarians, what to, how to discuss things in Spanish or to answer in Spanish when someone came to the library and had no Spanish experience or could not. But there was no one that would write anything. I transferred papers, whatever they needed. Then I started seeing that the children, I started saying stories to the children and I noticed where a lot of the Hispanic children did not understand what we were saying [in English], what I was saying to them. And, so then I told my supervisor, I think we should start a Hispanic program – a storytelling time. And so he said, yes, whatever, it would be wonderful. Go ahead. Whatever you think. And at that time, I had a lot of the mothers that came with their children sometimes, and they also didn't know English. And so I decided to start Las Embajadores de Escondido. And they, they just thought again, Liz Painter was one of them. She helped, she helped a lot, because she was very friendly with all the people and she also wanted us to try something different. So again, I said, yes, let's do this. Let's tell the stories to the children in Spanish. And so there's a nice picture. The newspaper came over -- The [Escondido] Times Advocate -- and I have this, I'm sorry. Teater: It's okay. Do you want me to pause the recording? Rios: Yes. One moment. Okay. There's a very nice picture of me with this book that I would tell this story, Las Zapatitos Colorados, “The Red Shoes” and with this story, I would tell all the children to be very careful about who they went with, how not to go with just anyone and just sort of try to... tell them to be cautious, but at the same time, there was a lot to learn. We had a lot to learn. But you you'd have to see this, this article. And do you read Spanish? Teater: I know enough to muddle through it, you know < ; laugh> ; Rios: Oh good, good. Because this whole page is in Spanish. It's from the Hispanico, Hispanic Times. And it was way back in 2000. June 22nd, 2000. And it says Theresa Rios, nueva de delegate al club del parlementaria. Parliamentary. Teater: Oh cool. Rios: And before that well I was at Palomar College. I was with Concerned Citizens of Escondido at A Day With Your Neighbor Luncheon on May 7th, 1982: Theresa Rios, Pichacon Lupita, and George Lopez. And there's my boss over here. He's not mentioned, Jon Ericson. Anyway, there's a whole page of me with a picture of the, telling the story to the children. And I would like for you to see that, cause it just explains a lot. I had no idea I had done so much. < ; laughter> ; , it's bringing back all these memories and I loved it. I mean the, the library to me was like home. I mean wonderful. Teater: That's fantastic. Rios: Anyway, again, like I say, anything you asked me to do, whether it was a police department or it was the library or my bosses, the children were very important to get them started learning. I still have many friends here in Escondido that when I see, we talk about all the things that we did. And the library I've been going there and Roberta, she was my dear friend there. Just a lot of the gals that were, that are still there. Some of them the other day I went to the library and there was Francine, this one, she said “Theresa! How are you? I haven't seen you in,” you know, things like that. And I just love the library. I love going back. I'm just gonna kinda stay in touch, you know? Teater: Yeah. That's, that's great. That's so great. Rios: Back to, I mean, back to the -- what other question, I mean, I think I mentioned... Theresa Rios talks about moving from Arizona to California and how she came to be a librarian in the city of Escondido. Clifton, Arizona ; Escondido ; La Jolla ; librarian ; Palomar College ; Spanish ; Translator Becoming a librarian ; Spanish programs ; Theresa Rios in the Hispanico newspaper ; Translating for the public library 601 The Embajadores Program Teater: That was a good starting point. So, can you tell me more about the Embajadores program? Rios: Yes, the Embajadores we, like I said, the children's mothers, some of them, some were elderly ladies that came to the library that were my friends that I would tell them, come join us. I mean, come join the Embajadores. We want every child in Escondido to have a library card. Teater: Oh. Rios: I want every child to know, to learn how to read at a very young age. And so they came, they came from all over and we would have -- one time we had this salsa contest, not a contest, but everybody brought different kinds of salsa and my salsa won a blue ribbon. < ; laughs> ; Teater: Ooh. Rios: It was technically a blue ribbon. It was just a wonderful time. And the people came, we would have different places that would sponsor us. One of them was El Tapatilla in Escondido would send food. Again, a lot of stuff that's in this article brings back a lot of memories. But the Embajadores came and they gave tours. I taught them to give tours through the library. I taught 'em to sit and talk with people that need just answers in Spanish or just to get together with other ladies that, that spoke Spanish only. And then bring them in as far as, trying to -- if they wanted an education, if they wanted to join literacy [program], things like that. I mean, literacy was just starting ; the literacy program. And, and we had, you know, different people teaching other people Spanish or English or... Teater: And about when were these programs happening? Rios: That was back in that era, which is, you know... [unclear] There's a lot of paperwork that have here that I I've been going through, but you know, it's been so long. It's been-- Teater: Yeah. Yeah. Well that's okay. We can keep going. So, can you explain how, like early reading programs are impactful for a child's life? Like why that was so important to you? Rios: Because when I went to-- the reason that I believe this is so important is because I also, when I went to started kindergarten, I did not know a word of English. Very little, very, very little. My parents did not, we did not speak English at home. My father knew a little more than my mother, my mother didn't. I mean, because of her hardships, her mother died when she was, I believe, in third grade, I'm not sure, but the schools were what, you know, and she lived in a ranch and she was left with four or five or six little ones that she helped grow up. And a baby that my, her, my grandmother, her mother died. So my mother always thought education was very important. You need it. She would get very upset. Um, so I knew that... And then I have -- Me marrying so young and having four children. I decided, nuh-uh, if I would've had this education before, I would have, you know, not being so afraid of trying of being around people that could teach me that could read, could that would teach me. I mean, there was no nothing in Clifton Arizona where I was born. There was, there was some things, but not enough to inspire me at a young age. Teater: Mm-hmm. Rios: And so I believe that if the children could get it right into them and tell me their stories, and then I would try to direct them when I would ask questions. Well, what do you do? How do you read at home? Do you do this? No... Do you like coming to the library? Oh yes. We like it. Do you like to hear stories? Oh, yes. And then I would ask some of the children little questions. I don't know if I should say this, but What do you do? Oh, we drink tequila. Teater: < ; laugh> ; oh, no, Rios: We would laugh over that That. I said, “Oh, no, we gotta get this--” < ; laugh> ; . I mean, I don't mean to it it's part of growing up it's in their environment, their family so again, I, I would see parents and I would say, well, you know, good, this is not so good. But, oh my God. And it just, I mean, you'd have to talk to my supervisor, which was Joanne, oh, my away. Well, and Laura Mitchell was also one of my bosses. And like I said, city manager at the time, I can't, it's gone right now, but I'll have to get those names if you need 'em. But they would, give me card blank for whatever I wanted to do. I was so fortunate and so lucky and, a lot of like Graham Humphrey, he was the head of the library at the time. And he knew my husband very well. Dan Teater: Mm-hmm < ; affirmative> ; , Rios: And again, all I had to do was, well, Mr. Humphrey told me I want more Hispanic children here. I want, I don't-- at the time, I don't know whether he meant to say anything like this, but he said, I don't wanna see all this white Anglo-Saxons < ; affirmative> ; and I thought, oh my God. I mean because I believe that they're the white or the black or the Hispanic. We, they all need to learn everybody. < ; affirmative> ; Everybody needs to get some sense when they're young of what's going on and reading stories. I had no prejudice whatsoever, but I also understood the situation: who had the opportunities at home who didn't. And the ones that didn't of course would take priority of my attention, because I would have to explain myself more to them or listen to them a little more, so that they give me ideas of what, how I could help and how everybody in the library could help. Not just me. I didn't want, whenever somebody treated any of 'em with disrespect, I would just jump up and say, no, it's not the way we treat people. I mean, I had to fight everybody, not fight, but kind of. Teater: But yeah, I know what you mean. Rios: And I'm still doing it. I still do it. Even in my church at resurrection and everybody is welcome. Everybody is a child of Jesus. Everybody deserves a right to be heard. Of course, sometimes people are not in the mood to be heard or this and that. But with me, they'll come and tell me anything. and I feel how can I say I, a lot of humility that they can do that with me. But I feel if they're wrong, I'll tell them if they're hurting, I'll listen. And if they just wanna talk, that's good too. So we get along and that's how I get along at the library, and all my life. Theresa Rios talks about starting the Emajadores program, which gave Spanish speakers accessible resources in the library such as tours of the grounds, children's story times, and other elements for women, children, and the elderly. early reading programs ; El Tapatilla ; Embajadores program ; library ; literacy program dual-language learning ; Embajadores Program ; Library learning programs ; Spanish speaker ; Starting reading literacy programs at the library 1196 How to get Involved Teater: < ; laugh> ; all right. Let me, let me look through my questions because you're, you're answering so many of them. So what can library librarians who only speak English do to support the Spanish speakers of, you know, Escondido and San Diego? Rios: What could they do? Teater: Mm-hmm. Rios: Is that the question? Teater: Yes. Rios: They could take classes in Spanish mm-hmm < ; affirmative> ; They could have someone there to help interpret. They just like, you know, now a lot of people are coming like from other countries and we have to continue to learn. < ; affirmative> ; Although I'm fluent Spanish and English, I love French, but you know, I'm not that good at it. And I I'm very close to my Filipino friends. I have a daughter-in-law that's married to my son and a wonderful family. And here in Escondido, I very belong to my church at resurrection eighties and the man, all we are very good friends on the counter. I am a greeter at my church on Sundays. < ; affirmative> ; I, we all work together. So Like I say, whoever walks into that door always gets a good morning from me when I am greeting. And a lot of them too. And I say, we need to be very kind, but at the same time we need to. But anybody just run out, you know, they're having a problem. One, we have to kinda-- Teater: What other, are there any other initiatives that you worked on while you were in the library? It sounds like you had a lot of support from your supervisors. Rios: Well I was on the desk. I started on the desk. Like I said, greeting people and what do they need? Or they would tell me what I need to find out this, I need to go to this desk or I need to go here. I need to, I need to know about that. So I would direct them to wherever. That was part of our job, to direct people, to wherever they needed to go and help them. If they couldn't find something, if they had the librarian on the desk was busy we could try and just keep them moving. But at the same time, I had meetings with several people. I mean they have this special room. Can't think of it right now. I mean, it's just upstairs, but I would do whatever it took to for the children to have special things going on. I mean, yeah, I have to go back. But if you see this picture of me taken when I would read stories, oh, and I got, I got this job at the library, like I said, way back then, but my husband and I were planning a trip to Mexico City, Mexico, a three week trip through me to Mexico. And I told my boss, I told Joanne Greenberg. I said, I think this was in August that I got hired around that time. And in December, we were planning to go to Mexico for three weeks, four weeks. And I said, I would have to work here, but I have to ask, my husband and I are going to go to Mexico, and I want to go very badly. I've never been to Mexico City. And, if you will, let me go. And, and let me come back to this job. I promise to work as hard as I can. And, you know, they let me do this after just being hired a couple of months. And I was all very grateful for that. We had a lovely time in Mexico. We had children running after our van and I mean things I saw and and my husband being a photographer, took pictures of the kids and the dresses, the colors. It was amazing. So I came back to the library and < ; affirmative> ; , I had all those stories in me from, for the children and for, you know, even adults. Teater: Mm-hmm < ; affirmative> ; sounds like, that sounds awesome. Rios: Seeing the no education, you know, a lot of we were out in the mountains where there were, and I said, and here they get a chance to come to America. And here we have all these mentees for them. So again, Mr. Humphrey had told me just whatever you need to do. And Joanne Greenberg the same. And then Laura Mitchell, she's whatever I wanted to do till my husband got sick. And then I said, I can't anymore, I have to-- < ; affirmative> ; He had Gotten this infection that he hardly couldn't walk for about a year. Teater: Oh no. Rios: But I took care of him. And, and he, we did wonderful, I mean, far as, and he came out of it and now he's on dialysis. He has been for five years. And again, it's a challenge just every day is a something new, but, but I live a quiet life. And if I can be, I tell people at my church, I will be here, but if I can't-- < ; affirmative> ; And, and that's the way I said, if you want me that way fine. If not, well, I have to something else, because as far as my church and my masses, I can always see them at home. I can, you know, do other things, especially now that everything is on TV. So, yeah. But at the same time, I'm very close to my priests that we built this new church here in Escondido, Resurrection, and I have had a lot of opportunities to help there. And again, I meet a lot of my people from the library and invite 'em there and come and see and bring your children. And again, I'm still involved. Theresa rios discusses how Escondido Public Library and other libaries can support non-English speakers and become more accessible and inclusive of people of different backgrounds and speak different languages. classes ; library ; Mexico City ; Spanish speakers ; support Accessibility in Libraries ; Escondido Public Library ; How libraries can be more inclusive to non-English speakers 1659 Connection with children as a librarian Teater: So you're still involved with children's programs then? Rios: Not as much as I would like to be, because, like I said, I can't commit myself too much because of my husband. Teater: Yeah. Rios: I have things that I need to do, but any chance I have, and they're having something really special, I try to attend. Teater: That's Nice. Rios: Or I just, I have a kind connection with the children at the church. And, and I just love it ; just even when they just say good morning, back to me, or hello or goodbye. And excited and on their way. And I'm on my way too. Teater: Sounds awesome. What has your-- what has connecting to children, or what has connecting to children meant to you? Like over the years as a librarian? Rios: What has connected mean to children? Teater: No. What has your connection with children meant to you as a librarian over the years? Rios: The in, oh, I just love to hear a child read. I love to just see their little faces when they hear a story. I'm just know, like I said, I have four of my own and, and a lot of nieces, I come from a family of ten, five brothers and five sisters. So I have nieces and nephews. And, anytime I'm Aunt Terry or Aunt T, or < ; laugh> ; , you know, we have a connection with, and in the library, of course they all know that, that I worked there. Anybody could come and, and visit their friends, cousins, nieces, nephews. And one time I had my grandson at the library. I baby him in the summer. Because my daughter and her husband had business to take care of up in Woodland, California. I mean Auburn. < ; affirmative> ; And Mr. Humphrey says, oh, my, my grandson was, I think he was seven or, or so seven years anyway, I had him in, enrolled him into the Boys and Girls Club. And so I had my friend Darlene from the library take him and they came back, both of them crying. < ; laugh> ; Teater: Oh, no. Rios: My grandson wouldn't stay. He would, he wouldn't stay. And I was working at the library. I couldn't, you know, I've taken care of customers. And so they came back crying, and then I said, okay, you come to the back. And I set him down there and I said, don't you move, you stay right there and eat your lunch or whatever. And anyway Mr. Humphrey was very kind, he never said a word to me about, yeah. Was that of order or anything. I mean, he let me do whatever was necessary for me to continue working there. Teater: I love that. That's so sweet. Rios: My grandson. I mean he loved being there at the library with me. < ; laugh> ; can I say, I mean, family always came first with me and I tell all my, the people that I know when they can't attend a meeting, that I, or something that I'm involved with, I say, and they say, my family, my doc, or doctors do whatever families first you take care of that, do not worry about anything else. And I'm saying it's family first when they need whatever they need. But at the same time I live my own life. It's a different life because my husband and I have been married forty-one years. Cause he's my third husband. So I have to do what is necessary to have a good life. And at the same time, do what what's good for other people, especially children and others. But when I can't do it, I can't do it. Like I said, in my home comes first right now with my ill husband has been ill for over 20 years. Teater: Oh no. Rios: And he retired. So, but he manages, he's a wonderful person. I mean, I could not ask for a better mate. Teater: Well, that's good to hear. I think those are all of my questions. Is there anything else that you want to add to your experience as a librarian or anything about that? Rios: Well, I just want you to make sure that, is there any way I can mail this literature to you, this newspaper articles and some of the things that I've did or I'll tell you, do you ever get to the pioneer room? Teater: I do not. So for here, I'm gonna pause the recording. --All right. Well, thank you so much for your time, Theresa. It was really great talking to you and learning all about your experience as a librarian and your impact on literacy in Escondido. It sounds so fulfilling. Thank you for your time today. Rios: You're so welcome. And Jay, what, what was your name, Jay? Teater: What? My name is MJ. Rios: MJ. I knew I had one right. Okay. MJ, thank you for calling me and giving me the opportunity to say all these things that I hope will help other people. Theresa Rios talks about how being a children's librarian has effected her and how accomodating her supervisor was for her responsibilites that interfered with work. family ; husband ; librarian ; Mr. Humphrey ; nephew Appreciation as a librarian ; Appreciative employee ; family bonds ; legacy as a librarian Oral History Theresa Rios is a retired Escondido librarian, where she created Las Embajadores Biblioteca. In this interview, Theresa discusses teaching children to read, empowering children to learn, and how her childhood impacted her passion for teaching children to read and love learning. MJ Teater: All right. It is recording now. All right. So today is Thursday, April 6th, 2022 at 1:07 PM. I am MJ Teater, a graduate student at California State University San Marcos. And today I' ; m interviewing narrator Theresa Rios for the University Library Special Collections Oral History Project. Theresa, thank you for being here with me today. Theresa Rios: You' ; re very welcome. Teater: < ; laughs> ; All right. Just to get started, can you introduce yourself, like, say your name and when you were, or maybe not when you were born, but where you were born? Rios: Mm-hmm. My name is Theresa Rios. I was born in Clifton, Arizona. Teater: I' ; m going to ask you a few questions about your childhood and maybe your upbringing. So, how long have you lived in San Diego if you were born in Arizona? Rios: I came to Escondido in 1970. I brought my four children and myself and we moved here and my ex-husband and I have been here for fifty years. I lived in La Jolla for five years. I love Escondido. I came back to Escondido in I believe, [19]78. Teater: Mm-hmm. Rios: And I have been here ever since. Teater: Wow. I love that. That' ; s so cool. So at what point did you become a librarian? Or what was your journey to become a librarian? Rios: My journey was-- I have this write up from this Hispanic newspaper and it tells me here when I started the library was in... back in, oh my goodness. I' ; m little nervous, but not really. Anyway, I came, I started working, I came back to Escondido. I started going to Palomar College and from there I met my husband, Dan Rios. After that, I left Palomar College and I went to the employment office and they sent me to the [Escondido Public] library and I got this job at the library and I thought, my goodness, I love this job. And so I started by being a library assistant. And from there, they started giving me some privileges about -- being Hispanic, there was no Hispanic library books for either the children and even the adults. So I started-- Oh my goodness. I started, well translating for the library, whatever they needed. Anytime they needed a Hispanic to translate something, they would call me. I started teaching some of the librarians, what to, how to discuss things in Spanish or to answer in Spanish when someone came to the library and had no Spanish experience or could not. But there was no one that would write anything. I transferred papers, whatever they needed. Then I started seeing that the children, I started saying stories to the children and I noticed where a lot of the Hispanic children did not understand what we were saying [in English], what I was saying to them. And, so then I told my supervisor, I think we should start a Hispanic program -- a storytelling time. And so he said, yes, whatever, it would be wonderful. Go ahead. Whatever you think. And at that time, I had a lot of the mothers that came with their children sometimes, and they also didn' ; t know English. And so I decided to start Las Embajadores de Escondido. And they, they just thought again, Liz Painter was one of them. She helped, she helped a lot, because she was very friendly with all the people and she also wanted us to try something different. So again, I said, yes, let' ; s do this. Let' ; s tell the stories to the children in Spanish. And so there' ; s a nice picture. The newspaper came over -- The [Escondido] Times Advocate -- and I have this, I' ; m sorry. Teater: It' ; s okay. Do you want me to pause the recording? Rios: Yes. One moment. Okay. There' ; s a very nice picture of me with this book that I would tell this story, Las Zapatitos Colorados, " ; The Red Shoes" ; and with this story, I would tell all the children to be very careful about who they went with, how not to go with just anyone and just sort of try to... tell them to be cautious, but at the same time, there was a lot to learn. We had a lot to learn. But you you' ; d have to see this, this article. And do you read Spanish? Teater: I know enough to muddle through it, you know < ; laugh> ; Rios: Oh good, good. Because this whole page is in Spanish. It' ; s from the Hispanico, Hispanic Times. And it was way back in 2000. June 22nd, 2000. And it says Theresa Rios, nueva de delegate al club del parlementaria. Parliamentary. Teater: Oh cool. Rios: And before that well I was at Palomar College. I was with Concerned Citizens of Escondido at A Day With Your Neighbor Luncheon on May 7th, 1982: Theresa Rios, Pichacon Lupita, and George Lopez. And there' ; s my boss over here. He' ; s not mentioned, Jon Ericson. Anyway, there' ; s a whole page of me with a picture of the, telling the story to the children. And I would like for you to see that, cause it just explains a lot. I had no idea I had done so much. < ; laughter> ; , it' ; s bringing back all these memories and I loved it. I mean the, the library to me was like home. I mean wonderful. Teater: That' ; s fantastic. Rios: Anyway, again, like I say, anything you asked me to do, whether it was a police department or it was the library or my bosses, the children were very important to get them started learning. I still have many friends here in Escondido that when I see, we talk about all the things that we did. And the library I' ; ve been going there and Roberta, she was my dear friend there. Just a lot of the gals that were, that are still there. Some of them the other day I went to the library and there was Francine, this one, she said " ; Theresa! How are you? I haven' ; t seen you in," ; you know, things like that. And I just love the library. I love going back. I' ; m just gonna kinda stay in touch, you know? Teater: Yeah. That' ; s, that' ; s great. That' ; s so great. Rios: Back to, I mean, back to the -- what other question, I mean, I think I mentioned... Teater: That was a good starting point. So, can you tell me more about the Embajadores program? Rios: Yes, the Embajadores we, like I said, the children' ; s mothers, some of them, some were elderly ladies that came to the library that were my friends that I would tell them, come join us. I mean, come join the Embajadores. We want every child in Escondido to have a library card. Teater: Oh. Rios: I want every child to know, to learn how to read at a very young age. And so they came, they came from all over and we would have -- one time we had this salsa contest, not a contest, but everybody brought different kinds of salsa and my salsa won a blue ribbon. < ; laughs> ; Teater: Ooh. Rios: It was technically a blue ribbon. It was just a wonderful time. And the people came, we would have different places that would sponsor us. One of them was El Tapatilla in Escondido would send food. Again, a lot of stuff that' ; s in this article brings back a lot of memories. But the Embajadores came and they gave tours. I taught them to give tours through the library. I taught ' ; em to sit and talk with people that need just answers in Spanish or just to get together with other ladies that, that spoke Spanish only. And then bring them in as far as, trying to -- if they wanted an education, if they wanted to join literacy [program], things like that. I mean, literacy was just starting ; the literacy program. And, and we had, you know, different people teaching other people Spanish or English or... Teater: And about when were these programs happening? Rios: That was back in that era, which is, you know... [unclear] There' ; s a lot of paperwork that have here that I I' ; ve been going through, but you know, it' ; s been so long. It' ; s been-- Teater: Yeah. Yeah. Well that' ; s okay. We can keep going. So, can you explain how, like early reading programs are impactful for a child' ; s life? Like why that was so important to you? Rios: Because when I went to-- the reason that I believe this is so important is because I also, when I went to started kindergarten, I did not know a word of English. Very little, very, very little. My parents did not, we did not speak English at home. My father knew a little more than my mother, my mother didn' ; t. I mean, because of her hardships, her mother died when she was, I believe, in third grade, I' ; m not sure, but the schools were what, you know, and she lived in a ranch and she was left with four or five or six little ones that she helped grow up. And a baby that my, her, my grandmother, her mother died. So my mother always thought education was very important. You need it. She would get very upset. Um, so I knew that... And then I have -- Me marrying so young and having four children. I decided, nuh-uh, if I would' ; ve had this education before, I would have, you know, not being so afraid of trying of being around people that could teach me that could read, could that would teach me. I mean, there was no nothing in Clifton Arizona where I was born. There was, there was some things, but not enough to inspire me at a young age. Teater: Mm-hmm. Rios: And so I believe that if the children could get it right into them and tell me their stories, and then I would try to direct them when I would ask questions. Well, what do you do? How do you read at home? Do you do this? No... Do you like coming to the library? Oh yes. We like it. Do you like to hear stories? Oh, yes. And then I would ask some of the children little questions. I don' ; t know if I should say this, but What do you do? Oh, we drink tequila. Teater: < ; laugh> ; oh, no, Rios: We would laugh over that That. I said, " ; Oh, no, we gotta get this--" ; < ; laugh> ; . I mean, I don' ; t mean to it it' ; s part of growing up it' ; s in their environment, their family so again, I, I would see parents and I would say, well, you know, good, this is not so good. But, oh my God. And it just, I mean, you' ; d have to talk to my supervisor, which was Joanne, oh, my away. Well, and Laura Mitchell was also one of my bosses. And like I said, city manager at the time, I can' ; t, it' ; s gone right now, but I' ; ll have to get those names if you need ' ; em. But they would, give me card blank for whatever I wanted to do. I was so fortunate and so lucky and, a lot of like Graham Humphrey, he was the head of the library at the time. And he knew my husband very well. Dan Teater: Mm-hmm < ; affirmative> ; , Rios: And again, all I had to do was, well, Mr. Humphrey told me I want more Hispanic children here. I want, I don' ; t-- at the time, I don' ; t know whether he meant to say anything like this, but he said, I don' ; t wanna see all this white Anglo-Saxons < ; affirmative> ; and I thought, oh my God. I mean because I believe that they' ; re the white or the black or the Hispanic. We, they all need to learn everybody. < ; affirmative> ; Everybody needs to get some sense when they' ; re young of what' ; s going on and reading stories. I had no prejudice whatsoever, but I also understood the situation: who had the opportunities at home who didn' ; t. And the ones that didn' ; t of course would take priority of my attention, because I would have to explain myself more to them or listen to them a little more, so that they give me ideas of what, how I could help and how everybody in the library could help. Not just me. I didn' ; t want, whenever somebody treated any of ' ; em with disrespect, I would just jump up and say, no, it' ; s not the way we treat people. I mean, I had to fight everybody, not fight, but kind of. Teater: But yeah, I know what you mean. Rios: And I' ; m still doing it. I still do it. Even in my church at resurrection and everybody is welcome. Everybody is a child of Jesus. Everybody deserves a right to be heard. Of course, sometimes people are not in the mood to be heard or this and that. But with me, they' ; ll come and tell me anything. and I feel how can I say I, a lot of humility that they can do that with me. But I feel if they' ; re wrong, I' ; ll tell them if they' ; re hurting, I' ; ll listen. And if they just wanna talk, that' ; s good too. So we get along and that' ; s how I get along at the library, and all my life. Teater: That' ; s Fantastic Rios: I guess this is how I tried to be. And what else can I tell you? Teater: < ; laugh> ; all right. Let me, let me look through my questions because you' ; re, you' ; re answering so many of them. So what can library librarians who only speak English do to support the Spanish speakers of, you know, Escondido and San Diego? Rios: What could they do? Teater: Mm-hmm. Rios: Is that the question? Teater: Yes. Rios: They could take classes in Spanish mm-hmm < ; affirmative> ; They could have someone there to help interpret. They just like, you know, now a lot of people are coming like from other countries and we have to continue to learn. < ; affirmative> ; Although I' ; m fluent Spanish and English, I love French, but you know, I' ; m not that good at it. And I I' ; m very close to my Filipino friends. I have a daughter-in-law that' ; s married to my son and a wonderful family. And here in Escondido, I very belong to my church at resurrection eighties and the man, all we are very good friends on the counter. I am a greeter at my church on Sundays. < ; affirmative> ; I, we all work together. So Like I say, whoever walks into that door always gets a good morning from me when I am greeting. And a lot of them too. And I say, we need to be very kind, but at the same time we need to. But anybody just run out, you know, they' ; re having a problem. One, we have to kinda-- Teater: What other, are there any other initiatives that you worked on while you were in the library? It sounds like you had a lot of support from your supervisors. Rios: Well I was on the desk. I started on the desk. Like I said, greeting people and what do they need? Or they would tell me what I need to find out this, I need to go to this desk or I need to go here. I need to, I need to know about that. So I would direct them to wherever. That was part of our job, to direct people, to wherever they needed to go and help them. If they couldn' ; t find something, if they had the librarian on the desk was busy we could try and just keep them moving. But at the same time, I had meetings with several people. I mean they have this special room. Can' ; t think of it right now. I mean, it' ; s just upstairs, but I would do whatever it took to for the children to have special things going on. I mean, yeah, I have to go back. But if you see this picture of me taken when I would read stories, oh, and I got, I got this job at the library, like I said, way back then, but my husband and I were planning a trip to Mexico City, Mexico, a three week trip through me to Mexico. And I told my boss, I told Joanne Greenberg. I said, I think this was in August that I got hired around that time. And in December, we were planning to go to Mexico for three weeks, four weeks. And I said, I would have to work here, but I have to ask, my husband and I are going to go to Mexico, and I want to go very badly. I' ; ve never been to Mexico City. And, if you will, let me go. And, and let me come back to this job. I promise to work as hard as I can. And, you know, they let me do this after just being hired a couple of months. And I was all very grateful for that. We had a lovely time in Mexico. We had children running after our van and I mean things I saw and and my husband being a photographer, took pictures of the kids and the dresses, the colors. It was amazing. So I came back to the library and < ; affirmative> ; , I had all those stories in me from, for the children and for, you know, even adults. Teater: Mm-hmm < ; affirmative> ; sounds like, that sounds awesome. Rios: Seeing the no education, you know, a lot of we were out in the mountains where there were, and I said, and here they get a chance to come to America. And here we have all these mentees for them. So again, Mr. Humphrey had told me just whatever you need to do. And Joanne Greenberg the same. And then Laura Mitchell, she' ; s whatever I wanted to do till my husband got sick. And then I said, I can' ; t anymore, I have to-- < ; affirmative> ; He had Gotten this infection that he hardly couldn' ; t walk for about a year. Teater: Oh no. Rios: But I took care of him. And, and he, we did wonderful, I mean, far as, and he came out of it and now he' ; s on dialysis. He has been for five years. And again, it' ; s a challenge just every day is a something new, but, but I live a quiet life. And if I can be, I tell people at my church, I will be here, but if I can' ; t-- < ; affirmative> ; And, and that' ; s the way I said, if you want me that way fine. If not, well, I have to something else, because as far as my church and my masses, I can always see them at home. I can, you know, do other things, especially now that everything is on TV. So, yeah. But at the same time, I' ; m very close to my priests that we built this new church here in Escondido, Resurrection, and I have had a lot of opportunities to help there. And again, I meet a lot of my people from the library and invite ' ; em there and come and see and bring your children. And again, I' ; m still involved. Teater: So you' ; re still involved with children' ; s programs then? Rios: Not as much as I would like to be, because, like I said, I can' ; t commit myself too much because of my husband. Teater: Yeah. Rios: I have things that I need to do, but any chance I have, and they' ; re having something really special, I try to attend. Teater: That' ; s Nice. Rios: Or I just, I have a kind connection with the children at the church. And, and I just love it ; just even when they just say good morning, back to me, or hello or goodbye. And excited and on their way. And I' ; m on my way too. Teater: Sounds awesome. What has your-- what has connecting to children, or what has connecting to children meant to you? Like over the years as a librarian? Rios: What has connected mean to children? Teater: No. What has your connection with children meant to you as a librarian over the years? Rios: The in, oh, I just love to hear a child read. I love to just see their little faces when they hear a story. I' ; m just know, like I said, I have four of my own and, and a lot of nieces, I come from a family of ten, five brothers and five sisters. So I have nieces and nephews. And, anytime I' ; m Aunt Terry or Aunt T, or < ; laugh> ; , you know, we have a connection with, and in the library, of course they all know that, that I worked there. Anybody could come and, and visit their friends, cousins, nieces, nephews. And one time I had my grandson at the library. I baby him in the summer. Because my daughter and her husband had business to take care of up in Woodland, California. I mean Auburn. < ; affirmative> ; And Mr. Humphrey says, oh, my, my grandson was, I think he was seven or, or so seven years anyway, I had him in, enrolled him into the Boys and Girls Club. And so I had my friend Darlene from the library take him and they came back, both of them crying. < ; laugh> ; Teater: Oh, no. Rios: My grandson wouldn' ; t stay. He would, he wouldn' ; t stay. And I was working at the library. I couldn' ; t, you know, I' ; ve taken care of customers. And so they came back crying, and then I said, okay, you come to the back. And I set him down there and I said, don' ; t you move, you stay right there and eat your lunch or whatever. And anyway Mr. Humphrey was very kind, he never said a word to me about, yeah. Was that of order or anything. I mean, he let me do whatever was necessary for me to continue working there. Teater: I love that. That' ; s so sweet. Rios: My grandson. I mean he loved being there at the library with me. < ; laugh> ; can I say, I mean, family always came first with me and I tell all my, the people that I know when they can' ; t attend a meeting, that I, or something that I' ; m involved with, I say, and they say, my family, my doc, or doctors do whatever families first you take care of that, do not worry about anything else. And I' ; m saying it' ; s family first when they need whatever they need. But at the same time I live my own life. It' ; s a different life because my husband and I have been married forty-one years. Cause he' ; s my third husband. So I have to do what is necessary to have a good life. And at the same time, do what what' ; s good for other people, especially children and others. But when I can' ; t do it, I can' ; t do it. Like I said, in my home comes first right now with my ill husband has been ill for over 20 years. Teater: Oh no. Rios: And he retired. So, but he manages, he' ; s a wonderful person. I mean, I could not ask for a better mate. Teater: Well, that' ; s good to hear. I think those are all of my questions. Is there anything else that you want to add to your experience as a librarian or anything about that? Rios: Well, I just want you to make sure that, is there any way I can mail this literature to you, this newspaper articles and some of the things that I' ; ve did or I' ; ll tell you, do you ever get to the pioneer room? Teater: I do not. So for here, I' ; m gonna pause the recording. --All right. Well, thank you so much for your time, Theresa. It was really great talking to you and learning all about your experience as a librarian and your impact on literacy in Escondido. It sounds so fulfilling. Thank you for your time today. Rios: You' ; re so welcome. And Jay, what, what was your name, Jay? Teater: What? My name is MJ. Rios: MJ. I knew I had one right. Okay. MJ, thank you for calling me and giving me the opportunity to say all these things that I hope will help other people. Teater: Yeah, they will. Thank you so much for your time today. Rios: You' ; re so welcome. Teater: Okay. All right. Have a good rest of your day. Rios: You too goodly. Teater: All right. Bye. Bye. https://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en audio Property rights reside with the university. Copyrights are retained by the creators of the records and their heirs. This resource is licensed for noncommercial educational use using CC NC-BY 4.0. Please contact Special Collections at archives
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Rios, Theresa. Interview April 7, 2022
Description
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Theresa Rios is a retired Escondido librarian, where she created Las Embajadores Biblioteca. In this interview, Theresa discusses teaching children to read, empowering children to learn, and how her childhood impacted her passion for teaching children to read and love learning.
Identifier
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SC027-17
Subject
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Latine Americans
Libraries -- Literacy
Public libraries
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2022-04-07
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audio
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Theresa Rios
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Madison Teater
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Escondido (Calif.)
Arizona
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California State University San Marcos University Library
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English
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Theresa Rios
Community history
History Department internship
Latine experience
Women's experience
-
https://archivesoralhistories.csusm.edu/files/original/49655703ca9580fa7a280e4ff737314a.pdf
39f896b95a878e35d72cb83b35512638
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Galyean, Thomas. Interview Transcript, November 12, 2024.
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Thomas Earl Galyean was a Captain in the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War. He served with the 7-17th CAV as commanding officer of the aero rifle platoon, securing landing zones for aircraft. Galyean then served as an Assistant S3 for the operations section of headquarters, ensuring that aircraft received their assignments. Raised on his family’s chicken hatchery in San Marcos, California, Galyean narrates his family history, his decision to join the U.S. Army, and his interest in helicopter flight. Galyean describes his experience in flight school, including reflections on media representations of military training and the Vietnam War. Galyean describes his unique role while serving stateside, forming a military response team to suppress riots in the wake of the 1968 Democratic National Convention. Galyean meditates on the impact of controversial topics, such as the My Lai massacre, civilian casualties, and the rules of engagement. Galyean reflects on religion, comradery, family, and how the military changed his life.
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Thomas Galyean
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Jason Beyer
Adel Bautista
Justin Gans
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2024-11-12
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San Diego (Calif.)
San Marcos (Calif.)
Texas
California
Kentucky
Vietnam
Tây Nguyên (Vietnam)
Vietnam (Republic : 1954-1975)
Laos
Cambodia
Chicago (Ill.)
Brownsville (Tex.)
Brawley (Calif.)
Escondido (Calif.)
Imperial County (Calif.)
Sacramento (Calif.)
Louisiana
Alabama
Arkansas
Pleiku (Vietnam)
Pleiku (Vietnam)
Phan Rang (Vietnam)
Biên Hòa (Vietnam)
Qui Nhon (Vietnam)
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California State University San Marcos University Library
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English
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<a href="https://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en" target="_blank" rel="noopener">In copyright</a>
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Thomas Galyean
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text
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GalyeanThomas_BeyerJason_2024-11-12_transcript
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United States. Army—Veterans
Vietnam War, 1961-1975
Poultry farms
United States. Forest Service
El Cariso Hotshots (Calif.)
Reserve Officers' Training Corps
San Marcos High School (San Marcos, Calif.)
University of California, Los Angeles
Loop Fire, Calif., 1966
Air pilots—Training of
Fort Wolters (Tex.)
Fort Knox (Ky.)
Bell AH-1 Cobra (Attack helicopter)
Napalm
Fort Rucker (Ala.)
Fort Hood (Tex.)
Democratic National Convention (1968 : Chicago, Ill.)
Gray Air Force Base (Tex.)
Ground-controlled approach (Aeronautics)
Vietnam Helicopter Pilots Association
United States. Army. 7th Cavalry Regiment
University of Virginia
My Lai Massacre, Vietnam, 1968
Legal education—United States
Lawyers
Fort Polk (La.)
Ho Chi Minh Trail (Vietnam)
Community history
San Diego Veterans History Initiative
Veteran experience
-
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Oral Histories
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Interviewer
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Jason Beyer
Interviewee
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Thomas Galyean
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https://archivesoralhistories.csusm.edu/ohms-viewer/render.php?cachefile=GalyeanThomas_BeyerJason_2024-11-12_access.xml
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United States. Army—Veterans;Vietnamese Conflict, 1961-1975;chicken farm;U.S. Forest Service;El Cariso Hot Shots;Reserve Officers' Training Corps;San Marcos High School (Calif.);University of California, Los Angeles (Calif.);helitack;Loop Fire (Calif.);flight school;Fort Wolters (Texas);Fort Knox (Kentucky);The Personal Experience - Helicopter Warfare in Vietnam;We Were Soldiers;hunter-killer team;Bell AH-1 Cobra;Pleiku (Vietnam);Phan Rang (Vietnam);Bearcat (Vietnam);napalm;Fort Rucker (Alabama);Fort Hood (Texas);1968 Democratic National Convention;Gray Air Force Base (Texas);Ground-Controlled Approach;Vietnam Helicopter Pilots Association;7-17th CAV;University of Virginia;Qui Nhon (Vietnam);My Lai (Vietnam);free-fire zone;return fire;law school;attorney;Fort Polk (Louisiana)
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6.0 Galyean, Thomas. Interview November 12th, 2024. SC027-071 00:00:00 SC027 California State University San Marcos University Library oral history collection CSUSM csusm United States. Army—Veterans ; Vietnamese Conflict, 1961-1975 ; chicken farm ; U.S. Forest Service ; El Cariso Hot Shots ; Reserve Officers' Training Corps ; San Marcos High School (Calif.) ; University of California, Los Angeles (Calif.) ; helitack ; Loop Fire (Calif.) ; flight school ; Fort Wolters (Texas) ; Fort Knox (Kentucky) ; The Personal Experience - Helicopter Warfare in Vietnam ; We Were Soldiers ; hunter-killer team ; Bell AH-1 Cobra ; Pleiku (Vietnam) ; Phan Rang (Vietnam) ; Bearcat (Vietnam) ; napalm ; Fort Rucker (Alabama) ; Fort Hood (Texas) ; 1968 Democratic National Convention ; Gray Air Force Base (Texas) ; Ground-Controlled Approach ; Vietnam Helicopter Pilots Association ; 7-17th CAV ; University of Virginia ; Qui Nhon (Vietnam) ; My Lai (Vietnam) ; free-fire zone ; return fire ; law school ; attorney ; Fort Polk (Louisiana) Thomas Galyean Jason Beyer Moving image GalyeanThomas_BeyerJason_2024-11-12_access.mp4 0 https://archivesoralhistories.csusm.edu/files/original/719f129d05a256f9cb4708d531ea8735.mp4 Other video English 0 Interview Introduction 0 56 Personal Background Thomas Earl Galyean was a Captain in the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War. He grew up working on his family’s chicken farm in San Marcos. His grandfather and uncle served in the military, and his father worked for Consolidated Aircraft building the B-25. Prior to entering the military, Galyean fought forest fires for the U.S. Forest Service with the El Cariso Hot Shots. U.S. Army ; Vietnam War ; San Diego (Calif.) ; Spanish-American War ; World War I ; World War II ; B-25 ; Consolidated Aircraft ; chicken farm ; U.S. Forest Service ; El Cariso Hot Shots 0 154 Military Enlistment There was compulsory military service for all men physically qualified for combat from Galyean’s high school graduating class of 1964. Galyean enlisted in the Army Reserve Officer Training Corps when he enrolled at UCLA, which gave him the military deferment necessary to complete college before entering active duty as a Lieutenant. Galyean says he enlisted in the Army because it had a year-less time commitment than other branches. While on summer break before returning to UCLA, twelve members of the El Cariso Hot Shots died in the Loop Fire. Galyean says that the helitack units who helped save some firefighters inspired his interest in helicopter flight. Reserve Officers' Training Corps ; Army ; Army ROTC ; ROTC ; San Marcos High School ; UCLA ; helitack ; Loop Fire ; U.S. Navy ; U.S. Marines ; U.S. Airforce 0 329 Early Days of Military Service and Training Galyean completed flight school for fixed wing aircraft while in his senior year of college. Once on active duty, Galyean went to the officer basic course at Fort Knox, Kentucky as an Armor. He then began rotary wing flight school at Fort Wolters in Texas. Armor Officer ; basic training ; Second Lieutenant ; training ; Armor ; flight school ; fixed wing ; rotary wing ; platoon ; Fort Wolters ; Texas ; Fort Knox ; Kentucky ; helicopter ; TH-55 ; Howard Hughes ; Hughes Tool Company 0 455 Deployment to Vietnam Galyean references a documentary called The Personal Experience - Helicopter Warfare in Vietnam. He says he personally experienced most of what was described in the documentary, but his experience with the rules of engagement regarding return fire was different from the documentary. Galyean then describes his general experience of military service in Vietnam as part of an Air Cavalry troop. Galyean describes the organization of his platoon, their typical responsibilities, the Ho Chi Minh Trail, Montagnards, free-fire zones, hunter-killer teams, napalm strikes, capturing enemy POWs, and evacuations. Galyean mentions the film, We Were Soldiers, and says it depicted much of what he experienced. Amazon Prime ; The Personal Experience - Helicopter Warfare in Vietnam ; Air Cavalry ; light observation helicopter ; OH-6 ; Central Highlands (Vietnam) ; Ho Chi Minh Trail (Vietnam) ; Vietnam ; South Vietnam ; Laos ; Cambodia ; free-fire zone ; Montagnard (Vietnam) ; 4th Infantry ; battalion ; Cobra (AH-1) ; scout (helicopter) ; hunter-killer team ; command and control ; Huey (Bell UH-1 Iroquois) ; F-100 ; Pleiku ; Phan Rang ; Bearcat ; napalm ; We Were Soldiers ; P.O.W. camp 0 1071 Promotions and New Responsibilities Galyean finished his aircraft training at Fort Ruckers, Alabama before beginning a stateside tour at Fort Hood, Texas, where he was assigned a unique responsibility for his first six months. After the 1968 Democratic National Convention, the U.S. President ordered there be developed a response team so the military could suppress riots. Galyean, then a Flight Operations Officer, worked with the Air Force from nearby Gray Air Force Base to organize an immediate response team and coordinate drills. For his second six months at Fort Hood, Galyean was commanding officer of the aviation support detachment for headquarters as part of the 501st Supply and Transport Battalion. Their main responsibility was quickly building temporary runways and landing strips for the Air Force, so that the armored division practically had its own portable airport. They used a Ground-Controlled Approach, which was a radar unit with a small control tower on a trailer used to call down aircraft. Vietnam ; Fort Rucker ; Fort Wolters ; flight school ; Huey ; First Lieutenant ; Fort Hood ; First Armored Division ; 1968 Democratic National Convention ; riot ; Chicago (Ill.) ; National Guard ; United States ; U.S. Air Force ; C-130 ; Gray Air Force Base ; Mechanized Infantry Battalion ; aircraft ; flight operations officer ; Brownsville (Tex.) ; aviation support detachment ; headquarters ; 501st Supply and Transport Battalion ; Deuce-and-a-Half ; pierced steel planking ; Desert Storm ; armored division ; Ground-Controlled Approach ; G.C.A. ; aero rifle platoon ; radar unit ; captain ; commanding officer 0 1565 Air Cavalry Assignment By the time he completed his stateside tour and deployed to Vietnam, Galyean was a Captain assigned to an Air Cavalry troop. He was made commanding officer of the aero rifle platoon, securing landing zones for aircraft throughout the week and conducting maintenance on Sundays. For his last six months in Vietnam, Captain Galyean was an Assistant S3 for the operations section of headquarters. He operated the control center assigning the Air Cavalry squadron and worked in conjunction with attack helicopter companies. At headquarters, he kept track of which units were flyable and ensured that aircraft got their assignments for supplying units. Vietnam ; Table of Organization ; Air Cavalry ; Air Cavalry Squadron ; Air Cavalry troop ; maintenance troop ; Huey Cobra ; Huey ; Cobra ; OH-6 ; gunship ; pilot ; platoon ; rifle platoon ; scout platoon ; light observation helicopter ; Assistant S3 0 1905 Adapting to the Military Lifestyle, and Media Representations of Vietnam Helicopter Pilots Galyean says that his general experience in Vietnam was difficult to adapt to, but he was forced to adapt quickly. He says the wives of American GIs especially struggled. The best writing he read on what it was like as a helicopter pilot in Vietnam are John Steinbeck’s writings as a war correspondent in Vietnam. Galyean again positively references the documentary, The Personal Experience - Helicopter Warfare in Vietnam. He discusses rules of engagement for return fire. He says scouts often had to shoot first or they would be killed before they found enemy combatants. Vietnam ; We Were Soldiers ; Mel Gibson ; wife ; Facebook ; Vietnam Helicopter Pilots Association ; John Steinbeck ; Lady Bird ; Claudia Alta Johnson ; Lyndon B. Johnson ; L.B.J. ; University of Virginia ; Pleiku ; Air Cavalry ; Google ; Amazon Prime ; documentary ; helicopter pilot ; return fire 0 2292 Mechanical Issues with Huey Helicopters and Civilian Casualties in Vietnam Galyean describes some of the mechanical issues that Huey helicopters had. He tells a story from his time as an Assistant S3. He says a Cobras for one of his troops working along a beach had a rocket misfire and injured a little boy’s leg. Galyean says the My Lai massacre’s exposure to the public resulted in a standing order requiring investigations of civilian casualties to ensure whether they were intentional or accidental. Galyean was called upon to investigate the situation, and he says that, at the hospital where the boy was, the mother did not want to see the pilot chastised. Assistant S3 ; 7th Squadron, 17th Cavalry Regiment ; helicopter ; Cobra ; Huey ; Huey B ; gunship ; rocket pod ; jet ; F-4 ; F-100 ; rotor system ; single rotor ; Qui Nhon ; boy ; My Lai ; Lieutenant William Calley ; civilian ; village ; Kit Carson Scouts ; NVA ; North Vietnamese Army ; platoon ; Lieutenant ; hospital ; Jeep ; Vietcong ; 7-17th CAV 0 2730 Good Luck, Recreation, Comradery, and Communication with Family While in Vietnam For good luck, Galyean prayed often. For off days and days without flying, Galyean recalls relaxing and listening to music with his comrades. Sundays were maintenance days and typically the first or last day of someone’s deployment, so they would throw parties for all the incoming and outgoing GIs. Galyean tells a humorous story about how they once cooked steak and lobster for their dinner. He says everyone he served with was like brothers to him. While in Vietnam, he would write to his wife often. After returning from Vietnam, he has kept in touch with some of the people he served alongside. prayer ; recreation ; music ; maintenance ; party ; 501st Supply Transport Battalion ; commanding officer ; food distribution ; First Armored Division ; Army ; Qui Nhon ; Tuy Hoa ; steak ; lobster ; Mess Sergeant ; friendship ; comradery ; infantrymen ; pilot ; scout ; family ; letter ; Vietnam 0 3030 End of Military Service, Adjusting to Civilian Life, and Joining a Veterans’ Organization Galyean ended his service while at Fort Hood, Texas, from which he drove to Brawley, California, where his wife was living with her parents and working for a car dealership. In the newspaper, he learned of a job opportunity for Imperial County leading the creation of a public employment program for Vietnam veterans. He worked for Imperial County for five months until he started law school in San Diego. Galyean says he was received well upon his return from Vietnam but mentions a fellow pilot with PTSD who committed suicide. He says his wife excelled as an accountant working for her parents’ car dealership, so she had no problem finding similar work elsewhere. Galyean joined the Vietnam Helicopter Pilots Association and attended their convention in San Diego. He was also involved in writing some of the history of the 7-17th CAV. service ; Fort Hood (Tex.) ; Escondido (Calif.) ; newspaper ; law school ; advertisement ; Imperial County (Calif.) ; Public Employment Program ; veteran ; Vietnam ; Vietnam War ; Vietnam veteran ; personnel analyst ; Sacramento (Calif.) ; San Diego (Calif.) ; family ; community ; Navy Marine ; F-4 ; pilot ; car dealer ; high school ; accountant ; Ford ; GM ; Chrysler ; Vietnam Helicopter Pilots Association ; convention ; 717th CAV 0 3478 Reflections on Military Service Galyean says it was a godsend that he survived and calls his wife the angel of his life. He thinks it is a natural response that most veterans who have seen combat have some PTSD. He says military service taught him to have faith in the Lord’s will, follow your heart, and defend the U.S. political system. wife ; PTSD ; life lessons ; military service ; war ; veteran ; faith ; attorney ; constitutional system ; government 0 3673 01:01:13 Association with North County San Diego Galyean grew up on his father’s chicken hatchery in San Marcos, California. After spending time on military bases across the country, he and his wife wanted to return to San Diego. Galyean tells the story of how his father migrated from Arkansas to San Marcos and were employed by Fred Williams, who owned multiple businesses in the city. He says that his family never left San Marcos and all of his siblings still reside there. San Marcos (Calif.) ; chicken farm ; chicken hatchery ; Fort Polk ; Louisiana ; Fort Rucker ; Alabama ; Fort Hood ; Texas ; San Diego County (Calif.) ; John Steinbeck ; Grapes of Wrath ; Arkansas ; Fred Williams ; cottage 0 3808 Final Reflections on Military Service and Veterans Galyean emphasizes that the documentary, The Personal Experience - Helicopter Warfare in Vietnam, and the movie, We Were Soldiers, are good representations of his military experience. He wishes more people knew that veterans are “just good, ordinary, responsible people.” He says his experience taught him to love your life and work, do what you love, and do it the best you can. movie ; love ; life ; ordinary ; brotherhood ; veteran ; experience ; responsible 0 Oral history Thomas Earl Galyean was a Captain in the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War. He served with the 7-17th CAV as commanding officer of the aero rifle platoon, securing landing zones for aircraft. Galyean then served as an Assistant S3 for the operations section of headquarters, ensuring that aircraft received their assignments. Raised on his family’s chicken hatchery in San Marcos, California, Galyean narrates his family history, his decision to join the U.S. Army, and his interest in helicopter flight. Galyean describes his experience in flight school, including reflections on media representations of military training and the Vietnam War. Galyean describes his unique role while serving stateside, forming a military response team to suppress riots in the wake of the 1968 Democratic National Convention. Galyean meditates on the impact of controversial topics, such as the My Lai massacre, civilian casualties, and the rules of engagement. Galyean reflects on religion, comradery, family, and how the military changed his life. NOTE TRANSCRIPTION BEGIN 00:00:00.985 --> 00:00:57.994 My name is Jason Victor Byer. I'm a graduate of California State University San Marcos. Today I will be interviewing Thomas Galyean. Today's date is Tuesday, November 12, 2024. We are located at the Kellogg Library at California State University San Marcos at 333 South Twin Oaks Valley Road, San Marcos, California 92096. My relationship to the interviewee is that we are both military veterans. The names of people attending this interview are the interviewer, Jason Beyer ; the interviewee, Thomas Galyean ; and Adel Bautista, the camera operator. The purpose of this interview is to conduct an oral history. Please state your full name. 00:00:57.994 --> 00:01:00.725 Thomas Earl Galyean. 00:01:00.725 --> 00:01:02.000 Your branch of service. 00:01:02.000 --> 00:01:04.635 U.S. Army. 00:01:04.635 --> 00:01:06.484 The highest rank you attained. 00:01:06.484 --> 00:01:08.254 Captain. 00:01:08.254 --> 00:01:11.275 And any war or conflicts you served with. 00:01:11.275 --> 00:01:13.935 The Vietnam War. 00:01:13.935 --> 00:01:21.905 Thank you. So I'll begin by asking you your biographical details. Where were you born? 00:01:21.905 --> 00:01:24.795 San Diego, California. 00:01:24.795 --> 00:01:30.325 Does your family have any past affiliations with the military? 00:01:30.325 --> 00:02:10.544 the Spanish-American War, World War I, and World War II. And my uncle was a B-25 pilot in World War II. And my father though not in the military worked for Consolidated Aircraft, building the B-25. 00:02:10.544 --> 00:02:15.504 Did you hold any jobs prior to entering the military? 00:02:15.504 --> 00:02:34.835 The only job that I had besides working on the chicken farm I grew up on was—I did fight forest fires with the U.S. Forest Service, while I was in college one summer, with the El Cariso Hot Shots. 00:02:34.835 --> 00:02:42.324 When and why did you choose to join the military? Were you drafted or did you enlist? 00:02:42.324 --> 00:04:39.805 Actually, I ended up going to, enlisting through Army ROTC because I graduated from San Marcos High School in 1964. And when I graduated, there was compulsory military service. Everybody in my class who was a male who was physically qualified for combat—if they didn't have a deferment for ROTC, Reserve Officer Training Corps, at some college—were instantly drafted. Everybody else in my class who didn't go on a deferment and who was physically qualified were drafted. So, when I enrolled at UCLA, I took Army ROTC, and that gave me the deferment necessary to complete my degree and then be able to go on active duty as a Lieutenant. So, the one job that I had before that was fighting forest fires. And that particular crew, a month-and-a-half after I went back to school, was caught in the Loop Fire. Twelve of 'em burned to death. A thirteenth one died later. But, so, uh—and that could have been my fate had I not returned to UCLA for ROTC. But in the—seeing what happened and working with those guys and the helitack units—a couple of which helped save a couple of them—interested me in helicopter flight, which is what I ultimately did in the Army. 00:04:39.805 --> 00:04:46.915 You say that you entered into the branch known as the Army. Why did you choose that specific branch? 00:04:46.915 --> 00:05:29.584 Well, actually, I had the choice at that point—because UCLA had the ROTC for the Navy and Marines as well as the Air Force—to do any one of 'em. But I at that point picked the Army because, frankly, it had a year-less time commitment. After I was done with the military—'cause it had one year less than the others did—but then when I ended up volunteering for flight—to fly—then my commitment ended up being the same. 00:05:29.584 --> 00:05:34.774 For your early days of service, what type of training or school did you have? 00:05:34.774 --> 00:17:51.243 First school I had was Armor Officer Basic, because when you graduated as a Second Lieutenant and you were gonna fly, they had already—while I was during my senior year—they had already provided me with fixed wing training. So I learned to fly a fixed wing aircraft. But they then assign you a branch for a combat branch to serve in in the event you don't make it through flight school or—and depending on what branch you ended up with, the type of assignment you got when you got done with a rotary wing flight school. So they assigned me to Armor Officer as an officer in the Armor branch, which meant that as soon as I went on active duty, I went to Officer's basic course at Fort Knox, Kentucky for Armor, where basically they teach you to be a tank platoon leader. And then from there—that was basically a three-month course—then they send you to rotary wing flight school. Now the flight school is in two four-months consecutive portions. The first portion was at Fort Wolters, Texas, and that's where they teach you to fly a helicopter. They used a couple of different aircrafts. The one that I got trained in was what they call the TH-55, which was built by Howard Hughes and Hughes Tool Company, which we then learned to fly in at Fort Wolters, Texas. Now for anybody who really wanted to see what that involved, I just found out here a few months ago that on Amazon Prime there's available a about-an-hour video which is called Personal Experience of Helicopter Pilots in Vietnam (The Personal Experience - Helicopter Warfare in Vietnam). And it shows all the different trainings you got and then different types of experiences that you would have in Vietnam. And the only one in there that didn't, wasn't exactly what I experienced all the time—and I could identify with everything in that movie—was that we were always allowed to return fire if we were fired upon. Because what we did as an Air Cavalry troop, which is what I was in, you had three platoons: one platoon was a platoon of light observation helicopters—OH-6. The idea was we would be assigned an area, and most of my flights were in the Central Highlands area of Vietnam, along and in the vicinity of the Ho Chi Minh Trail—the western boundary of South Vietnam where it bordered up against Laos and Cambodia—and it was all jungle type of activity areas, so they would assigned to us a free-fire zone, they call it a (unintelligible) area, where we knew there were no friendlies at all. The only indigenous population that could be there in some of the places were what were called Montagnards. They were individual little communities of mountain people that lived in little villages that were built up on stakes. You knew where they were, you stayed away from 'em. They stayed away from everybody. They were the—so when we would go into whatever area they would give, if it moved, we could kill it, because it was the only humans we would see would be the enemy. So the way it would work is they would give us an area to work from—and what I mean by that, there'd be a clearing or an area someplace within about a 10 to 15 minute flight from the area where you're supposed to observe and search, where they would take out a fuel truck and there would be a fuel truck for us to be able to land and refill at. And frequently there would be, depending on whether we were working with the 4th Infantry or a South Vietnamese unit, there'd usually be an extra company to a battalion of soldiers there that were friendly soldiers from where we would work. So the scouts would fly in the area, they would try and find the enemy. And above them would be flying a couple of Cobras. The press called them hunter-killer teams of two scouts and two Cobras. And they'd be on station for a couple hours, and we'd be out there with two sets. So they would come off the search and they'd be replaced immediately on station by another team of two scout light observation helicopters and two Cobras. So what would happen—and then I would have—my infantry platoon would be—fly out and land at the staging area, usually. The only time that didn't happen was if the scouts found something before we got landed. And so once the scouts found something, our command and control ship that would be out there with the hunter-killer team, they'd try and assess as quickly as possible what kind of enemy we were looking at—how big the units were there, what was it gonna take to engage. We'd try and get a first landing zone, a place where we get at least hopefully four helicopters, but a minimum of two. And so what we would do is we would take my Hueys (Bell UH-1 Iroquois) with our infantry platoon, and we'd fly into that area first, and we'd put my infantry platoon, which usually went—it was reduced because at that time we were hard—it was hard to get replacements. 20 to 30 infantrymen we would put on the ground first to secure the landing zone. And then if we needed more troops to engage whatever enemy was found, then we would, with my Huey Platoon, be ferrying in the additional troops that were needed into that landing zone. Meanwhile, as soon as the enemy was found, the scouts, if they could, would throw a smoke grenade in the area they wanted hit the hardest. The Cobras would come in there and spray up the area. We always had the—the CNC (command and control) always had extra radios with the frequencies of the closest artillery unit that was usually on a fire base on hill round. And so, they would be able to immediately call in artillery if needed. There were different points that the artillery units that were out there would have marked. We knew where they were, they knew where they were. We'd give 'em the point to fire, to first start firing, and then we would be able to adjust because we had—we were all trained, but our CNC were trained in how to adjust artillery—and so we would adjust artillery, and our CNC always had available tactical air support jets—F-100s, usually—out of Pleiku, Phan Rang, or Bearcat. Those were the three closest Air Force bases that always had F-100s available for immediate response. So we would call in a fire strike—our command and control—which would come in and shoot up the place wherever we wanted a napalm strike. And then we would bring in the rest of whatever infantrymen we wanted to engage the enemy. And then if you ever saw a movie, We Were Soldiers, that movie depicted a lot of what we did just about every day. But, plus, the one thing they learned, that movie was about the very first Air Cavalry operation. But what we learned at that point, because we were always putting people in where there was no other friendly around before dark, we would withdraw all of the people that we'd put on the ground, because there was a decent chance if we didn't, they wouldn't be there the next day. So that's basically the way we would work. If—once we were on the ground, if we had found a bunch of materiel of the enemy, our infantrymen would burn it or capture some of it. If we captured the enemy—and a lot of times we did—then we would fly the enemy to a P.O.W. camp in Pleiku. Frequently we would end up, if somebody—whether it was the enemy or some of our own soldiers that were—had been wounded, we would fly them to the hospital at Pleiku to evacuate them there. And that's basically the general way we worked from day to day. 00:17:51.243 --> 00:17:55.634 Did you receive any promotions? And if so, could you tell me about them? 00:17:55.634 --> 00:31:45.355 Yeah, well, I was—originally I was a programmed to go to Vietnam directly out of flight school, because for the first five or six years of the war, as soon as a class graduated in Fort Rucker, they immediately went to Vietnam. They had a three-year flight commitment, which meant they would go to Vietnam, come home—if they were still around—for a year, and then go back for a second year in Vietnam. But because of when I graduated from flight school—I mean I was fortunate. I was fortunate because I ended up an extra two months after the first half of flight school because my wife was pregnant and she was about ready to deliver. And the flight surgeons and her doctor at Fort Wolters said it was not safe for us to travel and her to move to Fort Rucker. Since my commitment started at the end of flight school, they said, "We'll just let you join a later class"—which is what happened. So the class that I originally started with, started the second half, about a month before I ended up starting. And as it turned out, two weeks before we graduated from the second part of flight school, which was during our tactics and combat training in a Huey, I got a stateside tour first. So I was—because of the way that it worked, I was a First Lieutenant by the time I got done with flight school. And then I ended up, as a First Lieutenant, going to Fort Hood to the First Armored Division where I was the flight operations officer for the division. Now, I had a very interesting job when I got there because besides being in charge of the flight operations, making sure all the pilots that were at Fort Hood from in the First Armored Division that were between tours of Vietnam got all their flight time, 'cause they still had to fly. But at that point in time, the year—in 1968 there had been riots at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. And so the president had ordered that there be developed a program—because it took so long to get soldiers and National Guard to Chicago for that riot to have an immediate response team. Some teams already set up to where if there was some kind of a riot in the United States that needed to have military control, they didn't run into the problem they had run into at the Chicago Convention of getting them there in time to do a lot of good. So my job was to work with the Air Force there first and organize a situation where we had a Mechanized Infantry Battalion from the First Armored Division on standby to meet with a bunch of Air Force C-130s at Gray Air Force Base—which was right next to Fort Hood, which was where we were—where they could at a moment's notice—they called the drill twice. We did it twice while I was there. Where they would say, we need to scramble like we were going to some place. So, we had it organized, which the—where the Air Force C-130s would come from and marry up with the Mechanized Infantry Battalion of the First Armored Division that was to be used to get 'em over there, load them, take 'em up and fly 'em around for a few hours to make sure, you know, that the timing was such, we could get 'em gone as quickly as possible, you know? (Galyean smiles and laughs.) And so that was kind of a screwy job. Nobody ever had it before. But that was one of the things I got to do. So that, and during that period of time, because for that first six months that I was there, I was the Flight Operations Officer, we'd have—when a Huey got a thousand hours or whatever it was of flight time in Vietnam, they would bring them back to be rebuilt—put in a new engine and do all kinds of rebuild to these aircraft that were still in shape to be rebuilt. And they would fly 'em into Gray Air Force base, take off the tail rotors and the tail boom and the rotors. And they would fly 'em over, put 'em back together there at Gray Air Force Base, and then we would get pilots there who—and we're talking 30 aircraft at a time, 30 or 40—we would just have fly down to Brownsville, which is where they were rebuilt, and then bring them back, and then the next week there'd be a bunch. So that's basically what I was doing the first six months. The second six months that I was there, I was the commanding officer of this aviation support detachment, of which the headquarters was a little part of—which is part of the 501st Supply and Transport Battalion, and the whole mission and ability of that aviation support detachment was—they gave—we had some Deuce-and-a-Halfs with a lot of PSP, pierced steel planking, that we could go out and set up a runway that the Air Force could bring in that would be a portable runway. The theory was when you're in an armored division and you're moving as hopefully you'd be moving like we saw later in Desert Storm, you'd have the ability to take with the armored division its own airport. And we had a little G.C.A. (Ground-Controlled Approach), which was a radar unit that you could call down aircraft through a cloud, you know, and a little control tower that was on a trailer that you could pull. So basically you could have your own airfield with the armored division as it was moving. So that was my job for the second six months. But by the time I was then—I went to Vietnam, I was a captain. I was—I'd had a six month commanding officer experience as a company commander of this aviation support detachment. So when I got to Vietnam for the T.O.R.—the Table of Organization—when they, I got there, they assigned me to an Air Cavalry troop. The Air Cavalry troop being consisted of three Air Cavalry—I mean, the Air Cavalry Squadron had three Air Cavalry troops and a maintenance troop. And so each one of these Air Cavalry troops would be the separate units that would go out and have a certain area to look at and to study. So I was then a Captain, which called for—when I got there, they made me the commanding officer of the aero rifle platoon, which consisted of 10 Hueys of which four or five we needed to fly every mission. And then the other two platoons—of the other platoons of Air Cavalry troop were the scout platoon, that had a dozen light observation helicopters with a pilot for each and a door gunner crew chief for each ; and a dozen Huey Cobras, gunships, and the pilots for those. So, like I say, I had the rifle platoon, so what we did was bring in my platoon every day to wherever we were gonna be to secure a landing zone if we needed one to engage the enemy. And then at the end of the day, whatever we'd put in to fight the enemy, we'd take 'em back at the end of the day. And, during the six months that I did that, it was basically, out of a week, we would probably have an average of five days that we would actually fly. Sundays were always a maintenance day, and we could pretty well count on one of the days during Monday through Saturday for some reason, whether we had too many shot down or not enough flyable because it takes a lot of maintenance to keep a helicopter in the air. We used to figure an hour of maintenance times for an hour of flight time for a Huey, and for a Cobra and an OH-6, an hour-and-a-half to two hours of maintenance time for every hour of flight. So, that's what we would do for an average, I'd say, of like five days a week for the six months that I was there in that position. Now, the last half of my time in Vietnam—and I was still as a Captain, which is what I did for the rest of the time—I was in the headquarters. And in the headquarters I was what they called an Assistant S3—S3 being the operations section of the headquarters. And my job was, for part of the time, to man the control center, which meant that we would assign the Air Cavalry squadron—also worked in conjunction with a couple of attack helicopter companies. And our headquarters would get in the assignments for what aircraft in our area needed to be supplied to what units. We'd get the—and we usually would get that by about midnight—then by two or three in the morning, hopefully we would have received from each unit's maintenance how many aircraft they had that were flyable. So we could sit there and we immediately assign what aircraft units were gonna supply what aircraft to what units, you know, to support, so we could get 'em out to where they could fly—take off as soon as the sun came up. And that's basically what I did for the last six months. 00:31:45.355 --> 00:31:56.214 What was the hardest part of military lifestyle for you to adapt to? 00:31:56.214 --> 00:38:12.885 Oh, I would say just Vietnam in general. The—it was harder probably for my wife. If you ever saw the movie We Were Soldiers by Mel Gibson, that's the only movie I've ever seen that really showed what our wives went through. But it didn't take very long to adjust though, because you had to adjust real fast (laughs). You didn't have much, much choice. The—one of the—people have asked me a lot what it was like to fly over there. And as a matter of fact, somebody had posted and asked on Facebook for some—on the website for the Vietnam Helicopter Pilots Association—for people to describe what it was like. Well, probably the best thing I've ever read that describes what it was like to fly in a Huey one of the missions like we flew on was something written by John Steinbeck. It turned out that John Steinbeck's wife and Lady Bird (Claudia Alta "Lady Bird" Johnson) were very close friends in college. So L.B.J. (Lyndon B. Johnson) commissioned John Steinbeck to go to Vietnam for a year, do as many things as he could, and send back daily dispatches that went to LBJ. And they got published at some time in a magazine, but ultimately the University of Virginia a few years ago collected all these and published them. And there is a three or four page dispatch that he wrote that describes his experience in flying out of Pleiku on a Air Cavalry operation in which he was flying out of the same exact place that we flew out of, into the same area with an Air Cavalry troop, a couple of years before I was there. So, anybody who wanted to read something, that's all they gotta do is Google: Helicopter, John Steinbeck, and Vietnam. And it'll pop right up and you can read it. That's—now for other means to be able to see what it was like, I saw here a month or two ago on Amazon Prime, they had done a documentary—it's about an hour long—of personal experiences of Vietnam helicopter pilots. All you gotta do is Google that, if you're on Amazon Prime, and it'll come up with this one-hour presentation that goes through the steps of flight school and then what it was like flying there. And I experienced just about everything you can see in that video, except one thing: one of the units evidently said they were not allowed to return fire if they were shot at without specific authority after that. We always had the right—as far as our unit knew—to return fire if fired upon. There was a point in time when they came down and said we couldn't fire until we were fired upon. But that presented a problem for the scouts, because usually the first way they would find the enemy—and when they would find them, the enemy would find them and start shooting at 'em. So if you didn't—if they didn't fire first, well, the usual way that the scouts would do it is if they saw the enemy, they'd target the enemy, shoot to break off, so they could get away. And then the Cobras would come down and rake the area. And then we'd bring in whatever else. So we always had the power to return fire, our unit did. And frequently our scouts had to shoot first or they were dead by the time they found the enemy. But other than that, I think that one hour documentary just about shows everything that guys experienced that—and I could identify with all of it. 00:38:12.885 --> 00:38:20.875 What were your interactions like with local cultures and the people you encountered during deployment? 00:38:20.875 --> 00:45:30.755 During the period of time that I was the Assistant S3, scheduling things and running the operation center during the day when there was an emergency—something had to be done, they'd call in and we'd scramble whatever ship—because we always had standby ships available for emergencies. There was a situation that happened—and frankly the unit I was in, was the only unit that ever had a complete history that was written afterwards, 7-17th CAV (7th Squadron, 17th Cavalry Regiment), that from which they solicited recollections of actual pilots and crews from the battle plan (Galyean's cellphone rings and he silences it) things of all of the different units in the 7-17th., and it described it a little bit in this. What happened was, you see the rockets that were fired from helicopter from a Cobra or a Huey, when they used the Huey B models for gunships, were from rocket pods that that were developed for jets—for the F-4, the F-100, which is a very solid platform. Now with a Huey and a Cobra—with the type of rotor system they have, which was a single rotor—every time that the rotor is perpendicular to the direction of flight, you get a little (Galyean bounces once in his chair) bump, a little increase lift. And so you're always like this—(Galyean bounces side to side in his chair)—when you're flying. And you—that's that (Galyean points up, twirls his finger, and imitates a helicopter sound) wha, wha, wha, wha, wha that you hear when you hear a Huey go by. And they didn't have for those all of the solid state electoral connections for the firing operations like the jets had. Some of the things had to be soldered as part of making it work for that kind of aircraft. When you do this (Galyean bounces in his seat) to soldered electrical wires, sometimes they become disconnected. And so occasionally what would happen is it would get disconnected and when they would try to fire a rocket, it wouldn't fire. So there was a procedure that we would do when that happened—'cause it would happen from time to time. You'd take that—that Cobra would fly to the nearest Air Force base, where they always had a place that you could, at the Air Force base, that you could land, you could hover over to and sit down, and they would remove the—they had the ability to remove that pod and then disarm it so nobody accidentally got hurt. And so we had this—I got this call that a—one of the Cobras for one of our troops that had been working up north along the beach area had had a misfire on one of these rockets. And that the rocket had hit on the beach near where a little boy was playing, and he got some injury to his leg. So I scrambled a Huey to go out there and pick him up and his mother and take him to the—we were near Qui Nhon at that point—to the hospital at Qui Nhon to tend to his injury. Well this was a couple of years after an incident that happened at a place called My Lai, where an infantry Lieutenant had allowed his unit to shoot up some civilians in a village and they couldn't without really identifying for sure that they were the enemy. And as a result of that incident with this Lieutenant Calley (Lieutenant William Calley) and My Lai, there was a standing order, like the military does from time to time, where somebody screws up, they go to the leaders above that to try to analyze what could that higher leader have done to prepare for—to make sure it doesn't happen again. Did he chastise 'em for not having done whatever they felt they should have done? But at that point in time, then there became a standing order that if there was a civilian casualty as a result of our operation, there would be investigated to make sure as to whether or not it was intentional or whether it was accidental. So I get this call to take, to go investigate—and it just so happened we had in our headquarters at that time, what we call the Kit Carson Scout, that was an NVA (North Vietnamese Army) First Lieutenant who had defected. And as a matter of fact, he'd worked with my platoon on the ground, so I was very familiar with him 'cause I'd been on the ground with him in operations. And so I took this—and we went over to the hospital, which was only less than a half-hour drive in a Jeep. So we went over there to interview the mother. And when we got there and the mother found out why we were there, her comment was, "I know it was a mistake, I know it was an accident, don't chastise the pilot because he might get mad and not come back to help protect us from the Vietcong." So I thought that was kind of a unique experience. 00:45:30.755 --> 00:45:35.355 Was there something that you did for good luck while you were in Vietnam? 00:45:35.355 --> 00:45:40.684 Prayed a lot. 00:45:40.684 --> 00:45:46.885 What did you do for recreation or when you were off duty? 00:45:46.885 --> 00:48:42.355 Well, when we were off, like on the days we didn't fly for summer or on the Sundays, we'd relax, play music. Because Saturdays—because Sundays were always a down day for maintenance—we would usually on Saturday nights—and on Sundays were usually the day that we had new guys coming in and the old guys going out. When you arrived, you knew if you were living at the end of your tour, the day you already knew when you were going home. And so it was always on Sundays—so we had people leaving and more people coming in. So we had kind of a situation where, what we used to do is if you were one of the one or two or three of the officers who were—or pilots—who were gonna be leaving the follow a week after that, you would throw a party for the guys who were leaving the next day. And so what would you do? You get drunk, and you just have a party. (Galyean laughs) I had kind of a funny situation if we were able to do. Because of when I was in the 501st Supply Transport Battalion, the guy who was the commanding officer of the food distribution for the First Armored Division and I were good friends, because we were in the same battalion, and he had just happened to be responsible for the food distribution for the Army in Qui Nhon in the area that we were. And I was able to call him, and—because he was so close—and he got us a couple of cases of steaks for our party. And that morning—that Saturday morning, since we were able to—we were near a place called Tuy Hoa where there were lobster boats that came in every morning. We flew out and landed on the beach, and our Mess Sergeant went with us with, and we got a bunch of live lobsters that he took back and immediately put in a boiling pot, 'cause they had to be boiled while they were alive. So we—our party that night had steak and lobster (Galyean laughs). But I mean, that was the kind of things you did for recreation, and that was about it in our unit. 00:48:42.355 --> 00:48:52.054 What kind of friendships and camaraderie did you form while serving and with whom? 00:48:52.054 --> 00:49:43.304 Every single one of my infantrymen and the pilots I knew, we were like brothers. There was never any problem when we would have a scout go down and we weren't sure the condition. I had infantrymen volunteering at any time to repel down there to help 'em and help get 'em out. You know, Jason. You're brothers. So— 00:49:43.304 --> 00:49:51.844 How did you stay in touch with family and friends? Did you choose to keep communication with them while deployed? 00:49:51.844 --> 00:50:30.425 Um—(Galyean laughs)—you really didn't have much time. While I was in Vietnam, I'd write a letter to my wife frequently. But after that, yes. I from time to time have kept in touch with some of the guys, as I have with some of the guys that I was visiting who were burned from that fire when I was in the forest service. But yeah. 00:50:30.425 --> 00:50:39.594 So now we're coming towards your end of service. Do you recall the day your service ended? Where were you when your service ended? 00:50:39.594 --> 00:50:43.505 Fort Hood, Texas. And yes, I do remember (Galyean laughs). 00:50:43.505 --> 00:50:47.005 Did you return home or where did you go? 00:50:47.005 --> 00:53:55.625 From there, my wife's parents at the time had moved from the Escondido area. They lived in Brawley. He had a car dealership then, down there. So I went to—we drove back across the—from Fort Hood, Texas to their place. First I picked up a newspaper. I was scheduled to go to law school. So when I got out it was April, and I was scheduled to start law school in the fall. And I just happened to pick up a newspaper and there was an advertisement for somebody at the—to work at the county of Imperial as—and they wanted a vet. And it was because the government, as it turned out, had just passed a law. It was something they called the PEP program, which was a program for—public employment program—for Vietnam vets. And what they were trying to do is get state and local governments to come up with jobs for vets that were coming out of the Vietnam War now, because now we're standing down. We're getting outta Vietnam. And so it just so happened they needed somebody to administer the beginning of their program so—for the county of Imperial. So they hired me as a personnel analyst to go to Sacramento for a weekend to help figure out the rules of how this was gonna work and then start the plan and program for the county of Imperial. So then I was going around to school districts and different city governments and everything, trying to get them to come up with a job, and then the government would pay half of the salary with the idea they would do that for the first year, and then hopefully the public employer would continue in the future. And so I did that from the time that I got out of the Army for the county of Imperial for basically five months until law school started for me in San Diego. 00:53:55.625 --> 00:54:02.275 How were you received by your family and community when you returned back from Vietnam? 00:54:02.275 --> 00:55:00.675 Well, well frankly, because my family was always very supportive, and of course then I was at Fort Hood, so I mean—and when I was in law school, which was—and working for the PEP program and then in law school—I was well received. The only thing that was kind of a real bummer was the other pilot in my unit that had been a Navy Marine F-4 pilot evidently had PTSD so bad that on our contracts final, at the end of the first year, he stuck his head in an oven and killed himself. 00:55:00.675 --> 00:55:06.005 How did you readjust to civilian life? You said you went back to law school? 00:55:06.005 --> 00:56:50.824 Yeah, I went to law school, and let's just say I was highly motivated (laughs). I really worked. And my wife's father had always been a car dealer, and she had while she was in high school worked as an accountant for him—'cause there's a—it's a—car dealerships have an incredibly complex accounting system, particularly since they gotta have parts for just every kind of car, you know,? If you're a Ford, you gotta be able to repair GM, Chrysler, et cetera. So you got a complete inventory and financial accounting for the different parts sections. And she had did that when she was in high school for her dad. So she had no problem while we were, while I was in law school in San Diego. The first car dealership she walked into hired her on the spot to do accounting for them for parts. And so she had no problem adapting really, really quickly, 'cause she got a job doing exactly what she had done while she was in high school and what she did somewhat while I was in Vietnam for her dad. They lived—she lived with her parents. She and my son lived with her parents while I was in Vietnam. 00:56:50.824 --> 00:56:56.000 Did you join any veterans organizations after you returned home? 00:56:56.000 --> 00:57:58.000 Yeah, I did. Eventually when they came up with this Vietnam Helicopter Pilots Association, I joined that and went to their convention when it was in San Diego and participated in a couple of activities that they had and was involved in the writing of the history of the 7-17th CAV, because it turned out the guy that replaced me in Vietnam was the one who did all the work to get all of the after-action reports from all of the different units and generated this history. And then he would send it to people before the last edition was published to be able to add to it what their old personal recollections were. So I worked on that with him, but that was about it. 00:57:58.000 --> 00:58:09.585 So we're moving on to reflections. How has your service impacted your life, your community, your faith, and your family? 00:58:09.585 --> 00:59:43.315 My faith. I think it was a godsend that I was—I survived. And my wife, she was—she's the angel of my life. And she's a very spiritual person. I think it—particularly through what I've been going through—appreciate what veterans have gone through since then. And it's—I cannot fathom that there are very many veterans that have seen the things that most veterans who are part of the point of the sword in any of these war activities wouldn't have to some degree some PTSD—would just be human. I'm sure you know. 00:59:43.315 --> 00:59:53.905 What are some life lessons you learned from military service? 00:59:53.905 --> 01:00:21.114 Always do your best and have faith that the Lord's will will be presumed—will occur—if you give it a chance—if you follow your heart. 01:00:21.114 --> 01:00:33.414 What message would you like to leave for future generations who will view or hear this interview? 01:00:33.414 --> 01:01:13.934 I've spent the rest of my life as an attorney. I would say without a doubt, this constitutional system that we have is probably the best governments—governance—system there is, and it's worth defending. 01:01:13.934 --> 01:01:21.184 How did you become associated with the San Diego North County region? 01:01:21.184 --> 01:03:28.000 Well, I grew up in San Marcos on a chicken farm. My dad had a chicken hatchery. And so it wasn't hard when you've been places like Fort Polk, Louisiana ; Fort Rucker, Alabama ; Fort Hood, Texas ; to come home and realize that San Diego County is a good place to come home to. So that's why my wife and I knew that's where we wanted to come back to. Same reason my dad, when he was—my dad settled ultimately in San Marcos because if you ever read John Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath, my father and his uncle and cousins, when they lost or were losing their little walnut ranch in Arkansas, came out and were traveling all over picking crops and doing that. And when they got to San Marcos, a guy gave him a job at that point, and he decided, This is where I want to live. And this is where he—so that's—it was a guy's name, was Fred Williams. Fred Williams had a square dance barn, he had the first gas station, and he gave my dad a job there. He had these four little cottages that were adobe cottages. My dad got his mother and three younger siblings here. And we never—he never left and we never left. We came back, as did all of my siblings. 01:03:28.000 --> 01:03:44.864 Thank you for taking the time to share your recollections of military service. In conclusion, is there anything you've always wanted to share about your service or veteran experience that you never have? 01:03:44.864 --> 01:04:01.554 No, I think I've probably just about hit—I mean, like I say, all you gotta do is see those two—see that one—those two movies, and you'll understand exactly what I'm talking about. 01:04:01.554 --> 01:04:10.485 What do you wish more people knew about veterans? 01:04:10.485 --> 01:05:09.905 There just good, ordinary, responsible people. And they've experienced some things that I think give them an understanding of what our society is worth and what it means to be a part of a brotherhood. They experienced it. 01:05:09.905 --> 01:05:16.914 In your unveiling of the journey, what are the lessons learned from your military experience? 01:05:16.914 --> 01:05:29.000 Love life. Love what you're doing, do what you love, and do it the best that you can. 01:05:29.000 --> 01:05:32.704 Thank you for your time today. 01:05:32.704 --> 01:05:34.204 You got it. NOTE TRANSCRIPTION END ]]> https://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en video Property rights reside with the university. Copyrights are retained by the creators of the records and their heirs. This resource is licensed for noncommercial educational use using CC NC-BY 4.0. Please contact Special Collections at archives
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Galyean, Thomas. Interview November 12th, 2024.
Description
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Thomas Earl Galyean was a Captain in the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War. He served with the 7-17th CAV as commanding officer of the aero rifle platoon, securing landing zones for aircraft. Galyean then served as an Assistant S3 for the operations section of headquarters, ensuring that aircraft received their assignments. Raised on his family’s chicken hatchery in San Marcos, California, Galyean narrates his family history, his decision to join the U.S. Army, and his interest in helicopter flight. Galyean describes his experience in flight school, including reflections on media representations of military training and the Vietnam War. Galyean describes his unique role while serving stateside, forming a military response team to suppress riots in the wake of the 1968 Democratic National Convention. Galyean meditates on the impact of controversial topics, such as the My Lai massacre, civilian casualties, and the rules of engagement. Galyean reflects on religion, comradery, family, and how the military changed his life.
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SC027-071
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2024-11-12
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video
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Thomas Galyean
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Jason Beyer
Subject
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United States. Army—Veterans
Vietnam War, 1961-1975
Poultry farms
United States. Forest Service
El Cariso Hotshots (Calif.)
Reserve Officers' Training Corps
San Marcos High School (San Marcos, Calif.)
University of California, Los Angeles
Loop Fire, Calif., 1966
Air pilots—Training of
Fort Wolters (Tex.)
Fort Knox (Ky.)
Bell AH-1 Cobra (Attack helicopter)
Phan Rang (Vietnam)
Bearcat (Vietnam)
Napalm
Fort Rucker (Ala.)
Fort Hood (Tex.)
Democratic National Convention (1968 : Chicago, Ill.)
Gray Air Force Base (Tex.)
Ground-controlled approach (Aeronautics)
Vietnam Helicopter Pilots Association
United States. Army. 7th Cavalry Regiment
University of Virginia
My Lai Massacre, Vietnam, 1968
Legal education—United States
Lawyers
Fort Polk (La.)
Ho Chi Minh Trail (Vietnam)
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
San Diego (Calif.)
San Marcos (Calif.)
Texas
California
Kentucky
Vietnam
Tây Nguyên (Vietnam)
Vietnam (Republic : 1954-1975)
Laos
Cambodia
Chicago (Ill.)
Brownsville (Tex.)
Brawley (Calif.)
Escondido (Calif.)
Imperial County (Calif.)
Sacramento (Calif.)
Louisiana
Alabama
Arkansas
Pleiku (Vietnam)
Phan Rang (Vietnam)
Biên Hòa (Vietnam)
Qui Nhon (Vietnam)
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California State University San Marcos University Library
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English
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<a href="https://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en" target="_blank" rel="noopener">In copyright</a>
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Thomas Galyean
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San Diego Veterans History Initiative
Community history
San Diego Veterans History Initiative
Veteran experience
-
https://archivesoralhistories.csusm.edu/files/original/abdeb6b5993217c41d7d8f3dc1554cff.mp4
3c6df60dbdd1c712db4b06dd7a37c483
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Oral history of Tiffaney Boyd, April 15, 2021
Description
An account of the resource
Tiffaney Boyd is a CSUSM alumna and former president of Associated Students, Incorporated (ASI). She was a driving force in the creation of the Black Student Center (BSC), Cougar Pantry, and Sigma Gamma Rho. In this interview, Boyd Tiffaney details the process in which she and her fellow ASI cohorts proposed the idea of the BSC. She also discusses the politics that were involved in the process and the major contributors helping to bring the BSC to life.
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Tiffaney Boyd
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Sierra Jenkins
Date
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2021-04-15
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California State University San Marcos. Black Student Center
California State University San Marcos. Associated Students Incorporated
California State University San Marcos -- Students
Activism, Student
Black experience in America
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San Marcos (Calf.)
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California State University San Marcos University Library
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English
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<a href="https://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en" target="_blank" rel="noopener">In copyright</a>
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Tiffaney Boyd
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https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
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moving image
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Boyd Tiffaney_JenkinsSierra_2021-04-15
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Black Student Center Oral History Project
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Oral history of Tiffaney Boyd, April 15, 2021
Description
An account of the resource
Oral history interview of Tiffaney Boyd on 2021-04-15 for the Black Student Center Oral History Project at California State University San Marcos. Tiffaney goes into detail about the process in which she and her fellow Associated Students, Incorporated cohorts proposed the idea of the Black Student Center. She also discusses the politics that were involved in the process and who were major contributors to helping bring the BSC to life.
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Tiffaney Boyd
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Sierra Jenkins
Date
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2021-04-15
Subject
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Black experience in America
California State University San Marcos, Associated Students Incorporated
California State University San Marcos, Black Student Center
California State University San Marcos--Students
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California State University San Marcos University Library
Coverage
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San Marcos (Calif.)
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English
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<a href="https://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en" target="_blank" rel="noopener">In copyright</a>
Rights Holder
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Tiffaney Boyd
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https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
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moving image
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BoydTiffaney_JenkinsSierra_2021-04-15
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Black Student Center Oral History Project
-
https://archivesoralhistories.csusm.edu/files/original/189c1d079e520446dd42eb120b6f7ab1.pdf
204fd44f3c4c9c8820cf04c1b51da5a2
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Transcripts
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Written oral histories and transcripts are available for researchers that prefer the written word, or to see the whole interview in a document. Transcripts of <a href="https://archivesoralhistories.csusm.edu/collections/show/5">audio and video files</a> are also available as part of those video files.
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Boyd, Tiffaney. Interview transcript, April 15, 2021.
Description
An account of the resource
Tiffaney Boyd is a CSUSM alumna and former president of Associated Students, Incorporated (ASI). She was a driving force in the creation of the Black Student Center (BSC), Cougar Pantry, and Sigma Gamma Rho. In this interview, Boyd Tiffaney details the process in which she and her fellow ASI cohorts proposed the idea of the BSC. She also discusses the politics that were involved in the process and the major contributors helping to bring the BSC to life.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Tiffaney Boyd
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Sierra Jenkins
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2021-04-15
Subject
The topic of the resource
California State University San Marcos. Black Student Center
California State University San Marcos. Associated Students Incorporated
California State University San Marcos -- Students
Activism, Student
Black experience in America
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
San Marcos (Calf.)
Publisher
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California State University San Marcos University Library
Language
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English
Rights
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<a href="https://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en" target="_blank" rel="noopener">In copyright</a>
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Tiffaney Boyd
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text
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BoydTiffaney_JenkinsSierra_2021-04-15_transcript
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Black Student Center Oral History Project
Black experience
Black Student Center Oral History Project
CSUSM history
Women's experience
-
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Title
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Oral Histories
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Video and audio oral histories can be viewed here. Histories are listed alphabetically by last name. Individual histories are indexed and transcribed and can be searched.
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California State University San Marcos University Library
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<p>Rights to oral histories vary depending on the history. The library owns the copyright to some histories, and has license to reproduce for nonprofit purposes for others. Please contact CSUSM University Library Special Collections at <a href="mailto:%20archives@csusm.edu">archives@csusm.edu</a> with any questions about use.</p>
Oral History
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Interviewer
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Sierra Jenkins
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Tiffaney Boyd
OHMS Object
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https://archivesoralhistories.csusm.edu/ohms-viewer/render.php?cachefile=BoydTiffaney_JenkinsSierra_2021-04-15.xml
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6.0 Boyd, Tiffaney. Interview, April 15th, 2021. SC027-11 00:00:00 SC027 California State University San Marcos University Library oral history collection CSUSM Instructionally Related Activities funding csusm Tiffaney Boyd Sierra Jenkins moving image BoydTiffaney_JenkinsSierra_2021-04-15.mp4 0 https://archivesoralhistories.csusm.edu/files/original/abdeb6b5993217c41d7d8f3dc1554cff.mp4 Other video 0 Interview Introduction 0 39 Childhood Boyd discusses being born and raised in California's Inland Empire including her education. Moreno Valley ; Inland Empire ; economic divestment ; education 0 167 Learning about Black history and the Black experience in childhood and adolescence Boyd reflects on a lack of knowledge of Black history until college. Learning about Blackness related to how Black people are treated in the United States. Black history ; Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. ; Hemet ; police harrassment 0 293 Developing an understanding of Blackness Boyd speaks about the racial and ethnic diversity of her high school and her shock at the small population of Black students at California State University San Marcos. Blackness for her is about pride and the knowledge of the struggles that Black people have experienced. racial diversity ; infrastructure ; Black pride ; struggle ; sociology ; criminology ; inequality ; systemic racism 0 546 Personal impact of Black activism and social justice movements Boyd discusses her awareness of Black activism especially with Trayvon Martin's death. She believes Black people are trying and succeeding but it is much harder for them to do so. She also talks about the Natural Hair Show on campus. protest ; natural hair movement ; Trayvon Martin 0 827 Role in the creation of the Black Student Center Boyd talks about her roles in student government that allowed her to be involved in initial discussions in the development of the Black Student Center. Racism at universities across the nation impacted her concern for resources available for Black students at California State University San Marcos. At a campus open forum with the President, students brought up several issues impacting Black students including the need for a Black Student Center. Latinx Center ; racism ; U-Hour ; open forum 0 1161 Previous efforts to establish the BSC and initial opposition Boyd discusses initial lack of support of the idea of a Black Student Center by Associated Students, Incorporated (ASI) staff. She was met with a lot of resistance by a traditionally white, male ASI elected positions. There were several Black students who were willing to be vocal about their experiences and lack of support. food pantry ; Associated Students, Incorporated ; student success ; women of color 0 1509 Student governance meeting and discussion / vote on the resolution for the creation of the Black Student Center Boyd talks about her work in getting the resolution for the creation of the Black Student Center passed. There were challenges to this proposal including a student leader who claimed that slavery did not exist. Ultimately, his comment helped to propel a positive vote forward. public comment ; resolution ; vote ; slavery ; celebration 0 1809 Leaders on the Black Student Center project, their contributions, and unsung heroes Boyd speaks to the work that came next after the resolution for the Black Student Center passed. A task force was appointed to study the issue and propose details about the Center. Other diverse student groups stood aside Black students to support the development of the Center. task force ; Jamaéla Johnso ; Louis Adamsel ; Dilcie Perez ; Fredi Avalos ; Kai Guzman ; Sharon Elise 0 2028 The Black Student Center Grand Opening Boyd discusses her graduation and what went on after that time. The Black Student Center opened in the University Student Union. It was good for her to come back to the opening of the Center and reflect on the work she started. diversity office ; graduation ; student union ; advocacy ; coalition building 0 2363 Early focus of the BSC’s initiatives, programming, events Boyd speaks to the early plans for the Black Student Center to have programs focusing on Black women and amenities needed by Black students. Black women ; women of color ; safe haven ; cultural competence 0 2496 Early events and programs Boyd says she has not been able to reap the benefits of the Black Student Center since she graduated soon after the planning stages. 0 2562 Personal impact of the Black Student Center on Boyd Boyd reflects on how her experience with the Black Student Center was formative for her career in policy and government affairs. Boyd was a legislative aide for Shirley Weber, who was a key proponent of establishing ethnic studies in California schools. Shirley Weber ; ethnic studies ; legislation ; advocacy ; policy work ; change 0 Oral history Tiffaney Boyd is a CSUSM alumna and former president of Associated Students, Incorporated (ASI). She was a driving force in the creation of the Black Student Center (BSC), Cougar Pantry, and Sigma Gamma Rho. In this interview, Boyd Tiffaney details the process in which she and her fellow ASI cohorts proposed the idea of the BSC. She also discusses the politics that were involved in the process and the major contributors helping to bring the BSC to life. NOTE TRANSCRIPTION BEGIN 00:00:00.000 --> 00:01:00.000 Today is Thursday, April 15th, 2021, at 3:04 PM. I am Sierra Jenkins, student at CSU (California State University) San Marcos, and today I'm interviewing Tiffany Boyd for the Black Student Center Oral History Project, a collaboration of the CSUSM Black Student Center and CSUSM University Library, Special Collections. Tiffany, thank you for being here with me today. TIFFANEY BOYD: Thank you. JENKINS: All right, so I'm going to just jump right in with the questions. And the first one I have for you is, start out with where you were born and where did you grow up? BOYD: Sure. I was born in Moreno Valley, California. And I grew up in San Jacinto, well Hemet/San Jacinto area, which is Inland Empire, California. I don't know if you wanted me to go more, but I grew up there. JENKINS: Yeah. How was it growing up in that area? BOYD: Sure. So, 00:01:00.000 --> 00:02:00.000 so that area is kind of economically, uninvested in or divested in, right. I grew up in some apartment complexes there, and you know, a lot of crime, a lot of poverty to say the least, surrounds, and it was within Hemet California just because it is not close to big business or anything. It's 30 minutes out to the freeway. My high school was next to a dairy farm. And so the education system, I went to a high school that was brand new. We were the first freshmen, first graduating class out there and you could tell that. I didn't have to write essays in high school at all. I had a 00:02:00.000 --> 00:03:00.000 substitute teacher for three years. It was just, substitute teacher after year after year for my English class, in which I didn't have to write and really the students were able to kind of run the show for three years because the same teacher was assigned, but she was out. And so I think just going to that high school realized how much education was not, you know, like factored or very like highly focused on at my school. JENKINS: Oh, wow. That’s, That’s crazy. But that kind of goes into my next question of, what were you taught in childhood and adolescence about Black history and the Black experience, whether it be through education or life, family? BOYD: Sure. You know, I think within my family, it was always emphasized to go to school, to go to college eventually. But as far as Black history specifically, 00:03:00.000 --> 00:04:00.000 it wasn't much, taught in my school. It wasn't until much later into college and electives that I was really able to learn about Black history above and beyond MLK day or some type of form of Black History Month, but not really getting into the, I guess, the depths of our history and all of the fighters that were, you know, had to fight against oppression and, applied against the systems that continue to not invest in Black economics and Black justice. And so I think growing up with my parents, and in Hemet that is, was originally a retirement city for older folks, older white folks, and was a city that Black people weren't welcomed in and my dad was harassed by the police in Hemet, right, got like 21 tickets in one year, from just like 00:04:00.000 --> 00:05:00.000 walking, driving, biking, no matter what, just like: what are you doing here, never seen you before in this area? And so I think, watching my dad and his interaction with the criminal justice system younger kind of taught me, I think, a lot about Black history in some ways, or like the historic ways that in which Black people are treated in this country. And so, we're seeing a lot of that today as far as folks being harassed doing normal things as Black people, but still not being seen as a whole person or someone worth the dignity and right to live. JENKINS: How did you come to your own understanding of Blackness? BOYD: I don't know. I don't even know what that means. I mean, I don't even know. I think for me coming to college, I went to a high school that had, 00:05:00.000 --> 00:06:00.000 you know, Black and Brown and it was a very diverse high school. Not as far as diverse teachers, but the students were diverse. Coming to San Marcos where we were less than 3% of the population at the campus was something that was new for me. And it did throw me a little bit off that there wasn't, you could be the only Black person in campus or in your class often. I don't think I had one Black professor during my time at San Marcos and so that was also kind of just different, and made hyper aware of my, that I was Black, that I'm different. And I think that realizing that we didn't have a like organization like sororities fraternities at the time, we didn't have like Black focused clubs. There was a BSU (Black Student Union), 00:06:00.000 --> 00:07:00.000 but at that time it wasn't active. And so there was a very desired need just to be with people of likeness that kind of understood the Black experience, whatever that kind of means. But for me, Blackness just means pride or an understanding that there are struggles that we go through or that we've been through that other ethnicities and races haven't necessarily had that struggle. JENKINS: Okay. And, you mentioned that you came, like you learned more about your, about Black history and the Black experience in college was that through classes and I guess since you didn't use to have like the BSU and Black sororities, did it come through the Black Student Center later? BOYD: So I didn't come through the Black Student Center later because we didn't, I didn't get to benefit from the Black Student Center at all. I think through sociology classes 00:07:00.000 --> 00:08:00.000 and through criminology courses and communications courses. One course which is kind of almost the opposite, but yet it still points to it is The Communication of Whiteness, is a class taught by Jim Mamoon that kind of just put into perspective. I think a lot of times we do focus on the experience of Black people and how we've gotten, come to be, but it's like, how do we continue to perpetuate whiteness and how that affects the power structures that we face today? And so I think being able to talk about inequality and race in my sociology classes really put into perspective of how everything isn't necessarily so, I guess happenstance, but that systems are perpetuated and created and policies are perpetuated and created that allow the experience that I have in which I'm going to a school 00:08:00.000 --> 00:09:00.000 that is underfunded or that, I wasn't, you know, had access to AP courses or anything that it's perpetuated, that structural racism kind of works in that way. And so I think that that's how I was able to form more of a strong identity that, you know, we don't have a pipeline program at our, on our campus. That we’re not recognized as Black students, that our struggles are different than a traditional student or how higher education was originally formed. And so I think that, in that I wanted to create a space where, and dialogue and room for us to kind of talk about the experience of being at San Marcos and not necessarily being seen. JENKINS: That's awesome. That kind of goes back what you're talking about, with like what's going on today and like that kind of thing. So my next question is how has Black social justice and activism such as the Civil Rights 00:09:00.000 --> 00:10:00.000 movement, feminism, the natural hair movement and Black Lives Matter affected you? BOYD: Yeah, I would say it was affecting me a lot. So the first, the first iteration of some way, like I was already kind of aware, but I think it was like a appointment, like exclamation mark when Trayvon Martin died or was a murdered, assassin, killed. And I was in a sociology class and we were talking about Hurricane Katrina and just how that, how there wasn't help from the federal government to this area. And then of course, we're like studying this. And then at the same time, Trayvon Martin is killed through, with Skittles in his hand. And so that year, I want to say it was either, I want to say 2013 or 2014, we went and I had my parents come to a protest march in LA. 00:10:00.000 --> 00:11:00.000 And I think that in that you kind of just continue to be aware. And then you hear about Freddy (Gray) and you hear about Eric Garner and all of these folks. And so I think that that has really been something that has stayed with me. We did during our time, and you'll hear from other students about the natural hair show that we had at our campus. And, and you realize that folks are either afraid or ashamed of their hair texture as it is. And so I think that awareness of like what Black Lives Matter and what civil rights did and how they've pushed forward an agenda to say: hey, we are just as human, we’re as dignified as anybody else, and we deserve those same rights and the same ability to flourish and have jobs. And you just see the historical ways in which, again and again, Black people are trying and are succeeding. 00:11:00.000 --> 00:12:00.000 But they are, it's much harder for us to do so. JENKINS: Can you tell me about more about the natural hair show that you mentioned? I've actually never heard of, haven't heard of that yet. BOYD: Yeah. So, on our campus as, so when I was a freshman on the campus we didn't have, our BSU (Black Student Union) was not strong. We didn't have a core group of folks that were involved. We didn't have faculty that were invested either. And so a few students started that mantel my year and by the third year, BSU, like my third year of college, we had put on a natural hair show in which, when we first began as well we didn't have a (university) student union, which now we do have a student union in which people are able to do gather and be a center hub of the campus. And so that first year that it opened, 00:12:00.000 --> 00:13:00.000 we had this big hair show, Black natural hair show in which students volunteered to model their hair as it is, afros and curls and braids, and was just a celebration, had folks who were hairstylists and had their own businesses come and promote their businesses. And then had students able to walk the catwalk in a way, and then have some uplifting powering music and just a way to come together and celebrate to say, this is our hair texture and this is something to be celebrated that everybody is different, and beautiful in and of their own right. JENKINS: That sounds amazing. Did you guys only have it that year? Is it something that's reoccurred since then? BOYD: Yeah, so it's reoccurred since then, each year. I'm not quite sure, I'm about a few years removed. But I do know that 00:13:00.000 --> 00:14:00.000 Akilah Green, who was the, she had recently that time had, did the big chop. And she was impetus, or she was the go starter for this event. And I know that there's been a few times where she's been called back to participate in the natural hair show that she began. So I want to say that it's at least like the sixth year, if it's still continuing either virtually or not, I'm pretty sure that there have been students that kind of continued it on. But yeah, it's been like an annual thing and it's really a beautiful event. JENKINS: That's so cool. I'm going to definitely check that out. What is your relationship to the BSC (Black Student Center)? Why did you get involved? BOYD: Sure. So, my, in my senior year, my fifth year, I was present... Well, I guess it to go back, in 2014, 00:14:00.000 --> 00:15:00.000 I want to say, I was vice president in the... Actually, sorry, I'll go back even more. I was a representative. I was like a rep, a rep for the College of Humanities, Arts, Behavioral, and Social Sciences (in Associated Students Incorporated, student government). And that year they were talking about the creation of a Latino Latina center (Latin
/x Center) at our campus, and we were able to vote, and it was a big thing. We've had, only had the Cross-Cultural Center and we had the Women's Center (now Gender Equity Center) at the campus, and the Latinos, or Latinx population wanted a center. And so it was a big, big conversation. And in the end it had, you know, triumphed and we were, it had passed for the creation of Latino Latina center. You fast forward two years later, and I was a president at the time (of Associated Students Incorporated and there was a huge 00:15:00.000 --> 00:16:00.000 demonstration. There had been, there's always, or I won't say that there's always, but campuses continue to negotiate diversity and inclusion at their campuses is an ongoing theme across campuses. Not only in California, but across the nation. And at that time, Missouri, which they call a Mizzou University (University of Missouri at Columbia) where it was going through something where racism had occurred on campus toward Black students, but athletes had spoke out about the injustice that was faced on that campus and the president was unresponsive. And so the students had went on protest at Missouri, the student athletes, which is a huge, big deal because at that campus, they had football and that's a big revenue, that the campus was losing by them not performing or not, you know, doing the game. 00:16:00.000 --> 00:17:00.000 And so you see a lot of other things were happening at that time. And I don't quite remember all of the activities, but something had just happened I want to say at San Jose State University, something had happened at a different university. And the way in which the university treats Black students, welcomes Black students, and invests in Black students was like up in question, across all campuses. And so, as you know, as the student body president at the time, I also was concerned about Black students on our campus and what resources, or lack of thereof, resources for black students was available. At our campus, we do have what's called U Hour, which, from 12 to one (p.m.) on Tuesdays and Thursdays, students for the most part don't have classes. There's not classes resuming at that time. And so it allows for campus life to, for events or for clubs to meet you at that U Hour, University Hour. 00:17:00.000 --> 00:18:00.000 And so Black, so for BSU (Black Student Union) on Thursdays, of every other Thursday, I want to say, BSU was able to like gather and meet. And if you're able, if you're on campus on a Thursday and on a, and don't have classes and you're able to participate in BSU. But if you didn't, if you either were a commuter student, which a lot of students are, and maybe your classes are Monday and Wednesdays, or if you had a job that you had to go to, or something you're unable to really participate in the BSU because it's like only this time on the hour. So, and for the most part, you don't even see these Black students, you're not (sneezes) excuse me, running into them on campus because we're so spread out. And so when one day, like we were, the university, the campus university was having a, what is it called? An open forum, a diversity open forum 00:18:00.000 --> 00:19:00.000 about just the campus itself. It wasn't really even a diversity forum. It was just an open forum of the president (Karen Haynes) talking about the state of the campus and some initiatives that were going forward and students had rose up that day and said, hey, what about Black students? What are you doing about Black students on our campus? We're feeling isolated. We aren't having retention rates. We don't have professors and are feeling unsupported. And so when the campus president heard about it, she said, please address a letter to me, I, this is the first time that I'm hearing about this issue. And so that's kind of where I got involved, as the student government lens is that I also had put forth a resolution in support of a Black Student Center, or a resource center to be a hub where Black students can come, no matter the time or the date of, of the hour. Right. But that there would be somebody dedicated 00:19:00.000 --> 00:20:00.000 to the inclusion of Black students where you can get resources of paper or have dialogues that are hyper specific and culturally competent around this area or this issue. JENKINS: What was the initial response when you put that proposal in? BOYD: Sure. It was, it was complicated, I guess (laughs) you could say. So, student government at San Marcos is kind of its own institution, its own little bubble. Right. And I had been involved since a representative so by the time my, I was elected for president, it was my third year being involved in student government and the faculty who are, or not faculty, but the staff who are ever-present for us, and students of course come in 00:20:00.000 --> 00:21:00.000 and wash out. They weren't very supportive of me or my executive board. So we were the first, all-women of color executive board. There's three executives, there's the president, the vice president of student affairs and the vice president of operations, that are all elected and get to sit on the executive committee. And so prior to even this effort, which didn't start until October of the year, and you are elected in, I want to say like April or March of that year, so 2015 March, April is when I'm elected into the presidency. You fast forward to August. And we're trying to talk about what initiatives we have for the year. And I was already thinking, although I didn’t express it, that I 00:21:00.000 --> 00:22:00.000 wanted to look into the issue of a Black Student Center. And besides that was like a food pantry. And I wanted to look into social media. It's weird that social media is, you know, everywhere. It's like normal, but at the time we didn't have social media presence as, as the student government. And so I wanted to establish us, get a Snapchat, get us an Instagram at the time. And so, we're talking about social media, we're talking about events, we're talking about how can student government be more accessible and visible to the students? Because a lot of times we are a great resource and yet students either aren't taking advantage of the resource or don't really know or understand. And so figuring out ways to do that and be connected to the university more. And we were told that we're difficult women, that we should, that, you know, he wished as the executive director that he had, the SAE board back. And SAE stands for 00:22:00.000 --> 00:23:00.000 Sigma Alpha Epsilon. And they are a like on our campus at least historically white fraternity of males, and that is the brand of student government. At the time was that mostly it's like fraternity guys who get their own friends to vote for them. And that they weren't inclusive of the campus, they weren't representative of the campus. And you know, ASI kind of just did their own thing over there. So I was trying to bridge that gap and was met with a lot of resistance, from the beginning. And so when the Black Student Center came around and was another thing that was seen as unwelcome, it's all I can say. It's like not understood why we need an additional center when we have the Cross-Cultural Center. Two years ago we just had the Latino center. This is kind of just, you know, doing too much. There's not that many of you, why do you need a whole center, right? 00:23:00.000 --> 00:24:00.000 The argument for the Latino Latin
/x Center was that: we're half the population of this campus, or like a significant amount. We’re a Hispanic Serving Institution, at least deemed that through federal government, through the federal side and so it's like we should be serving our students. And so on the opposite side, it's like, we're a small population, but it's necessary in order for the retention and rate of student success for this to be here. And so I would just say that that's kind of how it was. The Black Student Union at the time had some great Black students who were vocal, who were willing to put their story on the line about the isolation that they feel, about the microaggressions that are experienced, and the lack of support, but they weren't organized in a way to understand how, 00:24:00.000 --> 00:25:00.000 how to speak with the president, how to talk to the vice president, the vice, the Dean of Students, Student Affairs. And so I think that I was able to bridge that understanding of working with the administration to forward our goals, because there are, there were faculty who were supportive of this, that this initiative and idea, and were helping to craft the resolution language and trying to whip up the votes for other students to also buy-in. As the, as a woman of color and executive board, executive board of color, it was great to have that camaraderie within our executive board, but of course the board is much larger than just us (officers) and it gets much more diverse than folks of color. So we knew that it was an uphill battle because there were, I don't remember at the time how many representatives, but of course you got to get, you know, half plus 00:25:00.000 --> 00:26:00.000 one. JENKINS: So it sounds like there was a lot of pushback. So how was it when they approved the Black Student Center? What was that like? BOYD: Sure. So it was, it was a huge meeting. So the first, so basically the students, you know, spoke out. The president (Karen Haynes) said that she would look into the issue. But I believe that there was a caveat about going through student government or what does the student voice have to be, say, since we represent. So then I was like: my baton to start, my work. So I started my work as well. Fast forward to February of 2016. The executive director (of Associated Students Incorporated) that I had mentioned before is out on leave. He's no longer working for the student government. We have a new person who just started in February, who is a retired annuitant from San Diego State University, and we're at this huge meeting. 00:26:00.000 --> 00:27:00.000 If you know anything about student government, we don't have a lot of people at our meetings. People are not interested. (laughs) And our meetings, we have them on Fridays, afternoon and our campus is a commuter campus and nobody's on campus on Friday. On that day we moved our meeting from our small room that we had into a much larger room in the USU in the (University) Student Union to accommodate for the amount of folks. Public comment. Was a lot of public comment was happening. There was concerns about some of the language that was in the resolution, the resolution language, and there was process questions about the Student Advocacy Committee and their recommendation to the board. It was like, just a lot of, just a lot. And so you have students that are speaking out to say, we want this, this item to pass and there was other, you know, environmental stuff. And I think even the food pantry (Cougar Pantry) was like that day as well. So just like a lot of 00:27:00.000 --> 00:28:00.000 agenda items. And so during that time, we had a student who represented the College of Business and Administration, and he was kind of adamantly against this Black Student Center. And so during the open discussion around the bill in which people can make amendments to the language of the resolution if they want or anything, he was basically saying that slavery didn't exist. So, slavery was a part of the resolution for good or for bad. It started at, and any resolution kind of goes big and it goes narrow down to where, whereas this is, for these reasons this. And so he was like, slavery doesn’t exist, that the industrial revolution was the reason why we are a great country 00:28:00.000 --> 00:29:00.000 that we are. And so, you know, it of course is a touchy subject to say the least. And so students were upset and outraged that he made the comment and all of this stuff. But in the end, I think that that comment actually helped propel more than back up for students who were still on the fence, of student government representatives that were on the fence. We didn't know if we had enough votes for the resolution at the time, but I wanted to at least put the issue up. There had been a lot of turmoil within the ASI (Associated Students Incorporated) and just with the students. And so I just wanted to say, okay, it's on the floor, let's have a full discussion about what you'd like to see what you want, than for us to continue to have these like sidebar conversations. And so we went up for a vote and in the end, it passed. I think 00:29:00.000 --> 00:30:00.000 that student, that represented (College of) Business was the only student who voted against the bill, or the resolution. And so, I mean, it was celebratory, right? It's exciting because, we didn't know what was going to happen and to, to get so far, that initiative had started basically in October when they spoke out to the president. And so to have that, to have that in February, which is a kind of quick deadline, but like not that quick, was great. And it was because students, and myself, and other people were prepared to know how to do our job, with or without a staff helping us to craft language or go through the order. JENKINS: That's amazing. It sounds like you put a lot of work into doing this. So we talked about that. So you were definitely a leader on this project. Was there anybody 00:30:00.000 --> 00:31:00.000 else who you saw as like a great contributor to the Black Student Center and including any unsung heroes that we may not know about? BOYD: Sure. So, you know, after, after the resolution was passed that, you know, it doesn't stop there, right. There has to be a flushing out of what, what is the Center going to do? We have established that there's a problem, we've established that we're willing as student voice to put our, our stamp of approval to say that, deem this statewide, or a campus-wide problem. And then so there was a lot, there was then, the president then appointed a task force to study the issue and to come up with a proposal of what the student, what the Black resource name would be, where it would be hosted, what services would it 00:31:00.000 --> 00:32:00.000 have, and all of that good stuff. And so, as ASI (Associated Students Incorporated), I was able to be the representative there. And then as part of the BSU (Black Student Union), Jamaéla Johnson, who was actually the Vice President of Student Affairs (in ASI) at the time, but was also a really big BSU - I don't know what her office title was in the BSU. But she was a part of BSU. One thing that for me, I wasn't able to be like as an active member. And I think because of the work that I had, aside from campus that Thursday hour was constantly taken away from me or used in some way. But I always tried to stay in contact with whoever the president was and try to do whatever, you know, cross collaborations. I was president of like some other orgs and so tried to like just align efforts, but I wasn't like super involved. So 00:32:00.000 --> 00:33:00.000 as BSU representative, Jamaéla Johnson was there and we were able to really speak at the table with the administrators of Student Affairs and, I forget everybody who was at the table, but everybody who the president had assigned to this task force to really discuss it. Louis Adamsel, which was, he was really integral and helpful during this process. Brandy Williams was one of the students. Danii Thornton and, I forget her sister's name (Darneisha Thornton). They both started with a D but the Thorton twins were really helpful in getting the initiative and the voice out, and Dilcie Perez who at the time was the Dean of Students was really helpful, too. And there was a lot of faculty who were, Sharon Elise 00:33:00.000 --> 00:34:00.000 was great. Freddy Avalos, another professor that was great during it. Karen Guzman (now Kai Guzman). The Latino students who, MEChA is the organization that had passed the Latino center resolution. And they came in support and stood alongside Black students as, as we were advancing the idea of a Black Student Center, they were there as well to help, advocate and support and say that this is just as important. JENKINS: I love that it was such a community effort. That's really amazing for the Center. What, were you at the BSC’s grand opening? BOYD: Yes, I Was there. So – JENKINS: Tell me about it. BOYD: So what? JENKINS: Tell me about it. BOYD: Oh yeah, sure. So 00:34:00.000 --> 00:35:00.000 during that issue, so I think that, you know, Mizzou and everything that their president had been fired from the campus, he had actually left their campus, and this was the same time, allowed the president (Karen Haynes) to be like more listening to students. You don't want to be the president who's not listening to students when you're seeing the consequences of that in firing on other campuses, right? And then in February during the same time that, you know, we're pushing in advancing and it's Black History Month, our diversity officer was also let go. Nobody knew why our diversity officer was let go in February but they were also let go. And so that helped kind of propel as well, this angst around diversity. Other students were kind of upset that our diversity officer’s gone one day and he was a really good champion for these issues, right. We're talking about, 00:35:00.000 --> 00:36:00.000 you know institutionalizing some of it. And of course he's only one man. So yes, having a center with somebody else for programming or anything as well, it was important. And so I also just wanted to give that context, just to say that was also like part of the storm that helped create the Center, the birth of the Center. And so the diversity office was also like an unsung hero within that, that also kept students sane and helpful. But so that was that year and we graduated many other students who were a part of it ; Jamaéla Johnson, myself had both graduated and moved on in our lives. But excitingly enough, there was space in the (University Student) Union that they were able to retrofit. When we left, we talked about what resources we thought would be important for the (Black) Student Center, and where we identified some places. But it wasn't anything set in stone in that the president (Karen Haynes) got to identify and 00:36:00.000 --> 00:37:00.000 have the last word on that. And so, fast forward a year and the food pantry (Cougar Pantry) that I had already, that had passed uncontroversially. Which was good, but was controversial before, and this had passed. And so when we got invited back to campus to say that it's actually opening, that there's been identified place in the (University Student) Union, it was, it was much exciting. I was in, I want to say that I had already relocated to Sacramento by this time, which is Northern California. And so I flew back down, and they were just nice enough to give, I guess, space for myself, Akilah Green, who was the diversity and inclusion, I want to say, student representative on the student government. And she had been doing a lot of BSU (Black Student Union) work as well. And Jamaéla Johnson, 00:37:00.000 --> 00:38:00.000 all three of us were able to come back to campus to see the grand opening, to speak a little bit about our experience and our joy that, you know, to see it to come to life. And it was great because, again, the (University Student) Union was fairly new as we were exiting campus and so to see just how much campus life had grown and how much the Union had became a hub for students to converse. And to know that the Black Student Center was a part of that life, that it wasn't in a corner back by Markstein (Hall), which is where our meetings used to be, but that it was at the corner hub with all of the other centers there, was great to see that there was an identified place, that there was Black faces, like in the same room, and that there was artwork that was reflective and that there was a whole programming and director 00:38:00.000 --> 00:39:00.000 at the time. And to see it kind of come 360 was great because you always want to hopefully leave something better than what you found it, leave some type of legacy. And I really did feel that if we weren't in the position, if it was some other folks in student government, then I think that they might not have passed the resolution, or it would have been something that was dragged on and maybe unfinished. And I think that the effectiveness of coalition building, of advocacy, of people having different levels of involvement, from either protesting down or from having allies at the Dean of Students, really made it really effective, as well as a national climate that's saying: hey, like, we have to keep paying attention to this, that we can't just let it be some one-off thing, but that, this is something that has been historical since when students weren't even Black students, weren't allowed to be on campuses. Since we built our own Black campuses, right? To see this happen and 00:39:00.000 --> 00:40:00.000 acknowledged was a really great moment for I think everybody— JENKINS: You've mentioned a lot about like, the work you guys put in to see the Center come to life. Can you tell me more about the early focus of BSCs initiatives, programming events and like the focus of the Center itself? BOYD: Sure. So for us, we thought it was important that there was programming specifically for like uplifting and focusing on Black students and dialogue, Black women. We had like a Gender Equity Center, but a lot of times women of color can fall through the cracks of women’s initiatives. And so it was really important that there was programming, that there was printing so that students are able to print for free at the campus center, that there would be like a refrigerator 00:40:00.000 --> 00:41:00.000 for students to have their have meals refrigerated there, and be a place where people can frequently just come and like, hang out so that if you're in between classes that you can learn or meet other students of Black descent, hopefully, and of course anybody is welcome to come in and learn something. But I think that that was most important that the significance of having both resources there, but also just having a communal space in which folks know that it is a safe place to be where hopefully the microaggressions or the frustrations of campus that you might go through could be a place where, like a safe haven for you to kind of come touch base and then be able to flourish within the campus later. And I think that that was like a part of the focus ; have some concrete resources, have one person that's dedicated to programming there, and 00:41:00.000 --> 00:42:00.000 having culturally competent program and then have just like the physical space of saying like, this is a Black Student Center for you built by you, hopefully hiring students, as well, to shape it, form it, was what we had expected and hoped. JENKINS: In your opinion, have they succeeded and, what has been your favorite event that they've had or program? BOYD: Yeah. You know, it's unfortunate cause I don't really get to reap the benefits or the fruits of the labor. And I know from a distance about what's happening maybe on campus or what's happening with the Black Student Center. But I haven't been super involved since I kind of just like planted the seed. 00:42:00.000 --> 00:43:00.000 And so I don't know what events that they have done that were really successful or really impactful in the years that I left. JENKINS: I'm sorry to hear that. (laughs) This question, I guess you would be able to answer: what has been the impact of the BSU (BSC, Black Student Center) or, you know, petitioning for the BSU on your, on you personally? BOYD: Can you repeat the question? JENKINS: What has been the impact of the BSU (BSC) since you haven't been able to like experience it? What has been the impact of being like a leader, a leading advocate for the BSU (BSC) on you personally? BOYD: Yeah, I mean, I think it's formative of my whole trajectory of what I do now, to be honest. I currently, well, I guess what I was just doing, but it kind of falls into, I just got a new job. But I'm doing policy and government affairs 00:43:00.000 --> 00:44:00.000 right now, but I've been doing, I was a legislative aide for four years. And it was during San Marcos at a luncheon, a diversity and inclusion luncheon that Assembly Member Shirley Weber, who represents the 79th district in San Diego, came to our campus to speak around diversity, around change, around all things diversity. And so she spoke there and she talked about her legislation that she was working on. And I said: I want to work for her one day, right? And it's because she advances. She's a Africana Studies Professor, we didn't have Ethnic Studies on our campus at the time. We only had, they were starting a minor, an Ethnic Studies minor. And it was a dabble of if you took, you know, this sociology class or if you took this communications class and you could like kind of work it into being an Ethnic Studies minor. 00:44:00.000 --> 00:45:00.000 And just working towards issues that matter on our campus and saying, you know what? We don't have this, we should have this, we need this. It's something that could have improved the way that I had experienced the campus. It was great because I now apply that to the policies in which I advanced, and the legislature. And I ended up working for Assembly Member Weber, during my time. And so we were able to via my inexperience, it's almost like what I don't have or what I don't see is what I want to advocate for the most ; and so this past year in 2020, we established a graduation requirement, and a requirement for all CSU (California State University) campuses to have ethnic studies on their campus and to have a graduation requirement for all CSU students to at least take one 00:45:00.000 --> 00:46:00.000 ethnic studies course before they graduate. Within the four historically, recognized ethnic studies demographics, which is Native American, Chicano, Latino, Asian, API, and then an Africana or African studies. And so that's a, it's a huge, it was three years. It wasn't just like one and done, but it was impactful for my story, right. So because I advocated for the Black Student Center and all of these things and was a part of seeing how coalition building advocacy, how having folks in power works is it's, I apply that every day to like legislation as I'm trying to either advocate for ethnic studies or advocate for exonerated folks to have access to housing or, pregnant and, pregnant and parenting pupils in K through 12 and their access to education and not being pushed out. I'm asking folks: hey, like, please, it's unfortunate, but 00:46:00.000 --> 00:47:00.000 please tell your story to help paint a picture for folks so that they can understand what it is on the ground level. And then we're talking with legislators who have the ability and finance and budget to also say like, you know what we need to invest in this, this costs this much, but this is why this is so important. And so I think that has been super impactful to how I look at policy change, how I look at change in general, and the experiences that I'm having. It's like, it's not so again, so happenstance, right? It's like people aren't in the room where people, we haven't had the right people or the right time and the national climate to take action. We, in Sacramento, a student – person – had, Stefan Clark was shot, right. In Sacramento that same year that I'm out here my first year. And he, his cell phone is mistaken as a gun. 00:47:00.000 --> 00:48:00.000 That year is when we like, ran a use of force bill, right. To say that officers should shoot when it's necessary, not when they're just scared. And it's the same kind of process of getting folks on the ground, getting folks here and there, and putting in positions and then raising it, on a national level, to have that dialogue and the outrage and stuff. And then we can start ushering in more change. And it's unfortunate that that's kind of, it takes so much from so many different angles, but that's almost how it always is in order to best change. And it's just like, are you willing to continue to raise the issue again and again? JENKINS: Your work is very inspiring. It's so amazing that you also got to work with somebody you like, nope, I'm going to work with her. Like, that's really amazing. BOYD: Absolutely. JENKINS: 00:48:00.000 --> 00:00:00.000 So that's actually all I have for you because the rest of the questions are mainly like if you were at the BSC, experiencing it, that kind of thing. But my last question is, are there any questions that I should have asked that I have not? BOYD d: You know, I don't think so. I can't think of any question that you didn't or that I didn't touch upon it. I would just, yeah, I don't think so. JENKINS: Okay. So, thank you so much for participating and the Black Student Center Oral History Project. I, we all appreciate it so much and we, thanks. Thanks for being here. I'm gonna’ stop recording now. BOYD: Okay. NOTE TRANSCRIPTION END ]]> https://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en video Property rights reside with the university. Copyrights are retained by the creators of the records and their heirs.
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Boyd, Tiffaney. Interview April 15th, 2021.
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Tiffaney Boyd is a CSUSM alumna and former president of Associated Students, Incorporated (ASI). She was a driving force in the creation of the Black Student Center (BSC), Cougar Pantry, and Sigma Gamma Rho. In this interview, Boyd Tiffaney details the process in which she and her fellow ASI cohorts proposed the idea of the BSC. She also discusses the politics that were involved in the process and the major contributors helping to bring the BSC to life.
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SC027-11
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2021-04-15
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Tiffaney Boyd
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Sierra Jenkins
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California State University San Marcos. Black Student Center
California State University San Marcos. Associated Students Incorporated
California State University San Marcos -- Students
Activism, Student
Black experience in America
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San Marcos (Calif.)
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Tiffaney Boyd
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Black Student Center Oral History Project
Black experience
Black Student Center Oral History Project
CSUSM history
Women's experience
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Judith Downie
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Tomme Arthur
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5.4 Arthur, Tomme. Interview August 8, 2019 SC027-044 01:09:58 SC027 California State University San Marcos University Library Special Collections oral history collection CSUSM csusm Brewers -- California -- San Diego County. Brewing industry -- California -- History. Lost Abbey Brewing (San Marcos, Calif.) Microbreweries -- California -- San Diego County. Tomme Arthur Judith Downie ArthurTomme_DownieJudith_2019-08-08.m4a 1:|17(6)|44(4)|71(12)|94(8)|117(10)|139(3)|172(14)|214(13)|227(11)|264(9)|284(2)|311(5)|345(12)|373(2)|393(14)|427(5)|450(16)|474(12)|493(6)|523(7)|562(8)|583(6)|616(10)|634(16)|649(12)|670(14)|698(10)|717(5)|743(3)|760(6)|779(6)|802(9)|824(12)|843(10)|860(6)|877(13)|894(13)|911(17)|930(11)|953(3)|976(2)|991(14)|1021(12)|1039(7)|1062(14)|1098(8)|1146(15)|1159(9)|1189(15)|1231(3)|1246(10)|1270(9)|1300(3)|1321(3)|1342(16)|1363(2)|1384(4)|1401(4)|1421(14)|1439(11)|1459(4)|1475(10)|1499(6)|1521(2)|1535(4)|1559(5)|1590(9)|1610(2)|1627(6)|1643(11) Undefined 0 https://archivesoralhistories.csusm.edu/files/original/77ba455fa57d5b0079ba70f5e57ea2db.m4a Other audio English oral history Tomme Arthur has been involved in several San Diego breweries, most notably as founder and managing owner of Lost Abbey Brewing located in San Marcos, CA. His first professional brewing position was at the short-lived Cervecería La Cruda in San Diego, California. Arthur moved to Pizza Port Brewing in Solana Beach, California as an assistant brewer. After becoming Director of Brewing Operations for the increasing number of locations, he led the chain in garnering numerous beer awards. Arthur opened Lost Abbey Brewing in 2006 to focus on his interest in Belgian-style beers. In late 2023, Arthur separated Lost Abbey from Port Brewing operations in a ‘right-sizing’ plan in response to beer industry trends. Port Brewing retained the Hop Concept, Tiny Bubbles, and Kharisma brands in their portfolio and took over the San Marcos production space and closed the tasting room. Lost Abbey entered an alternating proprietorship agreement with Mother Earth Brewing to share their production space in nearby Vista, CA. 
 ; 
 ; In his 2019 interview, Arthur discusses his introduction to craft beer and home brewing ; entry into the profession and work at various breweries beginning in the 1990s ; founding Lost Abbey Brewing and other brewery ventures ; mentoring individuals in the industry ; and awards. 
 ; Judith Downie: So today is August 8th, 2019 and this is Judith Downie, the Curator of the CSUSM Brewchive® with Tomme Arthur, founder and co-owner of Lost Abbey, the Hop Concept, Port Brewing, and myriad other projects that we're going to be asking about. So tell me, the purpose of this is to kind of record in one place things I've seen in a lot of places. You know, you've been very generous with your time with people mentoring and interviewing. And so this is for the Brewchive®, basically an overall history of your life experiences as a brewer, thoughts, things like that. So, we do have a list of questions here, which again I'll read them off, I may reword them a little bit and you are open to responding to them however you need. And I hope we have plenty of time that you've talked about things that maybe nobody's ever asked you. Tomme Arthur: That would be fun. JD: Yeah. So record these things for posterity. So, let's start with your background. To be clear, from what I've seen, you started home brewing in Arizona while you were in college and how did that start? TA: So I am a native San Diegan. My family's three to four generations on both sides. Went to Saint Augustine High School. When I was in high school, I decided that I really liked the English language and I wanted to study English and felt that teaching was a path that I would probably take. JD: Okay. TA: And so I fell in love with Flagstaff as a campus and community. And the school at Northern Arizona University had a really good education teaching program. So that's how I ended up in Flagstaff. When I got to school, I met a family, last name is Gardner and, and their son, Tom. And I became very close and the Gardner family really was into beer and they were sort of my mentors to beer. And they said, you know, we're going to teach you about better beer. And of course, I was only 18 at the time, but you know, I wasn't gonna say no. And they kind of pushed me in this direction of here's what better beer looks like, tastes like. American beer, imported beer, Canadian, very English, you know, all the, all the different countries where a great beer would have come from. A lot of it at that time was imported of course. JD: Right. Because really, you know, we're talking what the... TA: 1991 and 95 was when I was in school. JD: Okay. So there really wasn't much of a craft beer scene in Arizona I don't think. TA: There were very few craft breweries in Arizona. In fact, there were no craft breweries in Flagstaff at the time. We ended up having three open up in my last year of school. But there were no craft breweries in Flagstaff and at that time. There was likely to be 10 or 15 probably in the entire state. But we've got a lot of regional beers. There was a lot of beer from Oregon, Washington, Northern California, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado beer. So there was some American craft. But mostly from very older players, you know, Sierra Nevada Anchor, Deschutes (Brewery), big, bigger breweries. JD: And being that the craft beer scene in San Diego was still pretty young in that time period. Do you remember seeing anything from San Diego? TA: No. In fact we, we actually talk about this a lot, that prior to Stone Brewing coming into San Diego, nobody actually sent beer outside of San Diego. Karl Strauss (Brewing) had beer in San Diego at the time and packaged in bottles. But they, I don't believe much of their beer, if any, was leaving the San Diego area. So my understanding is that it really wasn't until Stone opened their doors and shipped beer to Arizona, likely maybe Nevada, you need to ask them, where they crossed the state line and perhaps were one of the original new craft breweries to actually make beer to leave San Diego. JD: Which is really interesting because I have in my pre-Prohibition research on San Diego craft brewing found Mission Brewing. They were brewing beer to supplement San Diego Consolidated Brewing, which is San Diego Brewing Company (today). They were San Diego Consolidated Brewing for a while and Arizona passed Prohibition in 1914, five years before National Prohibition and halted any shipment of even Hopski, which was a near beer Mission was brewing, into the state. They weren't even allowing that. And there was a big lawsuit and Mission Brewing lost and that was the contributing factor to the closure of Mission through that. TA: They actually lost out on a nonalcoholic or near beer. JD: Yeah. Hopski, and they didn't continue to brew that because J. H. Zitt, who was the president, the current owner of San Diego Consolidated Brewing had said ‘I will never brew anything but real beer.’ So he's the one who decided to close Mission. Because he actually owned it at the time because his father-in- law and brother-in-law, who had founded Mission, had walked away. TA: Yeah, the old San Diego stuff is really interesting. JD: Yeah, and it's a, it's an interesting kind of parallel between you being in Arizona and starting your interest in beer there and then coming back to San Diego. But I've also seen that you've noted that your favorite beers are Belgian style. What? TA: I just find them to be very unique and I think that there's, there's a pretty, I guess when I first got started in brewing in my sort of craft foundation, they were the most unique things out there. And that, that today is not necessarily the case. There's so many new producers and people that have really taken the boundaries and, and stretched them and moved them in directions. I think ostensibly under a Belgian influence or sort of what amounts to be a Belgian artistry, but there's a lot more to it these days. And I just think that if you, if you become imaginative about beer, you have to look at what the Belgians did or were doing at that time. Technique wise, yeast wise flavors, just process things. Very unconventional via what, what would amount to be a very conventional sort of brewing, you know, take four malts or take four ingredients. You can, you used a lot of water and hops and that's beer. And then you look at what they do. And it's completely different. JD: So you think the Belgians weren't constrained by the purity law that the Germans had and that's part of what led to their inventiveness? TA: Yeah, I just feel like they as a group embraced different methodologies and, and that sometimes weren't easy. And those methods at least preserved flavors that couldn't be found in beer, again, conventional beer. JD: Okay. Very interesting. So, onto your actual brewing experiences. You started home brewing? I read it was a homebrew kit... TA: So the Gardner’s bought me a home brew kit early for my graduation. So, I was gifted it in January of 1995 and that's when we started homebrewing. JD: Okay. And you didn't like the first beer you brewed? TA: The first beer we brewed, it was a black style, you know, sort of a dry Irish Guinness-style stout, but it came out very thin and didn't taste like Guinness or anything. So it wasn't, it was not a good beer. But you know, I think the expectations were high and probably should have set the bar a little lower. JD: Was this extract or all grain? TA: It was extract for sure. JD: Yeah. Because of course supplies even in the 90s, were still kind of hard to come by. TA: Yeah, we were pretty lucky there was a homebrewer outpost in Flagstaff, so there was a store that sold ingredients that we could've, we could've started in an all-grain basis. But I was living in a house with four people and it just wasn't really, I didn't have the resources to go build a full all grain brewing system, with the plastic fermenters and you know, boiling on the stove top kind of stuff was definitely where it was at. JD: Yeah, you got to start somewhere. So, then you came back to San Diego. Was that, what was the reason for coming leaving Arizona? TA: So I graduated in June or May of 1995. JD: So was this your bachelor's or your teaching credential? TA: This was my bachelors of arts in just English. And at that point I didn't really want to stay in Flagstaff and I wasn't gonna attend grad school there. So, I moved back home and so I left. And when I got home I kind of kicked around a little bit trying to figure out what I was going to do and really didn't have a plan necessarily I was able to go back and live with my parents. And you know, the only requirement was that I find a job. So, I found a job and that's kinda how I got in the downtown life. My dad had a printing business when I was growing up, so I was very, very well trained and I worked in the campus print shop when I was in school. So, I applied for a printing job in a downtown San Diego business and I was commuting, taking the trolley from La Mesa down into downtown San Diego every day. And I happened to be reading want ads, just, it was all that was left in the newspaper at that point. And stumbled upon a brew pub opening that had an ad in the paper for cooks, dishers, all that stuff in it said assistant brewer and I circled it. And I walked over the next day at lunch and applied for a job. And that was actually Cervecería La Cruda. JD: Right, with Troy Hojel? So, you actually opened Cervecería La Cruda in September of ‘96? TA: No, they, they would have opened, I think it would've been March of 96 ‘cause we ended up, we attended the great American beer festival in September, October of 96 and then it closed. It was less than a full year. I think I was hired in April, May-ish. and then I wasn't there even for a full year. JD: Yeah. I have, I have March ‘97 is when it closed. TA: So I think it probably was mid April-ish I would've been hired in. We didn't even make it a full year. JD: Yeah. This is the kind of thing I like because I have a very large Excel spreadsheet of every brewery from 1868 which was Chollas Valley Brewery through today. Whether they opened or closed, it never made it, pulled the license, whatever... TA: So, how many different breweries have attempted to open? Are we in the three hundreds or? JD: Well, my Excel spreadsheet also includes all the individual tasting rooms because generally they pull a separate ABC license. I'm up over 550 getting close to 600 I think, but I could certainly get back to you with how many tried and never even actually opened. I think there's a real object lesson there. TA: I think the most interesting thing is that we operate that there's 160 or whatever right now that are active, but it's really interesting to know kind of how many have kind of opened and closed and opened and closed and where you know, you can say, okay, since prohibition we've had 208 that have tried or participated in this, in this scene. JD: Yeah, because I break the whole history into three parts. There was a pre-Prohibition 1868 to 1919, 1919/1920 then 1933 to 1953 because Aztec, which had sold to Altes Brewing, closed and they were the last brewery operating post-Prohibition and then we didn't pick up again until the (19)80s so I can extract that information and get it to you because those numbers are always very powerful. TA: Yeah. I just feel like it'd be interesting to say since Prohibition, there's been 208 licenses that were issued or over, you know-- JD: And then there were others that announced a name or announced that they were going to open and never even got around to pulling a license. You know, so I have, I have every single possible name of any business that ever said ‘we are going to be a brewery or a brew pub, or...’ TA: No one ever drops on in front of you and you say, haven't heard of it. JD: Well actually not too long ago, I ran across one called the Royal Duffer. And that evidently they were contract brewing. They were in Carlsbad and they were like four golf buddies. And so they had beer for, again, I think it was less than a year. And I haven't been able to find out too much information from them, but I'm very alert to, ‘Oh, I don't think I've ever heard of that name before’ so this is the first one I've not heard of in a long time. So I think I'm pretty comprehensive. But yeah. Yeah, it's been interesting and a lot of work. But going back to Troy, is Troy still around? TA: He is in somewhere in Colorado outside of Denver. In fact, I just talked to him the other day. He texted me, I think his cousin opened a brewery in Texas and he had a question or two. TA: So yeah. He's in Colorado and doing the software. JD: Okay. So he's no longer in the brewing business. TA: No, actually he left the brewery business and ended up doing software in Northern California for a bit, I think, and then moved off to Colorado. JD: Well, it's gotta be sad to watch your dream die especially so quickly. TA: You know, it was a pretty aggressive life lesson, you know? It taught me a lot in the short time that we were into it. I still think that Troy is one of the best brewers I've ever met. And it would've been a really cool thing to see it succeed at, but certainly would've put me on a different life path, I think if it had. So I don't, I don't try not to, you know, revisionist history, that part of it. But the beers that he made and he was a very technical brewer, I think, I think it would've been, it would've added to the scene even more. JD: Yeah. What actually happened? Was it just lack of sales? TA: I think more than anything it was a bad, is a bad business model. I don't know if you know the story of Baja Brewing Company. JD: I'm familiar with the name, but not really the story. TA: So Baja Brewing Company opened up and they claimed to be the very first Mexican-themed brewpub in the United States. Now it was their claim to fame. But what happened is that the partners at Baja Brewing and the partners at La Cruda actually had a schism and they split. They were going to open the Baja Brewing Company together or something along those lines and they had a falling out and the partnership dissolved. And so these guys opened Baja Brewing Company and less than three or four months later Cervecería La Cruda opened up three blocks away. So the very first Mexican theme brewpub in this country opened up and three blocks later and three months and three blocks over the second one opened. So, very underfunded from the get-go. Very, it was a 13,000 square foot building at Forth and Island, you know, big, big building. Too much of it to just for the time I, I'd be nervous opening a 13,000 square foot building brewpub today. And you know, back when the Gaslamp was kind of still new and trendy and hot, I don't know what the rent was, but just overall a bad, a bad vision I think for what was going on. JD: Ahead of its time. Really. TA: Yeah. And the thing that's kind of crazy is that Cervecería La Cruda to them is a hangover brewery. So when you say ‘tengo la cruda’, that means I have the crud, I'm not feeling well. That's not a real great way to tell people you want to come here and drink. They opened up with a menu that they had sourced from the family that owned El Callejon in Encinitas. So, they had this really great, I would say deep, deep Mexican Sonoran source, you know, moles (sauces) and things. But that wasn't on anyone's radar with respect to craft brew at the time. So, good people, great, great opportunity. But not even something, that I think today, even if you attempted to tackle it, would probably work really well. JD: So as you say, a real experience. TA: Yeah, a lot I learned from, you look around and you see simplicity sometimes wins. JD: Or slow growth. Planned slower. TA: Or have more money than you think. Yeah. JD: Somebody said to me one time something like, you need five times more than you think you do. And I would, I think that's true with any business really. But the expense of equipment and materials and everything and you just can't do it all yourself. TA: No. You gotta be able to weather a lot of storms. JD: And you know, with this, I know in September of 2016 I went to the craft beer conference up in Sacramento and I saw you speak there and you at that time, this is three years ago now, said that San Diego was already over-saturated, and you would not open up a brewery at this point in San Diego. And how many breweries have we had open up? TA: Continues to be a head-scratching thing. Yeah. Well, we joke, I mean, we're here in San Marcos now. I've got three breweries within a one-mile stretch. Right. So yeah, that's just the way it is. Yeah. JD: But you're each different. Accommodating everybody at some point. But so when La Cruda closed, you moved to White Labs for just a couple of months in yeast sales. Was that based because you knew about yeast? TA: So White Labs had just kinda gotten their feet wet. So I remember the very first day when I was at La Cruda, one of the very first days I was at La Cruda. Chris White (founder of White Labs) walked in on a sales call. And so we were chatting and talking and at some point, and this is a part of my history that I don't remember all of that clearly, but I ended up moving in with them. I mean I was a roommate and I think there was a crossover point where I was working at La Cruda, but I already moved into their house. Cause he and Lisa had an empty room. I needed a place to stay. And then when La Cruda was on its way to be closing it became kind of obvious that I could help them in their infancy of their company with some just R and D and just different trialing and things like that. TA: You know, I had met a lot of brewers in Arizona at that time. So Chris said, well, why don't you come help me just kind of knock down some doors and you know, we just need somebody that can walk in and kind of talk about this in a very brewer friendly kind of way. So my goal was I was kind of like an ambassador really. You know, I didn't really do a lot of pure sales but my job was to talk about it and explain how my experience with different yeasts and temperatures and things like that. So it was kind of just yeah, I think it was more of a product, product knowledge and ambassador at that point. JD: Was there any conversation at that time about opening up a tasting room for yeast labs? TA: No. No. I mean, maybe Chris had it, but it you know, that was a pretty, it was a long time ago and there wasn't really a sense of yeast as a business outside of the yeast business. I don't think there was sort of that auxiliary layer to it. I'm sure Chris would have liked to have had a bunch of beers on tap, but I, I would imagine if he had had that thought back then that they would have probably just wanted 10 beers on tap for their customers to come sample them, but not necessarily not, not really treat it as an educational function for the consumer as much as an educational experience for a brewer who maybe hadn't worked a certain use and things like that. I mean there's just an enormous amount of yeasts that have been banked since we started. Since I got my first job in 1996 there's been an enormous amount of new yeast that had been added. So, they need an avenue to show people what those yeasts do. JD: And back then too, you probably had a lot of brewers, even professional brewers, would be how I see it. That didn't really understand a lot about the hops that were available. The yeast that was available, you know, cause a lot of them had, were coming out of the homebrew experience and you know, all of a sudden here's more stuff you need to know. TA: If you go back and look at it ‘95, ‘96 to, so that time, I mean we're talking about a dial up modem, you know, we're talking about low internet speed, we're talking about not... JD: A lot of people, not even having computers or knowing how to use it. TA: Not even a lot of Information online. Frankly. I mean you couldn't, you could not do all the kind of information that's out there today. And, and past that, a lot of the information that did exist in book format was highly technical through the ASBC (American Society of Brewing Chemists) and the big brewers. And then what was available that had been written about the sort of homebrew level and medium brewery. There wasn't a lot of medium brewery stuff in there, so you were getting a lot of books on how to brew ales, but they had this really big English, you know, sort of basis to them. Cask condition, real ale ingredients weren't American in their basis. So there was no ability to look up and say, Oh, how do I use this German hefeweizen yeast? You know, how do I, how much do I pitch it, what temperature, how does it behave? And none of that information existed. JD: So a lot of technical stuff. TA: Yeah. even just simplistic technical. What's the right temperature? JD: And around here San Diego was still something of a Coors town that's San Diego was test market for a couple of different, for Coors Light and for Herman Joseph's 1868 and you know, so really do you have much of a market for... TA: In fact, we joked about it here. This was the best, I think this was the best-selling Coors light town when I took in, when I got into brewing, this was the number one Coors Light in the country. JD: Yes, it was. TA: Well that explains to you, you know, where we're, where we were and where we came from. And on top of that you had all the import beers too, right? You still had Coronas and Pacifico and the Modelos in the world doing very well here at that time too. So yeah, it was a, it was a long ways to the top. JD: So you weren't at White Labs for very long before you were hired by Pizza Port. Pizza Port just had the one location then, right? TA: They had the one location in Solana Beach. Vincent (Marsaglia), Gina (Marsaglia) had been partners in the Carlsbad Public House with a guy named Brett. I think his last name was Stamp. JD: Tetley Ridden, I, it's a hyphenated name. (correct name is Redmayne-Titley) TA: Yeah. And then he became a, they, they had a falling out with Carlsbad Public House and they were in, they were in the process of converting the Public House, which is the Pizza Port in Carlsbad in the village into the Pizza Port at that time. So I was, I was brought into assist on Solana Beach because the head brewer was going to go have shoulder surgery and then they were supposed to move me up to Carlsbad to take over the production of the brewing and Carlsbad once, once he came back. So there was almost a second Pizza Port in line at that time. So they were, they were in the home stretch of the construction to convert it from the Public House to Pizza Port, which opened in July of 1997 so they were real close. And I always like to tell the story ‘cause I think it's very fascinating to me. I'd never stepped foot in Pizza Port before I got interviewed for the job. So I had no real perceived concept or notion of what exactly they did or what they didn't do. JD: Okay. And so you were an assistant brewer then? You weren't head brewer? TA: Yeah. Eddie Class, I think his last name was Classic. He was the head brewer at that time. And Vince was going to be the head brewer in Carlsbad when they opened. So yeah, Eddie was in charge of the brewery in Solana Beach and he was gonna go, I think I was going to have rotator cuff surgery and take about three months off. And then when he came back I was supposed to go take the job in Carlsbad. JD: Okay. but you, you obviously that didn't quite work out that way, but you were promoted to Director of Brewery Operations in June of 2005. TA: Yeah, that was a short stint ‘cause we were getting ready to open this place too. So yeah. JD: So you already knew you were going to be moving on? TA: We were having conversations at that point about how to get to here. We, I think in June it kind of was a collective. They terminated Kirk McHale, who was the brewer in Carlsbad in June of 2005 and then there was the San Clemente location, Carlsbad location, and Solana Beach. And I was asked to kind of tackle all three of them at the same time, make sure that they were more or less on the same page, collectively, kind of get them aligned. And then we also knew that we were having conversations about a new partnership and trying to build up the partnerships so that we could get this, this facility put into our orbit. JD: Okay. So that leads me into the founding Port Brewing in partnership with Vince and Gina. And you know, you have Port Brewing, you have Lost Abbey, you have the Hop Concept and I've also seen that you're involved in an Arizona brewery called Moto Sonora. So can you explain the structure of everything? TA: Yeah. When we started talking to Stone Brewing about buying this facility from them you know, my love of Belgian beers was pretty strong and I knew that we wanted to make some things out here that were very barrel aged, Belgian influenced and all that. And we had this, Vince had the idea for the brand called the Lost Abbey. So we were very, very keen on the fact that we knew that was going to happen. There were a lot of beers at Pizza Port that were being produced that needed to kind of stretch and grow and needed to get from get out from under just being a pub-based beer. And that allowed, you know, people who had been asking for more, you know, basically Pizza Port beer. And that's where the Port Brewing came from. So the Port Brewing beers, many of them when we opened our doors here came from Solana Beach recipes that I had produced, Hop 15, Santa’s Little Helper, Shark Attack. We brought the Wipe Out recipe over from Carlsbad and those beers had a lot of legacy towards the pubs and, and kind of, you know, grew them out of that realm. But we knew that there'd be the Port brand’s very West coast centric, you know, kind of that Ballast Point, Coronado, Green Flash, Stone kind of mentality. You know, higher hopping rates, you know, sometimes imperial, things like that. We always knew that that wasn't really that wasn't going to be our principal focus in the sense that we were going to have the two brands, but we also knew that having the two brands side by side allowed us to walk in and have a wide range of beers without having everything be a Lost Abbey beer or Port Brewing beer. JD: Okay. And then the Hop Concept is a fairly recent addition to the portfolio. TA: So a few years ago I walked into a bar and all the beer names on the wall really just confused me. There were so many new beers and I had no idea what they tasted like. And I didn't want to be a bother to the bartenders and try to, you know, ask them this or that. And I'm not an Untappd person. I don't really use digital media to tell me what I should be drinking. So, it kinda came back to we wanted to create a line of beers that were very fresh and simplistic in their makeup. So, the Hop Concept beers, we had a line called the Hop Freshener series and they were basically we had ‘Dank and Sticky’ and ‘Citrus and Piney and ‘Lemon and Grassy’ and ‘Tropical and Juicy’. And it was essentially taste and smell. And we, all we were trying to do was tell the consumer and the bartender, this is what you should expect the beer to taste like, or smell like. And it was a quick, straightforward deliverable and it was meant to be a, I use the word simple, but simple deliverable like you knew what you were getting. We were setting you up to understand how that beer should taste and behave. JD: Yeah, it does seem like naming beers because they do have to be registered names or whatever, becomes a bigger and bigger challenge. And in just looking at a name on the board, you frequently have no idea of what that beer really is. So, something like this where you're going back to the basics, this is what you're going to get. I think must be very attractive. TA: I thought so. I thought the cleanliness of it for us, which was just straightforward and nomenclature and deliverable, like this is this is what you can expect and... JD: Your label designs are very clean and very clear. Where Lost Abbey looks much more European, Medieval in a lot of ways. TA: And we went out and we went out and hired a firm for the first time to really, we told them this is what our vision is and this is why we're doing it this way, but we want you to make sure we produce this with a very crisp look to it. And they, they certainly executed that and I, and I think that's always been a strength of that brand. JD: Yeah. Let me ask you a little bit about the latest venture, Moto Sonora. I read that this was evidently your college roommate you are in partnerships with and his younger brother. And, of course, this is taking you back to Arizona. TA: It is. Tucson, not Flagstaff. I wish it was in Flagstaff, but I'm going to come to like Tucson cause it's closer. But yeah, my, it's kind of ironic because this was a random sort of thing back when, when I was in college with Jeff. Jeff really wasn't a big beer drinker but it turns out but his brother Jeremy really fell in love with craft beer and the two of them kind of decided that they have a high value for the city of Tucson. They loved that area. They've got deep roots in the community there. Their family, the DeConcini family's been a, been a big part of the Arizona scene and they just wanted to do this project. And I started talking to them as a consultant and just kind of saying, let me, let me hear what you're thinking. And then they said, well, maybe you could spend some more time on it. And I said, yeah, I've got the time to do that. TA: Let's, let's do this. So, I am coming in as one of the co-founders on that project. Port Brewing is not involved in the sense that we're not invested in it. JD: That was a question I had. TA: We're not, Port Brewing is not an investor in the company. Although I have permission with my partners to supply as many ingredients and things, you know, that we can, we can work to make sure that the beers there are at the highest, you know, sort of capacity. And if it means we're buying the hops and selling them hops and things like that, that's gonna happen. You know, I see it as potentially a training ground where if one of our brewers wants the position when we get going or they, you know, we want to move people out that way. But this is not anything more than a co-founding situation where I have the freedom to go tight, you know, take on other projects. I, I kind of liken it to chefs having multiple locations or bar owners having, you know, other projects and things. But I'm not moving to Tucson and I'm not going to be the head brewer there. I'm going to, you know, I'm going to establish what we're doing and push the company in the right direction and make sure that we become a really valuable part of that community. We've been definitely looking forward to the, just being involved in it and you know, a different beer scene at the same time. JD: Well, this kind of jumps over some of the questions I have because it leads into the amount of mentoring and work with newer brewers and the collaborations you do with the more established brewers. You are renowned in the industry for how people can come to you and pick your brain and you support and mentor in so many different ways. I see you as a one-person campaign to ensure craft beer success. And, and this is in comparison with efforts like Stone's True Craft where there were more financial assistance. Have you always been a remarkable mentor? It sounds kind of like, you know, you're, you're thinking to become a teacher. TA: Yeah. I think that's a big part of it, right? It's a, it's a sense of, you know, that shared piece. You know, I remember very, very early in my, in my Solana Beach days, I wanted to make a Saison-style beer and I needed to find somebody who could give me the answer for how much ginger I was supposed to put in the beer. Cause I wanted to make the beer with some ginger. And there weren't many places where I could turn to. And I picked up the phone one day and I called the owner of Left-Hand Brewing Company, his name was Dick Doore. And I said, Dick, you guys have this amazing Juju, ginger pale ale. I love it. Would you be willing to share that information with me? And he did. And he, you know, and we'd barely met. And it was one of those things that, okay, yeah, that's how the industry works. Right. And you know, this is something that I think Troy had put in my head back in the day was like, there are the right people to be talking to and then there's the wrong people. And the wrong people are the ones that don't freely exchange the information, or they don't, they don't try to push it uphill. And for the longest time we had so much work to do in this town to push the level uphill that we collectively had to talk about it. I mean, everybody I think that you would interview would have the similar sense of if we didn't all work together then we wouldn't have gotten to where we were. JD: Isn't that the principle behind the San Diego Brewers Guild? TA: Of course, you know, the very first Guild meeting was out at La Cruda. So yeah. Yes, for sure that the Guild, you know, I think we were the very first city in the country to have its own brewers guild. And that, that's kind of a, you know, a feather in the cap for what I think, you know, the old, the old guard or the people that really did, you know, hunker down back in the day was that there was a true sense that there was going to be something really good about the scene here. But we had to work really hard at it. So, I've always liked that conversational aspect of it. I believe that I can, I can ask the right questions with friends and people and, and if I can turn around and get that information back out, it makes sense. So yeah, why not? I mean, there's, there's very little, I guess I don't feel very competitive or threatened by it by that, you know, that dialogue or that sharing of information. JD: I think that's, I mean, I, I'm on certain, like the San Diego Plexus Facebook group and stuff, and your name comes up and everybody says, Tomme Arthur, he's the person to talk to. He is the god locally, you know, I mean, your name is always used in very positive way, which I think really speaks to the efforts that you have put into the community and supporting, especially newer brewers, but also working with other established brewers and not treating it as competition but treating it as we can all be better. TA: And I think the one thing that's kind of maddening these days, and this is, this is my personal soap box, is that there's a lot of people that are collaborating on things. And I'm, I'm very concerned about this new sense of collaborating because I don't know that it's doing much other than it's bringing people together. And then you say, well what did we change and what did we do? And I'm like, okay. But I think the collaborative narrative of old was we collaborated on something because it was going to be something demonstratively different than we could have done singularly. And I'm not sure that much of that's going on today. So, when we collaborate with an old guard or with someone new, we're, we're really trying to have a sense of purpose. And I hope that people continue to realize that just collaborating with someone for the sake of sales isn't always, I guess from where I come, from isn't always the best course of action. JD: Again, going to your mentoring, have you had the opportunity to open doors for specific groups? And I'm thinking women or minorities or people with disabilities, people, you know, because the standard concept of a brewer is a male, white guy, you know, I mean that just still is. It's not that way anymore. But have you had opportunities to work with or speak to groups to encourage them? TA: I was thinking about this the other day because you know, I look at our staff, it is generally mostly male. We have had a few female employees on the beer side in the past and they've been phenomenal employees. And I was thinking the other day that we haven't done enough in our world to cultivate that specifically. And I know the Brewers Association is pretty keen on promoting diversity and things these days. And I'm wondering as an educational mentor, et cetera, where I should be looking to do some of those things or how I get involved in that. You know, where, where can I be impactful in that, in that space. And I don't know if it's through the university or through, you know, there's a big Latino population up here in San Marcos and Vista. But clearly, you know, being white and being white isn't always the best thing. With respect to trying to, you know, we've got to find new, new people to energize and really enthuse about what we do. And preaching to the 40-year-old male white choir isn't, isn't the best place to live in. JD: Well, I don't know if you're aware of Border X (Brewing), which is of course down in Barrio Logan has, is sponsoring a women's beer club called Mujeres Brew Club. I'm sorry, I, my Spanish isn't that swell. And they invited me to be their first speaker and they're doing a meeting each month on a different aspect and at the end they are going to brew a beer at Border X. And the women that are in there, many of them don't know even beer styles. I mean, one woman evidently asked the question, what's an IPA? And so, you know, and it's, it's a safe space for women and it does have a large number of Latina women, which I think is phenomenal because maybe some of these will become brewers and there are women are working in the beer industry in San Diego who are also members. Some of them are speakers and some are just attending the meetings because they're always eager to learn more. So maybe reaching out to, or you know, helping sponsor a group like that or Pink Boots Society (international organization for women and non-binary people in the fermentation industry. The first chapter was founded in San Diego.) of course, you know, is always looking for speakers and educational opportunities and things. But you know, there's a growing presence, but it is hard to, when women are so scattered or you know, like you say it's underrepresented with the minorities or you know, and there are certain positions that probably someone with a physical disability couldn't perform in a brewhouse, what could they do? Can they be the quality control people, things like that. So, it seems like there are places that we need to increase. TA: Yeah. It's interesting because I was thinking about this again the other day. I was like, we just don't have that many women apply for jobs. It's, it's you know, I, you know, I have a, a fairly good amount of men working, you know males, working on the floor. But I can't remember the last time I saw an application come in for a brewing position from a woman. So somehow the outreach needs to get further than, you know, I'm talking entry-level packaging jobs, things like that. There's, there's clearly, you know, there's, it's not a bias in our world. They're just not coming and knocking down our door. So somehow we have to convince them that this isn't, this is a pretty good place where they could, you know, they can, they can find careers and homes. JD: Well, if you do want to advertise positions, I have a couple of resources. I can push things out to Pink Boots San Diego for one. And then there's another Facebook page of women interested in beer. Some are working in the industry ; some are maybe looking to get into the industry. And of course, maybe pushing the word out to the EngiBeering® program at Cal State San Marcos. ‘Cause there are, there's at least a couple of women enrolled in that program. But yeah, it's hard because there aren't many women available to bring in. But then, you know, we do have a, you know, a fairly strong Hispanic population in this area. So, you know, why can't we leverage that? And it's finding those points of contact. That's a, that's a continual problem that I have seen. Also, to kind of jump back, I mentioned Stone's True Craft effort, which, you know, obviously died. It was a great idea to help small, small breweries with financing to where they didn't have to sell themselves to big beer. What did you think of that idea when you thought, heard of it? TA: You know, I had a lot of friends that took meetings with them. I mean, at least on the surface I was told, you know, Hey, we've, we've gone and talked to them about it. I think the biggest challenge was, is that that was at a time when there was a lot of unrealistic expectations about valuations and what, what things were worth or how, how long term, you know, how companies would be out, people would work long term together. You know, it's an interesting model because this business is such a, almost a loner thing. Like most people open their own little brewery and then at some point you need more investment in that comes with a lot more triggers and kinds of parameters and stuff in some small breweries never outgrow the small, you know, model. They, I'm the single proprietor, not me. They are a single proprietor, ownership kind of environment and you know, they borrow money from the bank and that's what they get and that's what they want to be. You know, there's a very passionate pursuit for them. And then there's the big business side of it, which says if you're going to scale and grow and you know, buying equipment is not cheap and putting concrete in the ground and copper piping and just every single thing you could think of. JD: And the length time it takes to just deal with all the permitting within the city, within the state, with the ABC (California’s Alcoholic Beverage Control agency in charge of licensing alcohol production, distribution and sales.) TA: And the regulatory. Yeah. All of those pieces. So I applaud Greg for, and Steve, for putting the platform together. You know, the, I think the biggest hurdle for a lot of people is just how, how do you entrepreneurially sign up for something like that? Right? It's, it's, you know, it's a different, it's a different (unclear) in you. You're talking about an environment where you went from being in charge of your own facility to now having new investment that comes with different, again, different triggers and things. I think it's interesting cause nobody signed up to do it and I don't know if that was that the metrics didn't align or how that was. But I know a lot of people took meetings and so I guess the question is, is what, what was, what was unrealistic on both sides for, for that, how come it, how come they didn't get anybody to, to partner with? JD: Yeah. I'm, I don't know who took meetings, but it would be interesting to talk to them to ask them why they didn't pursue that, and did they find an alternative that worked better for them. So that's on my list of things to do. Since we've mentioned big beer, have you ever been approached by big beer with an offer to purchase you or to work with them in some sort of way? TA: No. In the 13 years that we've been open no one has put an offer sheet on the table and said, we want to buy you for XYZ dollars or otherwise. We have met with some family offices, venture people, people, you know, my thing is we'll take any meeting just to say hi. Mostly to learn about what people are looking for, what they're doing. But pretty emphatically we've never actually been offered, no one's ever actually offered to purchase us in, in a minority capacity and majority otherwise. So no. JD: Good. I won't ask you what your response would be, but do you think that maybe partly it's because, I don't want to say you do extreme beers, but you do less run-of-the-mill beers in many cases that might just be something that big beer would not find attractive. TA: If we live in a fringe world, we're, you know, we're sort of known as a super-premium producer and we have a lot of niches that we feel from barrels and sour. You know, they've, big breweries have a need in sometimes to do that, but they, they, I think they've found those elsewhere and they want scale and they want all kinds of things. You know, San Diego is an interesting model, right. We had Ballast Point sold, you know, Green Flash had sold and we've had a lot of big, bigger companies come through and, and, and have taken investments. And so I don't know if there was any real need beyond, I think big beer came and found what they needed from San Diego. I'd be surprised if, if there's any big beer-ness left in San Diego. I mean, I say that, and you know, we'll see. But you know, I, I don't, I don't really feel like that the big beer is kind of be knocking down the doors in San Diego anytime soon. JD: They got their toe in. TA: Potentially because of the desaturation and just some of the difficulties that they might experience. ah, it's a, it's a whole, it's a whole run of things and it really has to do with, you know, where can they, where can they scale and where can they find their return on their investment and things like that. JD: Yeah, no, that's what they're looking at is a bottom line. TA: It is 100% about how much can they make on what they're buying it. Yeah. JD: Because your beers are not run of the mill Coors-type beers, not to bash Coors, but just, you know, as an example, where did you get your early inspirations? I mean, you, you said you like the Belgians and you were exposed to a wide variety of European and, and what craft beer was made in the US. But things like oak aging and sour beers, were those things that you were exposed to early on or were those things that you found out later while you were experimenting? TA: Yeah, it was early. I remember, I remember my first Chimay Red. I remember my first Guinness and I vividly remember the very first Rodenbach I ever had. And I, you know, the Rodenbach I think hit me more than anything else in that really portend, you know, that really does explain why, you know, like, Oh my God, that's okay. I know there's weird beer out there, but this is way to the left, right? This thing is way, way downstream from anything I'd had at that point. You know, I was, when on the four years I was in college, I was sampling a lot of beers and then I continued to continue to buy beer. And, and it's just when you get one that's put in front of you and you say, wow, how did they do that? And that was kind of the, the aha that was the light bulb, I think was, was that first Rodenbach. That somebody who's living in a world where that, that's so to the extreme and delicious. But why can't, why can't I, why can't I think about beer like that? And that's, that definitely pushed me in that direction. JD: Well that's great to have such an open mind. Do you remember who, if anyone else was doing things like barrel aging and sour beers or anything when you started doing it? TA: Vinnie (Cilurzo, founded Blind Pig Brewing in Temecula, CA before moving to Northern California to found Russian River Brewing.) and I joke about this a lot cause Vinnie at Russian River and I are pretty good friends and a lot of it comes back to when we first picked up oak barrels and really got into that, you know, late 19, late 1990s, you know, the first batch of cuvée that we were making and they were making beer called Temptation. There was very little of that going on and I knew Belgian had (inaudible. in the market. But out West there weren't a lot of people making sour beer in barrels. And so we had to just kinda kick the can on how to do it. Talk collectively. Again, it got back to, we were not we did not, you know, you know, withhold the secrets. And we talked a lot about the what ifs and things and that I think was a big, big part of the success was just, okay, how are we going to do this in this environment? Because again, you couldn't open a book and read how to do it. Today you can open plenty of books. JD: Or just find it out there on the web. TA: I mean, you pick up the phone and call someone, but then back then it isn't, you know, how do you manage your barrel program or what do you, how do you do this? It was, well, I'm going to try, I'm going to try this. Okay. That sounds like that. That seems reasonable to me. JD: Oh, so you can't think of anybody specifically locally though? You, I mean, Vinnie, to me, is still local as they were nearby-- TA: For sure, it’s California. JD: but I'm thinking in San Diego. TA: You know, I don't know if we, I always say we, being Pizza Port. I don't know if we were the first ones to make intentionally sour beer in San Diego. I don't recall running into it anywhere at that point. But for the sake of clarity, I never say we were the first ones because I truly don't know. There was some oak aging going on the guys at Rock Bottom (Restaurant and Brewery) in La Jolla specifically ‘cause I got barrels from them. AleSmith (Brewing Company)I think was right about that same time, ‘97, ’98-ish where they were getting into having some bourbon barrel kind of things going on. JD: But that was Skip (Virgilio founded AleSmith Brewing and later sold to Peter and Vicky Zien.). TA: Skip doing that. There was not a lot of sour beer in California at that point. So, or even San Diego can that I can recall. JD: I’m glad sour beer’s around. Okay. You just mentioned cuvée. And I've seen it said that that is your favorite beer. TA: Perhaps. JD: Yeah. Perhaps. TA: It’s the only one that bears my name (Cuvée du Tomme). How's that? JD: That's true. That's true. On the other hand, is there a beer that you ever made that you didn't care for, but everybody else said, no, we've got to put this on tap. TA: Ooh, that's a damn good question. JD: Did they, did it actually sell well? TA: There is a running joke here at the brewery. We made a beer a few years ago called Spontaneous Cheer. And the Spontaneous Cheer was a peach sour and it was actually spontaneously fermented. So we, we've got some spontaneous fermentation barrels and things that we do from time to time and we have a large library of barrels. We have over a thousand oak barrels full of now and we made this batch of beer and it tasted pretty darn good. That being said, I struggled with it personally because it didn't really manifest our house culture. We have a very strong sour beer sense. Like there's a terroir in our world. You can taste the Lost Abbey beer and it's white grapey and it's stone peach fruit. And you can tell that there's something about the way that we blend in and package. And that beer had none of it, even though it was a peach beer. But that's because all of the cultures came from the spontaneous portion. And so, people were like, you have to release this beer. And I can't in good conscience release it because you could open it in a tasting room in Texas and you'd have no idea it came from us and what's the point of that? So that's probably the one in this environment that had garnered a lot of energy I would say, okay, that's not what I was, didn't hate the beer, just wasn't keen on it. Bearing the name Lost Abbey being sour and didn't, didn't exude us. JD: And so you have not brewed it again since. TA: No, we haven’t. Even though we likely could, and people would freak for it, but it doesn't, again, it gets really to the point of, you know, we're really trying to have that identity in a big sea of imitations. I would think that that was probably a one-and-done. I'd be surprised if it came back. JD: Okay, if I ever see an unopened bottle of it, I'll know that that's truly special. TA: So we never bottled it. That's the only bottle that I think, I mean it was, it was literally only one oak barrel, so 50 gallons. But I think we only bottled it. I had a friend who had a baby and there was a request, but I, there shouldn't, there shouldn't be any bottles of that out in the world. There are, they probably aren't real. JD: Yeah. Well, we'll know that they are shams. What was your very first award for brewing? TA: That's a good question. JD: You've had so many. TA: I know like, let's see. We had strong ale in 19... Well, okay. The very first award that I know for certain was the gold medal that I participated in at La Cruda. We won a gold medal (awarded at the Great American Beer Festival) for the Makanudo Porter, but that was not my beer and I was not the recipe generator. So I would say probably a beer that we brewed at Pizza Port and that was part of the Strong Ale Festival in ‘97 or ‘98. And then at that point we started entering the Real Ale Festival in Chicago or some California State Fair stuff. We did not win a GABF (Great American Beer Festival.) award until 1999, 2000. JD: Shame on them. TA: It took me a little while to figure out where our beers sort of fit in the competitive landscape. JD: The pantheon of beers. TA: So once I figured that part out, we got on a roll pretty, quickly. JD: That does seem to be a little bit of a challenge cause I'm a member of the Society of Barley Engineers when they talk about submitting for homebrew (competitions). Sometimes there are quite intense discussions about where a particular beer, that somebody’s having everybody sample, what category that fits into. And you do then deal with judges’ taste buds. Which, you know, it's a constantly moving landscape. TA: I’ve been a GABF judge since ‘99-ish. And that has afforded me an enormous amount of opportunities to watch the process, participate in it, and even potentially piss off brewers and people who maybe didn't, you know, like the way that it went. It's fascinating to watch the competition evolve at a table relative to the dialogue, the strength of the judges, the opinions of the judges. Even just the sheer age of the, the judging has come from, there were only this block of people that used to do it and now it's expanded and now the categories have morphed and they're different. And the, you know, we talk about it a lot because it's, it's interesting to see how difficult, first of all, there's so many more beers, but the sheer, the sheer perspective that people are operating under relative to, I've had these style beers or I've never been think about, okay, I'm supposed to judge a Kölsch-style beer, but I'm a judge and I've never been to Cologne and had the six beers from there that are the, that are the standards. Well, how do you judge that? Like that's, that's a, it's an interesting scenario because you're being asked to read this against what was written, how this is how a standard should taste. Yet. You've never been in situ and had that environmental condition. JD: Right, with that terroir and all everything else, all those factors that work into it. TA: 100 percent. I do agree with you that there's, one of the things about entering competitively is that there's so many different places beers can fit and sometimes it's really environmentally like time and place. Sometimes the beer exudes more oak and sometimes it doesn’t, and it wants to be in an oak category, but it can't cause it has brett (industry jargon for Brettanomyces, a fungi used to sour beer.) We did a sampling a couple months ago back in early July and I think we went through 20 different beers for GABF trying to get down to the five that we wanted to send. And in order to do that we had to kind of pick the beers. We'd, you know, we brought out all the beers that we thought were really well done and then we had to go say, well that would fit here, wouldn't fit here, but it probably fits best here, but we don't want to send that beer there because we already have another one that wants to go there. So, you don't wanna compete against yourself either? JD: Now are you limited to five beers for competition? TA: Of late? They've been in the four to five range. Okay. A few years ago, you could send up to eight and prior to that it was kind of unlimited. But when it went from eight to five it got a lot harder. JD: Yeah. But it just seems like, I mean you can see what thousands of entries that seems like and yeah-- TA: I think there's over 8,000 beers that'll be judged. But we always say this, it's like if, if back when we were going to sending eight beers, I don't know if we make eight world-class beers every fall. Right? So how many are really well done and how many of them are like, you know, that far up the channel. I think we make eight great beers but are they going to sit at the table and really, really compete. But I think when you have eight versus four, your odds are better. But perhaps being in categories that some, some years are strong, and some years are weak, is, is where it kind of comes from. JD: Yeah. But you're also trying to be selective. I'm sure there are people that “I'll send as many beers as I can to increase my odds of winning an award.” Because of course the GABF awards still mean a lot. TA: Yeah. There was a year, I know this to be true, where at least one or two breweries that don't need to be, and they're not from San Diego, sent somewhere between 30 to 50 beers. And didn't win an award. And these are pretty good breweries. So, you know, you're talking about the shotgun approach. You hit the side of the barn. But it was pretty interesting to see that they didn't win. You know, the years of late where we haven't, we haven't managed to win an award. You know, we look up and we talked to the guys and we say, you know, look at the breweries that didn't win. Like, you know, these are, these are still some, you know, solid, solid producers and congratulations to the ones that did. But yeah, there's no guarantee anymore. I mean, winning one is a pretty dang good achievement. JD: Yeah. Well then in some cases, like just recently, what happens to the beer while is being transported? It could completely knock a perfectly good beer that left here out of any consideration because what happens to it or it doesn't even get there. TA: Yeah. So we've tried to mitigate that as best we can. Where the consolidation point and we have been for a long time that helps with refrigeration and, you know, just really making sure that the beer is better taken care of, competitive, you know, competitive judging or, you know, competitive brewing. I would say this is far different than it was 10, 15 years ago. JD: I guess for good and for bad both. But back to your awards, is there any award that you have one that is the most meaningful to you? Not to discount the other awards. TA: Sure, I think two really come to mind. The, we've been lucky to win a (GABF) Brewery of the Year award four different times. And I'm, I'm personally, I really want to get to five. I want to have that. I want to have that, that last one on the, you know, in that, you know, if I, if they gave out rings, I want to have the handful. The last time we won was 2007, so it's been a long time. And we may never get that opportunity again. I think the one that I won last year, which was the Russell Schehrer Award for Innovation and Craft Brewing, that that's you know, that's a hall of fame landscape kind of thing. And it just speaks to the community involvement and the, you know, being, being a participant in this, you know, only 22 people have won it at that point. And I, I, yeah, the legacy award, you know, something like that. I mean, I, I still love, I love the GABF and World Beer (Cup) Awards, a couple of awards cause they're, you know, they're purely blind. They're your peers. They show your team that they're, you know, they're making the right decisions. But the Russell award was probably the one that was singular in the sense that that was, you know, personally with my name on it. Where it's almost every other award that we've had that we've been lucky enough to garner comes with somebody else, you know, participating in doing work in that regard. JD: Yeah. Okay. Well, very good. So, we're just about at the end of all my questions, from your experience, is there anything in the way of advice or a lesson you've learned or anything else that you think either can't be said enough or you haven't ever had the opportunity to say? TA: You know, I think that we were talking yesterday, it's kind of interesting. We were talking about how difficult this business has become and there's a lot of noise and chatter and 50 years from now when someone's looking at this, they'll say, wow it's not as easy as it used to be. And I don't know where the fall line's going to be. We're going to get to 10,000 breweries in this country. I don't doubt that that'll happen. And I don't know where, where the relevancy will be. I don't know what it will look like. I feel pretty strongly that in the time that I've been lucky enough to be in this business, a lot of what's made us successful has come from a very strong sense of this is the beer I want to produce. And nowadays there seems to be a lot of, you have to just do what the consumer is saying they want. And tons of breweries I think are kind of losing their way, respectful of an identity. And I don't know if the artist in me can, can sort of reconcile that for the long haul. I think there's this sense that if, if that's the way the industry is going, you know, is that what I signed up for? Part of me wants to see the consumerism shift and I, I talk about this a lot, but it's kind of like when you throw the boomerang out, it comes back a little slower than it went out and maybe the boomerang is coming back. You know, that there's just too much ubiquity right now. But maybe not. Maybe with 10,000 brewers, you just, there is ubiquity and that's just part of the nature of it. But you know, I think the success that I've had, you know, in this business has been built on beers that, that, that have something that look and tastes like things that I've, you know, imagined and there's been a lot of success for that. But I don't know how you continue to do that when there's 10,000 imitators and people trying to, trying to find the same sort of, you know, sense of their worth. So for me, I think the biggest thing moving forward is just where, where do we all fit in? It's just dense stuff. JD: Giving everybody a chance to attain their dream. But yeah, you know. TA: Yeah. I think that we're going to see, I think in the next two years we're going to see a lot of dreams getting crushed because it's getting, it's getting even harder today than it was probably a year ago. But there might be a light at the end of the tunnel in the sense that, you know, there's been a lot of distributor consolidation. There's been a lot of breweries, what they say, you know, rightsizing or trying to figure this all out. But it's a business. It's gonna eat people alive, you know? And, and that's what businesses do, right? There's, there is this, there's, there's a success rate attributed to craft beer that's not as high. I mean, it's higher than most consumer goods, and there will probably be a little bit more reckoning that will come along with it because you just can't, you just can't all swim in the same ocean. It just doesn't work. And so we're going to find some sense of corrective correlations. I mean, we're going to find smaller, you know, people are going to be making less beer for the next few years and if you're actively making more beer, you're one of the very few people that's, that's winning in that, in that space. JD: It does seem like we had a real bump up in numbers of breweries that opened in 2016-2017 which is being that this is 2019, we're looking at entering the fourth and fifth year of leases for a lot of the breweries. And I think that might be a time where people are going to have to sit down and assess. TA: Sure. I mean, if you've got a five-year lease and you're about to come into that fourth year, you're in the fourth year and you're now triggering the, am I going to renew? Right. I haven't, I haven't been taking a paycheck or I've been taking very little. And then at some point you're like, are we, is this a real thing? You know, I don't, I don't know. You know, people, people certainly I think come into it, you know, really, you know, eager and excited about it. And then little by little you're, you're grinding and there's a lot of grinding going on right now, which is okay, but you know, there's, but grinding isn't fun. JD: No. And when people come into it with a passion, which is a term you used earlier, passion cannot sustain you forever, unfortunately. I mean, it's what maybe gets you up the next morning, but at some point it's not paying the bills and you have managed to raise a family, you know, other people, you know, that they've got investors that may or may not understand the actual brewing industry and cause and effect and impacts. And, you know, yeah, it's going to be real interesting to see what happens. TA: Yeah. I've been pretty lucky. My partnership here hasn't had an unrealistic expectation of financial return. And, and you know, so, you know, we, we opened our doors, we borrowed some money, we repaid the money, and then we've basically reinvested all of that money into the company when we needed to. So we are not sitting here saying okay, you're, you know, you were relying on us for a dividend. And you know, that doesn't, it doesn't work like that. But the, the business of beer is very difficult. And you know, you, you talked about that word passion. We, when we opened our doors, I published this list of the 10 commandments of our brewery and one of the 10 commandments was that you, you know, passion isn't something you can buy at the corner store. And I meant that with a sense of like, if you come into this, you know, you can't just throw that term around. Like you've got to live it and breathe it. And I think that that kind of what you were speaking to earlier is, is, has always been like, I think there's a lot of people that will say, I am very passionate about what I do. And I have been, and that's, you know, over the 20 plus years I've been doing this. That's that, that is a word that I would associate with, with getting out of bed every day. And it's been very, it's been very conducive to being successful. That being said, you don't have to be overly passionate, but you have to be, you still have to be passionate about getting out of bed every day, even when you're struggling, even when you're not killing it. And I can guarantee you right now, there's a lot of people when they're getting out of bed who used to kill it and were, you know, who thought they were going to kill it and are saying to themselves, man, this is, this is real. Like, and you know, how do you, how do you put your game face on and, and, and really keep, keep grinding and to tackle the, you know, look, we want to get to the other side. JD: Yeah. Yeah. And you don't want to be a long face when your consumers come in because they're going to say, Hey, I came in here for a beer and a good time. TA: I am here. I am here for a good time. Right. Any happy people? JD: Oh dear. Oh dear. Something that just came to me, which is not on the list of questions, but we are sitting in the space that Stone originated at. And you had just mentioned that you've expanded. Talk a little bit about the physical plant. What was it like when you moved in as Lost Abbey? What did you have to do to it and how many times have you expanded? TA: All right. So, when we took over in January of 2006 and Stone moved out to the facility in Escondido, they controlled at that point about 30,000 square feet of I think the building is 85,000 square feet. So, they had about a third of it. And when they moved out, we collapsed the entire building back down to their original suite, suite 104, and that suite is 7,500 square feet. So, we started with a 30-barrel brewhouse in 19, I'm sorry, in 2006. And we had 30, 7,500 square feet, including the tasting room, cold box, and our barrel warehouse. In 2009, I believe we moved across the parking lot and took over another 10,000 square feet and moved the cold box, all the barrels and our distribution. So, for awhile we had that space. We were up to about 17,000 square feet. 2012 or so we took over this suite that we're sitting in here, which was another 7,500 square feet. So that allowed us to build our packaging hall, this office, the lab, things like that. We rolled for the next few years, for the next five years. We had that 27,000 square feet of space. And then we added we added a second, third, fourth warehouse across the parking lot. And that took us to almost 40,000 square feet. And then last January we moved out of that distribution warehouse into another building here, which is now connected from the front of the street to the back. Behind us. We control 40,000 square feet under one roof line for the first time. And we moved out of the facility across the parking lot, all of our barrels and everything. So we now are under one building, one roof line. We can't drive from the packaging hall to the rest of the building. But every other building we can drive forklifts through. And that never happened. Two years ago, we owned four (forklifts) ‘cause we had four different buildings. JD: Now does Port distribute all the beers here in San Marcos? TA: Everything comes out of this facility. We are doing a batch or two a year out of the Pizza Port facility when we need to, but we don't, it's this, this facility can handle a lot more beer than we're currently making. So most, most everything that has the word Port Brewing, Lost Abbey, or Hop Concept on it has come out of San Marcos. It's only been this year that we've brewed two or three batches of beer down the street at Pizza Port. And most of that was for efficiency to do big runs of things that we could, we did a giant Hop Freshener, Hop Concept release at Costco and needed to have beer all at the same time. JD: So are you, in Costcos outside of California as well? TA: No, and that has been something we haven't really tackled or looked at. JD: Like it would be just an overwhelming amount of production yet I think... TA: Costco's pretty, pretty keen on a lot of local these days, at least for beer. So, I don't know how relevant we would, you know, we might be able to get into some in Arizona, maybe in Washington and Northern California, but you know, there's a ton of breweries in each of those locations. Tapping the same buyer on the shoulder saying, can I get, can I get in here? And, and the buyers probably got enough options that they don't even need something from out of here. And frankly, the cost associated with getting it to them would almost make it prohibitive in terms of trying to put it on the shelf at their right price point. JD: Yeah. Have you ever had to turn down any kind of requests because you just knew that trying to fill that big an order was going to just break you? TA: No, we've, we've been pretty lucky in the sense that when we do get we just came off of couple of pretty good-sized Costco orders and they were about 40 pallets worth of beer. But the brewery can handle that without being too burdened in the sense. I mean, it's certainly a lot of attention on one thing but we're not overly stretched at our capacity right now. So, when those things pop up, we certainly snap at them and want, you know we wanna make sure we execute on it. If we were making a lot more beer, we probably would have, we would struggle with that a little more. But when you get an order for 40 pallets of beer, you figure it out, you know, you really do. JD: When we walked back here, we passed one of your employees building a bike. What other sorts of things do you do with the employees or for the employees to support maybe their self-education, other interests that they have, things like that. TA: We've definitely put it on our radar this year. We've lost a lot of employees in the last two years. I think we've turned over 20 employees and we only have about 50 total. So, we've put an emphasis on that level of communication, you know, what can we do to assist you in this endeavor? It's not something that we've programmed in the past or been terribly good at. That being said, we haven't, we have really seen that there are some simple opportunities to do things like that and Tim's running his own small bike shop and it's just a, you know, it's a pocket, pocketed space here at the brewery. You know, we've announced that if there's other brewer or other brewery employees from the tasting room all the way up that have an idea, we would love to hear about it. We don't make a dime on it. There's no, there's no real emphasis towards, you know, trying to co-partner on things. It's just we, we want to, we want to foster the opportunities if it makes sense. And Tim's the pilot sort of program right now with the bike, the little bike shop that he's running and it gets interesting, I hope. I hope it sparks other employees to say, okay, cool, I've wanted to do this, that or the other and it looks like I could and come to us and say, ‘Oh, could you carve out this space again?’ We are, we are under more, more efficient space right now and we do have a little bit of room. So, I hope that, I hope somebody else says, okay, I want to do this and it, and it fits the needs and the use and isn't a big deal. It'd be great because it means that we can, we can continue to lift what they want to be a part of and retain them at some time. JD: Yeah. Very good. It was fun. Oh, okay. Well, I think that pretty much has run through my list plus of questions for you about your career, your history, and what's going on with Lost Abbey/Port Brewing. And I want to thank you for that. And I'm going to go ahead and turn this off. https://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en audio Property rights reside with the university. Copyrights are retained by the university. 
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Arthur, Tomme. Interview August 8, 2019
Description
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Tomme Arthur has been involved in several San Diego breweries, most notably as founder and managing owner of Lost Abbey Brewing located in San Marcos, CA. His first professional brewing position was at the short-lived Cervecería La Cruda in San Diego, California. Arthur moved to Pizza Port Brewing in Solana Beach, California as an assistant brewer. After becoming Director of Brewing Operations for the increasing number of locations, he led the chain in garnering numerous beer awards. Arthur opened Lost Abbey Brewing in 2006 to focus on his interest in Belgian-style beers. In late 2023, Arthur separated Lost Abbey from Port Brewing operations in a ‘right-sizing’ plan in response to beer industry trends. Port Brewing retained the Hop Concept, Tiny Bubbles, and Kharisma brands in their portfolio and took over the San Marcos production space and closed the tasting room. Lost Abbey entered an alternating proprietorship agreement with Mother Earth Brewing to share their production space in nearby Vista, CA.
In his 2019 interview, Arthur discusses his introduction to craft beer and home brewing; entry into the profession and work at various breweries beginning in the 1990s; founding Lost Abbey Brewing and other brewery ventures; mentoring individuals in the industry; and awards.
Identifier
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SC027-044
Subject
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Brewers -- California -- San Diego County
Brewing industry -- California -- History
Lost Abbey Brewing (San Marcos, Calif.)
Microbreweries -- California -- San Diego County
Date
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2019-08-08
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audio
Creator
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Tomme Arthur
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Judith Downie
Coverage
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San Marcos (Calif.)
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California State University San Marcos University Library
Language
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English
Rights Holder
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California State University San Marcos
Brewchive(r)
-
https://archivesoralhistories.csusm.edu/files/original/226612c0577f663c67ab24dd321c55c1.pdf
cd7aae43e52969e82eec74a15793f4d1
PDF Text
Text
TOMME ARTHUR
TRANSCRIPT, INTERVIEW
2019-08-08
Biographical Note:
Throughout his career Tomme Arthur has gained a reputation in the industry for his focus on Belgianstyle ales, national awards, and mentorship of newer brewers. He is a frequent presenter at various
brewing conferences.
Tomme Arthur has been involved in several San Diego breweries, most notably as founder and
managing owner of Lost Abbey Brewing located in San Marcos, CA. His first professional brewing
position was at the short-lived Cervecería La Cruda in San Diego, CA founded by Troy Hojel. Arthur
moved to Pizza Port Brewing in Solana Beach, California as an assistant brewer. After becoming Director
of Brewing Operations for the increasing number of locations, he led the chain in garnering numerous
beer awards. He opened Lost Abbey Brewing in 2006 to focus on his interest in Belgian-style beers. Lost
Abbey remained in a partnership with Pizza Port under the Port Brewing umbrella. The Lost Abbey
opened in the original location for Stone Brewing, vacated when Stone moved to Escondido, CA. The
brewhouse underwent an extensive expansion in 2019 to accommodate the additional beverage brands
Hop Concept, Tiny Bubbles and Kharisma. Lost Abbey expansion included tasting rooms The
Confessional in Cardiff, CA, The Sanctuary in the San Elijio Hills neighborhood of San Marcos, CA, and
The Church in downtown San Diego, CA. In late 2023, Arthur separated Lost Abbey from Port Brewing
operations in a ‘right-sizing’ plan in response to beer industry trends. Port Brewing retained the Hop
Concept, Tiny Bubbles, and Kharisma brands in their portfolio and took over the San Marcos production
space and closed the tasting room. Lost Abbey entered an alternating proprietorship agreement with
Mother Earth Brewing to share their production space in nearby Vista, CA. Mother Earth had closed a
tasting room at this location when they moved the bulk of brewing operations to Idaho. Arthur
announced plans to renovate and re-open the tasting room space.
Judith Downie:
00:00:00
So today is August 8th, 2019 and this is Judith Downie, the
Curator of the CSUSM Brewchive® with Tomme Arthur, founder
and co-owner of Lost Abbey, the Hop Concept, Port Brewing,
and myriad other projects that we're going to be asking about.
So tell me, the purpose of this is to kind of record in one place
things I've seen in a lot of places. You know, you've been very
generous with your time with people mentoring and
interviewing. And so this is for the Brewchive®, basically an
overall history of your life experiences as a brewer, thoughts,
things like that. So, we do have a list of questions here, which
again I'll read them off, I may reword them a little bit and you
are open to responding to them however you need. And I hope
we have plenty of time that you've talked about things that
maybe nobody's ever asked you.
Tomme Arthur:
00:00:59
That would be fun. Yeah.
JD:
00:01:01
So record these things for posterity. So, let's start with your
background. To be clear, from what I've seen, you started home
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�TOMME ARTHUR
TRANSCRIPT, INTERVIEW
2019-08-08
brewing in Arizona while you were in college and how did that
start?
TA:
00:01:16
So I am a native San Diegan. My family's three to four
generations on both sides. Went to Saint Augustine High School.
When I was in high school, I decided that I really liked the
English language and I wanted to study English and felt that
teaching was a path that I would probably take.
JD:
00:01:30
Okay.
TA:
00:01:31
And so I fell in love with Flagstaff as a campus and community.
And the school at Northern Arizona University had a really good
education teaching program. So that's how I ended up in
Flagstaff. When I got to school, I met a family, last name is
Gardner and, and their son, Tom. And I became very close and
the Gardner family really was into beer and they were sort of
my mentors to beer.
TA:
00:02:00
And they said, you know, we're going to teach you about better
beer. And of course, I was only 18 at the time, but you know, I
wasn't gonna say no. And they kind of pushed me in this
direction of here's what better beer looks like, tastes like.
American beer, imported beer, Canadian, very English, you
know, all the, all the different countries where a great beer
would have come from. A lot of it at that time was imported of
course.
JD:
00:2:22
Right. Because really, you know, we're talking what the...
TA:
00:2:26
1991 and 95 was when I was in school.
JD:
00:2:27
Okay. So there really wasn't much of a craft beer scene in
Arizona I don't think.
TA:
00:2:31
There were very few craft breweries in Arizona. In fact, there
were no craft breweries in Flagstaff at the time. We ended up
having three open up in my last year of school. But there were
no craft breweries in Flagstaff and at that time. There was likely
to be 10 or 15 probably in the entire state. But we've got a lot of
regional beers. There was a lot of beer from Oregon,
Washington, Northern California, Arizona, New Mexico,
Colorado beer. So there was some American craft. But mostly
from very older players, you know, Sierra Nevada Anchor,
Deschutes <Brewery>, big, bigger breweries.
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JD:
00:03:08
And being that the craft beer scene in San Diego was still pretty
young in that time period. Do you remember seeing anything
from San Diego?
TA:
00:03:16
No. In fact we, we actually talk about this a lot, that prior to
Stone Brewing coming into San Diego, nobody actually sent
beer outside of San Diego. Karl Strauss <Brewing> had beer in
San Diego at the time and packaged in bottles. But they, I don't
believe much of their beer, if any, was leaving the San Diego
area. So my understanding is that it really wasn't until Stone
opened their doors and shipped beer to Arizona, likely maybe
Nevada, you need to ask them, where they crossed the state
line and perhaps were one of the original new craft breweries to
actually make beer to leave San Diego.
JD:
00:03:51
Which is really interesting because I have in my pre-Prohibition
research on San Diego craft brewing found Mission Brewing.
They were brewing beer to supplement San Diego Consolidated
Brewing, which is San Diego Brewing Company <today>. They
were San Diego Consolidated Brewing for a while and Arizona
passed Prohibition in 1914, five years before National
Prohibition and halted any shipment of even Hopski, which was
a near beer Mission was brewing, into the state. They weren't
even allowing that. And there was a big lawsuit and Mission
Brewing lost and that was the contributing factor to the closure
of Mission through that.
TA:
00:04:28
They actually lost out on a nonalcoholic or near beer.
JD:
00:04:31
Yeah. Hopski, and they didn't continue to brew that because J.
H. Zitt, who was the president, the current owner of San Diego
Consolidated Brewing had said ‘I will never brew anything but
real beer.’ So he's the one who decided to close Mission.
Because he actually owned it at the time because his father-inlaw and brother-in-law, who had founded Mission, had walked
away.
TA:
00:04:58
Yeah, the old San Diego stuff is really interesting.
JD:
00:05:00
Yeah, and it's a, it's an interesting kind of parallel between you
being in Arizona and starting your interest in beer there and
then coming back to San Diego.
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JD:
00:05:12
But I've also seen that you've noted that your favorite beers are
Belgian style. What?
TA:
00:05:16
I just find them to be very unique and I think that there's,
there's a pretty, I guess when I first got started in brewing in my
sort of craft foundation, they were the most unique things out
there. And that, that today is not necessarily the case. There's
so many new producers and people that have really taken the
boundaries and, and stretched them and moved them in
directions. I think ostensibly under a Belgian influence or sort of
what amounts to be a Belgian artistry, but there's a lot more to
it these days. And I just think that if you, if you become
imaginative about beer, you have to look at what the Belgians
did or were doing at that time. Technique wise, yeast wise
flavors, just process things. Very unconventional via what, what
would amount to be a very conventional sort of brewing, you
know, take four malts or take four ingredients. You can, you
used a lot of water and hops and that's beer. And then you look
at what they do. And it's completely different.
JD:
00:06:10
So you think the Belgians weren't constrained by the purity law
that the Germans had and that's part of what led to their
inventiveness?
TA:
00:06:17
Yeah, I just feel like they as a group embraced different
methodologies and, and that sometimes weren't easy. And
those methods at least preserved flavors that couldn't be found
in beer, again, conventional beer.
JD:
00:06:33
Okay. Very interesting. So, onto your actual brewing
experiences. You started home brewing? I read it was a
homebrew kit...
TA:
00:06:44
So the Gardner’s bought me a home brew kit early for my
graduation. So, I was gifted it in January of 1995 and that's
when we started homebrewing.
JD:
00:06:50
Okay. And you didn't like the first beer you brewed?
TA:
00:06:52
The first beer we brewed, it was a black style, you know, sort of
a dry Irish Guinness-style stout, but it came out very thin and
didn't taste like Guinness or anything. So it wasn't, it was not a
good beer. But you know, I think the expectations were high
and probably should have set the bar a little lower.
JD:
00:07:08
Was this extract or all grain?
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TA:
00:07:09
It was extract for sure.
JD:
00:07:12
Yeah. Because of course supplies even in the 90s, were still kind
of hard to come by.
TA:
00:07:15
Yeah, we were pretty lucky there was a homebrewer outpost in
Flagstaff, so there was a store that sold ingredients that we
could've, we could've started in an all-grain basis. But I was
living in a house with four people and it just wasn't really, I
didn't have the resources to go build a full all grain brewing
system, with the plastic fermenters and you know, boiling on
the stove top kind of stuff was definitely where it was at.
JD:
00:07:40
Yeah, you got to start somewhere. So, then you came back to
San Diego. Was that, what was the reason for coming leaving
Arizona?
TA:
00:07:47
So I graduated in June or May of 1995.
JD:
00:07:50
So was this your bachelor's or your teaching credential?
TA:
00:07:52
This was my bachelors of arts in just English. And at that point I
didn't really want to stay in Flagstaff and I wasn't gonna attend
grad school there. So, I moved back home and so I left. And
when I got home I kind of kicked around a little bit trying to
figure out what I was going to do and really didn't have a plan
necessarily I was able to go back and live with my parents. And
you know, the only requirement was that I find a job. So, I found
a job and that's kinda how I got in the downtown life. My dad
had a printing business when I was growing up, so I was very,
very well trained and I worked in the campus print shop when I
was in school. So, I applied for a printing job in a downtown San
Diego business and I was commuting, taking the trolley from La
Mesa down into downtown San Diego every day. And I
happened to be reading want ads, just, it was all that was left in
the newspaper at that point. And stumbled upon a brew pub
opening that had an ad in the paper for cooks, dishers, all that
stuff in it said assistant brewer and I circled it. And I walked over
the next day at lunch and applied for a job. And that was
actually Cervecería La Cruda.
JD:
00:09:00
Right, with Troy Hojel? So, you actually opened Cervecería La
Cruda in September of ‘96?
TA:
00:09:10
No, they, they would have opened, I think it would've been
March of 96 ‘cause we ended up, we attended the great
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American beer festival in September, October of 96 and then it
closed. It was less than a full year. I think I was hired in April,
May-ish. and then I wasn't there even for a full year.
JD:
00:09:27
Yeah. I have, I have March ‘97 is when it closed.
TA:
00:09:31
So I think it probably was mid April-ish I would've been hired in.
We didn't even make it a full year.
JD:
00:09:39
Yeah. This is the kind of thing I like because I have a very large
Excel spreadsheet of every brewery from 1868 which was
Chollas Valley Brewery through today. Whether they opened or
closed, it never made it, pulled the license, whatever...
TA:
00:09:55
So, how many different breweries have attempted to open? Are
we in the three hundreds or?
JD:
00:09:58
Well, my Excel spreadsheet also includes all the individual
tasting rooms because generally they pull a separate ABC
license. I'm up over 550 getting close to 600 I think, but I could
certainly get back to you with how many tried and never even
actually opened. I think there's a real object lesson there.
TA:
00:10:18
I think the most interesting thing is that we operate that there's
160 or whatever right now that are active, but it's really
interesting to know kind of how many have kind of opened and
closed and opened and closed and where you know, you can
say, okay, since prohibition we've had 208 that have tried or
participated in this, in this scene.
JD:
00:10:37
Yeah, because I break the whole history into three parts. There
was a pre-Prohibition 1868 to 1919, 1919/1920 then 1933 to
1953 because Aztec, which had sold to Altes Brewing, closed
and they were the last brewery operating post-Prohibition and
then we didn't pick up again until the <19>80s so I can extract
that information and get it to you because those numbers are
always very powerful.
TA:
00:11:05
Yeah. I just feel like it'd be interesting to say since Prohibition,
there's been 208 licenses that were issued or over, you know,
JD:
00:11:12
And then there were others that announced a name or
announced that they were going to open and never even got
around to pulling a license. You know, so I have, I have every
single possible name of any business that ever said ‘we are
going to be a brewery or a brew pub, or...’
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TA:
00:11:28
No one ever drops on in front of you and you say, haven't heard
of it.
JD:
00:11:30
Well actually not too long ago, I ran across one called the Royal
Duffer. And that evidently they were contract brewing. They
were in Carlsbad and they were like four golf buddies. And so
they had beer for, again, I think it was less than a year. And I
haven't been able to find out too much information from them,
but I'm very alert to, ‘Oh, I don't think I've ever heard of that
name before’ so this is the first one I've not heard of in a long
time. So I think I'm pretty comprehensive. But yeah. Yeah, it's
been interesting and a lot of work. But going back to Troy, is
Troy still around?
TA:
00:12:10
He is in somewhere in Colorado outside of Denver. In fact, I just
talked to him the other day. He texted me, I think his cousin
opened a brewery in Texas and he had a question or two.
TA:
00:12:20
So yeah. He's in Colorado and doing the software.
JD:
00:12:23
Okay. So he's no longer in the brewing business.
TA:
00:12:25
No, actually he left the brewery business and ended up doing
software in Northern California for a bit, I think, and then
moved off to Colorado.
JD:
00:12:33
Well, it's gotta be sad to watch your dream die especially so
quickly.
TA:
00:12:35
You know, it was a pretty aggressive life lesson, you know? It
taught me a lot in the short time that we were into it. I still think
that Troy is one of the best brewers I've ever met. And it
would've been a really cool thing to see it succeed at, but
certainly would've put me on a different life path, I think if it
had. So I don't, I don't try not to, you know, revisionist history,
that part of it. But the beers that he made and he was a very
technical brewer, I think, I think it would've been, it would've
added to the scene even more.
JD:
00:13:05
Yeah. What actually happened? Was it just lack of sales?
TA:
00:13:09
I think more than anything it was a bad, is a bad business
model. I don't know if you know the story of Baja Brewing
Company.
JD:
Transcribed by
Judith Downie
00:13:17
I'm familiar with the name, but not really the story.
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TA:
00:13:20
So Baja Brewing Company opened up and they claimed to be
the very first Mexican-themed brewpub in the United States.
Now it was their claim to fame. But what happened is that the
partners at Baja Brewing and the partners at La Cruda actually
had a schism and they split. They were going to open the Baja
Brewing Company together or something along those lines and
they had a falling out and the partnership dissolved. And so
these guys opened Baja Brewing Company and less than three
or four months later Cervecería La Cruda opened up three
blocks away. So the very first Mexican theme brewpub in this
country opened up and three blocks later and three months and
three blocks over the second one opened. So, very underfunded
from the get-go. Very, it was a 13,000 square foot building at
Forth and Island, you know, big, big building. Too much of it to
just for the time I, I'd be nervous opening a 13,000 square foot
building brewpub today. And you know, back when the Gaslamp
was kind of still new and trendy and hot, I don't know what the
rent was, but just overall a bad, a bad vision I think for what was
going on.
JD:
00:14:31
Ahead of its time. Really.
TA:
00:14:32
Yeah. And the thing that's kind of crazy is that Cervecería La
Cruda to them is a hangover brewery. So when you say ‘tengo la
cruda’, that means I have the crud, I'm not feeling well. That's
not a real great way to tell people you want to come here and
drink. They opened up with a menu that they had sourced from
the family that owned El Callejon in Encinitas. So, they had this
really great, I would say deep, deep Mexican Sonoran source,
you know, for and things. But that wasn't on anyone's radar
with respect to craft brew at the time. So, good people, great,
great opportunity. But not even something, that I think today,
even if you attempted to tackle it, would probably work really
well.
JD:
00:15:12
So as you say, a real experience.
TA:
00:15:14
Yeah, a lot I learned from, you look around and you see
simplicity sometimes wins.
JD:
00:15:20
Or slow growth. Planned slower.
TA:
00:15:22
Or have more money than you think. Yeah.
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JD:
00:15:27
Somebody said to me one time something like, you need five
times more than you think you do. And I would, I think that's
true with any business really. But the expense of equipment and
materials and everything and you just can't do it all yourself.
TA:
00:15:40
No. You gotta be able to weather a lot of storms.
JD:
00:15:44
And you know, with this, I know in September of 2016 I went to
the craft beer conference up in Sacramento and I saw you speak
there and you at that time, this is three years ago now, said that
San Diego was already over-saturated, and you would not open
up a brewery at this point in San Diego. And how many
breweries have we had open up?
TA:
00:16:06
Continues to be a head-scratching thing. Yeah. Well, we joke, I
mean, we're here in San Marcos now. I've got three breweries
within a one-mile stretch. Right. So yeah, that's just the way it
is. Yeah.
JD:
00:16:21
But you're each different. Accommodating everybody at some
point. But so when La Cruda closed, you moved to White Labs
for just a couple of months in yeast sales. Was that based
because you knew about yeast?
TA:
00:16:34
So White Labs had just kinda gotten their feet wet. So I
remember the very first day when I was at La Cruda, one of the
very first days I was at La Cruda. Chris White1 walked in on a
sales call. And so we were chatting and talking and at some
point, and this is a part of my history that I don't remember all
of that clearly, but I ended up moving in with them. I mean I
was a roommate and I think there was a crossover point where I
was working at La Cruda, but I already moved into their house.
Cause he and Lisa had an empty room. I needed a place to stay.
And then when La Cruda was on its way to be closing it became
kind of obvious that I could help them in their infancy of their
company with some just R and D and just different trialing and
things like that.
TA:
00:17:15
You know, I had met a lot of brewers in Arizona at that time. So
Chris said, well, why don't you come help me just kind of knock
down some doors and you know, we just need somebody that
can walk in and kind of talk about this in a very brewer friendly
kind of way. So my goal was I was kind of like an ambassador
really. You know, I didn't really do a lot of pure sales but my job
was to talk about it and explain how my experience with
1
Chris White is the founder of White Labs.
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different yeasts and temperatures and things like that. So it was
kind of just yeah, I think it was more of a product, product
knowledge and ambassador at that point.
JD:
00:17:47
Was there any conversation at that time about opening up a
tasting room for yeast labs?
TA:
00:17:51
No. No. I mean, maybe Chris had it, but it you know, that was a
pretty, it was a long time ago and there wasn't really a sense of
yeast as a business outside of the yeast business. I don't think
there was sort of that auxiliary layer to it. I'm sure Chris would
have liked to have had a bunch of beers on tap, but I, I would
imagine if he had had that thought back then that they would
have probably just wanted 10 beers on tap for their customers
to come sample them, but not necessarily not, not really treat it
as an educational function for the consumer as much as an
educational experience for a brewer who maybe hadn't worked
a certain use and things like that. I mean there's just an
enormous amount of yeasts that have been banked since we
started. Since I got my first job in 1996 there's been an
enormous amount of new yeast that had been added. So, they
need an avenue to show people what those yeasts do.
JD:
00:18:41
And back then too, you probably had a lot of brewers, even
professional brewers, would be how I see it. That didn't really
understand a lot about the hops that were available. The yeast
that was available, you know, cause a lot of them had, were
coming out of the homebrew experience and you know, all of a
sudden here's more stuff you need to know.
TA:
00:19:02
If you go back and look at it ‘95, ‘96 to, so that time, I mean
we're talking about a dial up modem, you know, we're talking
about low internet speed, we're talking about not...
JD:
00:19:08
A lot of people, not even having computers or knowing how to
use it.
TA:
00:19:12
Not even a lot of Information online. Frankly. I mean you
couldn't, you could not do all the kind of information that's out
there today. And, and past that, a lot of the information that did
exist in book format was highly technical through the ASBC2 and
the big brewers. And then what was available that had been
written about the sort of homebrew level and medium brewery.
There wasn't a lot of medium brewery stuff in there, so you
American Society of Brewing Chemists.
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were getting a lot of books on how to brew ales, but they had
this really big English, you know, sort of basis to them. Cask
condition, real ale ingredients weren't American in their basis.
So there was no ability to look up and say, Oh, how do I use this
German hefeweizen yeast? You know, how do I, how much do I
pitch it, what temperature, how does it behave? And none of
that information existed.
JD:
00:19:59
So a lot of technical stuff.
TA:
00:20:00
Yeah. even just simplistic technical. What's the right
temperature?
JD:
00:20:03
And around here San Diego was still something of a Coors town
that's San Diego was test market for a couple of different, for
Coors Light and for Herman Joseph's 1868 and you know, so
really do you have much of a market for...
TA:
00:20:18
In fact, we joked about it here. This was the best, I think this
was the best-selling Coors light town when I took in, when I got
into brewing, this was the number one Coors Light in the
country.
JD:
00:02:26
Yes, it was.
TA:
00:02:28
Well that explains to you, you know, where we're, where we
were and where we came from. And on top of that you had all
the import beers too, right? You still had Coronas and Pacifico
and the Modelos in the world doing very well here at that time
too. So yeah, it was a, it was a long ways to the top.
JD:
00:20:42
So you weren't at White Labs for very long before you were
hired by Pizza Port. Pizza Port just had the one location then,
right?
TA:
00:20:48
They had the one location in Solana Beach. Vincent, Gina3 had
been partners in the Carlsbad Public House with a guy named
Brett. I think his last name was Stamp.
JD:
00:21:00
Tetley Ridden4, I, it's a hyphenated name.
TA:
00:21:07
Yeah. And then he became a, they, they had a falling out with
Carlsbad Public House and they were in, they were in the
3
4
Vincent and Gina Marsaglia
Redmayne-Titley
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process of converting the Public House, which is the Pizza Port
in Carlsbad in the village into the Pizza Port at that time. So I
was, I was brought into assist on Solana Beach because the
head brewer was going to go have shoulder surgery and then
they were supposed to move me up to Carlsbad to take over the
production of the brewing and Carlsbad once, once he came
back. So there was almost a second Pizza Port in line at that
time. So they were, they were in the home stretch of the
construction to convert it from the Public House to Pizza Port,
which opened in July of 1997 so they were real close. And I
always like to tell the story ‘cause I think it's very fascinating to
me. I'd never stepped foot in Pizza Port before I got interviewed
for the job. So I had no real perceived concept or notion of what
exactly they did or what they didn't do.
JD:
00:22:02
Okay. And so you were an assistant brewer then? You weren't
head brewer?
TA:
00:22:10
Yeah. Eddie Class, I think his last name was Classic. He was the
head brewer at that time. And Vince was going to be the head
brewer in Carlsbad when they opened. So yeah, Eddie was in
charge of the brewery in Solana Beach and he was gonna go, I
think I was going to have rotator cuff surgery and take about
three months off. And then when he came back I was supposed
to go take the job in Carlsbad.
JD:
00:22:30
Okay. but you, you obviously that didn't quite work out that
way, but you were promoted to Director of Brewery Operations
in June of 2005.
TA:
00:22:38
Yeah, that was a short stint ‘cause we were getting ready to
open this place too. So yeah.
JD:
00:22:43
So you already knew you were going to be moving on?
TA:
00:22:46
We were having conversations at that point about how to get to
here. We, I think in June it kind of was a collective. They
terminated Kirk McHale, who was the brewer in Carlsbad in
June of 2005 and then there was the San Clemente location,
Carlsbad location, and Solana Beach. And I was asked to kind of
tackle all three of them at the same time, make sure that they
were more or less on the same page, collectively, kind of get
them aligned. And then we also knew that we were having
conversations about a new partnership and trying to build up
the partnerships so that we could get this, this facility put into
our orbit.
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JD:
00:23:24
Okay. So that leads me into the founding Port Brewing in
partnership with Vince and Gina. And you know, you have Port
Brewing, you have Lost Abbey, you have the Hop Concept and
I've also seen that you're involved in an Arizona brewery called
Moto Sonora. So can you explain the structure of everything?
TA:
00:23:49
Yeah. When we started talking to Stone Brewing about buying
this facility from them you know, my love of Belgian beers was
pretty strong and I knew that we wanted to make some things
out here that were very barrel aged, Belgian influenced and all
that. And we had this, Vince had the idea for the brand called
the Lost Abbey. So we were very, very keen on the fact that we
knew that was going to happen. There were a lot of beers at
Pizza Port that were being produced that needed to kind of
stretch and grow and needed to get from get out from under
just being a pub-based beer. And that allowed, you know,
people who had been asking for more, you know, basically Pizza
Port beer. And that's where the Port Brewing came from. So the
Port Brewing beers, many of them when we opened our doors
here came from Solana Beach recipes that I had produced, Hop
15, Santa’s Little Helper, Shark Attack. We brought the Wipe
Out recipe over from Carlsbad and those beers had a lot of
legacy towards the pubs and, and kind of, you know, grew them
out of that realm. But we knew that there'd be the Port brand’s
very West coast centric, you know, kind of that Ballast Point,
Coronado, Green Flash, Stone kind of mentality. You know,
higher hopping rates, you know, sometimes imperial, things like
that. We always knew that that wasn't really that wasn't going
to be our principal focus in the sense that we were going to
have the two brands, but we also knew that having the two
brands side by side allowed us to walk in and have a wide range
of beers without having everything be a Lost Abbey beer or Port
Brewing beer.
JD:
00:25:15
Okay. And then the Hop Concept is a fairly recent addition to
the portfolio.
TA:
00:25:20
So a few years ago I walked into a bar and all the beer names on
the wall really just confused me. There were so many new beers
and I had no idea what they tasted like. And I didn't want to be
a bother to the bartenders and try to, you know, ask them this
or that. And I'm not an Untappd person. I don't really use digital
media to tell me what I should be drinking. So, it kinda came
back to we wanted to create a line of beers that were very fresh
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and simplistic in their makeup. So, the Hop Concept beers, we
had a line called the Hop Freshener series and they were
basically we had ‘Dank and Sticky’ and ‘Citrus and Piney and
‘Lemon and Grassy’ and ‘Tropical and Juicy’. And it was
essentially taste and smell. And we, all we were trying to do was
tell the consumer and the bartender, this is what you should
expect the beer to taste like, or smell like. And it was a quick,
straightforward deliverable and it was meant to be a, I use the
word simple, but simple deliverable like you knew what you
were getting. We were setting you up to understand how that
beer should taste and behave.
JD:
00:26:16
Yeah, it does seem like naming beers because they do have to
be registered names or whatever, becomes a bigger and bigger
challenge. And in just looking at a name on the board, you
frequently have no idea of what that beer really is. So,
something like this where you're going back to the basics, this is
what you're going to get. I think must be very attractive.
TA:
00:26:36
I thought the cleanliness of it for us, which was just
straightforward and nomenclature and deliverable
TA:
00:26:44
Like this is this is what you can expect and...
JD:
00:26:47
Your label designs are very clean and very clear. Where Lost
Abbey looks much more European, Medieval in a lot of ways.
TA:
00:26:55
And we went out and we went out and hired a firm for the first
time to really, we told them this is what our vision is and this is
why we're doing it this way, but we want you to make sure we
produce this with a very crisp look to it. And they, they certainly
executed that and I, and I think that's always been a strength of
that brand.
JD:
00:27:13
Yeah. Let me ask you a little bit about the latest venture, Moto
Sonora. I read that this was evidently your college roommate
you are in partnerships with and his younger brother. And, of
course, this is taking you back to Arizona.
TA:
00:27:30
It is. Tucson, not Flagstaff. I wish it was in Flagstaff, but I'm
going to come to like Tucson cause it's closer. But yeah, my, it's
kind of ironic because this was a random sort of thing back
when, when I was in college with Jeff. Jeff really wasn't a big
beer drinker but it turns out but his brother Jeremy really fell in
love with craft beer and the two of them kind of decided that
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they have a high value for the city of Tucson. They loved that
area. They've got deep roots in the community there. Their
family, the DeConcini family's been a, been a big part of the
Arizona scene and they just wanted to do this project. And I
started talking to them as a consultant and just kind of saying,
let me, let me hear what you're thinking. And then they said,
well, maybe you could spend some more time on it. And I said,
yeah, I've got the time to do that.
TA:
00:28:18
Let's, let's do this. So, I am coming in as one of the co-founders
on that project. Port Brewing is not involved in the sense that
we're not invested in it.
JD:
00:28:26
That was a question I had.
TA:
00:20:28
We're not, Port Brewing is not an investor in the company.
Although I have permission with my partners to supply as many
ingredients and things, you know, that we can, we can work to
make sure that the beers there are at the highest, you know,
sort of capacity. And if it means we're buying the hops and
selling them hops and things like that, that's gonna happen. You
know, I see it as potentially a training ground where if one of
our brewers wants the position when we get going or they, you
know, we want to move people out that way. But this is not
anything more than a co-founding situation where I have the
freedom to go tight, you know, take on other projects. I, I kind
of liken it to chefs having multiple locations or bar owners
having, you know, other projects and things. But I'm not moving
to Tucson and I'm not going to be the head brewer there. I'm
going to, you know, I'm going to establish what we're doing and
push the company in the right direction and make sure that we
become a really valuable part of that community. We've been
definitely looking forward to the, just being involved in it and
you know, a different beer scene at the same time.
JD:
00:29:24
Well, this kind of jumps over some of the questions I have
because it leads into the amount of mentoring and work with
newer brewers and the collaborations you do with the more
established brewers. You are renowned in the industry for how
people can come to you and pick your brain and you support
and mentor in so many different ways. I see you as a oneperson campaign to ensure craft beer success. And, and this is
in comparison with efforts like Stone's True Craft where there
were more financial assistance. Have you always been a
remarkable mentor? It sounds kind of like, you know, you're,
you're thinking to become a teacher.
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TA:
00:30:05
Yeah. I think that's a big part of it, right? It's a, it's a sense of,
you know, that shared piece. You know, I remember very, very
early in my, in my Solana Beach days, I wanted to make a
Saison-style beer and I needed to find somebody who could give
me the answer for how much ginger I was supposed to put in
the beer. Cause I wanted to make the beer with some ginger.
And there weren't many places where I could turn to. And I
picked up the phone one day and I called the owner of LeftHand Brewing Company, his name was Dick Doore. And I said,
Dick, you guys have this amazing Juju, ginger pale ale. I love it.
Would you be willing to share that information with me? And he
did. And he, you know, and we'd barely met. And it was one of
those things that, okay, yeah, that's how the industry works.
Right. And you know, this is something that I think Troy had put
in my head back in the day was like, there are the right people
to be talking to and then there's the wrong people. And the
wrong people are the ones that don't freely exchange the
information, or they don't, they don't try to push it uphill. And
for the longest time we had so much work to do in this town to
push the level uphill that we collectively had to talk about it. I
mean, everybody I think that you would interview would have
the similar sense of if we didn't all work together then we
wouldn't have gotten to where we were.
JD:
00:31:18
Isn't that the principle behind the San Diego Brewers Guild?
TA:
00:31:21
Of course, you know, the very first Guild meeting was out at La
Cruda. So yeah. Yes, for sure that the Guild, you know, I think
we were the very first city in the country to have its own
brewers guild.
TA:
00:31:31
And that, that's kind of a, you know, a feather in the cap for
what I think, you know, the old, the old guard or the people that
really did, you know, hunker down back in the day was that
there was a true sense that there was going to be something
really good about the scene here. But we had to work really
hard at it. So, I've always liked that conversational aspect of it. I
believe that I can, I can ask the right questions with friends and
people and, and if I can turn around and get that information
back out, it makes sense. So yeah, why not? I mean, there's,
there's very little, I guess I don't feel very competitive or
threatened by it by that, you know, that dialogue or that sharing
of information.
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JD:
00:32:05
I think that's, I mean, I, I'm on certain, like the San Diego Plexus
Facebook group and stuff, and your name comes up and
everybody says, Tomme Arthur, he's the person to talk to. He is
the god locally, you know, I mean, your name is always used in
very positive way, which I think really speaks to the efforts that
you have put into the community and supporting, especially
newer brewers, but also working with other established
brewers and not treating it as competition but treating it as we
can all be better.
TA:
00:32:34
And I think the one thing that's kind of maddening these days,
and this is, this is my personal soap box] is that there's a lot of
TA:
00:32:39
People that are collaborating on things. And I'm, I'm very
concerned about this new sense of collaborating because I don't
know that it's doing much other than it's bringing people
together. And then you say, well what did we change and what
did we do? And I'm like, okay. But I think the collaborative
narrative of old was we collaborated on something because it
was going to be something demonstratively different than we
could have done singularly. And I'm not sure that much of that's
going on today. So, when we collaborate with an old guard or
with someone new, we're, we're really trying to have a sense of
purpose. And I hope that people continue to realize that just
collaborating with someone for the sake of sales isn't always, I
guess from where I come, from isn't always the best course of
action.
JD:
00:33:25
Again, going to your mentoring, have you had the opportunity
to open doors for specific groups? And I'm thinking women or
minorities or people with disabilities, people, you know,
because the standard concept of a brewer is a male, white guy,
you know, I mean that just still is. It's not that way anymore. But
have you had opportunities to work with or speak to groups to
encourage them?
TA:
00:33:51
I was thinking about this the other day because you know, I look
at our staff, it is generally mostly male. We have had a few
female employees on the beer side in the past and they've been
phenomenal employees. And I was thinking the other day that
we haven't done enough in our world to cultivate that
specifically. And I know the Brewers Association is pretty keen
on promoting diversity and things these days. And I'm
wondering as an educational mentor, et cetera, where I should
be looking to do some of those things or how I get involved in
that. You know, where, where can I be impactful in that, in that
space. And I don't know if it's through the university or through,
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you know, there's a big Latino population up here in San Marcos
and Vista. But clearly, you know, being white and being white
isn't always the best thing. With respect to trying to, you know,
we've got to find new, new people to energize and really
enthuse about what we do. And preaching to the 40-year-old
male white choir isn't, isn't the best place to live in.
JD:
00:34:47
Well, I don't know if you're aware of Border X <Brewing>, which
is of course down in Barrio Logan has, is sponsoring a women's
beer club called Mujeres Brew Club. I'm sorry, I, my Spanish isn't
that swell. And they invited me to be their first speaker and
they're doing a meeting each month on a different aspect and
at the end they are going to brew a beer at Border X. And the
women that are in there, many of them don't know even beer
styles. I mean, one woman evidently asked the question, what's
an IPA? And so, you know, and it's, it's a safe space for women
and it does have a large number of Latina women, which I think
is phenomenal because maybe some of these will become
brewers and there are women are working in the beer industry
in San Diego who are also members.
JD:
00:35:40
Some of them are speakers and some are just attending the
meetings because they're always eager to learn more. So maybe
reaching out to, or you know, helping sponsor a group like that
or Pink Boots Society5 of course, you know, is always looking for
speakers and educational opportunities and things. But you
know, there's a growing presence, but it is hard to, when
women are so scattered or you know, like you say it's
underrepresented with the minorities or you know, and there
are certain positions that probably someone with a physical
disability couldn't perform in a brewhouse, what could they do?
Can they be the quality control people, things like that. So, it
seems like there are places that we need to increase.
TA:
00:36:24
Yeah. It's interesting because I was thinking about this again the
other day. I was like, we just don't have that many women apply
for jobs. It's, it's you know, I, you know, I have a, a fairly good
amount of men working, you know males, working on the floor.
But I can't remember the last time I saw an application come in
for a brewing position from a woman. So somehow the
outreach needs to get further than, you know, I'm talking entrylevel packaging jobs, things like that. There's, there's clearly,
you know, there's, it's not a bias in our world. They're just not
International organization for women and non-binary people in the fermentation industry. The first chapter was
founded in San Diego.
5
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coming and knocking down our door. So somehow we have to
convince them that this isn't, this is a pretty good place where
they could, you know, they can, they can find careers and
homes.
JD:
00:37:04
Well, if you do want to advertise positions, I have a couple of
resources. I can push things out to Pink Boots San Diego for one.
And then there's another Facebook page of women interested
in beer. Some are working in the industry; some are maybe
looking to get into the industry. And of course, maybe pushing
the word out to the EngiBeering® program at Cal State San
Marcos. ‘Cause there are, there's at least a couple of women
enrolled in that program. But yeah, it's hard because there
aren't many women available to bring in. But then, you know,
we do have a, you know, a fairly strong Hispanic population in
this area. So, you know, why can't we leverage that? And it's
finding those points of contact. That's a, that's a continual
problem that I have seen. Also, to kind of jump back, I
mentioned Stone's True Craft effort, which, you know, obviously
died. It was a great idea to help small, small breweries with
financing to where they didn't have to sell themselves to big
beer. What did you think of that idea when you thought, heard
of it?
TA:
00:38:01
You know, I had a lot of friends that took meetings with them. I
mean, at least on the surface I was told, you know, Hey, we've,
we've gone and talked to them about it. I think the biggest
challenge was, is that that was at a time when there was a lot of
unrealistic expectations about valuations and what, what things
were worth or how, how long term, you know, how companies
would be out, people would work long term together. You
know, it's an interesting model because this business is such a,
almost a loner thing. Like most people open their own little
brewery and then at some point you need more investment in
that comes with a lot more triggers and kinds of parameters and
stuff in some small breweries never outgrow the small, you
know, model. They, I'm the single proprietor, not me. They are a
single proprietor, ownership kind of environment and you
know, they borrow money from the bank and that's what they
get and that's what they want to be. You know, there's a very
passionate pursuit for them. And then there's the big business
side of it, which says if you're going to scale and grow and you
know, buying equipment is not cheap and putting concrete in
the ground and copper piping and just every single thing you
could think of.
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JD:
00:39:07
And the length time it takes to just deal with all the permitting
within the city, within the state, with the ABC6.
TA:
00:39:11
And the regulatory. Yeah. All of those pieces. So I applaud Greg
for, and Steve, for putting the platform together. You know, the,
I think the biggest hurdle for a lot of people is just how, how do
you entrepreneurially sign up for something like that? Right?
It's, it's, you know, it's a different, it's a different <unclear> in
you. You're talking about an environment where you went from
being in charge of your own facility to now having new
investment that comes with different, again, different triggers
and things. I think it's interesting cause nobody signed up to do
it and I don't know if that was that the metrics didn't align or
how that was. But I know a lot of people took meetings and so I
guess the question is, is what, what was, what was unrealistic
on both sides for, for that, how come it, how come they didn't
get anybody to, to partner with?
JD:
00:40:01
Yeah. I'm, I don't know who took meetings, but it would be
interesting to talk to them to ask them why they didn't pursue
that, and did they find an alternative that worked better for
them. So that's on my list of things to do. Since we've
mentioned big beer, have you ever been approached by big
beer with an offer to purchase you or to work with them in
some sort of way?
TA:
00:40:25
No. In the 13 years that we've been open no one has put an
offer sheet on the table and said, we want to buy you for XYZ
dollars or otherwise. We have met with some family offices,
venture people, people, you know, my thing is we'll take any
meeting just to say hi. Mostly to learn about what people are
looking for, what they're doing. But pretty emphatically we've
never actually been offered, no one's ever actually offered to
purchase us in, in a minority capacity and majority otherwise. So
no.
JD:
00:41:02
Good. I won't ask you what your response would be, but do you
think that maybe partly it's because, I don't want to say you do
extreme beers, but you do less run-of-the-mill beers in many
cases that might just be something that big beer would not find
attractive.
TA:
00:41:23
If we live in a fringe world, we're, you know, we're sort of
known as a super-premium producer and we have a lot of
6
California’s Alcoholic Beverage Control agency in charge of licensing alcohol production, distribution and sales.
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niches that we feel from barrels and sour. You know, they've,
big breweries have a need in sometimes to do that, but they,
they, I think they've found those elsewhere and they want scale
and they want all kinds of things. You know, San Diego is an
interesting model, right. We had Ballast Point sold, you know,
Green Flash had sold and we've had a lot of big, bigger
companies come through and, and, and have taken
investments. And so
TA:
00:41:57
I don't know if there was any real need beyond, I think big beer
came and found what they needed from San Diego. I'd be
surprised if, if there's any big beer-ness left in San Diego. I
mean, I say that, and you know, we'll see. But you know, I, I
don't, I don't really feel like
TA:
00:42:13
That the big beer is kind of be knocking down the doors in San
Diego anytime soon.
JD:
00:42:16
They got their toe in.
TA:
00:42:18
Potentially because of the desaturation and just some of the
difficulties that they might experience. ah, it's a, it's a whole, it's
a whole run of things and it really has to do with, you know,
where can they, where can they scale and where can they find
their return on their investment and things like that.
JD:
00:42:32
Yeah, no, that's what they're looking at is a bottom line.
TA:
00:42:35
It is 100% about how much can they make on what they're
buying it. Yeah.
JD:
00:42:41
Because your beers are not run of the mill Coors-type beers, not
to bash Coors, but just, you know, as an example, where did you
get your early inspirations? I mean, you, you said you like the
Belgians and you were exposed to a wide variety of European
and, and what craft beer was made in the US. But things like oak
aging and sour beers, were those things that you were exposed
to early on or were those things that you found out later while
you were experimenting?
TA:
00:43:10
Yeah, it was early. I remember, I remember my first Chimay
Red. I remember my first Guinness and I vividly remember the
very first Rodenbach I ever had. And I, you know, the
Rodenbach I think hit me more than anything else in that really
portend, you know, that really does explain why, you know, like,
Oh my God, that's okay. I know there's weird beer out there,
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but this is way to the left, right? This thing is way, way
downstream from anything I'd had at that point. You know, I
was, when on the four years I was in college, I was sampling a
lot of beers and then I continued to continue to buy beer. And,
and it's just when you get one that's put in front of you and you
say, wow, how did they do that? And that was kind of the, the
aha that was the light bulb, I think was, was that first
Rodenbach. That somebody who's living in a world where that,
that's so to the extreme and delicious. But why can't, why can't
I, why can't I think about beer like that? And that's, that
definitely pushed me in that direction.
JD:
00:44:06
Well that's great to have such an open mind. Do you remember
who, if anyone else was doing things like barrel aging and sour
beers or anything when you started doing it?
TA:
00:44:17
Vinnie7 <Cilurzo> and I joke about this a lot cause Vinnie at
Russian River and I are pretty good friends and a lot of it comes
back to when we first picked up oak barrels and really got into
that, you know, late 19, late 1990s, you know, the first batch of
cuvée that we were making and they were making beer called
Temptation. There was very little of that going on and I knew
Belgian had <inaudible. in the market. But out West there
weren't a lot of people making sour beer in barrels. And so we
had to just kinda kick the can on how to do it. Talk collectively.
Again, it got back to, we were not we did not, you know, you
know, withhold the secrets. And we talked a lot about the what
ifs and things and that I think was a big, big part of the success
was just, okay, how are we going to do this in this environment?
Because again, you couldn't open a book and read how to do it.
Today you can open plenty of books.
JD:
00:45:06
Or just find it out there on the web.
TA:
00:45:10
I mean, you pick up the phone and call someone, but then back
then it isn't, you know, how do you manage your barrel
program or what do you, how do you do this? It was, well, I'm
going to try, I'm going to try this. Okay. That sounds like that.
That seems reasonable to me.
Vinnie Cilurzo founded Blind Pig Brewing in Temecula, CA before moving to Northern California to found Russian
River Brewing.
7
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JD:
00:45:22
Oh, so you can't think of anybody specifically locally though?
You, I mean, Vinnie, to me, is still local as they were nearby,
TA:
00:45:30
For sure, it’s California.
JD:
00:45:32
but I'm thinking in San Diego.
TA:
00:45:34
You know, I don't know if we, I always say we, being Pizza Port. I
don't know if we were the first ones to make intentionally sour
beer in San Diego. I don't recall running into it anywhere at that
point. But for the sake of clarity, I never say we were the first
ones because I truly don't know. There was some oak aging
going on the guys at Rock Bottom <Restaurant and Brewery> in
La Jolla specifically ‘cause I got barrels from them. AleSmith
<Brewing Company>I think was right about that same time, ‘97,
’98-ish where they were getting into having some bourbon
barrel kind of things going on.
JD:
00:46:06
But that was Skip <Virgilio>8.
TA:
00:46:07
Skip doing that. There was not a lot of sour beer in California at
that point. So, or even San Diego can that I can recall.
JD:
00:46:17
I’m glad sour beer’s around. Okay. You just mentioned cuvée.
And I've seen it said that that is your favorite beer.
TA:
00:46:26
Perhaps.
JD:
00:46:27
Yeah. Perhaps.
TA:
00:46:28
It’s the only one that bears my name 9. How's that?
JD:
00:46:30
That's true. That's true. On the other hand, is there a beer that
you ever made that you didn't care for, but everybody else said,
no, we've got to put this on tap.
TA:
00:46:43
Ooh, that's a damn good question.
JD:
00:46:45
Did they, did it actually sell well?
TA:
00:46:48
There is a running joke here at the brewery. We made a beer a
few years ago called Spontaneous Cheer. And the Spontaneous
8
9
Skip Virgilio founded AleSmith Brewing and later sold to Peter and Vicky Zien.
Cuvée du Tomme.
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Cheer was a peach sour and it was actually spontaneously
fermented. So we, we've got some spontaneous fermentation
barrels and things that we do from time to time and we have a
large library of barrels. We have over a thousand oak barrels full
of now and we made this batch of beer and it tasted pretty darn
good. That being said, I struggled with it personally because it
didn't really manifest our house culture. We have a very strong
sour beer sense. Like there's a terroir in our world. You can
taste the Lost Abbey beer and it's white grapey and it's stone
peach fruit. And you can tell that there's something about the
way that we blend in and package. And that beer had none of it,
even though it was a peach beer. But that's because all of the
cultures came from the spontaneous portion. And so, people
were like, you have to release this beer. And I can't in good
conscience release it because you could open it in a tasting
room in Texas and you'd have no idea it came from us and
what's the point of that? So that's probably the one in this
environment that had garnered a lot of energy I would say,
okay, that's not what I was, didn't hate the beer, just wasn't
keen on it. Bearing the name Lost Abbey being sour and didn't,
didn't exude us.
JD:
00:48:15
And so you have not brewed it again since.
TA:
00:48:18
No, we haven’t. Even though we likely could, and people would
freak for it, but it doesn't, again, it gets really to the point of,
you know, we're really trying to have that identity in a big sea of
imitations. I would think that that was probably a one-anddone. I'd be surprised if it came back.
JD:
00:48:35
Okay, if I ever see an unopened bottle of it, I'll know that that's
truly special.
TA:
00:48:39
So we never bottled it. That's the only bottle that I think, I mean
it was, it was literally only one oak barrel, so 50 gallons. But I
think we only bottled it. I had a friend who had a baby and there
was a request, but I, there shouldn't, there shouldn't be any
bottles of that out in the world. There are, they probably aren't
real.
JD:
00:48:55
Yeah. Well, we'll know that they are shams. What was your very
first award for brewing?
TA:
00:49:04
That's a good question.
JD:
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00:49:08
You've had so many.
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TA:
00:49:09
I know like, let's see. We had strong ale in 19... Well, okay. The
very first award that I know for certain was the gold medal that I
participated in at La Cruda. We won a gold medal10 for the
Makanudo Porter, but that was not my beer and I was not the
recipe generator. So I would say probably a beer that we
brewed at Pizza Port and that was part of the Strong Ale Festival
in ‘97 or ‘98. And then at that point we started entering the Real
Ale Festival in Chicago or some California State Fair stuff. We
did not win a GABF11 award until 1999, 2000.
JD:
00:49:44
Shame on them.
TA:
00:49:46
It took me a little while to figure out where our beers sort of fit
in the competitive landscape,
JD:
00:49:52
The pantheon of beers.
TA:
00:49:53
So once I figured that part out, we got on a roll pretty, quickly.
JD:
00:49:57
That does seem to be a little bit of a challenge cause I'm a
member of the Society of Barley Engineers when they talk about
submitting for homebrew <competitions>. Sometimes there are
quite intense discussions about where a particular beer, that
somebody’s having everybody sample, what category that fits
into. And you do then deal with judges’ taste buds. Which, you
know, it's a constantly moving landscape.
TA:
00:50:17
I’ve been a GABF judge since ‘99-ish. And that has afforded me
an enormous amount of opportunities to watch the process,
participate in it, and even potentially piss off brewers and
people who maybe didn't, you know, like the way that it went.
It's fascinating to watch the competition evolve at a table
relative to the dialogue, the strength of the judges, the opinions
of the judges. Even just the sheer age of the, the judging has
come from, there were only this block of people that used to do
it and now it's expanded and now the categories have morphed
and they're different. And the, you know, we talk about it a lot
because it's, it's interesting to see how difficult, first of all,
there's so many more beers, but the sheer, the sheer
perspective that people are operating under relative to, I've had
these style beers or I've never been think about, okay, I'm
10
11
Awarded at the Great American Beer Festival.
Great American Beer Festival.
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supposed to judge a Kölsch-style beer, but I'm a judge and I've
never been to Cologne and had the six beers from there that are
the, that are the standards. Well, how do you judge that? Like
that's, that's a, it's an interesting scenario because you're being
asked to read this against what was written, how this is how a
standard should taste. Yet. You've never been in situ and had
that environmental condition.
JD:
00:51:41
Right, with that terroir and all everything else, all those factors
that work into it.
TA:
00:51:45
100 percent. I do agree with you that there's, one of the things
about entering competitively is that there's so many different
places beers can fit and sometimes it's really environmentally
like time and place. Sometimes the beer exudes more oak and
sometimes it doesn’t, and it wants to be in an oak category, but
it can't cause it has brett12. We did a sampling a couple months
ago back in early July and I think we went through 20 different
beers for GABF trying to get down to the five that we wanted to
send. And in order to do that we had to kind of pick the beers.
We'd, you know, we brought out all the beers that we thought
were really well done and then we had to go say, well that
would fit here, wouldn't fit here, but it probably fits best here,
but we don't want to send that beer there because we already
have another one that wants to go there. So, you don't wanna
compete against yourself either?
JD:
00:52:35
Now are you limited to five beers for competition?
TA:
00:52:39
Of late? They've been in the four to five range. Okay. A few
years ago, you could send up to eight and prior to that it was
kind of unlimited. But when it went from eight to five it got a lot
harder.
JD:
00:52:48
Yeah. But it just seems like, I mean you can see what thousands
of entries that seems like and yeah,
TA:
00:52:56
I think there's over 8,000 beers that'll be judged. But we always
say this, it's like if, if back when we were going to sending eight
beers, I don't know if we make eight world-class beers every
fall. Right? So how many are really well done and how many of
them are like, you know, that far up the channel. I think we
12
Industry jargon for Brettanomyces, a fungi used to sour beer.
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make eight great beers but are they going to sit at the table and
really, really compete. But I think when you have eight versus
four, your odds are better. But perhaps being in categories that
some, some years are strong, and some years are weak, is, is
where it kind of comes from.
JD:
00:53:29
Yeah. But you're also trying to be selective. I'm sure there are
people that “I'll send as many beers as I can to increase my odds
of winning an award.” Because of course the GABF awards still
mean a lot.
TA:
00:53:41
Yeah. There was a year, I know this to be true, where at least
one or two breweries that don't need to be, and they're not
from San Diego, sent somewhere between 30 to 50 beers. And
didn't win an award. And these are pretty good breweries. So,
you know, you're talking about the shotgun approach. You hit
the side of the barn. But it was pretty interesting to see that
they didn't win. You know, the years of late where we haven't,
we haven't managed to win an award. You know, we look up
and we talked to the guys and we say, you know, look at the
breweries that didn't win. Like, you know, these are, these are
still some, you know, solid, solid producers and congratulations
to the ones that did. But yeah, there's no guarantee anymore. I
mean, winning one is a pretty dang good achievement.
JD:
00:54:24
Yeah. Well then in some cases, like just recently, what happens
to the beer while is being transported? It could completely
knock a perfectly good beer that left here out of any
consideration because what happens to it or it doesn't even get
there.
TA:
00:54:39
Yeah. So we've tried to mitigate that as best we can. Where the
consolidation point and we have been for a long time that helps
with refrigeration and, you know, just really making sure that
the beer is better taken care of, competitive, you know,
competitive judging or, you know, competitive brewing. I would
say this is far different than it was 10, 15 years ago.
JD:
00:55:00
I guess for good and for bad both. But back to your awards, is
there any award that you have one that is the most meaningful
to you? Not to discount the other awards.
TA:
00:55:12
Sure, I think two really come to mind. The, we've been lucky to
win a <GABF> Brewery of the Year award four different times.
And I'm, I'm personally, I really want to get to five. I want to
have that. I want to have that, that last one on the, you know, in
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that, you know, if I, if they gave out rings, I want to have the
handful. The last time we won was 2007, so it's been a long
time. And we may never get that opportunity again. I think the
one that I won last year, which was the Russell Schehrer Award
for Innovation and Craft Brewing, that that's you know, that's a
hall of fame landscape kind of thing. And it just speaks to the
community involvement and the, you know, being, being a
participant in this, you know, only 22 people have won it at that
point. And I, I, yeah, the legacy award, you know, something like
that. I mean, I, I still love, I love the GABF and World Beer <Cup>
Awards, a couple of awards cause they're, you know, they're
purely blind. They're your peers. They show your team that
they're, you know, they're making the right decisions. But the
Russell award was probably the one that was singular in the
sense that that was, you know, personally with my name on it.
Where it's almost every other award that we've had that we've
been lucky enough to garner comes with somebody else, you
know, participating in doing work in that regard.
JD:
00:56:29
Yeah. Okay. Well, very good. So, we're just about at the end of
all my questions, from your experience, is there anything in the
way of advice or a lesson you've learned or anything else that
you think either can't be said enough or you haven't ever had
the opportunity to say?
TA:
00:56:
You know, I think that we were talking yesterday, it's kind of
interesting. We were talking about how difficult this business
has become and there's a lot of noise and chatter and 50 years
from now when someone's looking at this, they'll say, wow it's
not as easy as it used to be. And I don't know where the fall
line's going to be. We're going to get to 10,000 breweries in this
country. I don't doubt that that'll happen. And I don't know
where, where the relevancy will be. I don't know what it will
look like. I feel pretty strongly that in the time that I've been
lucky enough to be in this business, a lot of what's made us
successful has come from a very strong sense of this is the beer
I want to produce. And nowadays there seems to be a lot of,
you have to just do what the consumer is saying they want.
TA:
00:57:38
And tons of breweries I think are kind of losing their way,
respectful of an identity. And I don't know if the artist in me
can, can sort of reconcile that for the long haul. I think there's
this sense that if, if that's the way the industry is going, you
know, is that what I signed up for? Part of me wants to see the
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consumerism shift and I, I talk about this a lot, but it's kind of
like when you throw the boomerang out, it comes back a little
slower than it went out and maybe the boomerang is coming
back. You know, that there's just too much ubiquity right now.
But maybe not. Maybe with 10,000 brewers, you just, there is
ubiquity and that's just part of the nature of it. But you know, I
think the success that I've had, you know, in this business has
been built on beers that, that, that have something that look
and tastes like things that I've, you know, imagined and there's
been a lot of success for that. But I don't know how you
continue to do that when there's 10,000 imitators and people
trying to, trying to find the same sort of, you know, sense of
their worth. So for me, I think the biggest thing moving forward
is just where, where do we all fit in? It's just dense stuff.
JD:
00:58:49
Giving everybody a chance to attain their dream. But yeah, you
know.
TA:
00:58:53
Yeah. I think that we're going to see, I think in the next two
years we're going to see a lot of dreams getting crushed
because it's getting, it's getting even harder today than it was
probably a year ago. But there might be a light at the end of the
tunnel in the sense that, you know, there's been a lot of
distributor consolidation. There's been a lot of breweries, what
they say, you know, rightsizing or trying to figure this all out. But
it's a business. It's gonna eat people alive, you know? And, and
that's what businesses do, right? There's, there is this, there's,
there's a success rate attributed to craft beer that's not as high.
I mean, it's higher than most consumer goods, and there will
probably be a little bit more reckoning that will come along with
it because you just can't, you just can't all swim in the same
ocean. It just doesn't work. And so we're going to find some
sense of corrective correlations. I mean, we're going to find
smaller, you know, people are going to be making less beer for
the next few years and if you're actively making more beer,
you're one of the very few people that's, that's winning in that,
in that space.
JD:
00:59:51
It does seem like we had a real bump up in numbers of
breweries that opened in 2016-2017 which is being that this is
2019. We're looking at entering the fourth and fifth year of
leases for a lot of the breweries. And I think that might be a
time where people are going to have to sit down and assess.
TA:
01:00:11
Sure. I mean, if you've got a five-year lease and you're about to
come into that fourth year, you're in the fourth year and you're
now triggering the, am I going to renew? Right. I haven't, I
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haven't been taking a paycheck or I've been taking very little.
And then at some point you're like, are we, is this a real thing?
You know, I don't, I don't know. You know, people, people
certainly I think come into it, you know, really, you know, eager
and excited about it. And then little by little you're, you're
grinding and there's a lot of grinding going on right now, which
is okay, but you know, there's, but grinding isn't fun.
JD:
01:00:46
No. And when people come into it with a passion, which is a
term you used earlier, passion cannot sustain you forever,
unfortunately. I mean, it's what maybe gets you up the next
morning, but at some point it's not paying the bills and you have
managed to raise a family, you know, other people, you know,
that they've got investors that may or may not understand the
actual brewing industry and cause and effect and impacts. And,
you know, yeah, it's going to be real interesting to see what
happens.
TA:
01:01:18
Yeah. I've been pretty lucky. My partnership here hasn't had an
unrealistic expectation of financial return. And, and you know,
so, you know, we, we opened our doors, we borrowed some
money, we repaid the money, and then we've basically
reinvested all of that money into the company when we needed
to. So we are not sitting here saying okay, you're, you know, you
were relying on us for a dividend. And you know, that doesn't, it
doesn't work like that. But the, the business of beer is very
difficult. And you know, you, you talked about that word
passion. We, when we opened our doors, I published this list of
the 10 commandments of our brewery and one of the 10
commandments was that you, you know, passion isn't
something you can buy at the corner store. And I meant that
with a sense of like, if you come into this, you know, you can't
just throw that term around.
TA:
01:02:06
Like you've got to live it and breathe it. And I think that that
kind of what you were speaking to earlier is, is, has always been
like, I think there's a lot of people that will say, I am very
passionate about what I do. And I have been, and that's, you
know, over the 20 plus years I've been doing this. That's that,
that is a word that I would associate with, with getting out of
bed every day. And it's been very, it's been very conducive to
being successful. That being said, you don't have to be overly
passionate, but you have to be, you still have to be passionate
about getting out of bed every day, even when you're
struggling, even when you're not killing it. And I can guarantee
you right now, there's a lot of people when they're getting out
of bed who used to kill it and were, you know, who thought
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they were going to kill it and are saying to themselves, man, this
is, this is real. Like, and you know, how do you, how do you put
your game face on and, and, and really keep, keep grinding and
to tackle the, you know, look, we want to get to the other side.
JD:
01:02:54
Yeah. Yeah. And you don't want to be a long face when your
consumers come in because they're going to say, Hey, I came in
here for a beer and a good time.
TA:
01:03:02
I am here. I am here for a good time. Right. Any happy people?
JD:
01:03:06
Oh dear. Oh dear. Something that just came to me, which is not
on the list of questions, but we are sitting in the space that
Stone originated at. And you had just mentioned that you've
expanded. Talk a little bit about the physical plant. What was it
like when you moved in as Lost Abbey? What did you have to do
to it and how many times have you expanded?
TA:
01:03:34
All right. So, when we took over in January of 2006 and Stone
moved out to the facility in Escondido, they controlled at that
point about 30,000 square feet of I think the building is 85,000
square feet. So, they had about a third of it. And when they
moved out, we collapsed the entire building back down to their
original suite, suite 104, and that suite is 7,500 square feet. So,
we started with a 30-barrel brewhouse in 19, I'm sorry, in 2006.
And we had 30, 7,500 square feet, including the tasting room,
cold box, and our barrel warehouse. In 2009, I believe we
moved across the parking lot and took over another 10,000
square feet and moved the cold box, all the barrels and our
distribution. So, for awhile we had that space. We were up to
about 17,000 square feet. 2012 or so we took over this suite
that we're sitting in here, which was another 7,500 square feet.
TA:
01:04:35
So that allowed us to build our packaging hall, this office, the
lab, things like that. We rolled for the next few years, for the
next five years. We had that 27,000 square feet of space. And
then we added we added a second, third, fourth warehouse
across the parking lot. And that took us to almost 40,000 square
feet. And then last January we moved out of that distribution
warehouse into another building here, which is now connected
from the front of the street to the back. Behind us. We control
40,000 square feet under one roof line for the first time. And we
moved out of the facility across the parking lot, all of our barrels
and everything. So we now are under one building, one roof
line. We can't drive from the packaging hall to the rest of the
building. But every other building we can drive forklifts through.
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TA:
01:05:30
And that never happened. Two years ago, we owned four
<forklifts> ‘cause we had four different buildings.
JD:
1:05:37
Now does Port distribute all the beers here in San Marcos?
TA:
1:05:43
Everything comes out of this facility. We are doing a batch or
two a year out of the Pizza Port facility when we need to, but
we don't, it's this, this facility can handle a lot more beer than
we're currently making. So most, most everything that has the
word Port Brewing, Lost Abbey, or Hop Concept on it has come
out of San Marcos. It's only been this year that we've brewed
two or three batches of beer down the street at Pizza Port. And
most of that was for efficiency to do big runs of things that we
could, we did a giant Hop Freshener, Hop Concept release at
Costco and needed to have beer all at the same time.
JD:
01:06:15
So are you, in Costcos outside of California as well?
TA:
01:06:20
No, and that has been something we haven't really tackled or
looked at.
JD:
01:06:23
Like it would be just an overwhelming amount of production yet
I think...
TA:
01:06:28
Costco's pretty, pretty keen on a lot of local these days, at least
for beer. So, I don't know how relevant we would, you know, we
might be able to get into some in Arizona, maybe in Washington
and Northern California, but you know, there's a ton of
breweries in each of those locations. Tapping the same buyer
on the shoulder saying, can I get, can I get in here? And, and the
buyers probably got enough options that they don't even need
something from out of here. And frankly, the cost associated
with getting it to them would almost make it prohibitive in
terms of trying to put it on the shelf at their right price point.
JD:
01:06:59
Yeah. Have you ever had to turn down any kind of requests
because you just knew that trying to fill that big an order was
going to just break you?
TA:
01:07:09
No, we've, we've been pretty lucky in the sense that when we
do get we just came off of couple of pretty good-sized Costco
orders and they were about 40 pallets worth of beer. But the
brewery can handle that without being too burdened in the
sense. I mean, it's certainly a lot of attention on one thing but
we're not overly stretched at our capacity right now. So, when
those things pop up, we certainly snap at them and want, you
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know we wanna make sure we execute on it. If we were making
a lot more beer, we probably would have, we would struggle
with that a little more. But when you get an order for 40 pallets
of beer, you figure it out, you know, you really do.
JD:
01:07:49
When we walked back here, we passed one of your employees
building a bike. What other sorts of things do you do with the
employees or for the employees to support maybe their selfeducation, other interests that they have, things like that.
TA:
01:08:05
We've definitely put it on our radar this year. We've lost a lot of
employees in the last two years. I think we've turned over 20
employees and we only have about 50 total. So, we've put an
emphasis on that level of communication, you know, what can
we do to assist you in this endeavor? It's not something that
we've programmed in the past or been terribly good at. That
being said, we haven't, we have really seen that there are some
simple opportunities to do things like that and Tim's running his
own small bike shop and it's just a, you know, it's a pocket,
pocketed space here at the brewery. You know, we've
announced that if there's other brewer or other brewery
employees from the tasting room all the way up that have an
idea, we would love to hear about it. We don't make a dime on
it. There's no, there's no real emphasis towards, you know,
trying to co-partner on things.
TA:
01:08:56
It's just we, we want to, we want to foster the opportunities if it
makes sense. And Tim's the pilot sort of program right now with
the bike, the little bike shop that he's running and it gets
interesting, I hope. I hope it sparks other employees to say,
okay, cool, I've wanted to do this, that or the other and it looks
like I could and come to us and say, ‘Oh, could you carve out
this space again?’ We are, we are under more, more efficient
space right now and we do have a little bit of room. So, I hope
that, I hope somebody else says, okay, I want to do this and it,
and it fits the needs and the use and isn't a big deal. It'd be
great because it means that we can, we can continue to lift
what they want to be a part of and retain them at some time.
JD:
01:09:35
Yeah. Very good. It was fun. Oh, okay. Well, I think that pretty
much has run through my list plus of questions for you about
your career, your history, and what's going on with Lost
Abbey/Port Brewing. And I want to thank you for that. And I'm
going to go ahead and turn this off.
Transcribed by
Judith Downie
33
2024-01-04
�
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Title
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Transcripts
Description
An account of the resource
Written oral histories and transcripts are available for researchers that prefer the written word, or to see the whole interview in a document. Transcripts of <a href="https://archivesoralhistories.csusm.edu/collections/show/5">audio and video files</a> are also available as part of those video files.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Arthur, Tomme. Interview transcript. August 8th, 2019.
Description
An account of the resource
Tomme Arthur has been involved in several San Diego breweries, most notably as founder and managing owner of Lost Abbey Brewing located in San Marcos, CA. His first professional brewing position was at the short-lived Cervecería La Cruda in San Diego, California. Arthur moved to Pizza Port Brewing in Solana Beach, California as an assistant brewer. After becoming Director of Brewing Operations for the increasing number of locations, he led the chain in garnering numerous beer awards. Arthur opened Lost Abbey Brewing in 2006 to focus on his interest in Belgian-style beers. In late 2023, Arthur separated Lost Abbey from Port Brewing operations in a ‘right-sizing’ plan in response to beer industry trends. Port Brewing retained the Hop Concept, Tiny Bubbles, and Kharisma brands in their portfolio and took over the San Marcos production space and closed the tasting room. Lost Abbey entered an alternating proprietorship agreement with Mother Earth Brewing to share their production space in nearby Vista, CA.
In his 2019 interview, Arthur discusses his introduction to craft beer and home brewing; entry into the profession and work at various breweries beginning in the 1990s; founding Lost Abbey Brewing and other brewery ventures; mentoring individuals in the industry; and awards.
Creator
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Tomme Arthur
Contributor
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Judith Downie
Ernest Cisneros
Date
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2019-08-08
Subject
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Brewers -- California -- San Diego County
Brewing industry -- California -- History
Lost Abbey Brewing (San Marcos, Calif.)
Microbreweries -- California -- San Diego County
Coverage
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San Marcos (Calif.)
Publisher
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California State University San Marcos University Library
Language
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English
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<a href="https://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In copyright</a>
Rights Holder
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California State University San Marcos
Format
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text
Identifier
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ArthurTomme_DownieJudith_2019-08-08_transcript
Brewchive(r)